“So you are going off on a sealing expedition, are you?” said Leif, turning from the contemplation of the horizon, and regarding the Skraelinger with a comical smile.
“Yis, yo, ha, hooroo!” said Flatface, waving his arms violently to add force to his reply.
“And when do you go?” asked Leif.
“W’en? E go skrumch en cracker smorrow.”
“Just so,” replied Leif, “only I can’t quite make that cracker out unless you mean to-morrow.”
“Yis, yo, ha!” exclaimed the hairy man. “Kite right, kite right, smorrow, yis, to-morrow.”
“You’re a wonderful man,” remarked Leif, with a smile. “You’ll speak Norse like a Norseman if you live long enough.”
“Eh!” exclaimed the Skraelinger, with a perplexed look.
“When are you to be back?” asked Leif.
Flatface immediately pointed to the moon, which, although it was broad daylight at the time, showed a remarkably white face in the blue sky, and, doubling his fist, hit himself four blows on the bridge of his nose, or rather on the spot where the bridge of that feature should have been, but where, as it happened, there was only a hollow in the frying-pan, with a little blob below it.