The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [93]
One of the sailors had a thick black beard, and Starkad at once swam up to him from behind and grabbed his beard, pulled his head back, and submerged him. This sailor now brought his legs up to his head and attempted to kick at Starkad with his heels, but he could not get his beard free of the Greenlander’s fingers and began to swing his arms. Soon his hand went up, and Starkad let go his grip. The man had taken in much water, and came out coughing. He flung himself on the grass and heaved. In the meantime, Egil swam up to the other sailor and brought his legs tightly around the other man’s waist, hooking his feet together so that his clasp could not be broken. Then he grasped the other man by the ears and pushed his face under while pulling the rest of him down with his legs. This sailor, who was Egil’s friend and familiar with his trick, brought the sides of his hands hard into Egil’s ribs, causing him to let go, but now Egil caught the man around the jaw and teeth, and grabbed his tongue, so that he could not bite, and he forced the man under the water. He still clasped the man around the waist with his legs. Very soon the man’s hand went up, and he was pulled from the pool. Now the contest was between Egil and Starkad, and Starkad was the larger of the two men, one of the largest men in Greenland, and it was generally thought that the Greenlanders were larger than the Norwegians on the whole. Starkad was also known to be a good runner, and folk said that it would be a fine thing for a prize such as Kollbein had offered to come into the possession of a Greenlander.
As soon as Egil let go of his opponent, Starkad was upon him, and he took his hair in one hand and his nose in the other and forced the Norwegian’s face into the water, but Egil brought his legs up underwater and dealt Starkad a hard blow in the groin, so that the Greenlander relinquished the sailor’s nose and he took a breath. Now Egil’s arms came down on Starkad’s shoulders, and pushed him a little under the water, then, quick as an eyeblink, his legs came up and grasped the Greenlander about the head. He hooked his feet and there seemed to be little hope for the Greenlander, as his opponent’s body was out of reach. He went under, and the water grew quiet. After this, there was a long moment when Starkad was striving to break the other man’s hold, and he succeeded in doing this, but he did not appear at the surface, and Egil found himself treading water alone in the middle of the pool. Just then, Starkad came up again, took a breath, and went down again. When he surfaced the second time, he carried a large object which showed itself to be the corpus of Kollbein Sigurdsson.
This threw the assembled throng into a great stir. Starkad and Egil carried the ombudsman from the water and laid him upon the grass. Folk recalled when he had last been seen, and contestants recalled their struggles with him, but all alleged that they had hardly touched the man, for fear of his office, but had held him under a little, to go along with the game, and then let him up. Several men attested that they had seen others act in this courteous fashion. Starkad the Strong related how as Egil had forced him under, he had pushed off downwards and felt the flesh of the ombudsman, lying on the bottom of the pool, with his foot. The ombudsman was lifted up and made to give forth the water in his gullet, but this did not revive him.
There was a law in Greenland in those times that a drowned man, if recovered from the waters and not frozen, was to be placed before the altar of St. Nikolaus at the cathedral for six days, for St. Nikolaus was the patron of sailors and drowned men, and more than a few such unfortunates had been brought back from death through the intercession of the saint. But some of the Norwegians and some of the Greenlanders fell into a dispute about the quickest and best way of carrying the ombudsman back to Gardar, the Norwegians desiring to row out Hrafns Fjord, around the peninsula, and up Einars Fjord, and the Greenlanders wishing to take