Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/150

the saga refers to the knees for supporting the beams, which were then to be seen; and with thirty-four benches or banks for rowers, which would be the beams in a modern vessel. One of our long large steam vessels, with high poop deck and forecastle deck, low waist, and small breadth, would probably have very nearly the same appearance in the water as such a vessel as the Long Serpent; only, instead of paddle-boxes and wheels on each side, there would be thirty-four oars out on each side between the forecastle and the poop. The Northmen appear by the saga to have been lavish in gilding and painting their vessels. One of these long low war-ships of the vikings, with a gilded head representing a dragon on the stem, and a gilded representation of its tail at the stern curling over the head of the steersman, with a row of shining red and white shields hung over the rails all round from stem to stern, representing its scaly sides, and thirty oars on each side giving it motion and representing its legs, must have been no inapt representation of the ideal figure of a dragon creeping over the blue calm surface of a narrow gloomy fiord, sunk deep, like some abode for unearthly creatures, between precipices of bare black rock, which shut out the full light of day. Dragon was a name for a class or size of war-ships, but each had its own name. The Crane, the Little Serpent, the Long Serpent, the Bison, and other vessels of about thirty banks for rowers, are mentioned; and vessels of from twenty to twenty-five banks appear to have been common among the considerable bonders, and cutters of ten or fifteen banks to have been the ordinary class of vessels of all who went on sea. A vessel of thirty or thirty-four banks for rowers would have that number of oars out on each side, and not fifteen or seventeen only on each side; because the breadth of such a vessel would be sufficient to give two rowers, sitting midships, a suffi-