locked wedge, which
moved swiftly toward the village even as it grew into shape.

"What are they about?" asked men of one another as they watched,
breathless, from our decks.

"They will try to win to yonder camp," one said in answer, and that
was likely, though what hope could lie in that none could say.

Now the wedge had reached the little green which was between the
village and the shore. Before it lay the road hillward, steep and
rough, and that was full of Irish.

Still the Irish held back. They looked to see our ship follow, no
doubt, and would have all their foes ashore at once, lest we should
make some flank attack in the heat of the fight. But the Danes
moved onward steadily.

Then into the opening of the lane rode a man on a tall chestnut
horse, and the Irish yelled and thronged to him as he leaped off
it. It was Dalfin himself, as I saw when he was on foot. I suppose
that he had managed to find this steed somewhere on the way,
meeting with mounted men hurrying to the levy like himself most
likely. If the fishers were yet with him I could not see. They were
lost in the crowd round him.

Now Dalfin's sword went up, and the men shook themselves into some
sort of order. A slogan rose, wild and shrill, and with the prince
at their head they flung themselves on the Danes, lapping round
them, so that they hid them from our sight. Only in the midst of
the leaping throng there was a steady, bright cluster of helms,
above which rose and fell the weapons unceasingly.

The Irish could not stay that wedge. It went on, cleaving its way
through the press as a ship cleaves its way to windward through the
waves, and after it had passed, there was a track of fallen men to
tell of how it had fared. There were mail-clad men among that line
of fallen, and those, of course, were not Irish. They, like Dalfin,
would wear neither helm nor byrnie.

Slowly the Danes fought their way, uselessly to all seeming, away
from the water and hillward. Without heeding the depth of the lane
from the village, though the darts rained on them from its banks,
they went on, and we lost sight of the fighting, though the black
throng of warriors who could not reach their foe still swarmed
between them and the village. Some of them came back and yelled at
us from the shore, and once they seemed as if they were about to
launch the two boats which lay on the strand for an attack on us.
We had dropped a small anchor at this time.

Father Pheli