It was a beautiful world, full of the shifting charms of color and of motion, of the joy of sun and wind; but Alwin found it a wearily busy world for him.  Since he was not needed at the oars, they gave him the odds and ends of drudgery about the ship.  He cleared the decks, and plied the bailing-scoop, and stood long tedious watches.  He helped to tent over the vessel’s decks at night, and to stow away the huge canvas in the morning.  He ground grain for the hungry crew, and kept the great mead-vat filled that stood before the mast for the shipmates to drink from.  He prepared the food and carried it around and cleared the remnants away again.  He was at the beck and call of forty rough voices; he was the one shuttlecock among eighty brawny battledores.

It was a peaceful world, stirred by no greater excitement than a glimpse of a distant sail or the mystery of a half-seen shore; yet things could happen in it, Alwin found.  The second day out, the earl-born captive for the first time came in direct contact with the thrall-born Kark.

Kark was not deferential, even toward his superiors; there was barely enough discretion in his roughness to save him from offending.  Among those of his own station, he dispensed even with discretion.  And he had looked upon Alwin with unfriendly eyes ever since Leif’s first manifestation of interest in his English property.

It often happens that the whole of earth’s dry land proves too small to hold two uncongenial spirits peaceably.  One can imagine, then, how it fared when two such opposites were limited to some hundred-odd feet of timber in mid-ocean.

“Ho there, you cook-boy!” Kark’s rough voice came down to the foreroom where Alwin was working.  “Get you quickly forward and wipe up the beer Valbrand has spilled over his bench.”

For a moment, Alwin’s eyes opened wide in amazement; then they drew together into two menacing slits, and his very clothing bristled with haughtiness.  He deigned no answer whatsoever.

A pause, and Kark followed his voice.  “What now, you cub of a lazy mastiff!  I told you, quickly; the beer will get on his clothes.”

With immovable calmness, Alwin went on with his grinding.  Only after the fourth round he said coldly:  “It would save time if you would do your work yourself.”

Kark gasped with amazement.  This to him, the slave-born son of Eric’s free steward, who held the whip-hand over all the thralls at Brattahlid!  His china-blue eyes snapped spitefully.

“It does not become the bowerman of Leif Ericsson to do the dirty work of a foreign whelp.  If you have the ambition to be more than—­”

He was interrupted by the sound of approaching thunder.  Valbrand descended upon them, his new tunic drenched, the scars on his battered old face showing livid red.

“Is it likely that I will wait all day while two thralls quarrel over precedence?” he roared.  “The Troll take me if I do not throw one of you to Ran before the journey is over!  Go instantly—­”