“Nothing is told of the voyage of the earl and his men before they came south off Sarkland, and lay in the neighbourhood of Sardinia, and knew not what land they were near. The weather had turned out in this wise, that a great calm set in and mists and smooth seas—though the nights were light—and they saw scarcely at all from their ships, and so they made little way. One morning it happened that the mist lifted. Men stood up and looked about them. Then the earl asked if men saw anything new. They said they saw nought but two islets, little and steep, and when they looked for the islets the second time, then one of the islets was gone. They told this to the earl. He began to say, ‘That can have been no islets. That must be ships which men have out here in this part of the world, which they call dromonds; those are ships big as holms to look on. But there, where the other dromond lay, a breeze must have come down on the sea, and they must have sailed away; but these must be wayfaring men, either chapmen or faring in some other way on their business.’ “After that the earl lets them call to him the bishop and all the shipmasters; then he began to say: ‘I call you together for this, lord bishop and Erling, my kinsman: see ye any scheme or chance of ours that we may win victory in some way over those who are on the dromond.’ The bishop answers: ‘Hard, I guess, will it be for you to run your long-ships under the dromond, for ye will have no better way of boarding than by grappling the bulwarks with a broad-axe; but they will have brimstone and boiling pitch to throw under your feet and over your heads. Ye may see, earl, so wise as you are, that it is the greatest rashness to lay one’s self and one’s men in such risk.’ “Then Erling began to speak: ‘Lord bishop,’ he says, ‘likely it is that ye are best able to see this, that there will be little hope of victory in rowing against them. But somehow it seems to me that though we try to run under the dromond, so methinks it will be that the greatest weight of weapons will fall beyond our ships, if we hug her close, broadside to broadside. But if it be not so, then we can put off from them quickly, for they will not chase us in the dromond.’