keel of his war-ship ploughed the shore of Saelo's Isle.

"True, 'tis a good omen, king," said old Rane the helmsman, following
close behind.

But the soil of the "Lucky Isle" was largely clay, moist and
slippery, and as the eager young viking climbed the bank his right
foot slipped, and he would have fallen had not he struck his left
foot firmly in the clay and thus saved himself. But to slip at all
was a bad sign in those old, half-pagan, and superstitious times,
and he said, ruefully: "An omen; an omen, Rane! The king falls!"

"Nay,'tis the king's luck," says ready and wise old Rane. "Thou
didst not fall, king. See; thou didst but set fast foot in this
thy native soil of Norway."

"Thou art a rare diviner, Rane," laughed the young king, much
relieved, and then he added solemnly: "It may be so if God doth
will it so."

And now news comes that Earl Hakon, with a single war-ship, is
steering north from Sogne Fiord; and Olaf, pressing on, lays his two
ships on either side of a narrow strait, or channel, in Sandunga
Sound. Here he stripped his ships of all their war-gear, and stretched
a great cable deep in the water, across the narrow strait. Then he
wound the cable-ends around the capstans, ordered all his fighting-men
out of sight, and waited for his rival. Soon Earl Hakon's war-ship,
crowded with rowers and fighting-men, entered the strait. Seeing,
as he supposed, but two harmless merchant-vessels lying on either
side of the channel, the young earl bade his rowers pull between