noon
`` Already a passage is opening . And inside the fiord , much is different from what is expected . '' Alwin smiled with polite incredulity . The next day 's sun showed a dark channel open to them , so that before noon they had entered upon the broad water-lane known as Eric 's Fiord . The silence between the towering walls was so absolute , so death-like , as to be almost uncanny . Mile after mile they sailed , between bleak cliffs ice-crowned and garbed in black lichens ; mile after mile further yet , without passing anything more cheerful than a cluster of rocky islands or a slope covered with brownish moss . The most luxuriant of the islands boasted only a patch of crowberry bushes or a few creeping junipers too much abashed to lift their heads a finger 's length above the earth .