hat the long-suffering of Frode was
due to a wish for peace. High rose the blast of the trumpet, and loud
whizzed the javelins everywhere, till at last the heedless Frisians had
not a single lance remaining, and they were conquered, overwhelmed by
the missiles of the Danes. They fled hugging the shore, and were cut to
pieces amid the circuitous windings of the canals. Then Frode explored
the Rhine in his fleet, and laid hands on the farthest parts of Germany.
Then he went back to the ocean, and attacked the Frisian fleet, which
had struck on shoals; and thus he crowned shipwreck with slaughter. Nor
was he content with the destruction of so great an army of his foes, but
assailed Britain, defeated its king, and attacked Melbrik, the Governor
of the Scottish district. Just as he was preparing to fight him, he
heard from a scout that the King of the Britons was at hand, and could
not look to his front and his rear both at once. So he assembled the
soldiers, and ordered that they should abandon their chariots, fling
away all their goods, and scatter everywhere over the fields the gold
which they had about them; for he declared that their one chance was to
squander their treasure; and that, now they were hemmed in, their only
remaining help was to tempt the enemy from combat to covetousness. They
ought cheerfully to spend on so extreme a need the spoil they had gotten
among foreigners; for the enemy would drop it as eagerly, when it was
once gathered, as they would snatch it when they first found it; for it
would be to them more burden than profit.

Then Thorkill, who was a more notable miser and a better orator than
them all, dishelming and leaning on his shield, said:

"O King! Most of us who rate high what we have bought with our
life-blood find thy bidding hard. We take it ill that we should fling
away what we have won with utmost hazard; and men are loth to forsake
what they have purchased at peril of their lives. For it is utter
madness to spurn away like women what our manly hearts and hands have
earned, and enrich the enemy beyond their hopes. What is more odious
than to anticipate the fortune of war by despising the booty which is
ours, and, in terror of an evil that may never come, to quit a good
which is present and assured? Shall we scatter our gold upon the earth,
ere we have set eyes upon the Scots? Those who faint at the thought of
warring when they are out for war, what manner of men are they to be
thought i