At night, for twelve nights in all, the moon kept watch over the ship.  Soon she was no longer the slim shy girl child, but she seemed like a bride looking into the trembling mirrors of the sea, and then she was a princess scattering their way with silver coins, and then she was a woman who sets a lantern in the window at a cottage so that the shepherd in a blizzard can find his way home to fire and board.

Such images would not have occurred to Ranald, seated on the stern bench with Hakon Treeman, but they drifted through the mind of the old skipper, and he gave them utterance.

One night there were many clouds, and the moon was mostly hidden.  But from time to time there was a brightness at the edge of a cloud, and the moon seemed to hurry through clear patches of sky until another cloud and another and yet another covered it.

"What business are you out on tonight, moon?" said Hakon the skipper.  "What are you troubling yourself about?  Is it a cow that's wandered away from the yard?  Is it a sick child you have in a crib beside the fire, and you're off to get cures from the herb-wife?  Have you heard that the boats are in from the west with a great haul of herring, and you must hurry to get your share?  Don't trouble yourself, goodwife 
. . . There, you shake another cloud from you, and another, in your great haste this windy night to finish your business, whatever it is.  Be in no hurry.  The time will come soon enough for you, of shrinking and withering.  Then you will sit at the threshold of a black cave with a jar of cinders, and as the dead of this world troop to that place, you put ash on each mouth and eyelid.  And last – poor moon – you yourself turn and grope your way into the black cave, bearing your jar of cinders."

Hakon Treeman spoke so low to himself that only Ranald heard his words.

Then Hakon gave a sign so sorrowful that it seemed to Ranald like a cry of pain.

Soon Ranald covered himself with his bear blanket, and fell asleep.

for a summary of the story of Vinland, see Book Report

this paperback edition
published by Flamingo 1993