So the weeks went on, until at last one day as we left a haven where we had bided for a while, taking ransom from the town that we might leave it in peace, we spied a sail far off coming from eastward, and Thormod would have us bear up for her, to see what she might be.  But instead of flying, as a trading ship would, the strange vessel waited for us, lowering her sail and clearing for action, so that there was doubt if she was not Norse.  Now between Dane and Northman is little love lost, though at times they have joined hands, loosely as one might say, or as if cat and dog should go together to raid a rabbit warren.

“If she be Norse,” said Halfden, and his eyes shone, “we will fight her, and that will be a fight worth telling of by the crew that is left when we have done!”

But she turned out to be Danish, and a boat came from her to us.  She was on the same errand as ourselves, and, moreover, belonged to one Rorik, who was a friend of Lodbrok’s, so that again I must go through all the story of his perils.

Now if Halfden’s men had seemed rough and ill-favoured to me when first I saw them, time and comradeship had worn off the feeling, but it came back to me as I looked on these men, and most of all on this Rorik; so that for a little I hated myself for being in their company to make war on peaceful Christian folk, though, indeed, I could well excuse myself, seeing what straits had thrown me thus among them to follow the ways of my own forefathers, Hengist’s men.

These newcomers held long counsel with Halfden and Thormod, and the end of it was that they agreed to sail in company, making a raid on the English coast, and first of all on the South Saxon shores, behind the island that men call Wight.  And that was the thing that I had feared most of all, so that as I sat silent and listened, taking no part, as I might, in the planning, my heart seemed like to break for the hardness of it.

Yet I set my face, saying naught, so that presently Rorik looked over at me and laughed, crying in a kind of idle jest: 

“Silent is our friend here, though he looks mighty grim, so that I doubt not he will be glad to swing that big axe of his ashore.”

Now I was in ill company, and must fit my speech to theirs, answering truly enough: 

“It seems to me that some of us here were a little downcast when we found that you were no Northmen, for we looked for a fight.”

Whereon they all laughed, and Rorik said that maybe his men had the same longing, but that we would make a great raid between us.  And so the matter passed, and he and his men went back to their ship, and we headed over to the English shore together.

CHAPTER IV.  THE SONG OF THE BOSHAM BELL.