and Wendland, and
all gladly sailed away. Svein, Eric, and the Swedish king, with their
combined fleets, lay in wait behind some cape in a safe little bay of
some island, then called Svolde, but not in our time to be found; the
Baltic tumults in the fourteenth century having swallowed it, as some
think, and leaving us uncertain whether it was in the neighborhood of
Rugen Island or in the Sound of Elsinore. There lay Svein, Eric, and Co.
waiting till Tryggveson and his fleet came up, Sigwald's spy messengers
daily reporting what progress he and it had made. At length, one bright
summer morning, the fleet made appearance, sailing in loose order,
Sigwald, as one acquainted with the shoal places, steering ahead, and
showing them the way.

Snorro rises into one of his pictorial fits, seized with enthusiasm at
the thought of such a fleet, and reports to us largely in what order
Tryggveson's winged Coursers of the Deep, in long series, for perhaps an
hour or more, came on, and what the three potentates, from their knoll
of vantage, said of each as it hove in sight, Svein thrice over guessed
this and the other noble vessel to be the Long Serpent; Eric, always
correcting him, "No, that is not the Long Serpent yet" (and aside
always), "Nor shall you be lord of it, king, when it does come." The
Long Serpent itself did make appearance. Eric, Svein, and the Swedish
king hurried on board, and pushed out of their hiding-place into
the open sea. Treacherous Sigwald, at the beginning of all this, had
suddenly doubled that cape of theirs, and struck into the bay out of
sight, leaving the foremost Tryggveson ships astonished, and uncertain
what to do, if it were not simply to strike sail and wait till Olaf
himself with the Long Serpent arrived.

Olaf's chief captains, seeing the enemy's huge fleet come out, and
how the matter lay, strongly advised King Olaf to elude this stroke of
treachery, and, with all sail, hold on his course, fight being now on so
unequal terms. Snorro says, the king, high on the quarter-deck where
he stood, replied, "Strike the sails; never shall men of mine think of
flight. I never fled from battle. Let God dispose of my life; but flight
I will never take." And so the battle arrangements immediately began,
and the battle with all fury went loose; and lasted hour after hour,
till almost sunset, if I well recollect. "Olaf stood on the Serpent's
quarter-deck," says Snorro, "high over the others. He had a gilt shield