"It may be then that you would be willing that I should offer them to come under my rule?" Karlsefne suggested; and went on to say more in an undertone.
Astonishment opened the helmsman's eyes at first; then, slowly, he wrinkled into a fat smile. At last he reached out and grasped Karlsefne's hand.
"If you will rid me of the twenty plagues, who are turning me thin, I will feel as though you had given me twenty marks of gold," he declared. Whereupon the Lawman turned to the group of blank faces.
"Now this is my offer to you," he said, "that you part from the rest of the Greenlanders and form yourselves into a band and build your own booth and choose one of your own number to rule over you."
The faces lighted in ecstasy,—then gloomed in unbelief. Brand spoke for all when he inquired timidly:
"Is this a punishment?"
"It is not a reward," Karlsefne answered; and for a moment his gaze sharpened so that the Red One winced under it. "If I did not believe that it is because you know no better that you act thus, there would be hard things in store for you. I take this way to show you why lawfulness is needful. Yet is there no trick to it; all I have promised shall be fulfilled,—and more. You shall have your own table if you can furnish it; your own boat if you can build it; in every way like men——"
They thought his pause the end, and burst into jubilant chorus; "It will not take us long to know what to answer to this!"
But he raised his hand for silence. "Answer nothing until you have heard the whole. If you form yourselves upon the manner of men, so must you also bear men's burdens. You must furnish your share of hunters and fishers and of workers in the fields; and you must do your share of guarding against outside foes or lawlessness within. Even as Thorvard, here, and Snorri and Biorn, answer to me for the behavior of their following, so must your chief answer for you——"
"Yes! Yes!" they cried eagerly.