Still the Irish held back.  They looked to see our ship follow, no doubt, and would have all their foes ashore at once, lest we should make some flank attack in the heat of the fight.  But the Danes moved onward steadily.

Then into the opening of the lane rode a man on a tall chestnut horse, and the Irish yelled and thronged to him as he leaped off it.  It was Dalfin himself, as I saw when he was on foot.  I suppose that he had managed to find this steed somewhere on the way, meeting with mounted men hurrying to the levy like himself most likely.  If the fishers were yet with him I could not see.  They were lost in the crowd round him.

Now Dalfin’s sword went up, and the men shook themselves into some sort of order.  A slogan rose, wild and shrill, and with the prince at their head they flung themselves on the Danes, lapping round them, so that they hid them from our sight.  Only in the midst of the leaping throng there was a steady, bright cluster of helms, above which rose and fell the weapons unceasingly.

The Irish could not stay that wedge.  It went on, cleaving its way through the press as a ship cleaves its way to windward through the waves, and after it had passed, there was a track of fallen men to tell of how it had fared.  There were mail-clad men among that line of fallen, and those, of course, were not Irish.  They, like Dalfin, would wear neither helm nor byrnie.

Slowly the Danes fought their way, uselessly to all seeming, away from the water and hillward.  Without heeding the depth of the lane from the village, though the darts rained on them from its banks, they went on, and we lost sight of the fighting, though the black throng of warriors who could not reach their foe still swarmed between them and the village.  Some of them came back and yelled at us from the shore, and once they seemed as if they were about to launch the two boats which lay on the strand for an attack on us.  We had dropped a small anchor at this time.

Father Phelim saw that and came to me.

“Let me go to the young prince,” he said; “I may be of use here.  There will be trouble, unless someone tells the poor folk that these ships are friendly in very deed.”

So we went to Hakon, and I told him what Phelim thought.

“The good father is right enough,” he answered.  “But how is he to get ashore unharmed?  To send a boat would mean that it would be fallen on before it was seen who was in it.”

“Let me swim,” said Phelim stoutly.

“Maybe your tonsure might save you, father,” said Hakon; “but I would not risk it.  One cannot see much of a man in the water.”

“Let me have one of the small boats—­it can be launched from the far side of the ship—­and I will row him ashore,” I said.  “I can speak the Gaelic.”

Hakon considered.  “Well,” he said, “it may save endless trouble, and I do not see why you should not go.  Phelim must stand up, and they will see him.”