PAGE

"'And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by
two cats'" (in color) 4

"Nils marked out an inscription in Runic letters" 30

"The miniature globe took form as the children watched,
fascinated" 44

"He proposed that Caonaba should put on the gift the
Spanish captain had brought" 78

"A sapling, bent down, was attached to a noose ingeniously
hidden" 86

"The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and
friendliness" (in color) 132

"Cortes flung about his shoulders his own cloak" 146

"Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard" (in color) 162

"Cartier read from his service-book" 176

"The creatures darkened the plain almost as far as the eye
could see" 190

"'Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?'" 204

"Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard" 226

"If he had to wear her fetters, they should at least be
golden" 244

"The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall" 266

DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS

I

ASGARD THE BEAUTIFUL

A red fox ran into the empty church. In the middle of the floor he sat
up and looked around. Nothing stirred--not the painted figures on the
wooden walls, nor the boy who now stood in the doorway. This boy was
gray-eyed and flaxen-haired, and might have been eleven or twelve years
old. He was looking for the good old priest, Father Ansgar, and the wild
shy animal eyeing him from the foot of the altar made it only too clear
that the church, like the village, was deserted.

Father Ansgar was dead of the strange swift pestilence that was called
in 1348 the Black Death. So also were the sexton, the cooper, the
shoemaker, and almost all the people of the valley. A ship had come into
Bergen with the plague on board, and it spread through Norway like a
grass-fire. Only last week Thorolf Erlandsson[1] had had a father and
mother, a grandmother, two younger sisters and a brother. Now he was
alone. In the night the dairy woman and the plowmen at Ormgard farm had
run away. Other farms and houses were already closed and silent, or
plunder