es think that we were driven off, and their yells
began afresh.

Then came a quick word from Olaf, and the oars took the water to
ease the sharp check as the length of the cables was reached, while
the ship astern of us swung to her tow line. The king glanced to
right and left of him, and saw that the other three ships had fared
as well as we, and that they too were dropping down from the
bridge.

How the Danes roared and howled with joy, thinking that we were all
in full retreat! Yet, as the last ship tightened her cable, I saw
the jerk shake one of them from his perch on the bridge bulwarks
and send him headlong into the water.

Olaf saw it, and raised his hand and shouted. And with one accord
the oars of the eight great ships smote the water, and bent, and
tore the waves into foam--and London Bridge was broken!

The memory of that sight will never pass from my mind or from the
mind of any man of us who saw all that the lifted hand and shout of
Olaf the king brought about.

There was a slow groaning of timbers and a cracking, and then a
dead silence. Then the silence was broken by a wild yell of terror
from the swarming Danes, and ere they could fly from the crowded
towers and roadway where the bridge was steepest, the whole length
of three spans bent and swayed towards us, and a wide gap sprang
open across the roadway. Into that gap crumbled a great stone-laden
tower, and men like bees from a shaken swarm. And then those three
spans seemed to melt away with a great rush and roar, and howl of
men in mortal terror--and down the freed tide swept our ships,
dragging after them the timbers that the cables yet held.

Then into the Southwark fortress went Eadmund and his men like
fire, while from the London side of the river came the roar of a
fight, as the citizens fell on the Danes who were fleeing terror
smitten from the weakened spans that were left of London Bridge.

Then Olaf swung our ships to either bank, and past us went in
confusion, on the rush of pent-up water, the great timbers and
piles of the bridge, as it broke up piece by piece in the current.
The men on Ethelred's ships had all they could do to save their
vessels from being stove in by the heavier woodwork when it was
swept down among them.

That danger passed; and now was our turn come to join in the
fighting, for there were none to prevent us from getting the ships
up to the bridge. And so we scaled from our decks the bulwarks that
had been s