The water struck icy cold to me, and I felt that I could not stand it long, but I gained on the boat with every stroke, though it was hard work swimming in my mail and with a sword in my hand.  I got rid of the blanket that was hampering my left arm, and by that time I was far enough from the ship for my foes to be puzzled by it.  The moonlight was bright on the water, but the little waves tossed it so that it must have been hard for them to know which was I and which the floating stuff.  Certainly, the first arrows that were shot when the bowmen got a chance at me from the ship or over her were aimed at the blanket, for I heard them strike it.  Then one leapt from wave to wave past me.

I won to the boat just in time, for I could not have held on much longer.  The cold was numbing me, and if I stopped swimming I must have sunk with the weight of mail.  None of our old summer tricks of floating and the like were of any use with that weight on me.  The arrows were coming thickly by that time, and I was glad to get to the far side of the boat and rest my hand on the gunwale, while I managed to sheathe my sword.  The men could not see plainly where I was, and the arrows pattered on the planks of the boat and hissed into the water still, on the chance of hitting me.  So I thought it well to get out of range before I tried to get on board, and so held the gunwale with one hand and paddled on with the other, until the arrows began to fall short, and at last ceased.  A Welshman’s bow has no long range, so that I had not far to go thus.  But all the while I feared most of all to hear the plash of oars that would tell me that they had put off another boat in chase of me.

A little later and I should have been helpless, as I found when I tried to get into the boat.  The cold was terrible, and it had hold of my limbs in spite of the swimming.  It was hard work climbing over the bows, as I must needs do unless I wanted to capsize the light craft as I had overset a fisher’s canoe more than once, by boarding her over the side, as we sported in the Glastonbury meres in high summer; but I managed it, and was all the better for the struggle, which set the blood coursing in my veins again.  Then I got out the oars and began to pull away from the ship, with no care for direction so long as I could get away from her.

The foe had no boat, for they were all clustered in the ship or close to her on the rock, and there was a deal of noise going on among them.  When I was fairly out of their way, and I could no longer make out their forms, I began to plan where I had best go, and at first I thought of a little beach that I had seen on the far side of the cove, thinking that I could get up what seemed a gorge to the cliff’s top, and so hide inland somewhere.  But when I could see right into the gorge, I found that it was steep and higher than I thought.  My foes would be able to meet me by the time I was at the top.