The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [197]
When that tide again forsook the Hungry Sands the Man of the Sea bade Ælfwine go look at that new-come wreck, and going he saw it was not hurt; but there were within nine dead men who had not long ago been yet alive. They lay abottom gazing at the sky, and behold, one whose garb and mien still proclaimed a chieftain of Men lay there, but though his locks were white with age and his face was pale in death, still a proud man and a fierce he looked. ‘Men of the North, Forodwaith, are they,’ said the Man of the Sea, ‘but hunger and thirst was their death, and their ship was flung by last night’s storm where she stuck in the Hungry Sands, slowly to be engulfed, had not fate thought otherwise.’
‘Truly do you say of them, O Man of the Sea; and him I know well with those white locks, for he slew my father; and long was I his thrall, and Orm men called him, and little did I love him.’
‘And his ship shall it be that bears you from this Harbourless Isle,’ said he; ‘and a gallant ship it was of a brave man, for few folk have now so great a heart for the adventures of the sea as have these Forodwaith, who press ever into the mists of the West, though few live to take back tale of all they see.’
Thus it was that Ælfwine escaped beyond hope from that island, but the Man of the Sea was his pilot and steersman, and so they came after few days to a land but little known.34 And the folk that dwell there are a strange folk, and none know how they came thither in the West, yet are they accounted among the kindreds of Men, albeit their land is on the outer borders of the regions of Mankind, lying yet further toward the Setting Sun beyond the Harbourless Isles and further to the North than is that isle whereon Ælfwine was cast away. Marvellously skilled are these people in the building of ships and boats of every kind and in the sailing of them; yet do they fare seldom or never to the lands of other folk, and little do they busy themselves with commerce or with war. Their ships they build for love of that labour and for the joy they have only to ride the waves in them. And a great part of that people are ever aboard their ships, and all the water about the island of their home is ever white with their sails in calm or storm. Their delight is to vie in rivalry with one another with their boats of surpassing swiftness, driven by the winds or by the ranks of their long-shafted oars. Other rivalries have they with ships of great seaworthiness, for with these will they contest who will weather the fiercest storms (and these are fierce indeed about that isle, and it is iron-coasted save for one cool harbour in the North). Thereby is the craft of their shipwrights proven; and these people are called by Men the Ythlings,35 the Children of the Waves, but the Elves call the island Eneadur, and its folk the Shipmen of the West.36
Well did these receive Ælfwine and his pilot at the thronging quays of their harbour in the North, and it seemed to Ælfwine that the Man of the Sea was not unknown to them, and that they held him in the greatest awe and reverence, hearkening to his requests as though they were a king’s commands. Yet greater was his amaze when he met amid the throngs of that place two of his comrades that he had thought lost in the sea; and learnt that those seven mariners of England were alive in that land, but the ship had been broken utterly on the black shores to the south,