Ch. 3: The Knights of the Joyous Venture - Page 2

flood-gates down the mossy brick chute from the
mill-stream to the brook. A big trout - the children knew
him well - rolled head and shoulders at some fly that
sailed round the bend, while, once in just so often, the
brook rose a fraction of an inch against all the wet
pebbles, and they watched the slow draw and shiver of a
breath of air through the tree-tops. Then the little voices
of the slipping water began again.

'It's like the shadows talking, isn't it?' said Una. She
had given up trying to read. Dan lay over the bows,
trailing his hands in the current. They heard feet on the
gravel-bar that runs half across the pool and saw Sir
Richard Dalyngridge standing over them.

'Was yours a dangerous voyage?' he asked, smiling.

'She bumped a lot, sir,' said Dan. 'There's hardly any
water this summer.'

'Ah, the brook was deeper and wider when my
children played at Danish pirates. Are you pirate-folk?'

'Oh no. We gave up being pirates years ago,'explained
Una. 'We're nearly always explorers now. Sailing round
the world, you know.'

'Round?' said Sir Richard. He sat him in the comfortable
crotch of an old ash-root on the bank. 'How can it be round?'

'Wasn't it in your books?' Dan suggested. He had been
doing geography at his last lesson.

'I can neither write nor read,' he replied. 'Canst thou
read, child?'

'Yes,' said Dan, 'barring the very long words.'

'Wonderful! Read to me, that I may hear for myself.'

Dan flushed, but opened the book and began -
gabbling a little - at 'The Discoverer of the North Cape.'

'Othere, the old sea-captain,
Who dwelt in Helgoland,
To King Alfred, the lover of truth,
Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,
Which he held in his brown right hand.'

'But - but - this I know! This is an old song! This I have
heard sung! This is a miracle,' Sir Richard interrupted.
'Nay, do not stop!' He leaned forward, and the shadows
of the leaves slipped and slid upon his chain-mail.

"'I ploughed the land with horses,
But my heart was ill at ease,
For the old seafaring men
Came to me now and then
With their sagas of the seas."'

His hand fell on the hilt of the great sword. 'This is
truth,' he cried, 'for so did it happen to me,' and he beat
time delightedly to the tramp of verse after verse.

"'And now the land," said Othere,
"Bent southward suddenly,
And I followed the curving shore,
And ever southward bore
Into a nameless sea."'

'A nameless sea!' he repeated. 'So did I - so did Hugh and I.'

'Where did you go? Tell us,' said Una.

'Wait. Let me hear all first.' So Dan read to the poem's
very end.