obeyed. The thanes and their men gathered in
haste, savage with hope deferred, and Cnut shrank back again to
Ashingdon on the Crouch, and there built himself an earthwork on
the south side of the river, while his ships lay on the further
shore at Burnham, and in the anchorage, and along the mud below the
earthworks, seeming countless. And there he waited for us, and
there we knew that he meant to end the warfare in one great fight
for mastery, with his ships behind him that he might go if he were
at last obliged.

And there, too, though we knew it not, he waited for Streone to
give England into his hands.

We were close on him when his main force fell back upon his
earthworks, where they stand on the little hill above the river
banks that men will call "Cnut's dune" {13} henceforward, in
memory of what he won there. And Ulfkytel and I and the few East
Anglians that we had were with the advance guard, and drove in the
pickets that were between us and the hill. And then we knew that
Cnut meant to stand and fight in the open, and we were glad, for
out of his intrenchments poured his men, and we sent horsemen back
to Eadmund to hurry on the main body of our forces.

They were a mile or two behind us, and we waited impatiently,
watching the Danish host as it neared us, forming into the terrible
half circle as it came. And I remember all of that waiting, for the
day began with such hope, and ended so fearfully for us.

One could not have had a better day on which to fight, for there
was neither sun to dazzle, nor rain to beat in the faces of men who
needed eyes to guard their lives. But it was a gray day with a
pleasant wind that blew in from the sea, and the light was
wonderfully clear and shadowless as before rain, so that one could
see all things over-plainly, as it were. The rounded top of
Ashingdon hill seemed to tower higher than its wont, and close at
hand, beyond the swampy meadows to our left, and I wondered that
Cnut had not chosen that for his camping ground, though maybe it
would have been less well placed for reaching the ships, owing to
some shoaling of water that did not suit them. The tide was nearly
high now, and all the wide stretch of the Crouch river was alive
with the ships that brought over men from the Burnham shore, and
one could see the very wake and the ripple at the bows as they
came.

And when one looked at the Danes, the chiefs who ordered the host
were plain to be seen, and the gay colour