aching the second projection of cliff after leaving his men, Leif
peeped round cautiously and beheld the advancing Skraelingers several
hundred yards off. He returned at once to his men and took up a
position at their head in the deep shadow of the cliffs.

Although absolutely invisible themselves, the Norsemen could see the
Skraelingers quite plainly in the moonlight, as they came slowly and
with great caution round each turn of the footpath that led to the
hamlet. There was something quite awe-inspiring in the manner of their
approach. Evidently Flatface dreaded a surprise, for he put each leg
very slowly in advance of the other, and went on tiptoe, glancing
quickly on either side between each step. His followers--in a compact
body, in deep silence and with bated breath--followed his steps and his
example.

When they came to the place where the men crouched in ambush, Leif took
up a large stone and cast it high over their heads. So quietly was this
done that none even of his own party heard him move or saw the stone,
though they heard it fall with a _thud_ on the sand beyond.

The Skraelingers heard it too, and stopped abruptly--each man on one
leg, with the other leg and his arms more or less extended, just as if
he had been suddenly petrified. So in truth he had been--with horror!

To meet an open enemy, however powerful, would have been a pleasure
compared with that slow nervous advance in the midst of such dead
silence! As nothing followed the sound, however, the suspended legs
began to descend slowly again towards the ground, when Leif sneezed!

If Greenland's icy mountains had become one monstrous polar bear, whose
powers of voice, frozen for prolonged ages, had at last found vent that
night in one concentrated roar, the noise could scarcely have excelled
that which instantly exploded from the Norsemen.

The effect on the Skraelingers was almost miraculous. A bomb-shell
bursting in the midst of a hundred and fifty Kilkenny cats could not
have been more effective, and the result would certainly have borne some
marks of resemblance. Each hairy creature sprang nearly his own height
into the air, and wriggled while there, as if impatient to turn and fly
before reaching the ground. Earth regained, the more active among them
overshot and overturned the clumsy, whereby fifty or sixty were
instantly cast down, but these rose again like spring-jacks and fled,
followed by a roar of laughter from their foes,