XL] A SACRIFICE TO RHIN. 205 



for her execution. Sigurdr was the only person who regarded 

 the tragical event with indifference, nay, almost with delight. 

 Ever since we had commenced sailing in a southerly direction, 

 we had been obliged to beat ; but during the last four-and- 

 twenty hours the wind kept dodging us every time we tacked, 

 as a nervous pedestrian sets to you sometimes on a narrow 

 trottoir, This spell of ill-luck the Icelander heathenishly 

 thought would only be removed by a sacrifice to Rhin, the 

 goddess of the sea, in which light he trusted she would look 

 upon the goat's body when it came to be thrown overboard. 



Whether the change which followed upon the consignment 

 of her remains to the deep really resulted from such an in- 

 fluence, I am not prepared to say. The weather immediately 

 thereafter certainly did change. First the wind dropped 

 altogether ; but though the calm lasted several hours, the 

 sea strangely enough appeared to become all the rougher, 

 tossing and tumbling restlessly up and down — (not over and 

 over as in a gale) — like a sick man on a fever bed ; the im- 

 pulse to the waves seeming to proceed from all four quarters 

 of the world at once. Then, like jurymen with a verdict 

 of death upon their lips, the heavy, ominous clouds slowly 

 passed into the north-west. 



A dead stillness followed — a breathless pause — until, at 

 some mysterious signal, the solemn voice of the storm 

 hurtled over the deep. Luckily we were quite ready for it ; 

 the gale came from the right quarter, and the fiercer it blew 

 the better. For the next three days and three nights it was 

 a scurry over the sea such as I never had before ; nine or 

 ten knots an hour was the very least we ever went, and 240 

 miles was the average distance we .made every four-and- 

 twenty hours. 



Anything grander and more exciting than the sight of the 

 sea under these circumstances you cannot imagine. The 

 vessel herself remains very steady ; when you are below you 

 scarcely know you are not in port. But on raising your head 

 above the companion the first sight which meets your eye is 

 an upright wall of black water, towering, you hardly know 



