hips busy in the Duke's war against the Moors,
and we feared to be hanged by the Duke's men or sold into slavery by
the Moors. So we put into a small harbour which Witta knew. At night
men came down with loaded mules, and Witta exchanged amber out of the
North against little wedges of iron and packets of beads in earthen
pots. The pots he put under the decks, and the wedges of iron he laid
on the bottom of the ship after he had cast out the stones and shingle
which till then had been our ballast. Wine, too, he bought for lumps
of sweet-smelling grey amber--a little morsel no bigger than a
thumb-nail purchased a cask of wine. But I speak like a merchant.'
'No, no! Tell us what you had to eat,' cried Dan.

'Meat dried in the sun, and dried fish and ground beans, Witta took in;
and corded frails of a certain sweet, soft fruit, which the Moors use,
which is like paste of figs, but with thin, long stones. Aha! Dates
is the name.

"'Now," said Witta, when the ship was loaded, "I counsel you strangers
to pray to your Gods, for, from here on, our road is No Man's road." He
and his men killed a black goat for sacrifice on the bows; and the
Yellow Man brought out a small, smiling image of dull-green stone and
burned incense before it. Hugh and I commended ourselves to God, and
Saint Barnabas, and Our Lady of the Assumption, who was specially dear
to my Lady. We were not young, but I think no shame to say whenas we
drove out of that secret harbour at sunrise over a still sea, we two
rejoiced and sang as did the knights of old when they followed our
great Duke to England. Yet was our leader an heathen pirate; all our
proud fleet but one galley perilously overloaded; for guidance we
leaned on a pagan sorcerer; and our port was beyond the world's end.
Witta told us that his father Guthrum had once in his life rowed along
the shores of Africa to a land where naked men sold gold for iron and
beads. There had he bought much gold, and no few elephants' teeth, and
thither by help of the Wise Iron would Witta go. Witta feared
nothing--except to be poor.

"'My father told me," said Witta, "that a great Shoal runs three days'
sail out from that land, and south of the shoal lies a Forest which
grows in the sea. South and east of the Forest my father came to a
place where the men hid gold in their hair; but all that country, he
said, was full of Devils who lived in trees, and tore folk limb from
limb. How think ye?"

"'Gold