“Come, let us pledge the new land in a can of beer,” cried Biarne, pouring the beverage out of an earthenware jar into a squat old Norse flagon of embossed silver. “Thorward, fill up!”
“I will join you heartily in that,” cried Thorward, suiting the action to the word.
“And I,” said Karlsefin, raising an empty flagon to his lips, “will pledge it in a wish. I wish—prosperity to Vinland!”
“Come, Karlsefin,” remonstrated Biarne, “forego austerity for once, and drink.”
“Not I,” returned the skipper, with a laugh.
“Wherefore not?”
“First, because a wish is quite as potent as a drink in that respect; second, because our beer is nearly finished, and we have not yet the means to concoct more, so that it were ill-advised to rob you, Biarne, by helping to consume that which I do not like; and, last of all, I think it a happy occasion this in which to forswear beer altogether!”
“Have thy way,” said Biarne, helping himself to another whale-steak of large dimensions. “You are too good a fellow to quarrel with on such trifling ground. Here, pass the jar, Thorward; I will drink his portion as well as my own.”
“And I will join you both,” cried little Olaf with a comical turn of his eyebrows. “Here, I wish prosperity to Vinland, and drink it, too, in water.”
“We can all join thee in that, Olaf,” said Gudrid I with an approving nod and laugh. “Come, girls, fill up your cups and pledge to Vinland.”