"Come you with me," said Leif, "and you shall be no more drunk." Then
it was that Dirk said, "Let us sit down. I'll tell you where I've
been." So they sat down together in the moonlight.
Then Dirk told him that he had outwalked the others and passed out of
the forest belt and reached a ridge of low hills. When he came to them
he found that they were a tangle of wild vines. "And I know what vines
are very well," he stopped to say, "for in my country there is no lack
of them." Now these vines, he said, were loaded with grapes, some
still ripe, but mostly over-ripe and fallen; and in a hollow of the
rocks he had come to a pool of water wherein the grapes had fallen and
fermented. "There," said he, "was my wine-vat, and there was I. The
rest, master, you know."
"Can you take me to that place to-morrow?" Leif asked him. Dirk said
that he could.
"Well," Leif said, "here is our work then. We will collect what we can
of your grapes, and load our ship with timber. That will fill up the
winter for us; and in the spring we will go home."
And that was the way of it. The timber which they got was fine wood,
and fit for building. They stored what grapes they could, and having a
good-sized meal-tub on board, they made wine in it. They had samples
of self-sown grain, too, and the skins of animals which they had
trapped or shot with bows. When the spring came, they loaded their
ship and sailed out of the lake into the open sea; but they left on
shore the huts which they had made, meaning to return. At parting Leif
said: "That country deserves a good name, and shall have one. I call
it Wineland the Good."