stood up.

"We have all laughed at that tale of Butter Thorolf's," he said. "But
Floki himself said that the sea about the island is full of ice that
pushes upon the land, that no ship can live in that water in the winter,
that great mountains of ice cover the island. Did not all his cattle die
there of hunger and cold, and did he not come back to Norway cursing
Iceland?"

"Oh, Sighvat, you are old and fearful," called out Leif, and he laughed.

Then he stretched himself up and threw back his head.

"Are we afraid of ice? Have we not seen angry water before? I have been
hungry, but I have never died of it. Surely if there are fish in the sea
and grass in the valleys, we can live there. I should like to stand on a
hill and look around on a wide land and think, 'This is all ours,' and
out upon a rough sea and think, 'Far off there are our foes and they
dare not come over to us.' Besides, we shall have no Shockhead Harald to
lord it over us. We can come and go and feast and fight as we please. We
shall be our own kings. And our ships will be always waiting to take us
away, when we are weary of it. And we shall see things that other men
have never seen. I am tired of the old things. Perhaps in after days men
will make songs about 'those foster-brothers, Ingolf and Leif, who made
a new country in a wonderful land, and whose sons and grandsons are
mighty men in Iceland!'"

Ingolf leaped up from his chair.

"By the strong arm of Thor!" he cried, "I like the sound of it. Now I
make my vow."

He raised his drinking-horn.

"I vow that I will find this Iceland and pass the winter there, and that
if man can live upon it I will go back there and set up my home."

"And I vow that I will follow my foster-brother," cried Leif.

And many men vowed to go.

So on the next day they began to make ready a boat. They looked her over
carefully and recalked every seam and freshly painted her and put into
her their strongest oars and made her a new sail.

"This will be the longest voyage that she ever made," Ingolf said.

When the work was done, they put into her great stores, axes, hammers,
fish-nets, cooking-kettles, kegs of ale, chests of hard bread, chests of
smoked meat, brass kettles full of flour, skin bottles of water. They
stowed these things away in the ends of the ship. When they were ready
they put in four head of cattle.

"We shall need the milk and perhaps the meat," Ingolf said.

Many men wished to go, but Ingolf