here was an alarm of another fleet, and the shields
were slung outboard, but it proved to be only a wedding-party passing
from wick to wick, and they gave it greeting and sailed on. These were
eerie cheerless days. The thralls sweated in shifts at the oars, and the
betterborn talked low among themselves, as if the air were full of ears.
"Ran is heating her ovens," said Leif, as he watched the warm fog mingle
with the oarthresh.

On the fourth morning there came a break in the clouds, and the sight
of a high hill gave Leif the clue for his reckoning. The prows swung
seaward, and the galleys steered for the broad ocean. That afternoon
there sprang up the north-east wind for which they had been waiting.
Sails were hoisted on the short masts, oars were shipped and lashed
under the bulwarks, and the thralls clustered in the prows to rest their
weary limbs and dice with knucklebones. The spirits of all lightened,
and there was loud talk in the sterns among the Bearsarks. In the night
the wind freshened, and the long shallow boats rolled filthily so that
the teeth shook in a man's head, and over the swish of the waves and the
creaking of the sheets there was a perpetual din of arms clashing.
Biorn was miserably ill for some hours, and made sport for the seasoned
voyagers.

"It will not hold," Leif prophesied. "I smell rime ahead and quiet
seas."

He had spoken truly, for the sixth day the wind fell and they moved once
more over still, misty waters. The thralls returned to their oars and
the voices of the well-born fell low again These were ghoulish days
for Biorn, who had been accustomed to the clear lights and the clear
darkness of his own land. Only once in four days they saw the sun, and
then it was as red as blood, so that his heart trembled.

On the eleventh day Ironbeard summoned Leif and asked his skill of the
voyage. "I know not," was the answer. "I cannot steer a course except
under clean skies. We ran well with the wind aback, but now I am blind
and the Gods are pilots. Some day soon we must make landfall, but I know
not whether on English or Frankish shores."

After that Leif would sit in long spells of brooding, for he had a sense
in him of direction to which he sought to give free play--a sense built
up from old voyages over these very seas. The result of his meditations
was that he swung more to the south, and events proved him wise. For on
the fifteenth day came a lift in the fog and with it the noise of ti