It happened in the beginning of the summer that Sigurd Erikson
journeyed north into Esthonia to gather the king's taxes and tribute.
His business in due course brought him into a certain seaport that
stood upon the shores of the great Gulf of Finland.

He was a very handsome man, tall and strong, with long fair hair and
clear blue eyes. There were many armed servants in his following,
for he was a person of great consequence, and was held in high
honour throughout the land.

He rode across the marketplace and there alighted from his horse,
and turned his eyes towards the sea. Before him stretched the
rippling, sunlit bay with its wooded holms. A fleet of fishing boats
was putting out with the flood tide, and some merchant vessels lay
at anchor under shelter of the green headland.

Nearer to the strand a long dragonship, with a tall gilded prow
rising high above the deck tent, was moored against a bank of hewn
rock that served as a wharf. At sight of the array of white shields
along this vessel's bulwarks his eyes brightened, for he knew that
she was a viking ship from his own birth land in distant Norway,
and he was glad. Not often did it chance that he could hold speech
with the bold warriors of the fiords.

Close by the ship there was a noisy crowd of men and boys. He
strode nearer to them, and heard the hoarse voices of the vikings
calling out in loud praise of a feat that had been performed
by someone in their midst. Sigurd joined the crowd, and saw a boy
step out upon the vessel's narrow gangplank, and there, standing
between the ship and the shore, begin to throw a knife high up into