ut down the helm, hard, and the ship veered several
points off the land.

"What will you do, master?" one asked him, and Leif replied, "Look out
and see what I will do. Do you see nothing on the water?"

The man said that he saw nothing out of the common. "Well," said Leif,
"look again. I see a rock, or else a ship--and if a ship, then a ship
on a rock."

They all saw the rock now. "Yes," said Leif, "and there's a ship too,
or a piece of a ship; for there are men on the rock."

That was true too, but before they were near enough to count the
survivors of a wreck, pieces of the wreck itself, and baulks of timber,
which they supposed her cargo, came drifting by them; and then
presently a drowned man with a white face turned upwards.

Leif ran on, as near to the rock as he dared, near enough at least to
see the men huddled on the ridge of it, and their hands up signalling
to them. There, too, were the bows of a good ship rising high into the
air like a seal. The rock was a sort of shelf in the sea, and stood
out some ten furlongs from the great headland.

Leif brought up his ship and cast anchor. He had the boat out, and
himself rowed out to the wreck. "They can do us no harm, whoever they
are," he said; "but I think they are friends of ours." Some fifteen
men were huddled together, and apart from them was a woman in a blue
cloak, with a man lying beside her, his head on her lap, and a cloth
over his face. She did not move as the boat drew in, but all the
others came scrambling down the shelf to the water's edge.

Leif shouted. "Who are ye? And of what country?"

"Thore's people--from Ramfirth."

"Where is Thore?" They pointed to the woman.

"Yonder he lies hurt. That is his wife."

"And you are for Ericshaven?"

They said that they were. "Then you are well met," said Leif, and
stepped on to the rock.

Gudrid's eyes were great and serious. Leif came to her and took her
hands. "I little thought we should meet again like this."

"We must have died without you," she said.

Then he asked to look at poor Thore. He was unconscious, and had a
great wound in his temple, cut open almost to the bone. Gudrid told
him that when they struck, Thore, who had been at the helm, was thrown
out upon the edge of the rock. One of his men, thrown out also, had
pulled him up out of the sea. Gudrid herself had been below, sleeping.
She did not know how she had been saved. She awoke at the shock to
find her