Haflidi then went to the sailors and said: "You have much toil; and it seems that you don't get on with Grettir."
"His lampoons," they answered, "annoy us more than anything else."
Then Haflidi, speaking loud, said: "It will be the worse for him some day."
Grettir, when he heard himself being denounced, spoke a verse:
"Other the words that Haflidi spake
when he dined on curds at Reydarfell.
But now two meals a day he takes
in the steed of the bays mid foreland shores."
The sailors were very angry and said he should not lampoon Haflidi for nothing. Haflidi said: "Grettir certainly deserves that you should take him down a little, but I am not going to risk my good name because of his ill-temper and caprice. This is not the time to pay him out, when we are all in such danger. When you get on shore you can remember it if you like."
"Shall we not endure what you can endure?" they said. "Why should a lampoon hurt us more than it does you?"
Haflidi said so it should be, and after that they cared less about Grettir's lampoons.
The voyage was long and fatiguing. The ship sprung a leak, and the men began to be worn out. The mate's young wife was in the habit of stitching Grettir's sleeves for him, and the men used to banter him about it. Haflidi went up to Grettir where he was lying and said:
"Arise from thy den! deep furrows we plough!
Remember the word thou didst speak to the fair.
Thy garment she sewed; but now she commands
that thou join in the toil while the land is afar."