Now I did not know what I had best wish for.  Sometimes I thought that if our men were beaten back they might come to terms, and I should be freed.  And it being a thing impossible that I could hope that Wessex was to be beaten, and next to impossible that I should so much as imagine she could, I mostly wondered what would happen to me when the Danes had to seek the ships.  But as the noise of the fight drew nearer, and the black smoke from burning houses grew thicker, I forgot myself, and only wished I was with Elfric in that struggle; and at last I could stand it no longer.

“Let me go, men,” I said; “I cannot bide here.”

“We must, and you have to,” said the friendly man.  “We want to help as much as you, but here we have to stay.  Be quiet.”

“Ay, or we will bind you again,” said another man shortly.

But neither looked toward me; their eyes were on the road inland, down which we could not see, for it opened at the end of the wharf.

Now a wounded man or two crawled down that road, and some of the guard helped them to the ships.  They growled fiercely when their comrades asked how things went, and thereby I knew that it was ill for the Danes.  The houses nearer the wharves were burning one after another, as they were driven back.

At last there came a rush of Danes down that road, and into the seaward houses they went, and fired them.  Then they came on board the ships, and bade the ship guard relieve them at the front.  More than one of those who came thus had slight wounds on them, but they did not heed them.

“Keep still, lad,” said my friend as he hurried away.  “The men are savage.  We are getting the worst of it—­not for the first time.”

Savage enough the men were, and I saw that the advice was good; so I sat down on the steering bench and went on watching.  But I was not long left in peace.  The noise of the fight came closer and closer, and the wounded crept in a piteous stream to us.  And then a man would look to the after line from the ship to the bollard on the wharf, and leaped on the after deck close to me.

“Out of the way, you Saxon!” he said savagely, and with that sent me across the deck with a fierce push which was almost a blow; and that was the spark which was all I needed to set my smouldering impatience alight.

I recovered myself, and without a word hit him fairly in the face with all my weight behind a good blow from the shoulder, and sent him spinning in turn.  He went headlong over the edge of the raised deck, and lit among a group of his comrades, thereby saving himself from what would have been a heavy fall on his head and shoulders.

“Well hit, Saxon!” shouted a man from the nearest ship, and there was a great roar of laughter thence.