Half -Light over Cold Seas 73 



men do. It has been many years since anything so exciting has hap- 

 pened and so, even before the boat strikes the steep boulder beach, 

 they begin shouting orders. It can mean only one thing and this 

 that the boats have met a school of seigval chasing the cod into the 

 fjord and, sending the swiftest boat back to announce the happy 

 event, have formed a ring beyond the whales to the seaward and 

 started to drive them inward. If by their shouting, banging on the 

 water with oars, dropping nets with long pieces of cloth, skin gar- 

 ments, and sails tied to them, and by rapping on the boat hulls they 

 can panic the whales, the whole school or herd may well forget the 

 codfish in their madness and rush headlong up the fjord. Should this 

 happen, the village must be prepared, and certain important posts 

 must be manned. 



There are only ten young men left in the village, and only twenty 

 more come to join them in Thorvald's skuta; the rest are women, 

 children, and old men. All of them must therefore help, so those 

 who do not know what has to be done now crowd around Biarni 

 as he leaps from the boat because he is the son of the Lawgiver him- 

 self, and therefore naturally takes command. 



Dividing the people into two parties with an equal number of old 

 ones, women, and children in each, Biarni takes charge of one group 

 and turns the other over to Thorvald. Men are ordered to run im- 

 mediately to the Long House and bring all the harpoons and lances 

 that are there. The children are sent to search for shields and ham- 

 mers, the women for ropes, and the old men, who know what is 

 afoot, for the great spears for the catapults. When all are reassembled 

 with this gear, a shout is raised and the two parties race away from 

 each other round the horseshoe end of the fjord and thence along 

 its two steep sides towards the sea. 



There are paths cut out of the rock faces along these ways that 

 lead first up, then down, and sometimes almost to the water's edge. 

 They are narrow paths and the two parties string out, single file, 

 with the children straggling behind; The paths reach a mile down 

 the fjord and then rise to prominent rocks almost immediately oppo- 

 site each other just where the canyon begins to turn. Here are cun- 

 ningly concealed defensive posts that have often stood the settlement 

 in good stead, for from them arrows and spears may be showered 

 down upon any who wish to reach the end of the fjord. At these 



