"
The galley[2] rode the waves with the bold freedom of her kind. Her keel
was carved out of a single great tree. Her seasoned oaken timbers,
overlapping, were riveted together by iron bolts, with the round heads
outside. Where a timber touched a rib, a strip was cut out on each side,
forming a block through which a hole was bored. Another hole was bored
in the rib to match and a rope twisted of the inner bark of the linden
was put through both holes and knotted. In surf or heavy sea, this
construction gave the craft a supple strength. Calking was done with
woolen cloth steeped in pitch. The mast, of a chosen trunk of fir, was
set upright in a log with ends shaped like a fishtail. The long oarlike
rudder was on the board or side of the ship to the right of the stern,
called the starboard or steerboard. The lading was done on the opposite
side, the larboard or ladderboard. There were ten oars to a side, and a
single large triangular sail.
Long and narrow, hardly ten feet above the water-line at her lowest, her
curved prow glancing over the waves like the head of a swimming snake,
she was no more like the tumbling cargo-ships than a shark is like a
porpoise. When they were two days out, Nils said to Thorolf,
"A Viking in such a galley would sail to the end of the world.
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