I was to go to my godfather, Ingild the merchant, who would, as ever, see to business for me; and then, because the season was late, and wind and weather might keep me long in the river, my father bade me stay with him, if I would, and if need were lay up the ship in Thames for the winter, coming home by the great Roman street that runs through Colchester town to our shores; or if Ingild would keep me, staying in London with him even till spring came again.

“If I must leave the ship,” I said, “I shall surely come back to hunt with the jarl and you.”

“Nevertheless,” answered my father, smiling, “Ingild will have many a brave show for you in town.  Wait till you get to London, for the court of Ethelred himself will very likely be there, and there will be much to see.  And maybe you will find some Danish ship in the river, and will send her captain here to take the jarl home with him; for we may not hold him as a prisoner with us.”

Then Lodbrok added that, in any case, I might find means to send messages to his home by some ship sailing to ports that he named; and that I promised I would do.  Thereon he gave me a broad silver ring, rune graven, to show as a token to any of his countrymen whom I might meet, for the ring was known.

“Do not part with it, Wulfric,” he said, as I thanked him; “for it may be of use to you some day, if not on this voyage.  Jarl Lodbrok is well known on the high seas, and he gives not rings for naught.”

Now I would not take the falcon with me, but begged the jarl to use her; and I asked him also to train for himself a greyhound that I had bred, and of which he thought highly.

“Why,” said he, “I shall have the best hawk and dog in all Thetford town, and Beorn the falconer will have naught to say to me.”

Thereat we laughed, for Beorn’s jealousy was a sport to us when we thought of it, which was seldom enough.

So these two went to Thetford, and in the last week of August I sailed for London, with a fair breeze over the quarter, from our haven.

CHAPTER III.  WHAT CAME IN A NORTH SEA FOG.

Night saw our ship off Orfordness, and there the breeze failed us, and a thick fog, hiding the land and its lights, crept up from seaward and wrapped us round.  But before it came, on Orfordness a fire burnt redly, though what it was, unless it might be some fisher’s beacon, we could not tell.

The fog lifted as we drifted past the wide mouth of Stour and Orwell rivers with a little breeze, and the early daylight showed us the smoke of a fire that burnt on the higher land that shuts in the haven’s mouth on its southern shores.  But even as we saw it, the fog closed round us again and the wind died away, so that we lowered the sail, and the men got out the oars, and slowly, while Kenulf swung the lead line constantly, we crept on among the sand banks down the coast.