TER FIFTEEN.

GREENLAND AGAIN--FLATFACE TURNS UP, ALSO THORWARD, WHO BECOMES ELOQUENT
AND SECURES RECRUITS FOR VINLAND.

Who has not heard of that solitary step which lies between the sublime
and the ridiculous? The very question may seem ridiculous. And who has
not, at one period or another of life, been led to make comparisons to
that step? Why then should we hesitate to confess that the step in
question has been suggested by the brevity of that other step which lies
between the beautiful and the plain, the luxuriant and the barren, the
fruitful and the sterile--which step we now call upon the reader to
take, by accompanying us from Vinland's shady groves to Greenland's
rocky shores.

Leif Ericsson is there, standing on the end of the wharf at Brattalid--
bold, stalwart, and upright, as he was when, some years before, he
opened up the way to Vinland. Flatface the Skraelinger is there too--
stout, hairy, and as suggestive of a frying-pan as he was when, on
murderous deeds intent, not very long before, he had led his hairy
friends on tiptoe to the confines of Brattalid, and was made almost to
leap out of his oily skin with terror.

But his terror by this time was gone. He and the Norsemen had been
reconciled, very much to the advantage of both, and his tribe was, just
then, encamped on the other side of the ridge.

Leif had learned a little of the Skraelinger tongue; Flatface had
acquired a little less of the Norse language--and a pretty mess they
made of it between them! As we are under the necessity of rendering
both into English, we beg the reader's forbearance and consideration.

"So you are going off on a sealing expedition, are you?" said Leif,
turning from the contemplation of the horizon, and regarding the
Skraelinger with a comical smile.

"Yis, yo, ha, hooroo!" said Flatface, waving his arms violently to add
force to his reply.

"And when do you go?" asked Leif.

"W'en? E go skrumch en cracker smorrow."

"Just so," replied Leif, "only I can't quite make that cracker out
unless you mean _to-morrow_."

"Yis, yo, ha!" exclaimed the hairy man. "Kite right, kite right,
smorrow, yis, to-morrow."

"You're a wonderful man," remarked Leif, with a smile. "You'll speak
Norse like a Norseman if you live long enough."

"Eh!" exclaimed the Skraelinger, with a perplexed look.

"When are you to be back?" asked Leif.

Flatface immediately pointed to the moon, which, although it was broad
daylight a