"Great wonder had those of Dinby when thou wentest by e'en now
unhooded, in the foul weather," said Noise, "as to whether thou
wouldst have as little fear of men as of the cold: there were two
bonders' sons, both men of great strength, and the shepherd called
them forth to go to the sheep-watching with him, and scarcely could
they clothe themselves for the cold."

Grettir said, "I saw within doors there a young man who pulled on his
mittens, and another going betwixt byre and midden, and of neither of
them should I be afeared."

Thereafter they went down to Sorbness, and were there through the
night; then they fared out along the strand to a farm called Reeks,
where dwelt a man, Thorwald by name, a good bonder. Him Grettir prayed
for watch and ward, and told him how he was minded to get out to
Drangey: the bonder said that those of Skagafirth would think him no
god-send, and excused himself therewithal.

Then Grettir took a purse his mother had given to him, and gave it
to the bonder; his brows lightened over the money, and he got three
house-carles of his to bring them out in the night time by the light
of the moon. It is but a little way from Reeks out to the island, one
sea-mile only. So when they came to the isle, Grettir deemed it good
to behold, because it was grass-grown, and rose up sheer from the sea,
so that no man might come up thereon save there where the ladders were
let down, and if the uppermost ladder were drawn up, it was no man's
deed to get upon the island. There also were the cliffs full of fowl
in the summer-tide, and there were eighty sheep upon the island which
the bonders owned, and they were mostly rams and ewes which they had
mind to slaughter.

There Grettir set himself down in peace; and by then had he been
fifteen or sixteen winters in outlawry, as Sturla Thordson has said.

CHAP. LXX.

<i>Of the Bonders who owned Drangey between them</i>.

In the days when Grettir came to Drangey, these were chief men of the
country side of Skagafirth. Hialti dwelt at Hof in Hialtidale, he
was the son of Thord, the son of Hialti, the son of Thord the Scalp:
Hialti was a great chief, a right noble man, and much befriended.
Thorbiorn Angle was the name of his brother, a big man and a strong,
hardy and wild withal. Thord, the father of these twain, had married
again in his old age, and that wife was not the mother of the
brothers; and she did ill to her step-children, but served Thorbiorn
t