on its side and floated dead.

Poor Philammon! He alone was silent, amid the yells of triumph;
sorrowfully he swam round and round his little paper wreck.... it would
not have floated a mouse. Wistfully be eyed the distant banks, half
minded to strike out for them and escape,.... and thought of the
crocodiles,.... and paddled round again,.... and thought of the
basilisk eyes;.... he might escape the crocodiles, but who could escape
women?.... and he struck out valiantly for shore.... when he was brought
to a sudden stop by finding the stem of the barge close on him, a noose
thrown over him by some friendly barbarian, and himself hauled on
board, amid the laughter, praise, astonishment, and grumbling of the
good-natured crew, who had expected him, as a matter of course, to avail
himself at once of their help, and could not conceive the cause of his
reluctance.

Philammon gazed with wonder on his strange hosts, their pale
complexions, globular heads and faces, high cheek-bones, tall and sturdy
figures; their red beards, and yellow hair knotted fantastically above
the head; their awkward dresses, half Roman or Egyptian, and half
of foreign fur, soiled and stained in many a storm and fight, but
tastelessly bedizened with classic jewels, brooches, and Roman coins,
strung like necklaces. Only the steersman, who had come forward to
wonder at the hippopotamus, and to help in dragging the unwieldy brute
on board, seemed to keep genuine and unornamented the costume of his
race, the white linen leggings, strapped with thongs of deerskin, the
quilted leather cuirass, the bears'-fur cloak, the only ornaments of
which were the fangs and claws of the beast itself, and a fringe of
grizzled tufts, which looked but too like human hair. The language which
they spoke was utterly unintelligible to Philammon, though it need not
be so to us.

'A well-grown lad and a brave one, Wulf the son of Ovida,' said the
giant to the old hero of the bearskin cloak; 'and understands wearing
skins, in this furnace-mouth of a climate, rather better than you do.'

'I keep to the dress of my forefathers, Amalric the Amal. What did to
sack Rome in, may do to find Asgard in.'

The giant, who was decked out with helmet, cuirass, and senatorial
boots, in a sort of mongrel mixture of the Roman military and civil
dress, his neck wreathed with a dozen gold chains, and every finger
sparkling with jewels, turned away with an impatient sneer.

'Asgard--Asgard! I