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 shore. 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