There was not a breath of wind for three days and three nights, as they
coasted southward, with the peaks of the Norland on their port, and to
starboard the skerries that kept guard on the firths. Through the haze they
could now and then see to landward trees and cliffs, but never a human
face. Once there was an alarm of another fleet, and the shields were slung
outboard, but it proved to be only a wedding-party passing from wick to
wick, and they gave it greeting and sailed on. These were eerie cheerless
days. The thralls sweated in shifts at the oars, and the betterborn talked
low among themselves, as if the air were full of ears. "Ran is heating her
ovens," said Leif, as he watched the warm fog mingle with the oarthresh.

On the fourth morning there came a break in the clouds, and the sight of a
high hill gave Leif the clue for his reckoning. The prows swung seaward,
and the galleys steered for the broad ocean. That afternoon there sprang up
the north-east wind for which they had been waiting. Sails were hoisted on
the short masts, oars were shipped and lashed under the bulwarks, and the
thralls clustered in the prows to rest their weary limbs and dice with
knucklebones. The spirits of all lightened, and there was loud talk in the
sterns among the Bearsarks. In the night the wind freshened, and the long
shallow boats rolled filthily so that the teeth shook in a man's head, and
over the swish of the waves and the creaking of the sheets there was a
perpetual din of arms clashing. Biorn was miserably ill for some hours, and
made sport for the seasoned voyagers.

"It will not hold," Leif prophesied. "I smell rime ahead and quiet seas."

He had spoken truly, for the sixth day the wind fell and they moved once
more over still, misty waters. The thralls returned to their oars and the
voices of the well-born fell low again These were ghoulish days for Biorn,