Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/359

Rh clashed their bronze axes, set in wooden hafts.

"Then I say there is not one among ye holdeth this child's honor dearer than do I."

So they cheered him again as they went to see the ships unloaded. And it was many days of sunshine and of storm (and many a moonlit night) before the ships were filled with tin.

N the day before the ships sailed East they were by the Great Hall, when Ahab said,

"Bertha, canst thou guess thy parentage?"

"Come!" she answered, quickly, and led him to the Great Hall. It was a room of vast dimensions, hung with furs; and with blocks of stone about the sides, where the chiefs sat in yearly council, or oftener if there were wars; and slitted openings for light. And at one end was a long gray stone of half a man's height, with another stone as long, but near flat, cemented to the top of it—the altar of the Druid priests, where pretty youths were put to death to please the angry gods, while fires of oak twigs filled the place with heavy, sacred scents. But at the other end, not very high up, and low where all could see, hung the great sword, and its scabbard was of foreign metal unmarked by sign or symbol, and its hilt was of pure gold, and in the head of it was set a ball of ivory, white as milk. Bertha led Ahab here.

"There is my history," she said. "No man knoweth else."

"I have seen the sword," said Ahab, "for many times each day I have vis- ited this place to look upon it. Wast thou bound to it with thongs when they found thee, Bertha?"

"With strong thongs of leather, my lord," said she, "and it was twenty years ago. None here hath strength to pull it from its sheath."

"Have I?" mused Ahab, and he was thinking of Elissa in the garden of Ibrahim.

"These good people think I came here from the gods," said Bertha, wistfully. "Perhaps I did so, yet I would not be more than a woman, with a woman's heart and a woman's life. But they say I am more, and that one day a god will come who can unsheath the sword, and that him I shall wed."

"And wouldst thou, then, not wed a god?" asked Ahab.

"Not I, my lord," cried Bertha. "A woman would wed to her taste, and by that do I know I am but a woman."

"Thou art an incomparable woman," said Ahab.

"And thou, my lord," said Bertha, very softly, "art, to some of us, so very like a god!"

Ahab sprang back two paces, takenunaware. That and fear lest he betray his longing to possess the sword undid his self-control; but instantly discerning his advantage, he recovered his dignity and resolved on one brave play. For the taunts of Elissa of Tyre still led his thoughts,—and he was a proud man.

"Bertha," said Ahab, "have many tried to draw the sword?"

"Hundreds," she answered,—"so many that the priests and the chiefs have promised to give me and the sword to him who can unsheath it."

"The sword and thou!" said Ahab.

"Me and the sword!" answered Bertha.

And then Ahab walked a little way, and he prayed: "O Baal, I pray by thy power, and by the seven planets, and by the sacred rivers, and by the hills of the lands I have found for thy people,—Baal, I ask thee for strength to draw this sword and to carry it and to wield it as thou sendest me chance!"

"Take down the sword and hand it me!" cried Ahab.

He swung back his red robe until his arms were naked to the shoulders. Bertha gave him the sword, and he put his left hand on the sheath, and his right hand, fitted to the gripping of tillers and muscled against the pitching of the seas, to the golden hilt, and the ivory ball just struck his little finger.

"Baal!" he cried.

And, easily as a sunbeam slips through deepest shadows, the sword came out; and, as exultantly he swung it high about his head, its double edges flashed in splendid glory.

"Bertha!" he cried, "see, I have drawn the sword and it is mine!"

"Yes, my lord," she answered him,