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Updated: May 3, 2025
"No, my dear, I won't leave you," he said, and put his arm round her, for she seemed about to fall. "Come," he said, "I'll take you, and stay by you." She mastered her fear. "Yes," she said, "I must go. Oh, but you are so good to me." "Don't go if you are afraid," said Thorstan. "He may be dead by now." "No, no," she said, "not yet.
He was the lightest-hearted man and the happiest whom Gudrid had seen in Greenland, where mostly, it seemed, men had to fight with life at too long odds to have any heart left over for pastime. Thorstan Black owned to it. "There is no people but ours of Iceland, I do believe, who would hold out against this white death," he said. "So fast as we come we die of it.
They took down stores in the sleigh, and were much concerned at what they saw and heard. The strangers from the east were all sick; six were dead, and could only be buried in the snow. Thorstan promised that he would take all the bodies back to Ericsfrith if he had to heap the ship with dead men. When they returned to the homestead the first thing they heard was that Gurth was dead.
"Ay," she said, "I have heard tell of such lands, and you may see them, being young. But this place has made me old, and almost broken my heart. In a little while I shall ask no better than to be laid in the snow." Thorstan Black patted her on the back. "Courage, old lass," he said. "You and I have seen the worst of it. I think it may be better hereafter.
He told Thorstan his reason. "If we can move out, house and homestead, gear and cattle, man, woman and child, well and good. It is a finer country than this. I will settle there gladly. But you see how it is with our father. He won't last long, and you will see he will refuse to move. This is his Settlement; he has made it for himself. He is king of all this country, and he feels it.
He did not tell her, and Gudrid did not know, what he and Thorstan could have to say to each other but the two were great friends. The fact of the matter was that Thore had now got it into his head that Gudrid had cast a spell upon both himself and Thorstan, and that the prediction concerning her was less prophecy than a gift of magic power.
Now you must make the most of your time, for it won't be long. And I knew what the matter was between you from the first, but in those days I loved her dearly and could not let her go. Now do you two be married soon, and take it not amiss with me that I have outstayed my time." "You do wrong to speak so," Thorstan said.
After a week of blustering south-west gales and rain the wind went round to the north. Then from the N.N.W. there began a storm the like of which none of them had ever known, and for week after week they were buried in it, not knowing where they were. They lost men, tackle, stores; there was not a dry rag on the ship; every day Thorstan expected the snow.
And land was nearer than they thought, for one morning Thorstan saw a darkening in the fog, a kind of shape, and then, quick as the thought, he put the ship about. She came round slowly, and at that moment the spars and rigging seemed alive with sea-birds. As the ship went round a huge black wall reared itself a-starboard, and he heard the waves at its foot.
But Thorstan had not forgotten, and seemed to be waiting, like a raven on a rock, until he should be dead. Gudrid, who was fanciful, saw herself and him in that guise silent and watchful, each on a rock, made patient by certainty. All this was terrible to her, and made her old before her time. She was not more than three-and-twenty even now.
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