An Old Captivity Summary of the story
For those who may not have actually read the book. Nevil Shute was no doubt impressed by the 1932 excavation of the ruins of Eric the Red's farmhouse at Brattahlid in Greenland and the Viking sagas which claimed that Eric's son Lief Ericson (what else would Eric have named his son??) had discovered the American continent in about 1000 AD. coupled with a legend that two young Scottish captured slaves had accompanied Lief and explored the good Vinland gave Nevil a plot. This boils down to an Oxford don and his not immediately-obvious attractive daughter Alix who hire a young pilot (Donald Ross) to fly them to Greenland to conduct an aerial photographic survey of a suspected Viking settlement. The expedition's preparation and flight tire out Donald and under the influence of some suspect sleeping pills he dreams that he and Alix are the two Scottish captives who carve their names on a stone from their ship's ballast and leave it on what is modern Cape Cod. At the end of the story en-route to New York to sell their seaplane he dives onto an area of Cape Cod that he recognises from his dream; and as the book's denouemant Donald and Alix rediscover the carved stone that was left there 900-odd years before
there is also a review by John Darrington on the Nevil Shute foundation site at:-
Review