own, commanded several trenches of unwonted depth to
be made within the camp, and the earth to be secretly carried out in
baskets and cast quietly into the river bordering the walls. Then he had
a mass of turf put over the trenches to hide the trap: wishing to cut
off the unwary enemy by tumbling them down headlong, and thinking that
they would be overwhelmed unawares by the slip of the subsiding earth.
Then he feigned a panic, and proceeded to forsake the camp for a short
while. The townsmen fell upon it, missed their footing everywhere,
rolled forward into the pits, and were massacred by him under a shower
of spears.

Thence he travelled and fell in with Trannon, the monarch of the
Ruthenians. Desiring to spy out the strength of his navy, he made a
number of pegs out of sticks, and loaded a skiff with them; and in this
he approached the enemy's fleet by night, and bored the hulls of the
vessels with an auger. And to save them from a sudden influx of
the waves, he plugged up the open holes with the pegs he had before
provided, and by these pieces of wood he made good the damage done by
the auger. But when he thought there were enough holes to drown the
fleet, he took out the plugs, thus giving instant access to the waters,
and then made haste to surround the enemy's fleet with his own. The
Ruthenians were beset with a double peril, and wavered whether they
should first withstand waves or weapons. Fighting to save their ships
from the foe, they were shipwrecked. Within, the peril was more terrible
than without: within, they fell back before the waves, while drawing
the sword on those without. For the unhappy men were assaulted by two
dangers at once; it was doubtful whether the swiftest way of safety
was to swim or to battle to the end; and the fray was broken off at
its hottest by a fresh cause of doom. Two forms of death advanced in a
single onset; two paths of destruction offered united peril: it was hard
to say whether the sword or the sea hurt them more. While one man was
beating off the swords, the waters stole up silently and took him.
Contrariwise, another was struggling with the waves, when the steel came
up and encompassed him. The flowing waters were befouled with the gory
spray. Thus the Ruthenians were conquered, and Frode made his way back
home.

Finding that some envoys, whom he had sent into Russia to levy tribute,
had been horribly murdered through the treachery of the inhabitants,
Frode was stung by