One can be
wise at times, when the comfort of another is in the balance, as it
were.
Moreover, how could I tell that some of her longing for home might
not be also from pain of separation? And that was now no happy
thought to me. Well, I must wait and find out all that. If it was
in my power that longing should be stilled, and then I might know
the best and worst of all that might lie before me.
Thoughts like these do not grow up all at once as I have set them
down. At this time they seemed to gather from the many times they
had passed through my mind, and rank themselves against my words.
So it came to pass that I was silent, and was glad presently that
so I had been.
"Look!" said Gerda suddenly, pointing out to the far eastward,
"yonder are sails on the skyline."
Far off they were, but plain enough under the morning sun. Two
white specks on the blue circle's edge, sails of ships which sailed
westward, as if beating to windward in long boards against the
northeast breeze. They might be Norse vessels from Dublin on their
way homewards, though it had been more easy for such to wait a
slant from the south or west.
"They cannot be the ships which have caused the firing of the
beacons," I said. "That trouble was to the westward.
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