en baffled in a second
attempt to land and drive out Grettir, induced a young man called
Hoering, an expert climber, to try to scale the cliffs, promising
him if successful a very large reward. Angle rowed him over, and
Hoering did, indeed, scale the precipice, but young Illugi was on
the watch, chased him round the island, and Hoering, sore pressed,
leapt over the cliff and was killed.

[Illustration: The Witch Thurid cuts a charm on the log.]

About this time, Grettir having been so many years in outlawry, many
thought that the sentence should be annulled; and it was deemed
certain that he would be pardoned in the next ensuing summer; but they
who had owned the island were exceedingly discontented at the
prospect of his acquittal, and urged Angle either to give back the
island or slay Grettir. Now Angle had a foster-mother, Thurid; she was
old and cunning in witchcraft, which she had learnt in her youth; for
though Christianity had now been established in the island, yet there
remained still many traces of heathendom. Angle and she put out in a
ten-oared boat to pick a quarrel with Grettir, of which the upshot was
that the outlaw threw a huge stone into the boat, where the witch lay
covered up with wrappings, and broke her leg. Angle had to endure many
taunts at the failure of all his attempts to outplay Grettir. One day,
Thurid was limping along by the sea, when she found a large log, part
of the trunk of a tree. She cut a flat space on it, carved magic
characters, or runes, on the root, reddened them with her blood, and
sang witch-words over them; then she walked backwards round it, and
widdershins--which means in a direction against the sun--and thrust
the log out to sea under many strong spells, in such wise that it
should drive out to Drangey. In the teeth of the wind it went, till it
came to the island, where Illugi and Grettir saw it, but knowing it
boded them ill, they thrust it out from shore; yet next morning was it
there again, nearer the ladders than before; but again they drove it
out to sea. The days wore on to summer, and a gale sprang up with wet;
the brothers being short of firewood, Noise was sent down to the shore
to look for drift, grumbling at being ordered out in bad weather,
when, lo! the log was there again, and he fetched it up.

Grettir was angry with Noise, and not noticing what the log was, hewed
at it with his axe, which glanced from the wood and cut into his leg,
right down to the bone