oolish fellow. Why, look! It is only a
piece of floating ice such as we sometimes see from Iceland. It is no
ship, and there is no one on it."

His men laughed and one called to another and said:

"And you thought of frost giants!"

Then they sailed on for days and days. They met many of these icebergs.
On one of them was a white bear.

"Yonder is a strange pilot," Eric laughed.

"I have seen bears come floating so to the north shore of Iceland," an
old man said. "Perhaps they come from the land that we are going to
find."

One day Eric said:

"I see afar off an iceberg larger than any one yet. Perhaps that is our
white land."

[Illustration: "_It is a bigger boat than I ever saw before_"]

But even as he said it he felt his boat swing under his hand as he held
the tiller. He bore hard on the rudder, but he could not turn the ship.

"What is this?" he cried. "A strong river is running here. It is
carrying our ship away from this land. I cannot make head against it.
Out with the oars!"

So with oars and sail and rudder they fought against the current, but it
took the boat along like a chip, and after a while they put up their
oars and drifted.

"Luck has taken us into its own hands," Eric laughed. "But this is as
good a way as another."

Sometimes they were near enough to see the land, then they were carried
out into the sea and thought that they should never see any land again.

"Perhaps this river will carry us to a whirlpool and suck us under," the
men said.

But at last Eric felt the current less strong under his hand.

"To the oars again!" he called.

So they fought with the current and sailed out of it and went on toward
land. But when they reached the shore they found no place to go in.
Steep black walls shot up from the sea. Nothing grew on them. When the
men looked above the cliffs they saw a long line of white cutting the
sky.

"It is a land of ice," they said.

They sailed on south, all the time looking for a place to go ashore.

"I am sick of this endless sea," Thorhild complained, "but this land is
worse."

After a while they began to see small bays cut into the shore with
little flat patches of green at their sides. They landed in these places
and stretched and warmed themselves and ate.

"But these spots are only big enough for graves," the men said. "We can
not live here."

So they went on again. All the time the weather was growing colder.
Eric's people kept themselves wra