eir and we minded the nets.

Only two of our men stayed here with us, being fishers and old comrades
of my father. The rest he bade find their way home to Denmark to their
wives and children, from the Northumbrian coast, or else take service
with the king, Ethelwald, who ruled in East Anglia, beyond the Wash,
who, being a Dane by descent from the Jutes who took part with Angles
and Saxons in winning this new land, was glad to have Danish men for his
housecarls. Some went to him, and were well received there, as we knew
long afterwards.

The man who had been washed overboard and hauled back at risk of his
neck was one of these. His name was Mord, and he would have stayed with
us; but my father thought it hard that he should not have some better
chance than we could give him here, for it was not easy to live at
first. Somewhat of the same kind he said to Arngeir, for he had heard of
this king when he had been in the king's new haven in the Wash some time
ago. But Arngeir would by no means leave the uncle who had been as a
father to him.

Now when we marked out the land that Witlaf gave us, there was a good
omen. My father set the four blue altar stones at each corner of the
land as the boundaries, saying that thus they would hallow all the
place, rather than make an altar again of them here where there was no
grove to shelter them, or, indeed, any other spot that was not open,
where a holy place might be. And when we measured the distances between
them a second time they were greater than at first, which betokens the
best of luck to him whose house is to be there. I suppose that they will
bide in these places now while Grimsby is a town, for, as every one
knows, it is unlucky to move a boundary stone.

Soon my father found a man who had some skill in the shipwright's craft,
and brought him to our place from Saltfleet. Then we built as good a
boat as one could wish, and, not long after that, another. But my father
was careful that none of the Lindsey folk whom he had known should think
that this fisher was the Grim whom they had once traded with, lest word
should go to Hodulf in any way.

Now we soon hired men to help us, and the fishing throve apace. We
carried the fish even to the great city of Lincoln, where Alsi the
Lindsey king had his court, though it was thirty miles away. For we had
men in the villages on the road who took the great baskets on from one
to another, and always Grim and one of us were there on th