And again it was Sigurd who took pity on Alwin. "Bear it well; it will
not last much longer," he said. "Already a passage is opening. And
inside the fiord, much is different from what is expected."

Alwin smiled with polite incredulity.

The next day's sun showed a dark channel open to them, so that before
noon they had entered upon the broad water-lane known as Eric's Fiord.
The silence between the towering walls was so absolute, so death-like,
as to be almost uncanny. Mile after mile they sailed, between bleak
cliffs ice-crowned and garbed in black lichens; mile after mile further
yet, without passing anything more cheerful than a cluster of rocky
islands or a slope covered with brownish moss. The most luxuriant of the
islands boasted only a patch of crowberry bushes or a few creeping
junipers too much abashed to lift their heads a finger's length above
the earth.

Alwin looked about him with a sigh, and then at Sigurd with a grimace.
"Do you still say that this is pleasanter than drowning?" he inquired.

Sigurd met the fling with obstinate composure. "Are you blind to the
greenness of yonder plain? And do you not feel the sun upon you?"

All at once it occurred to Alwin that the icy wind of the headlands had
ceased to blow; the fog had vanished, and there was a genial warmth in
the air about him. And yonder,--certainly yonder meadow was as green as
the camp in Norway. He threw off one of his cloaks and settled himself
to watch.