Probably it was because he understood the danger of pushing their fidelity too far, that the chief gave the order to return so soon.  For his own part, he did not seem to be entirely satisfied.  With one foot on the stern of the boat, and one still on the rocks, he lingered uncertainly.

“Yet we have not acted with this land like Biorn, who did not come ashore,” he muttered.  Rolf displayed the fox-tall with a flourish.

“We have accomplished more than Eric after he had been in Greenland an equally short time, chief.  We have taken tribute from the inhabitants.”  Leif deigned to smile slightly.  He stepped into his place, and from the stern he swept a long critical look over the barren coast,—­from the fox-dens up to the high-peaked mountains, and back again to the sea.

“We will give as well as take,” he said at last.  “I will give a name to the land, and call it Helluland, for it is indeed an icy plain.”

They were welcomed on board with a hubbub of curiosity.  Almost every article of value upon the ship was offered in exchange for the cub and the fox-tail.  The uncanny accounts of the place were swallowed with open-mouthed greediness; so greedily that it was little wonder that at each repetition the narratives grew longer and fuller.  Told by torchlight, at a safe distance from Leif, each boulder took on the form of a squatting dwarf; and the faint squeaking of foxes became the shrieking of spirits.  The tale of the death-omen swelled to such proportions that Kark would have been terrified out of his wits if he had not rested secure in the conviction that the vision had been a wolf.  The explorers who had gotten little pleasure out of their adventure at the time of its occurrence, came to regard it as their most precious possession.  The fire of exploration waxed hot in every vein.  Every man constituted himself a special look-out to watch for any dawning speck upon the horizon.

With Fortune’s fondness for surprising mankind, the next of the “wonder-shores” crept upon them in the night.  The sun, which had set upon an empty ocean, rose upon a low level coast lying less than twenty miles away.  In the glowing light, bluffs of sand shone like cliffs of molten silver; and more trees were massed upon one point than the whole of Greenland had ever produced.  Even Leif was moved to exclaim at the sight.

“Certainly this is a land which names itself!” he declared.  “You need not wait long for what I shall fix upon.  It shall be called Markland, after its woods.”

Sigurd’s enthusiasm mounted to rashness.  “I will have a share in this landing, if I have to plead with Leif for the privilege,” he vowed.  And when, for the second time, Rolf was told off for a place in the boat, and for the second time his claims were slighted, he was as reckless as his word.

“Has not my credit improved at ail, after all this time, foster-father?” he demanded, waylaying the chief on his descent from the forecastle.  “I ask you to consider the shame it will bring upon me if I am obliged to return to Norway without having so much as set foot upon the new-found lands.”