"Thither go I!" exclaimed Ulric. "I have promised Ben Ezra that I will take him to his own, and I must go to that city and see the temple. I have it in mind that I may see his god. They say he is a good god and a great fighter like Thor."
"I have heard much of him," said Lysias, "but he is more like Jupiter. If thou wilt land at the island Paphos, I will show thee his statue and thou canst see what he is like. We shall hear his voice thunder if I read this weather rightly."
"Then he is Thor!" said Ulric, turning to the door. "Come! I know not the weather signs of this sea."
Out they went and Lysias glanced around the sky. His face was brighter now and he stepped firmly like a warrior.
"O jarl," he shouted, "I am a seaman also. Take down thy sails quickly! Put out a bank of oars. Bid thy steersman keep the head of thy keel southward, for from thence cometh a tempest. The sky will darken rapidly."
"The Greek is right!" shouted Sigurd. "I had forgotten the sign of such a storm, but I call it to mind. It is a strong one."
Down came the sails, out went the oars, and the thick haze on the water southerly, which had been sunlit and fair to look upon, shot up toward the middle heaven, blackening as it went.
"O jarl," said Wulf the Skater, "thank the gods! We are to see a kind of storm that we do not have in our own seas."
"Fine storms come to us in midsummer," said Ulric, "and they roar well in the fiords. Will the anger of Thor be louder here? The Greek saith that his Jupiter can thunder, and the Jew told me that his Jehovah is also a thunderer. Are they of kin? They who speak the same tongue are of one house."
The Greek was now standing by the anvil and hammer on the fore deck.
"The sign of this ship was Minerva," he muttered, "but the Saxons have given it to Vulcan. If yonder cloud is indeed of the wind from the African desert we may yet wish that Neptune were our steersman. But what care I for the gods? They were never yet of any use to me. My father made many sacrifices, but the Romans slew him."
There now were sails in sight, but these were fast furling. Most of them were small, but one, at the greater distance, had seemed much wider than the rest.
"I have been watching her," said Sigurd to Ulric, speaking of this craft. "I am not young, but my eyes are the eyes of a falcon. Now that her sail is down her oars are out and she steereth toward us. The storm will give her oarsmen enough to do."