A month or two ago I should have feared them, thinking of Beowulf, son
of Hygelac, and what befell him and his comrades from the marsh fiends,
Grendel and his dam. Now I watched them, and half longed for a fight
like Beowulf's. [iv]

At last the moon rose behind me, and I walked on. Once a vast shape rose
up in the mist and walked beside me, and I half drew my sword on it. But
that, too, drew sword, and I knew it for my own shadow on the thick
vapour. Then a sheet of water stretched out almost under my feet, and
thousands of wildfowl rose and fled noisily, to fall again into further
pools with splash and mighty clatter. I must skirt this pool, and so
came presently to a thicket of reeds, shoulder high, and out of these
rose, looking larger than natural in the moonlight, a great wild boar
that had his lair there, and stood staring at me before he too made off,
grunting as he went.

So I went on aimless. The night was full of sounds, but whether earthly;
from wildfowl and bittern and curlew, from fox, and badger, and otter;
or from the evil spirits of the marsh, I knew not nor cared. For now the
long imprisonment and the day's terrible doings, and the little food I
had had since we halted on the hill of Brent, all began to get hold of
me, and I stumbled on as a man in a bad dream.

But nothing harmed or offered to harm me. Only when some root or twisted
tussock of grass would catch my foot and hinder me I cursed it for being
in league with Matelgar, tearing my way fiercely over or through it. And
at last, I think, my mind wandered.

Then I saw a red light that glowed close under the edge of some thick
woodland, where the land rose, and that drew me. It was the hut of a