r my news.

Then he asked me what I would do next. There seemed to be no more
work at sea, and yet he would have me speak with King Alfred and
take some reward from him. And I told him that the season grew
late, and that I would as soon stay in England for this winter as
anywhere.

"What will you do next in the matter of these Danes, however?" was
my question.

Then he said:

"I must chase them through the country till they are within the
king's reach. He has the rest pent in Exeter, and there will be
trouble if they sail out to join these. I must follow them,
therefore, end send men to Alfred to warn him. Then he will know
what to do. Now I would ask you to take the ships back into the
river Exe and join us there."

I would do that willingly, and thought that if the wind held fair
after the gale ended, I might be there before he joined the king by
land. But I should have to wait for a shift to the eastward before
sailing.

So Odda brought his men ashore, and marched on Wareham and thence
after the Danes, not meaning to fight unless some advantage showed
itself, for they were too many, but to keep them from harming the
country. And I waited for wind to take me westward.

Then the strange Norsemen left us. They had gained much booty in
the Danish ships, for they carried what had been won from the
Saxons, and what plunder should be taken was to be their share in
due for their services. They were little loss, for they were
masterless vikings who might have given trouble at any time if no
plunder was to be had, and I was not sorry to see them sail away to
join Rolf Ganger in France.

Now these men would have followed me readily, and so I should have
been very powerful at sea, or on any shore where I cared to land.
But Odda had made me feel so much that I was one in his counsel,
and a friend whom he valued and trusted, that I had made this
warfare against the Danes my own quarrel, as it were in his
company. Already I had a great liking for him, and the more I heard
of Alfred the king, the more I wished to see him. At the least, a
man who could build ships like these, having every good point of
the best I knew, and better than any ever heard of before, was
worth speaking with. I thought I knew somewhat of the shipwright's
craft, and one thinks much of the wisdom of the man who is easily
one's master in anything wherein one has pride.

Moreover, Alfred's men were wont to speak of him with little fear,
but as if