Margaret forbore from looking to challenge me with eloquent,
questioning eyes. With numb fingers inside my thick mitten, I drew
aside the ear-flap of her sou'wester and shouted:
"It is nothing new. I have been here before. In the lives of all my
fathers have I been here. The frost is on my cheek, the salt bites
my nostrils, the wind chants in my ears, and it is an old happening.
I know, now, that my forbears were Vikings. I was seed of them in
their own day. With them I have raided English coasts, dared the
Pillars of Hercules, forayed the Mediterranean, and sat in the high
place of government over the soft sun-warm peoples. I am Hengist and
Horsa; I am of the ancient heroes, even legendary to them. I have
bearded and bitten the frozen seas, and, aforetime of that, ere ever
the ice-ages came to be, I have dripped my shoulders in reindeer
gore, slain the mastodon and the sabre-tooth, scratched the record of
my prowess on the walls of deep-buried caves--ay, and suckled she-
wolves side by side with my brother-cubs, the scars of whose fangs
are now upon me."
|