Olson

“ A water-soaked canvas bag, roughly slit open, was spread out on the settee. What appeared to be a score or so of small pebbles was lying on the canvas, beside what seemed to me to be a handful of sand; but at that moment the first rays of the sun reached the Wanderer’s decks, the pebbles and sand began to gleam dully, and I saw that I was looking at a pile of gold nuggets and gold dust.
“Two men to carry him below, cap’n,” came Dr. Olson’s voice from the other end of the settee. “He’s all right; in surprisingly good condition; but we’ve got to strip him and get dry clothes on him.” ”

“ Because it is power; because it means the gratification of all that is encompassed in—life.
“So you see what is behind life, with all its veneer and politeness, Mr. Pitt. The primal instincts, as you expressed it—raw and crawling. You must excuse me now; I must go down and see the man we picked up. If he should happen to die it would not be right to let the secret of the source of this gold die with him. Besides, I want Olson to save him. He can take Larson’s place in the crew.”
I walked to the bow of the Wanderer and back. A new atmosphere seemed to have descended upon the yacht. ”

“ He'll get out all right."
"Will he? There's a girl under suspicion, too. She had no more to do with it than I had, but she's likely to get into mighty serious trouble just the same."
"I ain't read anything in the papers about any girl," Olson answered sullenly.
"No, it hasn't got to the papers yet. But it will. It's up to every man who knows anything about this to come clean."
"Is it?" The farmer looked bleakly at his visitor. "Seems to me you take a lot of interest in this. Who are you, anyhow?"
"My name is Kirby Lane." ”

“ Olson and the captain went with them. The captain came back alone, something over an hour ago. He said the rest were hunting gold up in the hills and wouldn’t be back for some time.”
“Well, hang it! He’s got something,” began George again, but I managed to catch him by the arm and draw him back out of Betty’s hearing.
“Forget yourself for the present,” I whispered. “Think of Miss Baldwin a little.”
“I think he’s bluffing,” I said aloud. “As Miss Baldwin says, there can’t be any of the men around here. He was talking to frighten us. We’ll go straight down to the canoe.” ”

“ Olson burst out bitterly.
"An' I tell you so again," Kirby answered, smiling. "I was mentionin' possibilities. On your evidence it lies between my cousin James an' the Hulls. It was the Hulls that had tied him up after Cass Hull knocked him senseless. It was Hull who had given him two days more to live. And that's not all. Not an hour an' a half ago I had a talk with Mrs. Hull. She admitted, under pressure, that she returned to my uncle's apartment again to release him from the chair. She was alone with him, an' he was wholly in her power. She is a woman with a passionate sense of injury. ”

“ Take the sword and may you have good fortune!' Then Hott attacked the beast and struck at it as soon as he was near enough so that he could hit it, and the beast fell down dead. Bothvar said, 'Look, lord, what he has done!' The king replied, 'Truly he has changed much, but Hott alone didn't kill the beast, you were the man who did it.' Bothvar said, 'It may be so.' The king said, 'I knew as soon as you came here that only few men could compare with you, but this seems to me your most illustrious deed, that you have made a warrior out of Hott, who appeared little born to great good fortune. ”

“ The king bade his men be courageous, [and said] each one should help, according as he had courage for it, and proceed against this monster. It was done as the king commanded; they made themselves ready for it. The king looked at the beast and said, 'I don't see that the beast moves; but who will undertake the task and attack it?' Bothvar answered, 'A brave man might be able to satisfy his curiosity about this! (þat væri næsta hrausts manns forvitnisbót.) Comrade Hott, destroy this evil talk about you,—men say that there is neither strength nor courage in you ”

“ Later the saga says: "No snow came there, and all of their live stock lived by grazing, and thrived." The natives appeared again the next spring, and a clash occurred. Fearing continued trouble with them, Karlsefni resolved to return to Greenland. This he did a year later, and spent the winter of 1006-7 there, whereupon he settled in Iceland. From him and Gudrid a number of prominent ecclesiastics claimed descent, and also Hauk Erlendsson. The Vinland story was doubtless a cherished family possession, and was put into writing, when writing sagas, instead of telling them, came into fashion. ”

