to her as she lay in her long shed on the slips, ready to take the water
at any tide. She was only waiting for cargo and stores to be put on
board her with the shift of wind that had come at last, and I thought
that my father would see to these things as soon as he came back.

Now in the evening we had news from the Jarl, and strange enough it was.
My father came back two days afterwards and told us all, and so I may as
well make a short story of it. The ways of Gunnar Kirkeban had been his
end, for a certain Viking chief, a Norseman, had wintered in Wales
during the past winter, and there he had heard from the Welsh of the
wrongs that they had suffered at his hands. Also he had heard of the
great booty of Welsh gold that Gunnar had taken thence in the last
summer; and so, when these Welsh asked that he would bide with them and
help fight the next Danes who came, he had offered to do more than that
---he would lead them to Gunnar's place if they would find men to man
three ships that he had taken, and would be content to share the booty
with them.

The Welsh king was of the line of Arthur, and one who yet hoped to win
back the land of his fathers from the Saxons and English; and so he
listened to this Hodulf, thinking to gain a powerful ally in him for
attack on the eastern coast of England after this. So, favoured by the
wind that had kept us from the sea, Hodulf, with twenty ships in all,
had fallen on Gunnar unawares, and had had an easy victory, besetting
the town in such wise that only in the confusion while the wild Welsh
were burning and plundering on every side had the messenger to the jarl
been able to slip away.

But when the jarl and our men reached the town there was naught to be
done but to make terms with Hodulf as best he might, that the whole