Produced by Lionel Sear
By Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch ('Q').
In the early summer of 1358, with the breaking up of the ice, there cameto Brattahlid, in Greenland, a merchant-ship from Norway, withprovisions for the Christian settlements on the coast. The master'sname was Snorri Gamlason, and it happened that as he sailed intoEric's Fiord and warped alongside the quay, word was brought to him thatthe Bishop of Garda had arrived that day in Brattahlid, to hold aconfirmation. Whereupon this Snorri went ashore at once, and, gettingaudience of the Bishop, gave him a little book, with an account of howhe had come by it.
The book was written in Danish, and Snorri could not understand a wordof it, being indeed unable to read or to write; but he told thistale:—
His ship, about three weeks before, had run into a calm, which lastedfor three days and two nights, and with a northerly drift she fell away,little by little, towards a range of icebergs which stretched across andahead of them in a solid chain. But about noon of the third day thecolour of the sky warned him of a worse peril, and soon there came upfrom the westward a bank of fog, with snow in it, and a wind thatincreased until they began to hear the ice grinding and breaking up—as it seemed—all around them. Snorri steered at first for thesouthward, where had been open water; but by and by found that even herewere drifting bergs. He therefore put his helm down and felt his waythrough the weather by short boards, and so, with the most of his menstationed forward to keep a look-out, fenced, as it were, with thedanger, steering and tacking, until by God's grace the fog lifted, andthe wind blew gently once more.
And now in the clear sunshine he saw that the storm had been moreviolent than any had supposed; since the wall of ice, which before hadbeen solid, was now burst and riven in many places, and in particular tothe eastward, where a broad path of water lay before them almost like acanal, but winding here and there. Towards this Snorri steered, andentered it with a fair breeze.
They had come, he said, but to the second bend of this waterway, when aseaman, who had climbed the mast on the chance of spying an outlet,called out in surprise that there was a ship ahead of them, but twomiles off, and running down the channel before the wind, even as they.At first he found no credit for this tale, and even when those on deckspied her mast and yard overtopping a gap between tw