Read Online Saxon: The Emperor's Elephant by Tim Severin - Free Book Online

fair for the next three days while Redwald steered his chosen course without any sight of land. In response to my
questions he told me that he took the direction of the waves as his guide, together with the angle of the sun and stars whenever the clouds allowed. But it was a mystery to me how he managed to
calculate so accurately the distance we had covered. Late one morning, he gestured over the bow and announced casually that we would be at Kaupang next daybreak. I looked in that direction but saw
nothing. Another couple of hours passed before I made out a narrow dark smudge just discernible against the hazy line where a grey overcast sky met a sullen-looking sea. It was our landfall.
Judging by the crew’s lack of any reaction, they thought this feat of navigation was unremarkable. They made minor adjustments to the set of the sail, and then went back to the everyday
routine of repairing worn tackle and hauling up buckets of water from the bilge and tipping the contents overboard.
    Slowly the cog wallowed towards the coast. It was a raw land, rugged and desolate. Thick, gloomy forest covered dark hills that rose gradually towards a range of mountains whose bald peaks were
purple-grey in the far distance. As we drew closer, it was possible to make out the jumbled boulders of a rock-bound shore without any sign of human activity. The wind had already eased to a soft
breeze and in the late afternoon it died away completely. The cog was left becalmed, the big sail sagging. We were perhaps a long bow shot from the shoreline, and I supposed the vessel had come to
a complete halt. But watching more closely I realized that the cog was caught in some sort of current. She was being carried sideways towards a spit of land where the swell heaved and broke on a
hidden reef, each surge and retreat sucking back the foam in whorls and patterns. Unnerved, I turned to look at Redwald, for it seemed to me that the cog must drift helplessly onto the rocks.
    ‘Is it far to Kaupang?’ I asked, trying to hide my alarm.
    ‘Just around that point,’ he answered calmly.
    He seemed utterly unconcerned by our situation and I wondered if he had noticed a gathering grey murkiness out to sea. To add to our troubles, a fog bank was beginning to form.
    An hour dragged by and there was nothing to do except observe the shoreline slowly edging past. Behind us the fog bank grew thicker, swallowing up the sun as it sank towards the horizon. Now the
mist was oozing towards us. The first wisps arrived, cool and moist, caressing our faces. In a very short time it had wrapped itself around us and we could see no more than a yard or two in any
direction. It was like being immersed in a bowl of thin milk. From where I stood beside the helm I could see no further than the mainmast. The bow was totally invisible. When I licked my lips, I
tasted fresh dew. The fog was settling. I shivered.
    ‘Have you been in anything like this before?’ I muttered to Osric standing at my shoulder. Walo had gone below deck, taking his turn to guard our saddlebags.
    ‘Never,’ he replied. Long ago he had been shipwrecked on a voyage from Hispania to Britain aboard a ship trading for tin. It was as an injured castaway that he had been sold into
slavery.
    ‘Why doesn’t the captain drop anchor?’ I wondered.
    I did not know that sound carries well in a fog. ‘Because the water’s too deep,’ came Redwald’s voice somewhere in the mist.
    I watched the droplets of water gather on the dark tan of the sail, then trickle down, joining into delicate rivulets before dripping to the deck. Somewhere in the distance was a faint sound, a
low, muted rumble repeated every few seconds. It was the murmur of the swell nuzzling the unseen rocks.
    The cog drifted onward.
    Perhaps half an hour later Redwald abruptly growled, ‘Sweeps!’
    There were indistinct movements in the mist. Blurred figures moved here and there on the deck, followed by several thumps and dragging