about them; for he declared that their one chance was to squander their treasure; and that, now they were hemmed in, their only remaining help was to tempt the enemy from combat to covetousness.  They ought cheerfully to spend on so extreme a need the spoil they had gotten among foreigners; for the enemy would drop it as eagerly, when it was once gathered, as they would snatch it when they first found it; for it would be to them more burden than profit.

Then Thorkill, who was a more notable miser and a better orator than them all, dishelming and leaning on his shield, said: 

“O King!  Most of us who rate high what we have bought with our life-blood find thy bidding hard.  We take it ill that we should fling away what we have won with utmost hazard; and men are loth to forsake what they have purchased at peril of their lives.  For it is utter madness to spurn away like women what our manly hearts and hands have earned, and enrich the enemy beyond their hopes.  What is more odious than to anticipate the fortune of war by despising the booty which is ours, and, in terror of an evil that may never come, to quit a good which is present and assured?  Shall we scatter our gold upon the earth, ere we have set eyes upon the Scots?  Those who faint at the thought of warring when they are out for war, what manner of men are they to be thought in the battle?  Shall we be a derision to our foes, we who were their terror?  Shall we take scorn instead of glory?  The Briton will marvel that he was conquered by men whom he sees fear is enough to conquer.  We struck them before with panic; shall we be panic-stricken by them?  We scorned them when before us; shall we dread them when they are not here?  When will our bravery win the treasure which our cowardice rejects?  Shall we shirk the fight, in scorn of the money which we fought to win, and enrich those whom we should rightly have impoverished?  What deed more despicable can we do than to squander gold on those whom we should smite with steel?  Panic must never rob us of the spoils of valour; and only war must make us quit what in warfare we have won.  Let us sell our plunder at the price at which we bought it; let the purchase-money be weighed out in steel.  It is better to die a noble death, than to molder away too much in love with the light life.  In a fleeting instant of time life forsakes us, but shame pursues us past the grave.  Further, if we cast away this gold, the greater the enemy thinks our fear, the hotter will be his chase.  Besides, whichever the issue of the day, the gold is not hateful to us.  Conquerors, we shall triumph in the treasure which now we bear; conquered, we shall leave it to pay our burying.”