Then he felt a frightful blow upon his head, and left eye. The half burned mast had fallen with a crash upon him; he was dashed upon his face among the flowers and the flames, and darkness closed over him.
When Halfred again awoke he lay in the bottom of a small boat, which drove over the open sea.
His hammer lay at his right hand. A cruise of water stood at his left hand. Two oars were in the stem of the boat.
Then he perceived that he could only see with difficulty what was on his left side. He felt for his left eye, and found a bleeding cavity. A splinter of the mast had struck it out, and a stabbing pain beat through his brain, which he said never again left him as long as he lived.
He looked at his body. In charred rags his burnt clothing hung upon him. Far in the distance he saw a craft which he recognized as the larger boat of the Singing Swan.
The Singing Swan herself had disappeared; but away to the south there lay a cloud of vapour and smoke over the sea.
The boat in which Halfred stood he recognised as the smaller boat of the Singing Swan. Evidently his sailing comrades had dragged the half-burned maniac from the burning ship, and saved him.
They had abandoned him to the Gods whom he had blasphemed, and in whom they believed, to be saved by them, or perish. But no more fellowship would they have with a man stricken by the heaviest of curses--madness.
For mad Halfred was, from the hour when he sprang into the flames, and the mast struck him, until shortly before his death.
Therefore could he only tell me very little of all that in the meantime happened either to, or through him.
But what he did tell me, here I faithfully write down.
But many many years must he have wandered in madness.
He told me, moreover, that he saw only before his eyes how Thora fell from the mast; and how the flames seized her head and hair. And that he could only think one single thought. "There are no Gods. Were there Gods I must have slain them.
"So must I slay all human beings who believe in Gods; for blotted out from the earth shall be the name and remembrance of the Gods."
And he could not die until he had slain the last man who still believed in the Gods.
And thus he journeyed all about, everywhere, in his small ship; landed in bays and upon islands, lived upon game which he hunted, or upon domestic animals which he found in the fields, upon roots and wild berries from the woods, upon eggs of sea-birds, and mussels from the rocks.