feared to be hanged by the Duke's men or sold into slavery by the Moors.
So we put into a small harbour which Witta knew. At night men came down
with loaded mules, and Witta exchanged amber out of the North against
little wedges of iron and packets of beads in earthen pots. The pots he
put under the decks, and the wedges of iron he laid on the bottom of the
ship after he had cast out the stones and shingle which till then had
been our ballast. Wine, too, he bought for lumps of sweet-smelling grey
amber--a little morsel no bigger than a thumbnail purchased a cask of
wine. But I speak like a merchant.'

'No, no! Tell us what you had to eat,' cried Dan.

'Meat dried in the sun, and dried fish and ground beans, Witta took in;
and corded frails of a certain sweet, soft fruit, which the Moors use,
which is like paste of figs, but with thin, long stones. Aha! Dates is
the name.

'"Now," said Witta, when the ship was loaded, "I counsel you strangers
to pray to your Gods, for from here on, our road is No Man's road." He
and his men killed a black goat for sacrifice on the bows; and the
Yellow Man brought out a small, smiling image of dull-green stone and
burned incense before it. Hugh and I commended ourselves to God, and
Saint Barnabas, and Our Lady of the Assumption, who was specially dear
to my Lady. We were not young, but I think no shame to say whenas we
drove out of that secret harbour at sunrise over a still sea, we two
rejoiced and sang as did the knights of old when they followed our great
Duke to England. Yet was our leader an heathen pirate; all our proud
fleet but one galley perilously overloaded; for guidance we leaned on a
pagan sorcerer; and our port was beyond the world's end. Witta told us
that his father Guthrum had once in his life rowed along the shores of