men whom
I might meet, for the ring was known.

"Do not part with it, Wulfric," he said, as I thanked him; "for it
may be of use to you some day, if not on this voyage. Jarl Lodbrok
is well known on the high seas, and he gives not rings for naught."

Now I would not take the falcon with me, but begged the jarl to use
her; and I asked him also to train for himself a greyhound that I
had bred, and of which he thought highly.

"Why," said he, "I shall have the best hawk and dog in all Thetford
town, and Beorn the falconer will have naught to say to me."

Thereat we laughed, for Beorn's jealousy was a sport to us when we
thought of it, which was seldom enough.

So these two went to Thetford, and in the last week of August I
sailed for London, with a fair breeze over the quarter, from our
haven.

CHAPTER III. WHAT CAME IN A NORTH SEA FOG.

Night saw our ship off Orfordness, and there the breeze failed us,
and a thick fog, hiding the land and its lights, crept up from
seaward and wrapped us round. But before it came, on Orfordness a
fire burnt redly, though what it was, unless it might be some
fisher's beacon, we could not tell.

The fog lifted as we drifted past the wide mouth of Stour and
Orwell rivers with a little breeze, and the early daylight showed
us the smoke of a fire that burnt on the higher land that shuts in
the haven's mouth on its southern shores. But even as we saw it,
the fog closed round us again and the wind died away, so that we
lowered the sail, and the men got out the oars, and slowly, while
Kenulf swung the lead line constantly, we crept on among the sand
banks down the coast.

Presently the tide turned against us, and Kenulf thought well that
we should drop anchor and wait for its turning again. The men
gladly laid in the oars, and the anchor rattled out and held. The
ship swung to her cable, and then there seemed deep silence after
the even roll and creak of the great sweeps in their rowlocks. The
fog was very dense, and beyond our stem head I could see nothing.

Then to break the silence came to us, over no great stretch of
water as it seemed, the sound of a creaking block, the fall of a
yard on deck, and a voice raised in some sharp order. Then I
thought I heard an anchor plunge, and there was silence. Very
ghostly it seemed to hear these familiar sounds and to see naught,
and it was the more so that we might by no means judge from which
side of us, or fore or aft, the noises cam