Ingolf was silent. It was certainly about an equal distance to the two points, and he had a very great desire to seek a landing-place near the more easterly of the two.
Instead of giving a direct answer, he began cautiously: "I have thought, brother, that I for my part will let the gods decide where I should settle in this new land."
Leif, whose temper at the moment was a little off its balance because of the incident with the serf, gave a hard laugh: "How will you go about it?"
Ingolf pointed to the pillars of his high-seat, which lay lashed together with strong skin straps above a pile amidships.
"I will throw the pillars of my high-seat overboard. Wherever they drift to land, I will settle."
"Even if they drift to land in the middle of the sands here?" asked Hjor-Leif incredulously and a little scornfully.
"The gods will know how to find the place where it will be best for me and my family to settle," answered Ingolf, undisturbed. "I lay with confidence the choice of a dwelling in their hand."
Hjor-Leif was silent for a long time. There was a hard and pitiless line round his large mouth. There was Ingolf again with his cursed gods! At last he spoke, without looking at anything: "Instead, then, of our choosing a place for ourselves where the earth is fertile and luxuriant we are to settle wherever it pleases the wind and current to wash up a pair of dead planks on shore."
He talked himself into a bad temper. And he wound up bitterly: "We shall hardly be neighbours, then, brother!"