f "Out! out! Holy crosse!" [161] He divined at once
that the Welch were storming the Saxon hold. Short time indeed sufficed
for that active knight to case himself in his mail; and, sword in hand,
he burst through the door, cleared the stairs, and gained the hall below,
which was filled with men arming in haste.

"Where is Harold?" he exclaimed.

"On the trenches already," answered Sexwolf, buckling his corslet of
hide. "This Welch hell hath broke loose."

"And you are their beacon-fires? Then the whole land is upon us!"

"Prate less," quoth Sexwolf; "those are the hills now held by the warders
of Harold: our spies gave them notice, and the watch-fires prepared us
ere the fiends came in sight, otherwise we had been lying here limbless
or headless. Now, men, draw up, and march forth."

"Hold! hold!" cried the pious knight, crossing himself, "is there no
priest here to bless us? first a prayer and a psalm!"

"Prayer and psalm!" cried Sexwolf, astonished, "an thou hadst said ale
and mead, I could have understood thee.--Out! Out!--Holyrood, Holyrood!"

"The godless paynims!" muttered the Norman, borne away with the crowd.

Once in the open space, the scene was terrific. Brief as had been the
onslaught the carnage was already unspeakable. By dint of sheer physical
numbers, animated by a valour that seemed as the frenzy of madmen or the
hunger of wolves, hosts of the Britons had crossed trench and stream,
seizing with their hands the points of the spears opposed to them,
bounding over the corpses of their countrymen, and with yells of wild joy
rushing upon the close serried lines drawn up before the fort. The
stream seemed literally to run gore; pierced by javelins and arrows,
corpses floated and vanished, while numbers, undeterred by the havoc,
leaped into the waves from the opposite banks. Like bears that surround
the ship of a sea-king beneath the polar meteors, or the midnight sun of
the north, came the savage warriors through that glaring atmosphere.

Amidst all, two forms were pre-eminent: the one, tall and towering, stood
by the trench, and behind a banner, that now drooped round the stave, now
streamed wide and broad, stirred by the rush of men--for the night in
itself was breezeless. With a vast Danish axe wielded by both hands,
stood this man, confronting hundreds, and at each stroke, rapid as the
levin, fell a foe. All round him was a wall of his own--the dead. But
in the centre of the space, le