astly to see.
Snorri climbed on board by the waist, where her sides were low and a
well reached aft from the mast to the poop. There was a cabin beneath
the poop, and another and larger room under the deck forward, between
the step of the mast and the bows. Into each of these he broke with
axes and bars, and in the one found nothing but some cooking-pots and
bedding; but in the other--that is, the after-cabin--the door, as he
burst it in, almost fell against a young man seated by a bed.
So life-like was he that Snorri called aloud in the doorway, but anon,
peering into the gloomy place, perceived the body to be frozen upright
and stiff, and that on the bed lay another body, of a lady slight and
young, and very fair. She, too, was dead and frozen; yet her cheeks,
albeit white as the pillow against which they rested, had not lost their
roundness. Snorri took note also of her dress and of the coverlet
reaching from the bed's foot to her waist, that they were of silk for
the most part, and richly embroidered, and her shift and the bed-sheets
about her of fine linen. The man's dress was poor and coarse by
comparison; yet he carried a sword, and was plainly of gentle nurture.
The sword Snorri drew from its sheath and brought away; also he took a
small box of jewels; but little else could he find on the ship, and no
food of any kind.

His design was to leave the ship as he found it, carrying away only
these tokens that his story, when he arrived at Brattahlid, might be
received with faith; and to direct where the ship might be sought for.
But as he quitted the cabin some of his men shouted from the deck, where
they had discovered yet another body frozen in a drift. This was an old
man seated with crossed legs and leaning against the mast, having an
ink-horn slung about his neck, and almost hidden by his grey beard, and
on his knee a book, which he held with a thumb frozen between two pages.

This was the book which Snorri had brought to Brattahlid, and which the
Bishop of Garda read aloud to him that same afternoon, translating as he
went; the ink being fresh, the writing clerkly, and scarcely a page
damaged by the weather. It bore no title; but the Bishop, who
afterwards caused his secretary to take a copy of the tale, gave it a
very long one, beginning: "God's mercy shown in a Miracle upon certain
castaways from Jutland, at the Feast of the Nativity of His Blessed Son,
our Lord, in the year MCCCLVII., whereby He made