inging snatches of song, and asking a hundred questions.

"I like those old fancies that the Vikings had about the sea and the sky
and the winds," she said at last, stretching her arms wide and dancing
from end to end of the deck. "They called the sea the 'necklace of the
earth,' and the sky the 'wind-weaver.'"

"I wish I had the magic boat that Loki gave to Frey," answered Birger
lazily, lying flat on his back and looking up into the "wind-weaver."
"If I had it, I would sail over the whole long 'necklace of the earth,'
from clasp to clasp."

But Gerda was already out of hearing. She had gone to sit beside her
father and watch the course of the boat through the thousands of rocky
islands that stud the coast.

"The captain says that the frost giants threw all these rocks out
here when they were having a battle with old Njord, the god of the sea,"
she said. Then, as she caught sight of a lighthouse on a low outer
ledge,--"Why, Father!" she cried, "I thought we were going to stop at
every lighthouse on the coast."

"So we are, after we leave the Skaergard," replied Lieutenant Ekman. "I
came down as far as this several weeks ago when the ice went out of the
fjord. There are two or three months when all this water is frozen over
and there can be no shipping; but as soon as the ice breaks up, the lamps
are lighted in the lighthouses and I come down to see them. Now it is so
light all night that for two months the lamps are not lighted at all
unless there is a storm."

Gerda ran to the rail to wave her handkerchief to a little girl on the
deck of a lumber vessel which they were passing.

"The lighthouse keepers have a good many vacations, don't they?" she said
when she came back.

"Yes," replied her father; "those on the east coast of Sweden have
several months in the winter when the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia
are covered with solid ice; but on the south and west coasts the
lighthouses and even the lightships are lighted all winter."

"Why is that?" questioned Birger, coming to join them.

"There is a warm current which crosses the Atlantic Ocean from the Gulf
of Mexico and washes our western coast. It is called the Gulf Stream.
This current warms the air and makes the climate milder, and it keeps the
water from freezing, so that shipping is carried on all winter,"
Lieutenant Ekman explained.

Just then a sailor came to tell them that their dinner was ready. While
they were eating, the launch made a landin