I watched for a while, for it was ill giving a false alarm and turning out our unwilling levies for naught, for each time they came up it grew harder to keep them, and each time fewer came.  In an hour I knew that there were eight ships and no more, and that they were heading south steadily, not as if intending to land in the Wash, but as though they would pass on to other shores than ours.  And they were not Ingvar’s fleet, for he alone had ten ships in his ship garth.

They were broad off the mouth of our haven presently, and maybe eight miles away, when one suddenly left the rest and bore up for shore—­sailing wonderfully with the wind on her starboard bow as only a viking’s ship can sail—­for a trading vessel can make no way to windward save she has a strong tide with her.

She came swiftly, and at last I knew my own ship again, and thought that Halfden had come with news of peace, and maybe to take me to sea with him, and so at last back to Osritha.  And my heart beat high with joy, for no other thought than that would come to me for a while, and when she was but two miles off shore, I thought that I would put out to meet and bring the ship into the haven; for he knew not the sands, though indeed I had given him the course and marks—­well enough for a man like Thormod—­when I was with him.  And there came over me a great longing to be once more on the well-known deck with these rough comrades who had so well stood by me.

But suddenly she paid off from the wind, running free again to the southward down the coast, and edging away to rejoin the other ships.  And as she did so her broad pennon was run up and dipped thrice, as in salute; and so she passed behind the headlands of the southern coast and was lost to my sight.

I bided there in my place, downcast and wondering, until the meaning of it all came to me; remembering Halfden’s last words, that he would not fall on East Anglia.  Now he had shown me that his promise was kept.  He had left the fleet, and was taking his own way with those who would follow him.

Yet if he had eight ships, what would Ingvar’s host be like?  Greater perhaps than any that had yet come to our land, and the most cruel.  For he would come, not for plunder only, but hating the name of England, hating the name of Christian, and above all hating the land where his father had been slain.

I climbed down from the tower, and found my people talking of the passing ships, and rejoicing that they had gone.  Already had some of them piled their goods in waggons ready for flight, and some were armed.  Then, as in duty bound, I sent men in haste to the earl at Caistor to report this, telling him also that the great fleet of which this was a part was surely by this token on its way.

By evening word came back from him.  He had sure news from Lynn that the great fleet had gone into the Humber to join the host at York, and that we need fear nothing.  Men said that there were twenty thousand men, and that there were many chiefs besides those that I had named.  This, he said, seemed over many to be possible, but it did not concern us, for they were far away.