“Certainly; do you not see that the light is only just fading from the mountain tops? so it can be but a little past noon.  The only difficulty is that the ice may not be in a condition for us to cross the fiord.  A warm land-wind has been blowing for three days; and even in the North, where the seal-hunters go, the ice often breaks up under them.  But now allow me to get my bearings.  That is the smoke from Brattahlid, behind us; and yonder I see the roofs of Eric’s ship-sheds.  Here,—­we will go in this direction until we come to a high point of the bank.”

Across the white plain that stretched in that direction, they skimmed accordingly.  Once they came upon a herd of Eric’s reindeer, rooting under the snow for moss; but aside from that, they saw no living thing.  Low-hanging gray clouds seemed to have shut out the world.  Now and then, from far out in the open water came the grinding and crunching of huge ice-cakes, see-sawing past each other.  Once there sounded the reverberating thunder of two icebergs in a duel.

“If there were any bears on that ice, they have found by this time that there can be even worse things than men with spears,” Sigurd observed, as he listened.

It is doubtful whether Alwin had heard the noise at all.  He answered, absently:  “Yes,—­and if we do not wish to come to the subject at once, we can say that we are cold and dropped in to warm ourselves.”

“To say that we are cold will always be truthfully spoken,” Sigurd assented, his teeth chattering like beads.  “I do not believe that Stark-Otter was much chillier when he pulled off his clothes and sat in a snow-bank.”

It turned out to be even more truthful than they imagined.  They had little more than left the shore and ventured out upon the ice, when the gentle east wind developed into a gale, that presently wrapped them in the blinding folds of a snow-storm.  The ice became invisible a step ahead of their feet.  They had retained their staffs when they left their skees upon the bank; but even feeling their way step by step was by no means secure.  It was not long before Alwin went through, up to his neck; and if he had been uncomfortable before, he was in wretched plight now, drenched to the skin with ice-water.

“If you also get in this condition, we shall both perish,” he chattered, when he had managed to clamber out again by the fortunate accident of his staff’s falling crosswise over the hole.  “I will continue to go first; and do you hoard your strength to save us both when I get too stiff to move.”  It proved a wise precaution; for in a few minutes he broke through again, and it took all his companion’s exertions to pull him out.  Before they reached the opposite shore, he had been in four times, and was so benumbed with cold that Sigurd was obliged to drag him up the bank and into the hut of Aran Bow-Bender.

One low room was all there was of it, and that was smoky and dirty, the air thick with the smells of stale cooking and musty fur garments.  Dogs were lying about, and there was a goat-pen in the corner; but a fire roared in the centre, a ring of steaming hot drinks stood around it, and behind them sat a circle of jovial-hearted sportsmen, who seemed to ask no greater pleasure than to pull off a stranger’s drenched garments, rub him to a tingle, and pour him full of hot spicy liquids.