"Grim, my dog, so you would not believe this was the sea! Now you can tell what it is. Stand up, and then you will see that there is a big ship lying before us! You would not recognize the beacons, but this you cannot mistake. Now I think you will not deny that this is the sea itself we are driving over." Torarin stayed still awhile longer as he gazed at a great vessel which lay frozen in. She looked altogether out of place as she lay with the smooth and even snowfields all about her. But when Torarin saw a thin column of smoke rising from the vessel's poop he drove up and hailed the skipper to hear if he would buy his fish. He had but a few codfish left at the bottom of his load, since in the course of the day he had been round to all the vessels which were frozen in among the islands, and sold off his stock. On board were the skipper and his crew, and time was heavy on their hands. They bought fish of the hawker, not because they needed it, but to have someone to talk to. When they came down on to the ice, Torarin put on an innocent air. He began to speak of the weather. "In the memory of man there has not been such fine weather as this year," said Torarin. "For wellnigh three weeks we have had calm weather and hard frost. This is not what we are used to in the islands." But the skipper, who lay there with his great gallias full-laden with herring barrels, and who had been caught by the ice in a bay near Marstrand just as he was ready to put to sea, gave Torarin a sharp look and said: "So then you call this fine weather?" "What should I call it else?" said Torarin, looking as innocent as a child. "The sky is clear and calm and blue, and the night is fair as the day. Never before have I known the time when I could drive about the ice week after week. It is not often the sea freezes out here, and if once and again the ice has formed, there has always come a storm to break it up a few days after." The skipper still looked black and glum; he made no answer to all Torarin's chat. Then Torarin began asking him why he never found his way to Marstrand. "It is no more than an hour's walk over the ice," said Torarin. But again he received no answer. Torarin could see that the man feared to leave his ship an instant, lest he might not be at hand when the ice broke up. "Seldom have I seen eyes so sick with longing," thought Torarin. But the skipper, who had been held ice-bound among the skerries day after day, unable to hoist his sails and put to sea, had been busy the while with many thoughts, and he said to Torarin: "You are a man who travels much abroad and hears much news of all that happens: can you tell me why God has barred the way to the sea so long this year, keeping us all in captivity?" As he said this Torarin ceased to smile, but put on an ignorant air and said: "I cannot see what you mean by that."