Days of the Discoverers | Page 5

is how she learned so
much about trees and herbs, and how to make bows and arrows and
moccasins."
"Moccasins?"
"The little shoes she made for Ellida. And she made a little boat for
Peder, like their skiffs."
This was interesting. For a private reason, Thorolf held Greenland to be
the most fascinating of all places.
"Can she speak their language?"
"Of course. I asked her to teach me, and she said that perhaps she
would some day. The songs that she sings to the little ones are some
that the Skroeling woman who adopted her used to sing to her when
she cried for her own mother. One of them begins like this:
"'Piche Klooskap pechian Machieswi menikok.'"
"What does it mean?"
"'Long ago Klooskap came to the island of the partridges.' Klooskap
was like Odin, or Thor. The priests in Greenland told her he was a devil
and wouldn't let her talk about him, but the Skroelings had runes for
everything just like the people in the sagas,--runes for war, and healing,

and the sea."
"How did she ever get away?"
"Some men came from Westbyrg to cut wood in the forest, and when
they saw that she was not really a Skroeling they bought her for an iron
pot and one of them married her. But he was drowned a long time ago."
"I wish I knew the Skroelings' language. Some day I mean to go to
Greenland."
"Perhaps Mother Elle will teach you. I'll ask her."
The Wind-wife was rather chary of information about the country of
the Skroelings until Nikolina's coaxing and Thorolf's silent but intense
interest had taken effect. The country, she said, was rather like Norway,
with mountains and great forests, lakes and streams, but far colder.
There were no fiords, and no cities. The people lived in tents made of
poles covered with bark, or hides. They dressed in the hides of wild
animals and lived by hunting and fishing. They had no reindeer, horses,
cattle, sheep or goats, no fowls, no pigs. They could not work iron, nor
did they spin or weave. The man and woman who had adopted her
treated her just like their own child.
The stories she had learned from these people were intensely
interesting to her listeners. There was one about a battle between the
wasps and the squirrels, and another about the beaver who wanted
wings. One was about a girl who was married to the Spirit of the
Mountain and had a son beautiful and straight and like any other boy
except that he had stone eyebrows. Then there was the tale about
Klooskap tying up the White Eagle of the Wind so that he could not
flap his wings. After a short time everything was so dirty and
ill-smelling and unhealthy that Klooskap had to go back and untie one
wing, and let the wind blow to clear the air and make the earth once
more wholesome.
Wild apples fell, grain ripened, nights lengthened. Long ago the
twin-flower, violet, wild pansy, forget-me-not and yellow anemone had

left their fairy haunts, and there remained only the curving fantastic
fronds of the fern,--the dragon-grass. Then had come brilliant spots and
splashes of color on the summer slopes--purple butterwort, golden
ragweed, aconite, buttercup, deep crimson mossy patches of saxifrage,
rosy heather, catchfly, wild geranium, cinnamon rose. These also
finished their triumphal procession and went to their Valhalla. Then
one September morning the children woke to hear the wind screaming
as if the White Eagle had escaped his prison, and the rain pelting the
world.
All summer they had been out, rain or shine, like water-ouzels, but now
they were glad to sit about the fire with the shutters all closed, and the
smoke now and then driven down into the room by the storm. Before
evening the little ones were begging for stories.
"I wish I could remember a saga I heard last Yule," Nikolina said at last.
"It was about a voyage the Vikings made to a country where the people
had never seen cattle. When they heard the cattle bellowing they all ran
away and left the furs they had come to sell."
"Tell all you remember and make up the rest," suggested Karen, but
Nikolina shook her head.
"One should never do that with a saga."
"I know that tale," spoke up Thorolf suddenly, although he had never in
his life repeated a saga. "Grandmother used to tell it. In the beginning
Bjarni Heriulfson the sea-rover, after many years came home to Iceland
to drink wassail in his father's house. But strangers dwelt there and told
him that his father was gone to Greenland, and he set sail for that land.
Soon was the ship swallowed up in a gray mist in which were neither