nths
in the ice."

Four months on shipboard, with nothing more cheerful to look at than
barren cliffs and a gray sea paved with grinding ice-cakes! The
consternation of Alwin's face was so great that Sigurd took pity on him
even while he laughed.

"It will not be so bad as that. And we will steer to a point north of
the fiord and lie there in the shelter of an island."

"Shelter!" muttered the English youth. "Twelve eiderdown beds would be
insufficient to shelter one from this wind."

Nor was the island of any more inviting appearance when finally they
reached it. What of it was not barren boulders was covered with black
lichens, the only hint of green being an occasional patch of moss
nestling in some rocky fissure. To heighten the effect, icy gales blew
continually, accompanied by heavy mists and chilling fogs.

Amid these inhospitable surroundings they were penned for two
weeks,--Norse weeks of but five days each, but seemingly endless to the
captives from the south. Editha retired permanently into the big
bear-skin sleeping-bag that enveloped the whole of her little person and
was the only cure for the chattering of her teeth. Alwin wrapped himself
in every garment he owned and as many of Sigurd's as could be spared,
and strove to endure the situation with the stoicism of his companions;
but now and then his disgust got the better of his philosophy.

"How intelligent beings can find it in their hearts to return to this
country after the good God has once allowed them to leave it, passes my
understanding!" he stormed, on the tenth day of this sorry picnicking.
"At first it was in my mind to fear lest such a small ship should sink
in such a great sea; now I only dread that it will not, and that we will
be brought alive to land and forced to live there."

Rolf regarded him with his amiable smile. "If your eyes were as blue as
your lips, and your cheeks were as red as your nose, you would be
considered a handsome man," he said encouragingly.

And again it was Sigurd who took pity on Alwin. "Bear it well; it will
not last much longer," he said. "Already a passage is opening. And
inside the fiord, much is different from what is expected."

Alwin smiled with polite incredulity.

The next day's sun showed a dark channel open to them, so that before
noon they had entered upon the broad water-lane known as Eric's Fiord.
The silence between the towering walls was so absolute, so death-like,
as to be almost uncanny.