d to
hear the howl and rush of pirates coming back on us. But it was a
Danish voice that called back to me that the last foe was gone.

We stumbled back now along either gunwale, over the bodies of
friend and foe that cumbered all the deck, and most thickly and in
heaps amidships, where our first rush fell. One by one from aft met
us those who were left of the men who had fought their way to the
stern. Well for us was it that the darkness had hindered the
Jomsburgers from knowing how few we were and how divided. But
shoulder to shoulder we had fought as vikings will, never giving
back, but ever taking one step forward as our man went down before
us.

Now I called to Thormod, and his voice answered me from shoreward.

"Here am I, Wulfric. How have you sped?"

"Some of us are left, but no foemen," I answered.

"Call your names," he said. And when we counted I had but sixteen
left of my thirty, so heavy had been the fighting. Yet I thought
that the Jomsburgers were two to our one as we fell on them, and of
them was not one left.

"What now?" asked Thormod. "There are more of these men in the
town. Here have I been keeping them back from the ship."

"Let us go up to the hall," I answered. "We could find our way in
the dark, and they cannot tell where they are in this fog."

So I and my men climbed on to the wharf, and there were the rest of
the crew with Thormod, who had crossed the decks as we cleared a
passage, even as the fog came down, and had driven the rest of the
Jomsburgers away from the landing place before they could join
those in the ship. Well for us it was that he had done this, or we
should have been overborne by numbers, for the ship was a large
one, carrying maybe seven score men.

"We must leave your tired men with the ship and go carefully," said
Thormod. "Likely enough we shall have another fight."

We marched up the well-known street four abreast, and as we left
the waterside the fog was thinner, so that we could see the houses
on either side of the way well enough. And as we went we were
joined by many of Ingvar's people, old men and boys mostly, who had
been left at home when the fleet sailed. And they told us that the
Jomsburg men were round the great house itself.

Yet we could hear no sound of them, and that seemed strange, so
that we feared somewhat, drawing together lest a rush on us were
planned. But beyond a few men slain in the street we saw nothing
till we came to the gate of th