‘Just one score of years after the great Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, there sailed westward, across the Atlantic, a ship, or rather galley, of strange make and fashion. She was very long, shipmates, and floated low and deep in the water, but her prow, all carved and fantastically wrought, rose up above her deck curved like the neck of a swan, and ending in a great eagle’s beak. This head and beak were of iron. At the top of both her masts, for there were two, this galley carried broad, swallow-tailed pendants, quite black, except that there were in the centre of each an eagle’s head and beak of red colour, just like the head and beak at the prow. The galley sailed marvellously fast, and the wind that bore her was ever fair. Yes, shipmates, weeks and weeks rolled on, and not a mariner on board her had need to start sheet, or tack,—and yet tempests swept across her path, and the crew of the galley saw Spanish caravals founder in the great waves, not a bow-shot from their ship, while they were speeding over water ruffled only by a gentle breeze. And the reason was, shipmates, that an enchanted wind filled the galley’s sails, and before its breath the natural storms of the air could not prevail. There was always, as it were, a spot of fair wind upon the ocean, running rapidly westward, and in the centre of that spot, the galley swept across the waves, going with sails and oars. ‘The sailors who manned this strange bark were men of very fair complexion, of light blue eyes and long flaxen hair, and the language they spoke was the tongue of that far northern land—whence, in the old days, came forth, each in his war-galley, the fierce sea-kings—the Buccaneers of the North—shipmates, to plunder and to spoil. These men were heathens and unbelievers—they worshipped gods, called Odin and Thor, and each had a magic sword, the steel of which was wrought by little demons who live under ground, and in hollow places, which they scoop in great rocks and stones, and where they forge such blades that no weapon, were it even welded by the cunning makers of Damascus, could prevail against them. But the strangest thing of all, comrades, was that the captain of this ship was a woman—a woman of great stature, and fierce and lofty aspect. Her name was Tronda, and she was a sorceress; she could make the winds blow as she listed, and she had a crystal into which those who looked could see the future. This Tronda, mates, was a witch of great power, and she came from one of the northern islands, near that huge whirlpool called Lofoden, which can suck great navies down into the abysses of the sea. She wore a sea-green coloured tunic, with a necklace of beads made of a pebble called adder-stone, which hath strange virtues, and her head-gear was formed of the fur of the wild cat. Likewise she wore a very broad girdle, on which were embroidered strange words and letters in gold, and to it was attached a pouch,