With that, Torcall Dall gave a wild cry, and sheathed an arm about the wee white one, and put out a hand to the bosom that loved him. But there was no white breast there, and no white babe: and what was against his lips was his own hand red with blood. "O Hildyr!" he cried. But only the splashing of the waves did he hear. "O white one!" he cried. But only the scream of a sea-mew, as it hovered over that boat filled with dead men, made answer. III All day the Blind Harper steered the galley of the dead. There was a faint wind moving out of the west. The boat went before it, slow, and with a low, sighing wash. Torcall saw the red gaping wounds of the dead, and the glassy eyes of the nine men. "It is better not to be blind and to see the dead," he muttered, "than to be blind and to see the dead." The man who had been steersman leaned against him. He took him in his shuddering grip and thrust him into the sea. But when, an hour later, he put his hand to the coolness of the water, he drew it back with a cry, for it was on the cold, stiff face of the dead man that it had fallen. The long hair had caught in a cleft in the leather where the withes had given. For another hour Torcall sat with his chin in his right hand, and his unseeing eyes staring upon the dead. He heard no sound at all, save the lap of wave upon wave, and the _suss_ of spray against spray, and a bubbling beneath the boat, and the low, steady swish of the body that trailed alongside the steering oar. At the second hour before sundown he lifted his head. The sound he heard was the sound of waves beating upon rocks. At the hour before sundown he moved the oar rapidly to and fro, and cut away the body that trailed behind the boat. The noise of the waves upon the rocks was now a loud song. When the last sunfire burned upon his neck and made the long hair upon his shoulders ashine, he smelt the green smell of grass. Then it was too that he heard the muffled fall of the sea, in a quiet haven, where shelves of sand were. He followed that sound, and while he strained to hear any voice the boat grided upon the sand, and drifted to one side. Taking his harp, Torcall drove an oar into the sand, and leaped on to the shore. When he was there, he listened. There was silence. Far, far away he heard the falling of a mountain-torrent, and the thin, faint cry of an eagle, where the sun-flame dyed its eyrie as with streaming blood. So he lifted his harp, and, harping low, with a strange, wild song on his lips, moved away from that place, and gave no more thought to the dead. It was deep gloaming when he came to a wood. He felt the cold green breath of it. "Come," said a voice, low and sweet. "And who will _you_ be?" asked Torcall the Harper, trembling because of the sudden voice in the stillness. "I am a child, and here is my hand, and I will lead you, Torcall of Lochlin." The blind man had fear upon him. "Who are you that in a strange place are for knowing who I am?" "Come."