The Thrall of Leif the Lucky Part 13

She stared at him dully. "Why should I be angry with you? You could not help what you did; and Leif thought I would wish rather to go to my own mother than to Thorhild."

It had never occurred to Alwin that she would be reasonable. His remorse became the more eager. He bethought himself of some slight comfort. "At least it cannot happen for a year, lady. And in--"

She raised her head quickly. "Why can it not happen for a year?"

"Because Gilli is away on a trading voyage, and will not be back until fall, when it will be too late to start for Greenland. Nor will he come early in spring and so lose the best of his trading season. It is sure to be more than a year."

Youth can construct a lifeboat out of a straw. Hope crept back to Helga's eyes.

"A year is a long time. Many things can happen in a year. Gilli may be slain,--for every man a mistletoe-shaft grows somewhere. Or I may marry someone in Greenland. Already two chiefs have asked my hand of Leif, so it is not likely that I shall lack chances."

"That is true; and it may also happen that the Lady Bertha will never get my runes. She was absent on a visit when Valbrand left them at her farm. Or even if she gets them, she may lack courage to tell the news to Gilli. Or he may dislike the expense of a daughter. Surely, where there are so many holes, there are many good chances that the danger will fall through one of them."

Helga flung up her head with a gallant air. "I will heed your advice in this matter. I will not trouble myself another moment; and I will love Brattahlid as a bird loves the cliff that hides it! And Thorhild? What if her nature is such that she is cross? She is no coward. She would defend those she loved, though she died for it. I should like to see Eric bid her to abandon a child. There would not be a red hair left in his beard. Better is it to be brave and true than to be gentle like your Lady Bertha. Is it because she is my mother that you give that t.i.tle to me also?"

Alwin hesitated and reddened. "Yes. And because I like to remember that there is English blood in you."

Helga paused in the midst of her excitement, and her face softened. She looked at him, and her starry eyes were full of frank good-will.

She said slowly, "Since there is English blood in me, it may be that you will some time ask for the friendship I have offered you."

At that moment, it seemed to Alwin that such simplicity and frankness were worth more than all the gentle graces of his country-women. He put out his hand.

"You need not wait long for me to ask that," he said. "I would have asked it a week ago, but I could not think it honorable to call myself your friend when I had injured you so."

Helga's slim fingers gave his a firm clasp, but she laughed merrily.

"That is where you are 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 ma.s.s 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 soon as he could get them to listen. "Does it in truth exist, or is it a tale to amuse children with?"

They both a.s.sured him that it was quite true.

"I myself have talked with one of the sailors who saw it," Sigurd explained. "He was Biorn's steersman. He saw it distinctly. He said that it looked like a fine country, with many trees."

"If it was a real country and no witchcraft, it is strange that he contented himself with looking at it. Why did he not land and explore?"

"Biorn Herjulfsson is a coward," Helga said contemptuously. "Every man who can move his tongue says so."

Sigurd frowned at her. "You give judgment too glibly. I have heard many say that he is a brave man. But he was not out on an exploring voyage; he was sailing from Iceland to Greenland, to visit his father, and lost his way. And he is a man not apt to be eager in new enterprises.

Besides, it may be that he thought the land was inhabited by dwarfs."

"There, you have admitted that I am right!" Helga cried triumphantly.

"He was afraid of the dwarfs; and a man who is afraid of anything is a coward."

But Sigurd could fence with his tongue as well as with his sword. "What then is a shield-maiden who is afraid of her kinswoman?" he parried. And they fell to wrangling laughingly between themselves.

Unheeding them, Alwin gazed away at the mysterious blue west. His eyes were big with great thoughts. If he had a ship and a crew,--if he could sail away exploring! Suppose kingdoms could be founded there!

Suppose--his imaginings became as lofty as the drifting clouds, and as vague; so vague that he finally lost interest in them, and turned his attention to the approaching sh.o.r.e. They had come near enough now to see that the scattered islands had connected themselves into a peaked coast, a broken line of dazzling whiteness, except where dark chasms made blots upon its sides.

But sighting Greenland and landing upon it were two very different matters, he found. A little further, and they encountered the border of drift-ice that, travelling down from the northeast in company with numerous icebergs, closes the fiord-mouths in summer like a magic bar.

"I shall think it great luck if this breaks up so that we can get through it in a month," Valbrand observed phlegmatically.

"A month?" Alwin gasped, overhearing him.

The old sailor looked at him in contempt. "Does a month seem long to you? When Eric came here from Iceland, he was obliged to lie four months 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 G.o.d has once allowed them to leave it, pa.s.ses my understanding!" he stormed, on the tenth day of this sorry picnicking.