al, would be drawn by
curiosity to visit the bay.

The scouting party followed the banks of the little stream that had
given them fresh water, Anders leading, Thorolf just behind him. Wind
stirred softly in the leaves overhead, unseen birds fluttered and
chirped, sunshine sifting through the maple undergrowth turned it to
emerald and gold and jasper. Once there was a discordant screech from
the evergreens, but it was only a brilliant blue jay with crest erect,
scolding at them. A striped squirrel flashed up the trunk of a tree to
his hole. Then sudden as lightning, from the bushes they had just
passed, came a flight of arrows.

Two men were slightly wounded, but most of the arrows were turned by the
light strong body armor of the Norsemen. The foe remained unseen and
unheard. Nothing stirred, though the men scanned the woods about them
with the keen eyes of seamen and hunters.

Thorolf was seized with an inspiration. He went forward a step or two,
lifted his hand in salutation, and called,--

"Klooskap mech p'maosa?"[4] (Is Klooskap yet alive?)

There was a silence stiller than death. The Norsemen faced the ominous
thicket without moving a muscle. Some one within it called out something
which Thorolf did not understand. But no more arrows came. He tried
another sentence.

"Klooskap k-chi skitap, pechedog latogwesnuk." (Klooskap was a great man
in the country far to the northward.)

This time he made out the answer. In a swift aside he explained to his
comrades,--

"'K'putuswin' means 'let us take council.' They want to have a talk."

He managed to convey his assent to the unseen listeners, and every tree,
rock and log sprouted Skroelings. They were quite unlike the natives of
Greenland, though of copper-colored complexion.[5] These men--there were
no women among them,--were tall and sinewy, and wore their coarse black
hair knotted up on the head with a tuft of feathers. They were naked to
the waist, and wore fringed breeches of deerskin, and soft shoes
embroidered in bright colors. Some had necklaces of bears' claws, beads
or shells, but the only weapons seemed to be the bow and arrow and a
stone-headed hatchet or club. They stared at the white man half
curiously and half threateningly.

Then began the queerest conversation that any one present had ever
heard. Thorolf discovered the wild men's language to be so nearly like
that learned from the Wind-wife that he could understand it when spoken
slowly, and i