GREENLAND AGAIN--FLATFACE TURNS UP, ALSO THORWARD, WHO BECOMES ELOQUENT
AND SECURES RECRUITS FOR VINLAND.
Who has not heard of that solitary step which lies between the sublime
and the ridiculous? The very question may seem ridiculous. And who has
not, at one period or another of life, been led to make comparisons to
that step? Why then should we hesitate to confess that the step in
question has been suggested by the brevity of that other step which lies
between the beautiful and the plain, the luxuriant and the barren, the
fruitful and the sterile--which step we now call upon the reader to
take, by accompanying us from Vinland's shady groves to Greenland's
rocky shores.
Leif Ericsson is there, standing on the end of the wharf at Brattalid--
bold, stalwart, and upright, as he was when, some years before, he
opened up the way to Vinland. Flatface the Skraelinger is there too--
stout, hairy, and as suggestive of a frying-pan as he was when, on
murderous deeds intent, not very long before, he had led his hairy
friends on tiptoe to the confines of Brattalid, and was made almost to
leap out of his oily skin with terror.
But his terror by this time was gone. He and the Norsemen had been
reconciled, very much to the advantage of both, and his tribe was, just
then, encamped on the other side of the ridge.
Leif had learned a little of the Skraelinger tongue; Flatface had
acquired a little less of the Norse language--and a pretty mess they
made of it between them! As we are under the necessity of rendering
both into English, we beg the reader's forbearance and consideration.
"So you are going off on a sealing expedition, are you?" said Leif,
turning from the contemplation of the horizon, and regarding the
Skraelinger with a comical smile.
"Yis, yo, ha, hooroo!" said Flatface, waving his arms violently to add
force to his reply.
"And when do you go?" asked Leif.
"W'en? E go skrumch en cracker smorrow."
"Just so," replied Leif, "only I can't quite make that cracker out
unless you mean _to-morrow_."
"Yis, yo, ha!" exclaimed the hairy man. "Kite right, kite right,
smorrow, yis, to-morrow."
"You're a wonderful man," remarked Leif, with a smile. "You'll speak
Norse like a Norseman if you live long enough."
"Eh!" exclaimed the Skraelinger, with a perplexed look.
"When are you to be back?" asked Leif.
Flatface immediately pointed to the moon, which, although it was broad
daylight at the time, showed a remarkably white face in the blue sky,
and, doubling his fist, hit himself four blows on the bridge of his
nose, or rather on the spot where the bridge of that feature should have
been, but where, as it happened, there was only a hollow in the
frying-pan, with a little blob below it.
"Ha, four months. Very good. It will be a good riddance; for, to say
truth, I'm tired of you and your noisy relations."
Leif said this more as a soliloquy than a remark, for he had no
intention of hurting the feelings of the poor savage, who, he was aware,
could not understand him. Turning again to him, he said--"You know the
kitchen, Flatface?" Flatface said nothing, but rolled his eyes, nodded
violently, and rubbed that region which is chiefly concerned with food.
"Go," said Leif, "tell Anders to give you food--food--food!"
At each mention of the word Flatface retreated a step and nodded. When
Leif stopped he turned about, and with an exclamation of delight,
trundled off to the kitchen like a good-natured polar bear.
For full half an hour after that Leif walked up and down the wharf with
his eyes cast down; evidently he was brooding over something. Presently
Anders came towards him.
Anders was a burly middle-aged Norseman, with a happy-looking
countenance; he was also cook, steward, valet, and general factotum to
Leif.
"Well, Anders, hast had a visit from Flatface?" asked Leif.
"Ay--he is in the kitchen now."
"Hast fed him?"
"Ay, gorged him," replied Anders, with a grin.
"Good," said Leif, laughing; "he goes off to-morrow, it seems, for four
months, which I'm right glad to hear, for we have had him and his
kindred long enough beside us for this time. I am sorry on account of
the Christian teachers, however, because they were making some progress
with the language, and this will throw them back."
