Then knew I that the Danes were falling back to the ships without risking battle, and my dream came back to me, with its vision of unguarded watch fires, and it seemed to me that surely, unless we could stay them, they would depart with the tide as it fell.

“How is the tide?” asked I of the men round me.

“Failing now,” said one who knew, “but not fast.”

Then I remembered things I had hardly noted in years gone by.  How the tide hung around Stert Point, as though Severn and Parret warred for a while, before the mighty Severn ebb sucked Parret dry, and how the ebb at last came swift and sudden.

“When the tide is low,” said they whom I had seen in my dream.

And in a moment I recalled the first fight, and the words of Gundred, and I knew that we had the Danes in a trap.

They were marching now in time to gain their ships and be off as the last man stepped on board, with the full draft of the ebb to set them out to sea beyond Lundy Isle, into open water.  Nor had they left their post till the last moment, lest our levy should be on their heels, or else some more distant marauding party had not come in till late.

I went back to Wulfhere and told him this, and in it all he agreed.

And, as we whispered together, Ealhstan sat up, asking quickly, “Who spoke to me?” and looking round for one near him, as it seemed.

“None spoke, Father,” said I, “or none but Wulfhere to me, whispering.”

“What said Wulfhere?”

“That the tide was failing,” I answered.

The bishop was silent for a moment, and then he said: 

“I heard a voice, plainly, that cried to me, ’Up! for the Lord has delivered these heathen into your hands’.”

“We heard no such voice, Father,” I said, “but I think it spoke true.”

Now the light was broadening, making all things cold and gray as it came.  And quickly I told Ealhstan what I had heard, and what both I and Wulfhere thought of the matter.

“Can we let them pass us, and so fall on them as they gain the level land of Stert?” asked Ealhstan, saying nothing more.

“That can we,” I answered.  “They will keep to the road, and we can draw back to the edge of the hill, so taking them in flank as they leave it.”

For the hills bend round a little beyond the place where the road falls into the level below Matelgar’s hall.

“So be it,” said the bishop.  “Go you, Wulfhere, and see how near the host is, and come back quickly.”

When he was gone the bishop bade me wake the men.  And at first I was for going round, but by this thane Wislac had waked, and had been listening to us:  and he said that if I would let him wake the men he could do it without alarm or undue noise.  Only I must raise the standard and bid them be silent.  At that the bishop smiled and nodded, and I raised the standard, and waited.

Then Wislac stood up and crowed like a cock, and instantly the men began to turn and sit up, and as their eyes lit on the standard raised in their midst, became broad awake, each man rousing the next sleeper if one lay near him.  And there was the bishop, finger on lip, and they were silent.