beside me, and lifting his hand, cursed ship and crew with so great
and bitter a curse that I trembled and looked to see the ship
founder at once, so terrible were his words.

Yet the ship held on her course, and the words seemed vain and
wasted, though I know not so certainly that they were so. For this
is what I saw when the ship met the waves of that wider stretch of
water that Halfden had now crossed.

She pitched sharply, and there was a bright gleam of sunlight from
the great bell's polished sides, and then another--and the ship
listed over to starboard and a wave curled in foam over her
gunwale. Then she righted again quickly, and as though relieved of
some weight, yet when a heavier, crested roller came on her she
rose to it hardly at all, and it broke on board her. And at that
she sank like a stone, and I could hear the yell that her men gave
come down the wind to me.

Then all the water was dotted with men for a little, and the bright
red and white of her sail floated on the waves for a minute, and
then all that was left of her were the masthead and yard--and on
them a few men. The rest were gone, for they were in their mail,
and might not swim. Only a few yet clung to floating oars and the
like.

"Little have these heathen gained from Bosham," said the prior, and
his eyes flashed with triumph. "Wilfrith the holy has punished
their ill doing."

So, too, it seemed to me, and I thought to myself that the weight