“May I not know?”

“Not yet.  Come, we must waste no more time.”

They walked swiftly down the brook.  No sentinels were posted in this direction, nor was any lookout kept.

“The danger is yet to come,” said the gleeman, in a low tone.

Shortly they reached the river, and then they found a boat hidden in the rushes, which grew tall and strong.  They embarked, and Alfgar steered, by the other’s direction, straight down the stream, while he rowed for full an hour with remarkable strength and dexterity, so that they drew near the coast, and the cold air from the sea blew in Alfgar’s face.

Here the gleeman ceased rowing, and spoke to him in a low tone.

“Do you see those dark figures ahead?”

“I do.”

“Well, they are the Danish war ships, and our hour of peril draws near.  We must drop down with the tide, which is running out strongly, and I must steer.  You can row, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“Well, get the oars ready to pull for your life, if I give the word, but not till then.  Now silence.”

In perfect silence they drifted down upon the ships.  Happily for them there was no moon, and although the stars were bright, there was little danger that their dark-painted bark would be seen at any distance.

One great mass after another seemed to float by them; but it was the dead hour of the night, and no sounds were heard from the sleeping crews.  They kept lax watch, because they had no foe to dread.  There was, alas! no English fleet.

One after another, until they had drifted into the centre of the fleet, where discovery must have been instant death.  There above them rose the “Great Dragon,” in all her hideous beauty, the gilded serpent reposing on the placid waves.  Her people, even at that untimely hour, were engaged in revelry, and as they passed by the fugitives heard the words: 

“Now the warrior’s cup of joy was full,
When he drank the blood of his foe,
Where the slain lay thick on the gory hill,
And torrents of blood from every rill
reddened the river below,
For Odin’s hall is the Northman’s heaven—­”

But they heard no more, for they had drifted beyond hearing.

They had now attained the last ship, when suddenly a watchman sprang to the side.

“Boat ahoy!  Whence and where?”

“From the ’Great Dragon’—­a poor gleeman and his attendant to his home on the shore.”

“Come on board then, and wake us with a song.  The watch is ours, and we will make it merry.”

There was no help for it; and commending courage with a significant look to his companion, the gleeman and Alfgar ascended.  It was yet dark, and the language and appearance of each might pass tolerably under ordinary circumstances for the characters they had assumed.

“Now a song, and we will keep it up till daylight.”

Thus pressed, the gleeman took his harp and sang an old Scandinavian song of the first sea king who invaded England, Ragnar Lodbrok.