The Iron Star — And What It Saw on Its Journey Through the Ages: From Myth to HistoryTrue, John Preston
History
The Iron Star — And What It Saw on Its Journey Through the Ages: From Myth to History
True, John Preston
Iron -- History -- Juvenile fiction
It did not take long to provision the craft, or to arrange other
matters. Soon they were surging once more across apparently boundless
seas. Three times they came to lands unknown to them, yet not the
country of great trees talked of by old sailors around the winter
fires. At last it loomed up in reality above the horizon, covered with
timber enough to build a great city,--more than ever was seen close at
hand by Northmen before. And right lustily swung the axes among them
for days and weeks, until even the keenest trader among them all was
contented with his share of wealth that was to come to him when once
back in Greenland. There were not lacking signs, either, that savage
neighbours might be unpleasant neighbours, as more than one stone-
headed arrow had whistled past, heralded by the first war-whoop that
ever was heard by ears of white men.
So, like a careful captain, Leif got his dried fish, his smoked deer-
meat, his water casks, and his lumber by degrees all on board; he lit
the watch fires as usual at sundown; but by moonrise, with the early
tide he and his men slipped quietly out of their stockaded camp and
into their vessel, and silently drifted out to sea before the warm
land-wind that still was faintly blowing. And late that night a savage
war party called at the camp with spear and torch, to find it only an
empty shell, to their huge disappointment.
Other captains, less wise, came after Leif in their timber-hunting,
and not all came safely home again. Perhaps the good fortune that
still followed the guardian of the Iron Star had something to do with
Leif and Ulf's fair voyaging in this, the first time that a part of
the Star ever came to the shores of America. If so, then indeed its
power must have lived long after Ulf had said farewell and swept
onward in his own ship toward Norway once again; for by all his
friends the tall captain was called "Leif the Lucky."
And even now, in the entrance to a beautiful park in a great city of
that land where he went timber-cutting a thousand years before that
city--Boston--was ever heard of, there, high in air, as though still
standing on the prow of his ship, looms up a brave figure in bronze. A
closeknit, flexible shirt of mail guards his form. One hand rests upon
his hip, holding his curved war-horn. The other shades the eyes;--for,
even in this statue of him, Leif Ericsson is still the crosser of far
seas, the finder of strange lands, the sleepless watcher forever
gazing from beneath his shadowed brows into the golden west.
SPARK VII.
HOW THE STAR HELPED ULF THE SILENT TO WIN A GREAT NAME.
Back at the fjord, what happened to Edith Fairhair while Ulf was on
the ocean? Apparently nothing worth recording. Yet something had
happened, so silently, so stealthily that no one gave the matter a
thought. What was it? Why, Edith Fairhair had grown up!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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