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Updated: June 27, 2025
"You will dishonor Leif's holy mission." "I shall not cause any quarrel, nor offend anyone. What harm can I do?" Sigurd laid his hands on his friend's shoulders and tried to see his face in the dark. "Give it up, comrade; I beseech you to give it up.
"Then I have not been disobedient to you, lord; for I would not avoid death if it seemed to me that such shirking were cowardly." A moment the retort brought a grim smile to Leif's lips; then suddenly his face froze into a look of terrible anger. He half started from his chair. "Do you dare tell me to my face that, because I order you to keep the peace, I am a coward?" Alwin gave a great gasp.
While their cries were still in the air, Leif's blade leaped from its scabbard, quivered in the light, and flashed down, biting through fur and hair and flesh and bone. Without a sound, Alwin fell forward heavily, and lay upon his face at his master's feet.
Kark was not deferential, even toward his superiors; there was barely enough discretion in his roughness to save him from offending. Among those of his own station, he dispensed even with discretion. And he had looked upon Alwin with unfriendly eyes ever since Leif's first manifestation of interest in his English property.
In the great hall there was no illumination save the flickering firelight. Black shadows blotted out the corners and stretched across the ceiling. The long benches were emptied of all save Leif's followers and Thorhild's band of women. The men sat like a row of automatons, drinking steadily, in deep silence, with furtive glances toward their leader.
The sun rose upon a perfect day, warm and bright, with the wind in the right quarter, steady and strong. And as if to make sure that not even one thing should mar so auspicious a beginning, Leif's luck swept away the only drawback that Rolf had been able to name.
It could not but seem a pity to his admirers that soon, with one word, he would be forced to undo it all. "It is harder than the martyrdom of the saints," Alwin murmured bitterly. Then his eye fell upon the silver crucifix, shining pure and bright on Leif's breast, and he realized the unworthiness of his thoughts, and resigned himself with a sigh.
One by one the crew filed out, with rumbling threats and scowling faces, but wordless and empty-handed. Alwin took advantage of his close attendance to be the last to go, but finally even he was forced to leave. Helga marched out beside him, her head held very high, her eyes dealing sharper stabs than her dagger, Leif's scarlet colors flying in her cheeks.
They found good anchorage there and a snug berth out of all troubles of wind or water. Next day they took off all their stores, and pitched tents for themselves in a glade, for it was Leif's meaning that they should pass a winter there. He was very much in love with the country, and said that in all his travels he had never been in a place so little likely to be vexed by cruel weather.
As they brought timber, much prized in the Greenland settlement, their voyage caused a great deal of talk. Naturally others wished to rival Leif. In the next few years several voyages to Vineland are briefly chronicled in the sagas. First of all, Thorwald, Leif's brother, borrowed his ship, sailed away to Vineland with thirty men, and spent two winters there.
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