directed their pursuit after her.  She came upon a dead man; Thorbrand, Snorri’s son, with a flat stone fixed in his head; his sword lay beside him, so she took it up and prepared to defend herself therewith.  Then came the Skroelingar upon her.  She let down her sark and struck her breast with the naked sword.  At this they were frightened, rushed off to their boats, and fled away.  Karlsefni and the rest came up to her and praised her zeal.  Two of Karlsefni’s men fell, and four of the Skroelingar, notwithstanding they had overpowered them by superior numbers.  After that, they proceeded to their booths, and began to reflect about the crowd of men which attacked them upon the land; it appeared to them now that the one troop will have been that which came in the boats, and the other troop will have been a delusion of sight.  The Skroelingar also found a dead man, and his axe lay beside him.  One of them struck a stone with it, and broke the axe.  It seemed to them good for nothing, as it did not withstand the stone, and they threw it down.

12. [Karlsefni and his company] were now of opinion that though the land might be choice and good, there would be always war and terror overhanging them, from those who dwelt there before them.  They made ready, therefore, to move away, with intent to go to their own land.  They sailed forth northwards, and found five Skroelingar in jackets of skin, sleeping [near the sea], and they had with them a chest, and in it was marrow of animals mixed with blood; and they considered that these must have been outlawed.  They slew them.  Afterwards they came to a headland and a multitude of wild animals; and this headland appeared as if it might be a cake of cow-dung, because the animals passed the winter there.  Now they came to Straumsfjordr, where also they had abundance of all kinds.  It is said by some that Bjarni and Freydis remained there, and a hundred men with them, and went not further away.  But Karlsefni and Snorri journeyed southwards, and forty men with them, and after staying no longer than scarcely two months at Hop, had come back the same summer.  Karlsefni set out with a single ship to seek Thorhall, but the (rest of the) company remained behind.  He and his people went northwards off Kjalarnes, and were then borne onwards towards the west, and the land lay on their larboard-side, and was nothing but wilderness.  And when they had proceeded for a long time, there was a river which came down from the land, flowing from the east towards the west.  They directed their course within the river’s mouth, and lay opposite the southern bank.

13.  One morning Karlsefni’s people beheld as it were a glittering speak above the open space in front of them, and they shouted at it.  It stirred itself, and it was a being of the race of men that have only one foot, and he came down quickly to where they lay.  Thorvald, son of Eirik the Red, sat at the tiller, and the One-footer shot him with an arrow in the lower abdomen.  He drew out the arrow.  Then said Thorvald, “Good land have we reached, and fat is it about the paunch.”  Then the One-footer leapt away again northwards.  They chased after him, and saw him occasionally, but it seemed as if he would escape them.  He disappeared at a certain creek.  Then they turned back, and one man spake this ditty:—­