of the flood.

Many are the tales that men all round the coasts will tell of the
great sea flood that came on Michaelmas even. For it ran far into
the land where no tide had run before, and many towns were
destroyed by it, and many people were drowned. It will be long
before the scathe it wrought will be forgotten. Many of the earl's
ships were broken, even where they lay behind the island, and two
of ours were lost--carried across the level where no ship had ever
swum before. And eight of our men had been swept from the causeway
and drowned. Two lie yet under the wreck of bridge and causeway, or
in the Ashbourne valley amid wrack and ruin of field and forest
that the flood left behind it.

But these things I learnt afterwards. Now I was like to die, and
Olaf bided at my side and minded nought else, as men said.

Chapter 6: Sexberga The Thane's Daughter.

Days came and went by while I lay helpless. Olaf the king at last
must needs leave me, and take the ships back to the Thames, there
to watch against Cnut's return, in which he, almost alone in
England, believed. But he would not sail before he knew that I
would recover, and he left me in the kind hands of Anselm, the old
Norman priest, who was well skilled in leech craft, and of Relf the
Thane and his wife. So I need say nought of the long days of
weakness after danger was gone, for there are few men who have not
known what they are like, and well for them if they have had such
tending as these good folk gave to me.

Yet it was not till November had half gone that I was able to ride
hunting again at last, and to go out with Relf in the crisp frosts
of early winter through the great woods of the Andred's-weald in
search of wolf and boar, or when the mists hung round the gray
copses, and the turf in the glades was soft, and scent was high, to
follow the deer that harboured in the deep shaws. We were seldom
without their spoils as we came homeward, and how good it was to
feel my strength coming back to me as I rode--to find the grip on a
spear shaft hardening, and the bow hand growing steadier against a
longer pull on the tough string. And Relf rejoiced with me to see
this, for he deemed that he owed me the more care because my hurt
had been gained in fighting for him and his home. Honest and rough,
with a warm heart was this forest thane, and we grew to be fast
friends.

Now when I was helpless, Wulfnoth the earl and Godwine would often
ride from Pevensea