Alwin found it a wearily busy
world for him. Since he was not needed at the oars, they gave him the
odds and ends of drudgery about the ship. He cleared the decks, and
plied the bailing-scoop, and stood long tedious watches. He helped to
tent over the vessel's decks at night, and to stow away the huge canvas
in the morning. He ground grain for the hungry crew, and kept the great
mead-vat filled that stood before the mast for the shipmates to drink
from. He prepared the food and carried it around and cleared the
remnants away again. He was at the beck and call of forty rough voices;
he was the one shuttlecock among eighty brawny battledores.

It was a peaceful world, stirred by no greater excitement than a glimpse
of a distant sail or the mystery of a half-seen shore; yet things could
happen in it, Alwin found. The second day out, the earl-born captive for
the first time came in direct contact with the thrall-born Kark.

Kark was not deferential, even toward his superiors; there was barely
enough discretion in his roughness to save him from offending. Among
those of his own station, he dispensed even with discretion. And he had
looked upon Alwin with unfriendly eyes ever since Leif's first
manifestation of interest in his English property.

It often happens that the whole of earth's dry land proves too small to
hold two uncongenial spirits peaceably. One can imagine, then, how it
fared when two such opposites were limited to some hundred-odd feet of
timber in mid-ocean.

"Ho there, you cook-boy!" Kark's rough voice came down to the foreroom
where Alwin was working. "Get you quickly forward and wipe up the beer
Valbrand has spilled over his bench."

For a moment, Alwin's eyes opened wide in amazement; then they drew
together into two menacing slits, and his very clothing bristled with
haughtiness. He deigned no answer whatsoever.

A pause, and Kark followed his voice. "What now, you cub of a lazy
mastiff! I told you, quickly; the beer will get on his clothes."

With immovable calmness, Alwin went on with his grinding. Only after the
fourth round he said coldly: "It would save time if you would do your
work yourself."

Kark gasped with amazement. This to him, the slave-born son of Eric's
free steward, who held the whip-hand over all the thralls at Brattahlid!
His china-blue eyes snapped spitefully.

"It does not become the bowerman of Leif Ericsson to do the dirty work
of a foreign whelp. If you have the ambition