The King nodded, and Leif took his stand in the prow with the lead in his hand.

The sea mirroring the mist was leaden dull, but the old pilot smelt shoal water.
Warily he sounded, till suddenly out of the gloom a spit of land rose on the port, and it was clear that they were entering the mouth of a river.
The six galleys jolted across the sandbar, Leif in the foremost peering ahead and shouting every now and then an order.

It was fine weather for a surprise landing.

Biorn saw only low sand-dunes green with coarse grasses and, somewhere behind, the darkness of a forest.

But he could not tear his eyes from it, for it was the long-dreamed-of Roman land.
Then a strange thing befell.