As boat and ship drifted apart his enemies mocked him, their grinning faces peering between and over the shields which lined the low rail. “Hoist your sail!” Bodvar jeered at him, “and make for Norway or Iceland, as you prefer. You are about as far from the one as from the other. You have no worse or better chance, either way.” “Hope you relish your provender!” Gellir called. “You’ll need both oars soon,” Hrodmar shrilled, “and I don’t see either.” “Don’t you wish you had a bailer!” Sigurd shouted. Soon he saw only fog. He eyed the dirty water sloshing about in the dory’s bilge. The boat was not leaking rapidly, but it was leaking. No water had lapped over the gunwales and the big groundswells were long and smooth. Of air there was not a breath. For the time being he had only the leaks to fear. And, in the bow, jammed under the tiny fore-thwart in the triangular cubby-hole, he saw a small wooden scoop-bailer. It meant more to him than the two little fish and the leather water-bottle under the after thwart. He conned the edges of the gunwales and thwarts. He saw two sharp splinters. The larger and sharper was where he could not use it; but, painfully and with great exertion, he wriggled, hunched and wrenched himself until he brought the cords which bound his wrists against the other splinter. With efforts distressing at once, and not long afterwards agonizing, he sawed the rope against the splinter. Panting, a jelly of exhaustion, shivering and sweating, he all but fainted; but he found fresh energy every time he glanced at the bilge-water. At last, just as hope and strength together were failing him, the cord parted. A few jerks and twists of his arms and hands and they were free. He shook himself, beat his arms against his chest and sprang upon the bailer. To his great satisfaction it was not long before no deftness could scoop it up half full; the boat was not leaking too fast for him. As the dense fog and breathless calm continued to brood over the waters and the slow groundswell even abated, his cockleshell kept afloat not only all that day and night, but throughout the two following days and nights. But the third night after he had been set adrift found him near exhaustion. More than half his time was occupied in bailing and his muscles ached. He was afraid to sleep for fear of foundering before he woke. Once, in spite of himself, he fell deeply asleep and roused to find the gunwales almost awash, so that the most desperate fury of bailing barely sufficed to save him. In the flurry of effort his remaining fish went overboard in a scoopful of water, unheeded. His flask he had emptied by dusk of the second day, control himself all he could. As the slow dawn whitened the fog after the short arctic night he thought he was delirious, for he seemed to hear the roar of surf on rocks and not far off.