great haste to
care to learn.

Soon fugitives--men, women, and children--began to straggle in
wretched little groups up the hill, weeping and groaning, and I knew
there would soon be too many there for my liking. So I crept away,
easily enough, and went out to the headland.

But I could see nothing on the sea now; and so, very sad at heart, I
sought a bushy hollow and laid me down and slept, while the smoke of
Watchet hung round me, and now and then a brighter glare flashed over
the low clouds, as the roof of some building fell in and fed the flames
afresh.

I woke in the light of the gray dawn, and the smell of burning was gone,
and the sea I looked out on was clear again, for a fresh breeze from the
eastward was sweeping the smoke, as I could see, away to the other
hills, westward. But the town was gone--only a smoke was left for all
there was for me to look down on, instead of the red-tiled and
gray-thatched roofs that I had so often seen before from that place or
near it.

Next I saw the ships of the vikings. They lay out in the channel at
anchor, for the tide was failing. I suppose they had gone into the
little haven as soon as there was water enough, and that those lights I
saw were signs made from one to the other when that was so. There were
specks near them--moving--their boats, no doubt, from the shore,
bringing off plunder. The long ships themselves looked like barley corns
from so high above, or so I thought them to look, if they were larger to
sight than that, for that was their shape.

Now I had not thought that they would have bided when the beacons were
lit; but would have gone out westward with this tide. And therefore I
wondered what their next move would be, but expected to see them up
anchor and go soon.

Waiting so, I waxed hungry, for nought had I tasted, save a few birds'
eggs that I had found in Holford Coombe, since that time yesterday.
Birds' eggs, thought I, were better than nought, so I wandered among the
bushes seeking more. As I did so, by and by, I came in sight of the
beacon on the hilltop, and looking up at it, rather blaming my
carelessness, saw that but two men were there, tending it, and from
their silver collars I knew that they were thralls. They were putting on
green bushes to make a smother and black smoke that would warn men that
the enemy were yet at hand.

When I saw that both the men were strange to me, I went up to them, as
though come to find out news of the busine