For a few minutes we sat on the beach and found our breath again, Gerda trying to tell us what she felt concerning what we had done, and then giving up, because, I suppose, she could not find the right words; which was a relief, for she made too much of it all. Then the four of us went up the beach to the shelter of the low, grassy sand hills above it, and there Dalfin turned and faced us with a courtly bow, saying gravely: "Welcome to Ireland, Queen Gerda, and you two good comrades. There would have been a better welcome had we come in less hurry, but no more hearty one. The luck of the O'Neills has stood us in good stead." "If it had not been for the skill of these two friends, it seems to me that even the luck of the torque had been little," said Gerda quietly. "You must not forget that." "It is part of the said luck that they have been here," answered Dalfin, with his eyes twinkling as he bowed to us. "All praise to their seamanship." Then he sat down suddenly as if his knees had given way, and looked up as if bewildered. "Is this silly island also afloat?" he asked, "for it feels more like a ship than any other dry land I was ever on. "It will do so for a time," I said. "Wait till you lose the swing of the decks and find your shore legs again." "Look yonder," Bertric said. "There is the other ship." We had forgotten her for a time in our own perils. She had followed our course, though for what reason we could not tell. Now she had borne up and was heading away westward, some four miles from shore, and sailing well and swiftly, being a great longship. Soon a gray wall of rain swept over her and hid her, and when it cleared in half an hour's time she was beyond our sight. It seemed pretty certain by this time that there could be no people on this side of the island at least, or they would have been here. We climbed to the highest of the sand hills, and looked over what we could see of the place, but there was no sign of hut or man. Beyond the sand hills there was a stretch of open moorland, which rose to the hill across by the strait between us and the mainland, and both hill and moor were alike green and fresh--or seemed so to us after the long days at sea. It was not a bad island, and Dalfin said that there should be fishers here, though he was in no way certain. All round us the sea birds flitted, scolding us for our nearness to their nests among the hills and on the edge of the moor, and they were very tame, as if unused to the sight of man. I thought we could make out some goats feeding on the hill side, but that was all. So far as we could judge, the island may have been a mile long, or less, and a half mile across.