Leif in after days had his name of The Lucky, not for the great country
which he had explored, nor for what he brought back from it, nor for
the good passage home which he made, but for another reason altogether.
It was the fact that the wind never failed them from the day they set
out until that one on which they first saw plainly in the sea the snow
mountains of Greenland. Everybody on board was in high spirits. Leif
himself at the helm, and the look-out man was waiting for the first
view of the great headland beyond which Ericsfrith with its two rocks
would open up, and a straight course for the haven. And then,
suddenly, Leif put down the helm, hard, and the ship veered several
points off the land.
"What will you do, master?" one asked him, and Leif replied, "Look out
and see what I will do. Do you see nothing on the water?"
The man said that he saw nothing out of the common. "Well," said Leif,
"look again. I see a rock, or else a ship--and if a ship, then a ship
on a rock."
They all saw the rock now. "Yes," said Leif, "and there's a ship too,
or a piece of a ship; for there are men on the rock."
That was true too, but before they were near enough to count the
survivors of a wreck, pieces of the wreck itself, and baulks of timber,
which they supposed her cargo, came drifting by them; and then
presently a drowned man with a white face turned upwards.
Leif ran on, as near to the rock as he dared, near enough at least to
see the men huddled on the ridge of it, and their hands up signalling
to them. There, too, were the bows of a good ship rising high into the
air like a seal. The rock was a sort of shelf in the sea, and stood
out some ten furlongs from the great headland.
Leif brought up his ship and cast anchor. He had the boat out, and
himself rowed out to the wreck. "They can do us no harm, whoever they
are," he said; "but I think they are friends of ours." Some fifteen
men were huddled together, and apart from them was a woman in a blue
cloak, with a man lying beside her, his head on her lap, and a cloth
over his face. She did not move as the boat drew in, but all the
others came scrambling down the shelf to the water's edge.