Though black rifts yawned here and there in the middle of the stream, the ice within a hundred paces of the shores was as solid as a rock and as smooth-carpeted as a floor, a shining temptation to any with red blood in his veins. From sliding they went to racing, cleaving the air like swallows. There is no knowing when they would have stopped if they had not been halted, on turning a bend in the river, by the sight of smoke curling up from behind in a low white bank ahead of them.
In the same breath Brand cried: "Skraellings!" and Gard cried, "Dwarfs!" At which Alrek repeated the last word with lifted eyebrows:
"Dwarfs?"
Somewhat shamefacedly, Gard explained himself: "I said that in jest. It came into my mind how Biorn Herjulfsson's men used to think that this land was inhabited by them. But the rocks are not large enough here. It is more likely to be Skraellings."
"It is most likely to be some of our own hunters," Alrek dissented, "but it lies on our shoulders to investigate. We will leave our skees on the ice and creep close to the bank and listen; the tongue they speak, and their voices, will tell us something. If they are Skraellings, remember to behave well toward them, but on no account allow them to get hold of your knives. Karlsefne would blame the man strongly who should give them a weapon."
The plan was simple enough to carry out, for the shore was flat at the river's edge. With a sudden freak of perverseness, Brand decided that doffing his skees was unnecessary, and edged his way up sidewise, the six-foot runners threatening more than once to trip his neighbor. But they did not have to get very close to hear, as the place was still and the voices loud.
Their first expression was disappointment, for the language spoken was nothing more novel than Norse, and the voice was the hoarse one of the vagabond Greenlander known as Faste the Fat.
"——they are contented with no better excitement than hunting," he was saying.
"And to get only such wealth as is to be got from trading with Skraellings," added the grumble of Ale the Greedy.
In the faces of the eavesdroppers disappointment began to give place to curiosity.