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over his shoulder and holding an ax in his other hand. He was anxious, if possible, to avoid becoming involved in a fight for the sake of a sheep, for it was not worth while to risk life and limbs for so little; so he drove his men forward with harsh words of rebuke when they stumbled or slackened speed.
    The ship lay hard by some flat rocks, being held away from them by the oars. They were ready to pull out as soon as Krok returned, for the other landing-parties had already returned empty-handed; some of them were waiting on the beach in case Krok should need any assistance. They were only a few paces from the ship when two great dogs came bounding down the path. One of them leaped at Krok, but he jumped aside and struck it with his ax; the other flashed past him with a huge leap at the man just in front of him, knocked him over by its impetus, and buried its teeth in his throat. Two of the others hastened forward and killed the dog, but when they and Krok bent over the man who had been bitten, they saw that his throat was badly torn and that he was rapidly bleeding to death.
    In the same instant a spear hissed past Krok’s head, and two men came running down the slope and out on the flat rocks; they had run so fast that they had outstripped all their companions. The foremost of them, who was bareheaded and bore no shield, but carried a short sword in his hand, tripped and fell headlong on the rocks; two spears flew over him and hit his companion, who crumpled to the ground. But the bareheaded man was at once on his feet again; baying like a wolf, he hewed at one man who had leaped forward with his sword raised when he had fallen, and felled him with a blow on the temples. Then he sprang at Krok, who stood just behind him; all this happened very quickly. He aimed savagely at Krok, but Krok was still carrying his sheep, and he slipped it round to meet the blow, in the same instant striking his adversary with the reverse edge of his ax on the forehead, so that he fell to the ground senseless. Krok bent over him and saw that he was no more than a youth, red-haired and snub-nosed and pale-complexioned. He felt with his fingers the place where the axhead had landed and found that the skull was unfractured.
    “I shall take the calf with me as well as the sheep,” he said. “He can row in the place of the man he killed.”
    So they picked him up and carried him on to the ship and threw him beneath an oar-bench; then, when they had all come aboard, except the two men whom they had left dead behind them, they pulled out to sea just as a large crowd of pursuers appeared on the beach. The sky had now begun to lighten, and some spears were thrown at the ship; but they did no damage. The men pulled strongly at their oars, happy in the knowledge that they had fresh meat on board; and they had already gone a good way from land when the figures on the beach were joined by a woman in a long blue shift with her hair streaming behind her, who ran to the edge of the rocks and stretched out her arms toward the ship, crying something. Her cry reached them as a thin sound across the water, but she stood there long after they had ceased to hear her.
    In this wise Orm, the son of Toste, who later came to be known as Red Orm or Orm the Far-Traveled, set forth on his first voyage.
    1. Modern Lithuania and Latvia.

CHAPTER THREE
HOW THEY SAILED SOUTHWARDS, AND HOW THEY FOUND THEMSELVES A GOOD GUIDE
    KROK’S men were very hungry when they reached Weather Island, for they had had to row the whole way there. They lay to and went ashore to gather fuel and cook themselves a good dinner; they found there only a few old fishermen, who on account of their poverty were not afraid of plunderers. When they came to cut up the sheep, they praised their fatness and the evident excellence of the spring pasturing on the Mound. They stuck the joints on their spears and held them in the fire, and their mouths watered as the fat began to crackle, for it was a long