stock of food was consumed.  Perhaps the raven did not flutter her wings when Hubba approached the castle, but by her apparent lifelessness portended calamity if an attack were to be made.  At all events, Hubba decided not to attack the castle, but to invest it closely on all sides, with his army on the land and with his vessels on the side of the sea, and thus reduce it by famine.  He accordingly stationed his troops and his galleys at their posts and established himself in his tent, quietly to await the result.

He did not have to wait so long as he anticipated.  Odun, finding that his danger was so imminent, nay, that his destruction was inevitable if he remained in his castle, thus shut in, determined, in the desperation to which the emergency reduced him, to make a sally.  Accordingly, one night, as soon as it was dark, so that the indications of any movement within the castle might not be perceived by the sentinels and watchmen in Hubba’s lines, he began to marshal and organize his army for a sudden and furious onset upon the camp of the Danes.

They waited, when all was ready, till the first break of day.  To make the surprise most effectual, it was necessary that it should take place in the night; but then, on the other hand, the success, if they should be successful, would require, in order to be followed up with advantage, the light of day.  Odun chose, therefore, the earliest dawn as the time for his attempt, as this was the only period which would give him at first darkness for his surprise, and afterward light for his victory.  The time was well chosen, the arrangements were all well made, and the result corresponded with the character of the preparations.  The sally was triumphantly successful.

The Danes, who were all, except their sentinels, sleeping quietly and secure, were suddenly aroused by the unearthly and terrific yells with which the Saxons burst into the lines of their encampment.  They flew to arms, but the shock of the onset produced a panic and confusion which soon made their cause hopeless.  Odun and his immediate followers pressed directly forward into Hubba’s tent, where they surprised the commander, and massacred him on the spot.  They seized, too, to their inexpressible joy, the sacred banner, which was in Hubba’s tent, and bore it forth, rejoicing in it, not merely as a splendid trophy of their victory, but as a loss to their enemies which fixed and sealed their doom.

The Danes fled before their enemies in terror, and the consternation which they felt, when they learned that their banner had been captured and their leader slain, was soon changed into absolute despair.  The Saxons slew them without mercy, cutting down some as they were running before them in their headlong flight, and transfixing others with their spears and arrows as they lay upon the ground, trampled down by the crowds and the confusion.  There was no place of refuge to which they could fly except to their ships.  Those, therefore, that escaped the weapons of their pursuers, fled in the direction of the water, where the strong and the fortunate gained the boats and the galleys, while the exhausted and the wounded were drowned.  The fleet sailed away from the coast, and the Saxons, on surveying the scene of the terrible contest, estimated that there were twelve hundred dead bodies lying in the field.