So they voyaged on the sea even so long, that they came between England and Normandy; they veered their luffs, and came toward land, so that they came full surely to Dartmouth at Totnes; with much bliss they approached to the land.  So soon as they came on land, the folk they slew; the churls they drove off, that tilled the earth there; the knights they hung, that defended the land, all the good wives they sticked with knives; all the maidens they killed with murder; and all the learned men (clerics) they laid on embers.  All the domestics (or baser sort) they killed with clubs; they felled the castles, the land they ravaged; the churches they consumed—­grief was among the folk!—­the sucking children they drowned in the water.  The cattle that they took, all they slaughtered; to their inns they carried it, and boiled it and roasted; all they it took, that they came nigh.  All day they sung of Arthur the king, and said that they had won homes, that they should hold in their power; and there they would dwell winter and summer.  And if Arthur were so keen, that he would come to fight with Childric, the strong and the rich, they would of his back make a bridge, and take all the bones of the noble king, and tie them together with golden ties, and lay them in the hall door, where each man should go forth, to the worship of Childric, the strong and the rich!  This was all their game, for Arthur the king’s shame; but all it happened in otherwise, soon thereafter; their boast and their game befell to themselves to shame; and so doth well everywhere the man that so acteth.

Childric the kaiser won all that he looked on with eyes; he took Somerset, and he took Dorset, and in Devonshire the folk all destroyed, and Wiltshire with hostility he greeted, he took all the lands unto the sea strand.  Then at the last, then caused he horns and trumpets to be blown, and his host to be assembled, and forth he would march, and Bath all besiege, and eke Bristol about berow.  This was their threat, ere they to Bath came.  To Bath came the kaiser, and belay the castle there; and the men within bravely began; they mounted upon the stone walls, well weaponed over all, and defended the place against Childric the strong.  There lay the kaiser, and Colgrim his companion, and Baldulf his brother, and many another.

Arthur was by the North, and knew nought hereof; he proceeded over all Scotland, and set it in his own hand; Orkney and Galloway, Man and Moray, and all the lands that lay thereto.  Arthur it weened to be certain thing, that Childric had departed to his own land, and that he never more would come here.  When the tidings came to Arthur the king, that Childric the kaiser was come to land, and in the South end sorrow there wrought, then said Arthur, noblest of kings:  “Alas! alas! that I spared my foe! that I had not with hunger destroyed him in the wood, or with sword cut him all to pieces!  Now he yields to me meed for my good deeds.  But so held me the