condition, but by
sharp menaces Toste induced him to promise what he asked. For threats
can sometimes gain a request which soft-dealing cannot compass. Hadding
was conquered by this man in an affair by land; but in the midst of his
flight he came on his enemy's fleet, and made it unseaworthy by boring
the sides; then he got a skiff and steered it out to sea. Toste thought
he was slain, but though he sought long among the indiscriminate heaps
of dead, could not find him, and came back to his fleet; when he saw
from afar off a light boat tossing on the ocean billows. Putting out
some vessels, he resolved to give it chase, but was brought back by
peril of shipwreck, and only just reached the shore. Then he quickly
took some sound craft, and accomplished the journey which he had before
begun. Hadding, seeing he was caught, proceeded to ask his companion
whether he was a skilled and practised swimmer; and when the other said
he was not, Hadding despairing of flight, deliberately turned the vessel
over and held on inside to its hollow, thus making his pursuers think
him dead. Then he attacked Toste, who, careless and unaware, was
greedily watching over the remnants of his spoil; cut down his army,
forced him to quit his plunder, and avenged his own rout by that of
Toste.

But Toste lacked not heart to avenge himself. For, not having store
enough in his own land to recruit his forces--so heavy was the blow he
had received--he went to Britain, calling himself an ambassador. Upon
his outward voyage, for sheer wantonness, he got his crew together to
play dice, and when a wrangle arose from the throwing of the cubes, he
taught them to wind it up with a fatal affray. And so, by means of this
peaceful sport, he spread the spirit of strife through the whole ship,
and the jest gave place to quarrelling, which engendered bloody combat.
Also, fain to get some gain out of the misfortunes of others, he seized
the moneys of the slain, and attached to him a certain rover then
famous, named Koll; and a little after returned in his company to his
own land, where he was challenged and slain by Hadding, who preferred to
hazard his own fortune rather than that of his soldiers. For generals of
antique valour were loth to accomplish by general massacre what could be
decided by the lot of a few.

After these deeds the figure of Hadding's dead wife appeared before him
in his sleep, and sang thus:

"A monster is born to thee that shall tame the r