sound of jubilation in these cries, swelling the heart of him who
heard them. They came from a long flight of swans on their way
from the south.

But when the skipper saw the icebergs moving southward and the
swans flying to the north such longing seized him that he wrung
his hands. "Woe's me, that I must lie here!" he said. "Will the
ice never break up in this bay? I may lie waiting here many days
yet."

Just as he said this, he saw a man come driving on the ice. He
came out of a narrow channel on the Marstrand side, and he drove
as calmly on the ice as if he did not know the waves had begun
once more to carry ships and boats.

As he drove under the stern of the gallias he hailed the skipper:
"Ho, you there, frozen in the ice, do you lack food aboard? Will
you buy my salt herring or dried ling or smoked eel?"

The skipper did not trouble to answer him. He only shook his fist
at him and swore.

Then the fish hawker stepped off his load. He took a bunch of hay
from the sledge and laid it in front of his horse. Then he climbed
up on the deck of the gallias. When he faced the skipper he said
to him very earnestly:

"Today I have not come to sell fish. But I know that you are a
God-fearing man. Therefore I have come to ask your help to find a
maiden whom the Scotsmen brought out to your ship with them