"I hear, my son," the message said, "thatyour good emperor, whom may the gods preserve, is sorely ill and may dieany day. When he is dead, be prompt in getting your share of the plunderof the palace and come back to me."The emperor died, and the order was fulfilled. It was the custom of theVarangians to reward themselves in this way for their faithful services ofprotection; and the result is that, to this day, Greek and Arabic goldcrosses and chains are to be found in the houses of Norwegian peasants andmay be seen in the museums of Christiania and Copenhagen. No one wasesteemed the less for this love of spoil, if he was only generous ingiving. The Norsemen spoke contemptuously of gold as "the serpent's bed,"and called a generous man "a hater of the serpent's bed," because such aman parts with gold as with a thing he hates.When the youth came to his father, he found Erik the Red directing thebuilding of one of the great Norse galleys, nearly eighty feet long andseventeen wide and only six feet deep. The boat had twenty ribs, and theframe was fastened together by withes made of roots, while the oakenplanks were held by iron rivets. The oars were twenty feet long, and wereput through oar holes, and the rudder, shaped like a large oar, was not atthe end, but was attached to a projecting beam on the starboard(originally steer-board) side.
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