re mistaken. If you had not injured me, you would
never have forgotten that I had injured you. Now we are even, and we
start afresh. That is a good thing."

CHAPTER XII

THROUGH BARS OF ICE

A day should be praised at night;
A sword when it is tried;
Ice when it is crossed.
Ha'vama'l

A dim line of snowy islands, so far apart that it was hard to believe
they were only the ice-tipped summits of Greenland's towering coast,
stretched across the horizon. Standing at Helga's side in the bow, Alwin
gazed at them earnestly.

"To think," he marvelled, "that we have come to the very last land on
this side of the world! Suppose we were to sail still further west? What
is it likely that we would come to? Does the ocean end in a wall of ice,
or would we fall off the earth and go tumbling heels over head through
the darkness--? By St. George, it makes one dizzy!"

Helga's ideas were not much clearer. It was nearly five hundred years
before the time of Columbus. But she knew one thing that Alwin did not
know.

"Greenland is not the most western land," she corrected. "There is
another still further west, though no one knows how big it is or who
lives in it."

She turned, laughing, to where young Haraldsson sat counting the wealth
of his pouch and calculating how valuable could be the presents he could
afford to bestow on his arrival.

"Sigurd, do you remember that western land Biorn Herjulfsson saw? and
how we were wont to plan to run away to it, when I grew tired of
embroidering and Leif kept you overlong at your exercises?"

"I have not thought of it since those days," laughed Sigurd. He swept
the mass of gold and silver trinkets back into the velvet pouch at his
belt, and came over and joined them. "What fine times we had planning
those trips, over the fire in the evenings! By Saint Michael, I think we
actually started once; have you forgotten?--in the long-boat off
Thorwald's whaling vessel! And you wore a suit of my clothes, and fought
me because I said anyone could tell that you were a girl."

Helga's laughter rang out like a chime of bells. "Oh, Sigurd I had
forgotten it! And we had nothing with us to eat but two cheeses! And
Valbrand had to launch a boat and come after us!"

They abandoned themselves to their mirth, and Alwin laughed with them;
but his curiosity had been aroused on another subject.

"I wish you would tell me something concerning this farther land," he
said, as soo