ea, and nothing else."

"We started for Iceland," said Ingolf, "and I will not stop before I
come there. I have a vow. Did you make none, Sighvat?"

Then they were on the water again for weeks with no sight of land.

"Oh! I would give my right hand to see a dragon pawing the water off
there and to fling a word to its men," Sighvat said.

"No hope of that," replied Ingolf. "Only three dragons before ours have
ever swept this water, and men are not sailing this way for pleasure or
riches."

So only the desolate sea stretched around them. Sometimes it was smooth
and shining under the sun. Often it was torn by winds, and a gray sky
hung over it, and the men were drenched with rain. Once they ran into a
fog. For three days and nights they could not see sun or stars to steer
by. They forgot which way was north. When after three days the fog
lifted, they found that they had been going in the wrong direction, and
they had to turn around and sail all that weary way over again. But at
last one afternoon they saw a white cloud resting on the water far off.
As they sailed toward it, it grew into long stretches of black, hilly
shore with a blue ice mountain rising from it. The sun was going down
behind that mountain, and long lines of pink and of shining green, and
great purple shadows streaked the blue.

"It is Iceland!" shouted the men.

"It is like Asgard the Shining," Ingolf said.

But it was still far off. Men can see a long way there because the air
is so clear. So Ingolf and his people sailed on for hours and at last
came into a harbor. A little green valley sloped up from it. On one side
was the bright ice mountain. Back of it were bare black and red hills.
In that valley Ingolf and his men drew up their boat and camped. At
supper that night one of the men said:

"I almost think I never felt a fire before or had warm food in my
mouth."

The men laughed.

"It is four months since we left Norway," Ingolf said. "Few men have
ever been on the sea so long."

That night they put up the awning in the boat and slept under it.

After that some men went fishing every day in the rowboat that they had.
And Ingolf took others, and they sailed along the shore, seeing what
kind of a land this was. But winter began to come on. Then Ingolf said:

"Remember what Floki said of the ice and the rough sea in winter. Soon
we cannot sail any longer. Let us choose a place to stay and build a hut
there and cut hay for our cattle."