Leif here referred to men who had recently been sent to Greenland by
King Olaf Tryggvisson of Norway, with the design of planting
Christianity there, and some of whom appeared to be very anxious to
acquire the language of the natives. Leif himself had kept somewhat
aloof from these teachers of the new faith. He had indeed suffered
himself to be baptized, when on a visit to Norway, in order to please
the King; but he was a very reserved man, and no one knew exactly what
opinions he held in regard to religion. Of course he had been
originally trained in the Odin-worship of his forefathers, but he was a
remarkably shrewd man, and people said that he did not hold by it very
strongly. No one ever ventured to ask him what he held until the
teachers above mentioned came. When they tried to find out his opinions
he quietly, and with much urbanity, asked to be informed as to some of
the details of that which they had come to teach, and so managed the
conversation that, without hurting their feelings, he sent them away
from him as wise as they came. But although Leif was silent he was very
observant, and people said that he noted what was going on keenly--which
was indeed the case.
"I know not what the teachers think," said Anders, with a careless air,
"but it is my opinion that they won't make much of the Skraelingers, and
the Skraelingers are not worth making much of."
"There thou art wrong, Anders," said Leif, with much gravity; "does not
Flatface love his wife and children as much as you love yours?"
"I suppose he does."
"Is not his flesh and blood the same as thine, his body as well knit
together as thine, and as well suited to its purposes?"
"Doubtless it is, though somewhat uglier."
"Does he not support his family as well as thou dost, and labour more
severely than thou for that purpose? Is he not a better hunter, too,
and a faster walker, and fully as much thought of and prized by his
kindred?"
"All that may be very true," replied Anders carelessly.
"Then," pursued Leif, "if the Skraelingers be apparently as good as thou
art, how can ye say that they are not worth making much of?"
"Truly, on the same ground that I say that I myself am not worth making
much of. I neither know nor care anything about the matter. Only this
am I sure of, that the Skraelingers do not serve you, master, as well as
I do."
"Anders, thou art incorrigible!" said Leif, smiling; "but I admit the
truth of your last remark; so now, if ye will come up to the house and
do for me, to some extent, what ye have just done to Flatface, ye will
add greatly to the service of which thou hast spoken."
"I follow, master," said Anders; "but would it not be well, first, to
wait and see which of our people are returning to us, for, if I mistake
not, yonder is a boat's sail coming round the ness."
"A _boat's_ sail!" exclaimed Leif eagerly, as he gazed at the sail in
question; "why, man, if your eyes were as good as those of Flatface, ye
would have seen that yonder sail belongs to a ship. My own eyes have
been turned inward the last half hour, else must I have observed it
sooner."
"It seems to me but a boat," said Anders.
"I tell thee it is a ship!" cried Leif; "ay, and if my eyes do not
deceive, it is the ship of Karlsefin. Go, call out the people quickly,
and see that they come armed. There is no saying who may be in
possession of the ship now."
Anders hastened away, and Leif, after gazing at the approaching vessel a
little longer, walked up to the house, where some of his house-carls
were hastily arming, and where he received from the hands of an old
female servant his sword, helmet, and shield.
The people of Brattalid were soon all assembled on the shore, anxiously
awaiting the arrival of the ship, and an active boy was sent round to
Heriulfness, to convey the news to the people there--for in Greenland
the arrival of a ship was of rare occurrence in those days.
As the ship drew near, all doubt as to her being Karlsefin's vessel was
removed, and, when she came close to land, great was the anxiety of the
people to make out the faces that appeared above the bulwarks.
"That is Karlsefin," said one. "I know his form of face well."
"No, it is Biarne," cried another. "Karlsefin is taller by half a
foot."
"'Tis Thorward," said a third. "I'd know his face among a thousand."
"There seem to be no women with them," observed Anders, who stood at the
end of the wharf near his master.
"Does any one see Olaf?" asked Leif.
"No--no," replied several voices.