raging shafts of hail. Then the champions came and
climbed the hill on the opposite side; and, seeking a spot sheltered
from the winds wherein to sit, they lit a fire and drove off the cold.
At last, not seeing Starkad, they sent a man to the crest of the hill,
to watch his coming more clearly, as from a watch-tower. This man
climbed to the top of the lofty mountain, and saw, on its sloping side,
an old man covered shoulder-high with the snow that showered down. He
asked him if he was the man who was to fight according to the promise.
Starkad declared that he was. Then the rest came up and asked him
whether he had resolved to meet them all at once or one by one. But he
said, "Whenever a surly pack of curs yelps at me, I commonly send them
flying all at once, and not in turn." Thus he let them know that he
would rather fight with-them all together than one by one, thinking that
his enemies should be spurned with words first and deeds afterwards.

The fight began furiously almost immediately, and he felled six of them
without receiving any wound in return; and though the remaining three
wounded him so hard in seventeen places that most of his bowels gushed
out of his belly, he slew them notwithstanding, like their brethren.
Disembowelled, with failing strength, he suffered from dreadful straits
of thirst, and, crawling on his knees in his desire to find a draught,
he longed for water from the streamlet that ran close by. But when he
saw it was tainted with gore he was disgusted at the look of the water,
and refrained from its infected draught. For Anganty had been struck
down in the waves of the river, and had dyed its course so deep with his
red blood that it seemed now to flow not with water, but with some ruddy
liquid. So Starkad thought it nobler that his bodily strength should
fail than that he should borrow strength from so foul a beverage.
Therefore, his force being all but spent, he wriggled on his knees, up
to a rock that happened to be lying near, and for some little while lay
leaning against it. A hollow in its surface is still to be seen, just as
if his weight as he lay had marked it with a distinct impression of
his body. But I think this appearance is due to human handiwork, for it
seems to pass all belief that the hard and uncleavable rock should so
imitate the softness of wax, as, merely by the contact of a man leaning
on it, to present the appearance of a man having sat there, and assume
concavity for eve