“Biorn Herjulfsson is a coward,” Helga said contemptuously.  “Every man who can move his tongue says so.”

Sigurd frowned at her.  “You give judgment too glibly.  I have heard many say that he is a brave man.  But he was not out on an exploring voyage; he was sailing from Iceland to Greenland, to visit his father, and lost his way.  And he is a man not apt to be eager in new enterprises.  Besides, it may be that he thought the land was inhabited by dwarfs.”

“There, you have admitted that I am right!” Helga cried triumphantly.  “He was afraid of the dwarfs; and a man who is afraid of anything is a coward.”

But Sigurd could fence with his tongue as well as with his sword.  “What then is a shield-maiden who is afraid of her kinswoman?” he parried.  And they fell to wrangling laughingly between themselves.

Unheeding them, Alwin gazed away at the mysterious blue west.  His eyes were big with great thoughts.  If he had a ship and a crew,—­if he could sail away exploring!  Suppose kingdoms could be founded there!  Suppose—­his imaginings became as lofty as the drifting clouds, and as vague; so vague that he finally lost interest in them, and turned his attention to the approaching shore.  They had come near enough now to see that the scattered islands had connected themselves into a peaked coast, a broken line of dazzling whiteness, except where dark chasms made blots upon its sides.

But sighting Greenland and landing upon it were two very different matters, he found.  A little further, and they encountered the border of drift-ice that, travelling down from the northeast in company with numerous icebergs, closes the fiord-mouths in summer like a magic bar.

“I shall think it great luck if this breaks up so that we can get through it in a month,” Valbrand observed phlegmatically.

“A month?” Alwin gasped, overhearing him.

The old sailor looked at him in contempt.  “Does a month seem long to you?  When Eric came here from Iceland, he was obliged to lie four months in the ice.”

Four months on shipboard, with nothing more cheerful to look at than barren cliffs and a gray sea paved with grinding ice-cakes!  The consternation of Alwin’s face was so great that Sigurd took pity on him even while he laughed.

“It will not be so bad as that.  And we will steer to a point north of the fiord and lie there in the shelter of an island.”

“Shelter!” muttered the English youth.  “Twelve eiderdown beds would be insufficient to shelter one from this wind.”

Nor was the island of any more inviting appearance when finally they reached it.  What of it was not barren boulders was covered with black lichens, the only hint of green being an occasional patch of moss nestling in some rocky fissure.  To heighten the effect, icy gales blew continually, accompanied by heavy mists and chilling fogs.