I would not waste your lives for naught. But it may
be that a show of force will keep him off, so we will wait under arms
until we are sure what he will do."
Then the men broke out, saying that they had beaten this man before with
him as leader, and they were in no mind to give up without a fight.
"Well, then," my father answered, "it is plain that you will back me,
and so I will call on you if there is need or chance. But we have the
women folk to think of now, and we must not risk aught."
Now the longship held on her course steadily, never shifting her helm
for so much as a point. In half an hour or so we must be alongside one
another, at this rate, and that Arngeir did not altogether like the look
of, for it would seem as if she meant to find out all about us at least.
There was some little sea running, and it might be thought easier to
board us on the lee side, therefore. We could not get away from her in
any way, for even now, while she was closer hauled than we, she kept
pace with us, and had she paid off to the same course as ourselves, she
would have left us astern in a very short time.
Presently a man swarmed up her rigging in order to look down on our
decks, and as he went up, my father bade our men crawl over to windward,
so that he should see all one gunwale lined with men, and so think that
both were, and deem that we were setting a trap for them in order to
entice them alongside by pretending to be hardly manned.
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