“ Hrs. Bjark., pp. 139-40 and 141-42. Lawrence's translation of the above selections from the rímur is as follows:—
"Most of the men insulted Hjalti; he was not clever in speech. One day they (Bjarki and Hjalti) went out of the hall, so that the king's men did not know of it. Hjalti was afraid, and cried, 'Let us not go near this wood; there is a she-wolf here, which eats men; she will soon kill us both.' The she-wolf burst out of a thicket, frightful, with gaping jaws. Hjalti thought this terrible ”

“ Later, in 1003, an Icelander, Thorfinn Karlsefni, who was visiting the Greenland colony, and who had married Gudrid, the widow of Leif's brother Thorstein, set out with four vessels and 160 followers to found a colony in the new lands. Here they remained three years, during which time a son, Snorri, was born to Thorfinn and Gudrid. This expedition, too, found "grapes and self-sown wheat," though seemingly not in any great abundance. Concerning the southern-most region of Vinland, the saga says: "They found self-sown wheat fields in the lowlands, but vines everywhere on higher places. ”

“ Signy was the sister of Hroar and Helgi; she married Sævil, an earl in Denmark; Hroar and Helgi had to conceal themselves on an island to save their lives (according to the Bjarkarímur, they were brought up by the old man Vifil, a circumstance omitted in the Skjọldungasaga, but contained in the Hrólfssaga) ; when they had arrived at the proper age, they slew (according to the Hrólfssaga and the rímur, "burnt-in") their father's murderer and thus avenged their father's death; Hroar and Helgi then became Kings of Denmark; Hroar married the daughter of the King of England ”

“ He (Hjalti) has gained a brave heart and a courageous disposition; he has got strength and valor from the blood of the she-wolf. The folds at Hleidargard were attacked by a gray bear; many such beasts were there far and wide thereabout. Bjarki was told that it had killed the herdmen's dogs; it was not much used to contending with men. Hrolf and all his men prepared to hunt the bear—'he shall be greatest in my hall, who faces the beast!' Roaring the bear ran from its lair and shook its baleful paws, so that the men fled. Hjalti looked on when the combat began ”

“ God knows how, but he lives. The crisis is past. He will recover."
And he did recover. The body of Gordon Paige won back to life and health.
But the soul within his body was the soul of Malcolm Rae!
WHAT is soul? What is self? I speak to you with the voices of Gordon Paige. I write, and the handwriting is that of Gordon Paige.
But I—the entity that dwells in the body of Paige—I am Malcolm Rae.
In the spring they brought the news of Malcolm Rae's death to Jane Cavanaugh. She loved him—she was heart-broken. But she found comfort in the presence of her old friend Gordon Paige. ”

“ See also Helt., I, pp. 215-17. In his St. germ. Sag., p. 378, n., Panzer calls in question the connection that Olrik makes between Bjarki's bear-ancestry and that of Siward. But Olrik's theory furnishes the only satisfactory explanation of all the phenomena involved, and is so extremely probable that it must be regarded as correct.]
[Footnote 44: Hrs. Bjark., pp. 59-60.] ”

“ In any event, the saga does not represent the monster as attacking the hall. To continue immediately after the statement just quoted: Hott answered, 'That is no beast, it is rather the greatest troll.' Now came the Yule-even; and the king said, 'Now I desire that all the men be still and quiet in the night, and I forbid them all to run any risk on account of the beast; let the cattle fare as fate wills; my men I do not wish to lose'. The king expects the cattle to fare ill, but wishes to run no risk of losing his men ”

“ His work The Book of Icelanders is unfortunately lost, but an abridgment of it, Libellus Islandorium, made by Ari himself, contains a significant reference to Vinland. It tells that the colonists in Greenland found "both broken cayaks (canoes) and stone implements, whereby it may be seen that the same kind of folk had been there as they which inhabited Vinland, and whom the men of Greenland {i.e. the explorers) called the skrælings (i.e. inferior people) ." From this allusion one cannot but think that so keen and alert a writer as Ari had given some attention to Vinland in the lost work. ”

