He nodded, and went on, with his eyes fixed on the monastery.

“Thus as the bell swings
Soothly it speaketh: 
Churchward it calleth
With voice of the chalice,
Speaking to shipmen
With voice that is sea born. 
Homeward the husband
Hailing with voices
Fresh from the fireside,
Where flashed the gold gifts—­
Clashing the war call,
Clear with its warrior voice.”

“That was the voice of the bell that sounded as we came,” I thought; and even as I would have said it, the bell of Bosham spoke again, and the prior stopped with an exclamation, and pointed.

Out of the gateway came four Danes, bearing the bell between them, and as they crossed the threshold, one stumbled, and the bell clanged as they dropped it on the courtyard pavement.  The tears ran down the holy man’s face as he saw this mishap to his beloved bell, which was kept bright as when it was first founded, by the loving hands of his people.

Now the Danes put it on that farm cart I had seen, and which they had mended, and took the bell down to the wharf, and we watched them sling it to the crane they had rigged, and place it amidships on deck.  Then they all went hastily on board, and put out into the haven, down which Halfden’s ship was already a mile distant, and dancing on the quick waves of wind against tide where the waters broadened into a wide lake.

Now when the ship was fairly under way, the prior rose up from beside me, and lifting his hand, cursed ship and crew with so great and bitter a curse that I trembled and looked to see the ship founder at once, so terrible were his words.

Yet the ship held on her course, and the words seemed vain and wasted, though I know not so certainly that they were so.  For this is what I saw when the ship met the waves of that wider stretch of water that Halfden had now crossed.

She pitched sharply, and there was a bright gleam of sunlight from the great bell’s polished sides, and then another—­and the ship listed over to starboard and a wave curled in foam over her gunwale.  Then she righted again quickly, and as though relieved of some weight, yet when a heavier, crested roller came on her she rose to it hardly at all, and it broke on board her.  And at that she sank like a stone, and I could hear the yell that her men gave come down the wind to me.

Then all the water was dotted with men for a little, and the bright red and white of her sail floated on the waves for a minute, and then all that was left of her were the masthead and yard—­and on them a few men.  The rest were gone, for they were in their mail, and might not swim.  Only a few yet clung to floating oars and the like.

“Little have these heathen gained from Bosham,” said the prior, and his eyes flashed with triumph.  “Wilfrith the holy has punished their ill doing.”

So, too, it seemed to me, and I thought to myself that the weight of that awesome curse had indeed fallen on the robbers.