des
washing near at hand on a rough coast. Suddenly almost overhead they
were aware of a great white headland, on the summit of which the sun
shone on grass.

Leif gave a shout. "My skill has riot failed me," he cried. "We enter
the Frankish firth. See, there is the butt of England!"

After that the helms were swung round, and a course laid south by west.
And then the mist came again, but this time it was less of a shroud, for
birds hovered about their wake, so that they were always conscious
of land. Because of the strength of the tides the rowers made slow
progress, and it was not till the late afternoon of the seventeenth day
that Leif approached Ironbeard with a proud head and spoke a word. The
King nodded, and Leif took his stand in the prow with the lead in his
hand. The sea mirroring the mist was leaden dull, but the old pilot
smelt shoal water.

Warily he sounded, till suddenly out of the gloom a spit of land rose on
the port, and it was clear that they were entering the mouth of a river.
The six galleys jolted across the sandbar, Leif in the foremost peering
ahead and shouting every now and then an order. It was fine weather
for a surprise landing. Biorn saw only low sand-dunes green with coarse
grasses and, somewhere behind, the darkness of a forest. But he could
not tear his eyes from it, for it was the long-dreamed-of Roman land.

Then a strange thing befell. A madness seemed to come on Leif. He left
his pilot's stand and rushed to the stern where the King stood. Flinging
himself on his knees, he clasped Ironbeard's legs and poured out
supplications.

"Return!" he cried. "While there is yet time, return. Seek England,
Gael-land, anywhere, but not this place. I see blood in the stream and
blood on the strand. Our blood, your blood, my King! There is doom for
the folk of Thorwald by this river!"

The King's face did not change. "What will be, will be," he said
gravely. "We abide by our purpose and will take what Thor sends with a
stout heart. How say you, my brave ones?"

And all shouted to go forward, for the sight of a new country had fired
their blood. Leif sat huddled by the bulwarks, with a white face and a
gasp in his throat, like one coming out of a swoon.

They went ashore at a bend of the stream where was a sandy cape, beached
the galleys, felled trees from the neighbouring forest and built them a
stockade. The dying sun flushed water and wood with angry crimson, and
Biorn observed that the