e now and then, and
ever where the fighting was fiercest; but Olaf bade me be patient.
There would be fighting enough for me presently, he said.

"You will see that we shall have to take the bridge, and so cut the
Danish force in two. Then from the bridge we have but to fight our
way either into the fort or into the town."

Presently our men gave back. The earthworks were too strong for
them. Then I asked again that I might go.

"If you must fall, it shall be at my side, cousin," said Olaf,
laying his hand on my arm. "Eadmund does not need you."

For now he and his men were coming back to the ships, having won
nought but knowledge of the strength of the fort. The Danes would
not leave their walls to follow the retreating English, though
Eadmund halted just beyond bow shot, and waited as if to challenge
them to fight in the open.

Now by this time the tide was almost full, and the stream of the
flood was slackening. And it seemed as if one might easily scale
the bulwarks of the great low-timbered bridge from the foredeck of
a ship. Ethelred saw that, and as soon as his men were on board
again the word was passed that attack on the bridge should be made
by every vessel that could reach it.

As it fell out, we of Olaf's eight ships lay below the rest, and
must have passed them to reach the bridge. All we might do,
therefore, was to close up to the sterns of the vessels that were
leading, and wait to send our men across their decks when the time
came. That pleased not Olaf at first, for he thought that his turn
had come; but in the end it was well for us.

Now the ships slipped their cables, and drifted up to the bridge
steadily, with a few oars going aft to guide them, and as they came
the Danes crowded above them, manning their towers and lining the
whole long length with savage faces and gleaming weapons. They
howled at us as we drew near, and as the bows of the leading ships
almost touched the piles, they hove grappling irons into them from
above, holding them fast. Whereat Eadmund thanked them for saving
trouble, while the arrows fell round him like hail.

But in a moment that word of his was changed, for now fell from
towers and bulwarks a fearsome rain of heavy darts and javelins,
and the men fell back from the crowded fore decks to seek safety
aft until the store of weapons was spent. Truly, there must have
been sheaves of throwing weapons piled ready on the roadway of the
bridge.

Then Eadmund's voice