rth, while the Vikings shouted; and
our ship ye have seen!

"On the sixth day after this, at the sunrise, let the ship be ready with
new oars; the ship's men will stay here to rest. I shall take the men
that I call my guard; those who hunt bears with me in the forest. But
let the dragon's-neck remain broken."

This he said, and the men were silent, the old ship's crew sitting,
looking dejectedly along the board, their ale undrunk, and shuffling
their feet in the rushes. Then there was drinking one to another while
the women took down the men's axes and armour-coats from the walls and
carried them off to their houses to clean them; and there was laughter
and boasting and talking loud making up courage, and some got up from
their places and went seriously out of the hall to the houses and to
their children, and some talked to the men of the ship's crew.

Thus the evening passed, and the men went home to their beds early, save
for a few who sat down with made-up indifference and talked, while their
beer-mugs stood on the benches till they grew warm in the firelight.

So the next six days we worked and made ready, hewing and smoothing new
oars, and whetting our knives on the grind-stone; and at sunrise on the
sixth day, with a long crowd of men and women on the strand and the rain
pouring down out of the misty brown sky, we hauled our ship down the
beach and setting ourselves in our places rowed splashingly away from
the castle; while the fine rain ran down our faces and the shouting grew
faint in the distance.

And so passes that part of my tale and I take up the second.

Now there come two months, O king, that are as difficult to see clearly
as the length of a flame in the sunshine.

We sailed south to Lolland, but we could find no word of a large ship
with a plain prow and a new crew.

And we landed on many shores, and much I learned of the art of
minstrelsy.

And Lord Snore managed his men well and was a kind lord over us, though
fierce, and long of anger.

We sailed, passing along the coast, sometimes running so near that the
coolness of the trees was grateful to the sun-burned men--where we could
see the bottom over the side of the ship, as we glided, stilly, over the
white stones that glimmered through the clear water.

And sometimes we would pass by grey castles with small villages and
houses over the fields, where the people would come out and look at the
ship, and when they saw the broken dragon and