and dashed them against the naked sword;[172] by this the Skrællings became frightened and ran off to their ships, and rowed away. Karlsefne and his men then came up and praised her courage. Two men fell on Karlsefne's side, but a number of the Skrællings. Karlsefne's band was overmatched. And now they went home to their dwellings and bound up their wounds; and considered what crowd that was that pressed upon them from the land side, and it now seemed to them that it could have hardly been real people from the ships, but that these must have been optical illusions. The Skrællings also found a dead man, and an axe lay by him; one of them took up the axe and cut wood with it; and then one after another did the same, and thought it was a fine thing and cut well. After that, one took it and cut at a stone, so that the axe broke, and then they thought that it was of no use, because it would not cut stone, and they cast it away. Karlsefne and his people now thought that they saw, although the land had many good qualities, that they still would always be exposed there to the fear of attacks from the original dwellers.[173] They decided, therefore, to go away, and to return to their own land. They coasted northward along the shore,[174] and found five Skrællings clad in skins, sleeping near the sea. They had with them vessels containing animal marrow, mixed with blood.[175] Karlsefne's people thought that these men had been banished from the land; they killed them. After that they came to a ness, and many wild beasts were there, and the ness was covered all over with dung, from the beasts which had lain there during the night. Now they came back to Straumfiord, and there was a plenty of everything that they wanted to have. [It is thus that some men say, that Biarne and Gudrid stayed behind, and one hundred men with them, and did not go farther; but that Karlsefne and Snorre went southward, and forty men with them, and were not longer in Hop than barely two months, and the same summer came back.][176] Karlsefne then went with one ship to seek Thorhall the Hunter, but the rest remained behind, and they sailed northward past Kiarlarness, and thence westward, and the land was upon their larboard hand. There were wild woods over all, as far as they could see, and scarcely any open places. And when they had sailed long a river ran out of the land from east to west. They sailed into the mouth of the river, and lay by its banks.[177] * * * * *