man had not taken a bout at the wrestling,
for that he who could hold his seat so must be the strongest-limbed
man between the fells and the sea. Hearing this Patricksen tossed his
head in anger, and said it was not yet too late, that if he took home
the champion's belt it should be no rude bargain to master or man
from sea to sea, and buckled though it was, it should be his who
could take it from its place.

At that word the young fellow rose, and then it was seen that his
right arm was useless, being broken between the elbow and the wrist,
and bound with a kerchief above the wound. Nothing loth for this
infirmity, he threw his other arm about the waist of the islander,
and the two men closed for a fall. Patricksen had the first grip, and
he swung to it, thinking straightway to lay his adversary by the
heels; but the young man held his feet, and then, pushing one leg
between the legs of the islander, planting the other knee into the
islander's stomach, thrusting his head beneath the islander's chin,
he knuckled his left hand under the islander's rib, pulled towards
him, pushed from him, threw the weight of his body forward, and like
a green withe Patricksen doubled backwards with a groan. Then at a
rush of the islander's kinsmen, and a cry that his back would be
broken, young man loosed his grip, and Patricksen rolled from him to
the earth, as a clod rolls from the ploughshare.

All this time Jorgen's daughter had craned her neck to see over the
heads of the people, and when the tussle was at an end, her face,
which had been strained to the point of anguish, relaxed to smiles,
and she turned to her father and asked if the champion's belt should
not be his who had overcome the champion. But Jorgen answered
no--that the contest was done, and judgment made, and he who would
take the champion's belt must come to the next Althing and earn it.
Then the girl unlocked her necklace of coral and silver spangles,
beckoned the young man to her, bound the necklace about his broken
arm close up by the shoulder, and asked him his name.

"Stephen," he answered.

"Whose son?" said she.

"Orrysen--but they call me Stephen Orry."

"Of what craft?"

"Seaman, of Stappen, under Snaefell."

The Westmann islander had rolled to his legs by this time, and now he
came shambling up, with the belt in his hand and his sullen eyes on
the ground.

"Keep it," he said, and flung the belt at the girl's feet, between
her and his adversary.