any coaxing."

I turned myself in the water, trying to see if I could make out the
singer, but I could not. Seeing that no other was likely to be
swimming in Portland race but myself, I had no thought that the
song was human.

But I could find nothing. When my face was seaward, I saw far off
the ships I had left, indeed; and one seemed to have set her sail,
for it showed as a square patch of blackness against the sky, but
no voice could come from them to me. Presently I thought that
somewhat dark rose and fell on the little waves between me and her,
but that was doubtless the tunic I had given to the water. I did
not think of wondering why I still saw it after all this long swim,
but I seemed to have made no headway from the ships, which were as
near as when I last looked at them.

So I turned again and swam easily, as I thought, shoreward. The
song went on, but it seemed to ring in my ears as the drone of our
miller's pipes comes up from the river on a still summer evening.
Yet it grew more plain.

Then I saw the ships before me. I was swimming in a circle, my
right arm mastering the left, I suppose. That told me how weary I
was, if I had not known it to the full before. At that moment the
song, which was close to me, stopped, and a fiery arm rose from a
wave top against the sky, and seemed to hail me.

"Ho, Wilfrid! have you had enough yet? By Aegir himself, you are a
fine swimmer!"

Through the brightness came a sparkling head, round which the foam
curled in fleecy fire; and shining as I shone, Thorleif the viking
floated up to me and trod the water.

"What, you also?" I said. "Both of us drowned together at last?"

And with that I went into the brightness below me, and troubled no
more for anything.

CHAPTER III. HOW WILFRID MET ECGBERT THE ATHELING.

It was indeed Thorleif whom I saw as the deadly faintness of utter
weariness and want of food came over me, and I sank. The Danes had
hardly lost sight of me from the ships, for they had drifted
backward and forward on the tide as I drifted, and I was never more
than a mile from them. Until the tide turned to the eastward there
had been no wind of any use to them, and that which came with
sunset was barely enough to give them steerage way. So they had
watched me for want of somewhat else to do, being worn out with the
long fight; and when I was far off, some keen-sighted seaman would
spy my head as it rose on a wave, and cry that the Saxon was yet