them, and they diligently did. Olaf's
men their business now done, were impatient to be home, and grudged
every day of loitering there; but, till Sigwald pleased, such his
power of flattering and cajoling Tryggveson, they could not get away.

At length, Sigwald's secret messengers reporting all ready on the part
of Svein & Co., Olaf took farewell of Burislav and Wendland, and all
gladly sailed away. Svein, Eric, and the Swedish king, with their
combined fleets, lay in wait behind some cape in a safe little bay of
some island, then called Svolde, but not in our time to be found: the
Baltic tumults in the fourteenth century having swallowed it, as some
think, and leaving us uncertain whether it was in the neighborhood of
Rugen Island or in the Sound of Elsinore. There lay Svein, Eric & Co.
waiting till Tryggveson and his fleet came up, Sigwald's spy
messengers daily reporting what progress he and it had made. At
length, one bright summer morning, the fleet made appearance, sailing
in loose order, Sigwald, as one acquainted with the shoal places,
steering ahead, and showing them the way.

Snorro rises into one of his pictorial fits, seized with enthusiasm at
the thought of such a fleet, and reports to us largely in what order
Tryggveson's winged Coursers of the Deep, in long series, for perhaps
an hour or more, came on, and what the three potentates, from their
knoll of vantage, said of each as it hove in sight. Svein thrice over
guessed this and the other noble vessel to be the Long Serpent; Eric
always correcting him: "No, that is not the Long Serpent yet" (and
aside always), "Nor shall you be lord of it, King, when it does come."
The Long Serpent itself did make appearance. Eric, Svein, and the
Swedish king hurried on board, and pushed out of their hiding-place
into the open sea. Treacherous Sigwald, at the beginning of all this,
had suddenly doubled that cape of theirs, and struck into the bay out
of sight, leaving the foremost Tryggveson ships astonished, and
uncertain what to do, if it were not simply to strike sail and wait
till Olaf himself with the Long Serpent arrived.

Olaf's chief captains, seeing the enemy's huge fleet come out, and how
the matter lay, strongly advised King Olaf to elude this stroke of
treachery, and, with all sail, hold on his course, fight being now on
so unequal terms. Snorro says, the king, high on the quarter-deck
where he stood, replied, "Strike the sails! never shall men of mine
thin