CHAPTER XII

THROUGH BARS OF ICE

    A day should be praised at night;
    A sword when it is tried;
    Ice when it is crossed. 
        Ha’vama’l

A dim line of snowy islands, so far apart that it was hard to believe they were only the ice-tipped summits of Greenland’s towering coast, stretched across the horizon.  Standing at Helga’s side in the bow, Alwin gazed at them earnestly.

“To think,” he marvelled, “that we have come to the very last land on this side of the world!  Suppose we were to sail still further west?  What is it likely that we would come to?  Does the ocean end in a wall of ice, or would we fall off the earth and go tumbling heels over head through the darkness—?  By St. George, it makes one dizzy!”

Helga’s ideas were not much clearer.  It was nearly five hundred years before the time of Columbus.  But she knew one thing that Alwin did not know.

“Greenland is not the most western land,” she corrected.  “There is another still further west, though no one knows how big it is or who lives in it.”

She turned, laughing, to where young Haraldsson sat counting the wealth of his pouch and calculating how valuable could be the presents he could afford to bestow on his arrival.

“Sigurd, do you remember that western land Biorn Herjulfsson saw? and how we were wont to plan to run away to it, when I grew tired of embroidering and Leif kept you overlong at your exercises?”

“I have not thought of it since those days,” laughed Sigurd.  He swept the mass of gold and silver trinkets back into the velvet pouch at his belt, and came over and joined them.  “What fine times we had planning those trips, over the fire in the evenings!  By Saint Michael, I think we actually started once; have you forgotten?—­in the long-boat off Thorwald’s whaling vessel!  And you wore a suit of my clothes, and fought me because I said anyone could tell that you were a girl.”

Helga’s laughter rang out like a chime of bells.  “Oh, Sigurd I had forgotten it!  And we had nothing with us to eat but two cheeses!  And Valbrand had to launch a boat and come after us!”

They abandoned themselves to their mirth, and Alwin laughed with them; but his curiosity had been aroused on another subject.

“I wish you would tell me something concerning this farther land,” he said, as soon as he could get them to listen.  “Does it in truth exist, or is it a tale to amuse children with?”

They both assured him that it was quite true.

“I myself have talked with one of the sailors who saw it,” Sigurd explained.  “He was Biorn’s steersman.  He saw it distinctly.  He said that it looked like a fine country, with many trees.”

“If it was a real country and no witchcraft, it is strange that he contented himself with looking at it.  Why did he not land and explore?”