“ In the Siward story he appears on a hill as Siward reaches Northumberland on his journey from the Orkney Islands, and tells Siward what course to pursue, presents him the banner Ravenlandeye, which is accepted, and predicts for him a brilliant future. In the Hrólfssaga Odin appears as a one-eyed old man living in a hut in Sweden. Hrolf and his men seek a night's entertainment of him while on their way to the Swedish court, and the old man tests their endurance and instructs Hrolf in regard to the measures he must take to accomplish his purpose. ”

“ Frothi abducted Jorund's daughter, by whom he had a son who was called Halfdan. But taking another woman to wife, a legitimate heir was born to him, and this son was called Ingjald.
Starkad, however, was so filled with remorse for having killed Ali that he did not wish to remain with Frothi. He went, therefore, soon after to Russia and later to Sweden, but, disgusted with the idolatry of the Swedes, returned to Frothi. Ingjald, son of Frothi, had in the meantime married the daughter of Swerting, thus, as it seemed to all, effecting a reconciliation with him. ”

“ That a popular hero is said to have descended from a bear is a very widespread motive, not at all confined to the territory in which the Bjarki story was known; but the similarities in the genealogies of Siward, Bothvar Bjarki, and Ulf (Gest. Dan., tenth book) are so great that the casual reader immediately concludes that these genealogies must in some way be related. Olrik has unraveled the skein and shown that the bear-ancestry belonged originally to Siward and from him was transferred to Ulf and Bjarki. ”

“ That the Hroar-Helgi story employs two dogs' name's is, of course, due to the fact that there are two boys to which they are to be applied, although, so far as the plot is concerned, the matter could have been managed with the use of one dog's name; and the fact that the dogs' names, in the Hrólfssaga, are Hopp and Ho, and that the boys' later assumed names are Hrani and Hamur, is due to a desire to preserve the initial letter, "H," of their names, which is in accordance with Scylding nomenclature. ”

“ It is quite impossible to characterize trolls in detail with unqualified words or phrases. They are usually malignant, though there are instances of their doing men a good turn. They are always very powerful, and are usually very large. It is told of one troll that, had she not made a misstep, she would have succeeded in wading from Norway to Iceland ”

“ In the Hrólfssaga, the boys, especially Helgi, cut crazy capers while on the way with Sævil when he goes to Frothi's hall in response to an invitation. Helgi rides horseback with his face to the horse's tail, just as Hamlet does; and the horse is an untamed colt, the idea coming from the fact that, when Hamlet is thus riding, a wolf appears and one of the men, to test his sanity, calls the wolf a colt. It would, indeed, be an untamed colt. In Saxo's version, better use is made of the insanity motive. Pretended insanity is the only resort left the boys to save themselves. ”

“ Halfdan and Frothi were brothers, the sons of a king, and each was the ruler of a kingdom. Halfdan had two sons, Hroar and Helgi, and a daughter, Signy, the oldest of the three children, who was married to Earl Sævil while her brothers were still young. The boys' foster-father was Regin. Near Halfdan's capital was a wooded island, on which lived an old man, Vifil, a friend of Halfdan. Vifil had two dogs, called Hopp and Ho, and was skilled in soothsaying. ”

“ Had the king proposed that no risk should be taken with the beast, Bjarki could have requested and secured permission to attack it, taking Hott with him. Had the king himself proposed to attack the beast, or had he proposed that his warriors should attack it in a body, Bjarki could have said, "No, the king must not expose himself," or, "The king must not expose so many of his men at once; let me go." To which the king could have assented, whereupon Bjarki could have taken Hott with him and let Hott, at the last, proceed against the beast alone and knock it over. ”

“ But in the saga there is a reason for their leaving the hall secretly; the king has forbidden his men to leave the hall and expose themselves to attack. That, in the rímur, the men are said to leave the hall in the daytime, instead of at night, is a consequence of the substitution of the wolf for the troll-dragon; a wolf is usually hunted in the daytime. It might be surmised that their going out secretly is in imitation of the story as Saxo knew it. But this is not the case; Saxo does not say that Bjarki and Hjalti went out secretly. ”