Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 2.djvu/178

 170 CHRONICLE OF THE saga vii. Asbiorn had a long-ship standing in the noust* cw"™ (dry dock), and it was a snekke (cutter) of twenty cxxiv. benches; and after Candlemas he had the vessel put Asborn.° in the water, brought out all his furniture, and rigged her out. He then summoned to him his friends and people, so that he had nearly ninety men all well armed. When he was ready for sea, and got a wind, he sailed south along the coast ; but as the wind did not suit, they advanced but slowly. When they came farther south they steered outside the rocks, without the usual ships' channel, keeping to sea as much as it was possible to do so. Nothing is related of his voyage before the fifth day of Easter, when, about evening, they came on the outside of Kormt Island. This island is so shaped that it is very long, but not broad at its widest part ; and without it lies the usual ships' channel. It is thickly inhabited; but where the island is exposed to the ocean great tracts of it are uncultivated. Asbiorn and his men landed at a place in the island that was uninhabited. After they had set up their ship-tents Asbiorn said, " Now ye must remain here and wait for me. I will go on land in the isle, and spy what news there may be which we know nothing of." Asbiorn had on mean clothes, a broad-brimmed hat, a fork in his hand, but had girt on his sword under his clothes. He went up to the land, and in through the island ; and when he came upon a hillock, from which he could see the house on Augvaldness, and on as far as Kormt Sound, he saw people in all quarters flocking together by land and by sea, and all going up to the house of Augvaldness. This seemed to him extraordinary ; and therefore he went up quietly to a house close by, in which servants for a dock for a small boat excavated in the shore-bank. Antiquarians will have the Homeric word Naosterion, of the same meaning, to be of a common origin with Nost.
 * Nost. The word Noust is in common use still in the Orkney Isles