Not so welcome was our sailing to my mother, who must sit at home listening to the song of the breezes and the roll of breakers, with her heart stirred to fear for us at every shift of wind and change of tide.  And fair Eadgyth, my sister, beautiful with the clear beauty of a fair-haired Saxon lady, shared in her fears also, though I think that she believed that no storm could rage more fiercely than her father and brother and their crew could ride through in safety.  Once she had sailed with us in high summer time to London, and so she held that she knew well all the ways of the ship and sea; fearing them a little, maybe.

Yet there was another dread in the heart of my mother, for this is what she said: 

“What of the Danes, Elfric, my husband?  Surely there is risk—­aye, and great risk—­of falling into their hands.”

Thereat my father laughed easily, and answered: 

“Not to an East Anglian ship now; for they have kept the pact we have made with them.  And they watch not our shores for ships, but the long Frisian and Frankish coasts.  There need be no fear of them.”

So my mother was reassured, and in a fortnight’s time we had gathered a mixed cargo, though no great one; and sailed, with a shift of wind to the southwest, into the Wash, and so put into the king’s haven on its southern shore, where we would leave our goods with a merchant whom we knew.

On the second day after we came the wind shifted to the eastward, and then suddenly to the northeast, and blew a gale, so that we bided in the haven till it was over.  For though it was not so heavy that we could not have won through it in open water with little harm, it was of no use risking ship and men on a lee shore for naught.

Our friend, the merchant, kept us with him gladly, and there we heard the last news of the Danish host, with whom we had made peace two years since; for nowadays that news had become of the first interest to every man in all England; though not yet in the right way.  For we had not yet learnt that England must be truly one; and so long as he himself was unharmed, little cared an East Anglian what befell Mercian or Northumbrian, even as Wessex or Sussex cared for naught but themselves.  Wherefore, all we longed to know was that the Danish host was not about to fall on us, being employed elsewhere.

We had found gain rather than hurt by their coming, for we had, as I say, made peace with them, and, moreover, sold them horses.  Then they had honestly left our coasts, and had gone to York, and thereafter to Nottingham.  Now Northumbria was theirs, and Mercia was at their feet.  And now again we learnt that they bided in peace at York, and we were content.

Three days it blew, and then the gale was spent; though the sea still ran high and swift.  So we bade farewell to our friend the merchant and set sail, and if the passage homewards was rough, it was swifter than we had hoped.