For their sakes I dreaded to think that I might never
return to them again.
I thought, too, of Thora, and wondered many times if she was
better, or if her illness had taken her away.
I had before found comfort in the thought that she was protected by
the viking's stone. But, probably, I now needed its mystic help
even more than she.
One afternoon--I think it must have been about the twentieth day of
my loneliness--I had been asleep for some three hours, and in a
kind of waking dream I saw a strange vague vision. A number of
persons, whose faces I could not rightly discern, were in a large
room. Amongst them was Thora, looking more beautiful than I had
ever seen her in my life, and she stood pointing with an accusing
finger at her brother Tom, at whose feet there crouched a lean dog,
snarling at him.
I was awakened from my half sleep by the noise of a crackling and
scraping of ice upon the schooner's sides. I had seen many floating
pieces of ice during the past few days, but this, from the noise it
made, seemed to be an unusually large piece. I feared it might even
be an iceberg, and I hastened up on deck.
I shall never forget the sight that greeted me.
The whole sky was aglow with the light of the aurora borealis--or
the Merry Dancers, as we call the phenomenon in Orkney.
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