"I cannot steer a course except under clean skies.

We ran well with the wind aback, but now I am blind and the Gods are pilots.

Some day soon we must make landfall, but I know not whether on English or Frankish shores." After that Leif would sit in long spells of brooding, for he had a sense in him of direction to which he sought to give free play--a sense built up from old voyages over these very seas.

The result of his meditations was that he swung more to the south, and events proved him wise.

For on the fifteenth day came a lift in the fog and with it the noise of tides washing near at hand on a rough coast.