While Nils and
several others were thus busy, the remainder of the party were trying
the seine. They reached camp after dark to find their booths in ashes,
and Nils with his men murdered a little way off, as they had come up
from the Rune Stone.[9]
[Illustration: "NILS MARKED OUT AN INSCRIPTION IN RUNIC
LETTERS."--_Page_ 30]
With fury and horror the Norsemen looked upon the destruction. It was
all Thorolf and the cooler heads could do to keep the rest from
attacking the first Skroelings they saw. But the mischief had been done,
without doubt, by the unknown warriors of the plains, who had been
perhaps watching their advance. They sadly prepared to return to their
boat. But before they went, Thorolf paddled out to the island on two
logs, while the others kept guard, and added some lines to the
inscription on the stone.
They never saw their Vinland again. Knutson, finding the King fighting
hard against the Danes, gave no further thought to the wilderness.
Thorolf and a handful of his men finally reached Bergen; Anders
stayed in Greenland. More than five centuries afterward, a Scandinavian
farmer, grubbing for stumps in a Minnesota marsh, found overgrown by the
roots of a tulip tree a stone with an inscription in Runic letters, took
it to learned men and had it translated.
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