Then said Olaf to me while the boy was intent on his work: "Here is
one who will be a great man in England some day, and I think before
long."

And I had thought the same; for Earl Wulfnoth's son would rank high
for the sake of his birth, and it seemed that he was fitted to take
the great place that might be his.

So Godwine beached the ships well, in the lee of the island on
which the great castle stands when the tide is high, and we went
ashore. The castle gates were well guarded in our honour, for
Godwine had sent the boat back with word who we were.

There greeted us Earl Wulfnoth himself in the courtyard of his
great house. One went inside the castle walls to find almost a
village of buildings, all of timber, that had grown up round the
hall that stood in the midst, and that had its courtyard and
stockading, as had our own house on the open hill at Bures. I think
there was no stronger place than this castle of Pevensea in all
Sussex, if anywhere on the southern coasts.

Now it were long to say how Wulfnoth the earl welcomed King Olaf,
but it was after a kingly sort, for he was king in all but name in
his earldom, shut off as it is from the rest of England by the deep
forests. But he feasted us for two days before he would speak a
word with Olaf as to what he had come to ask him, saying that it
was enough for him to see the bridge breaker and the taker of
Canterbury town, and to do him honour. For Olaf's fame had gone
widely through all England.