Night raven swinging And darkly winging,

And leafage foaming where hoofs are ringing,

So shall we hunt ev’ry night, they say,

Until that hunt on the Judgment Day.

Holla, horse, and holla, hound,

Stop awhile upon this ground!

Here’s the castle which erstwhile was.

Feed your horses on thistledown;

Man may eat of his own renown.

She started to go on with the next stanza, Valdemar’s cry to his lost darling; but she faltered and went directly to his men’s words as dawn breaks over them.

The cock lifts up his head to crow,

Has the day within him,

And morning dew is running red

With rust, from off our swords.

Past is the moment!

Graves are calling with open mouths,

And earth sucks down ev’ry light-shy horror.

Sink ye, sink ye!

Strong and radiant, life comes forth

With deeds and hammering pulses.

And we are death folk,

Sorrow and death folk,

Anguish and death folk.

To graves! To graves! To dream-bewildered sleep—

Oh, could we but rest peaceful!

For a little space there was silence. Nilsson said. “That strikes too near home, my dear.”

She looked about. Weariness had laid a pallor on her face. “I wouldn’t sing it in public,” she answered.

Concerned, he went to her, sat down by her side and asked: “Do you really think of us as being on the Wild Hunt of the damned? I never knew.”

“I try not to let on.” She stared straight before her. Her fingers plucked shivering chords from the lute. “Sometimes— We are now at about the million-year mark, you know.”

He laid an arm around her waist. “What can I do to help, Ingrid? Anything?”

She shook her head the least bit.

“I owe you so much,” he said. “Your strength, your kindness, yourself. You made me back into a man.” With difficulty: “Not the best man alive, I admit. Not handsome or charming or witty. I often forget even to try to be a good partner to you. But I do want to.”

“Of course, Elof.”

“If you, well, have grown tired of our arrangment… or simply want more, more variety—”

“No. None of that.” She put the lute aside. “We have this ship to get to harbor, if ever we can. We dare not let anything else count.”

He gave her a stricken glance; but before he could inquire just what she meant, she smiled, kissed him, and said: “Still, we could use a rest. A forgetting. You can do something for me, Elof. Draw our liquor ration. Help yourself to most of it; you’re sweet when you’ve dissolved your shyness. We’ll invite somebody young and ungloomy— Luis, I think, and Maria— and laugh and play games and be foolish in this cabin and empty a pitcher of water over anybody who says anything serious… Will you do that?”

“H I can,” he said.

Leonora Christine entered the next galaxy in its equatorial plane, to maximize the distance she would traverse through its wealth of gas and star dust. Already on the fringes, where the suns were as yet widely scattered, she began to bound at high acceleration. The fury of that passage vibrated ever more strongly and noisily through her.