, with his nets out close in under the land. So we threw out our
boat and boarded him for information. He proved to be a Grimsby
skipper, and we received the usual warm reception which these
Yorkshire people know so well how to give. But to my amazement he was
unable to afford us the one thing which we really desired. "I've been
coming this way, man and boy, for forty years," he assured me. "But I
can't read the chart, and I knows no more of the lay of the land than
you does yourself. I don't use no chart beyond what's in my head."

With this we were naturally not content, so we sent back to the boat
for our own sheet chart to try and get more satisfactory information.
But when it lay on the table in this old shellback's cabin all he did
was to put down on it a huge and horny thumb that was nearly large
enough to cover the whole historic island, and "guess we were
somewhere just about here."

Our cruise carried us all round the island--the larger part of our
time being spent off the Vestmann Islands and the mouth of Brede Bugt,
the large bay in which Reikyavik lies. It was off these islands that
Eric the Red threw his flaming sticks into the sea. The first brand
which alighted on the land directed him where to locate his new
headquarters. Reikyavik means "smoking village," so called from the
vapours of the hot streams which come out of the ground near by.

There is no night on the coast in summer; and even though we were a
Mission ship we found it a real difficulty to keep tab of Sundays. The
first afternoon that I went visiting aboard a large trawler, the
extraordinary number of fish and the specimens of unfamiliar varieties
kept me so interested that I lost all count of time, and when at last
hunger prompted me to look at my watch I found that it was exactly
1.30 A.M.

At that time so many plaice and flatfish were caught at every haul,
and they were so much more valuable than cod and haddock, that it was
customary not to burden the vessel on her long five days' journey to
market with round fish at all. These were, however, hauled up so
rapidly to the surface from great depths that they had no time to
accommodate the tension in their swimming bladders to the diminished
pressure, with the result that when thrown overboard they were all
left swimming upside down. A pathetic wake of white-bellied fish would
stretch away for half a mile behind the vessel, over which countless
screaming gulls and other birds were fighti