“What if I asked you to go in thither yourself, and try the mettle and the luck which, they say, never failed Hereward yet?”
“I should say that it was a child’s trick to throw away against a paltry stone wall the life of a man who was ready to raise for you in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, five times as many men as you will lose in taking Dover.”
“Hereward is right,” said more than one Earl. “We shall need him in his own country.”
“If you are wise, to that country you yourselves will go. It is ready to receive you. This is ready to oppose you. You are attacking the Frenchman at his strongest point instead of his weakest. Did I not send again and again, entreating you to cross from Scheldtmouth to the Wash, and send me word that I might come and raise the Fen-men for you, and then we would all go north together?”
“I have heard, ere now,” said Earl Osbiorn, haughtily, “that Hereward, though he be a valiant Viking, is more fond of giving advice than of taking it.”
Hereward was about to answer very fiercely. If he had, no one would have thought any harm, in those plain-spoken times. But he was wise; and restrained himself, remembering that Torfrida was there, all but alone, in the midst of a fleet of savage men; and that beside, he had a great deed to do, and must do it as he could. So he answered,—
“Osbiorn the Earl has not, it seems, heard this of Hereward: that because he is accustomed to command, he is also accustomed to obey. What thou wilt do, do, and bid me do. He that quarrels with his captain cuts his own throat and his fellows’ too.”
“Wisely spoken!” said the earls; and Hereward went back to his ship.
“Torfrida,” said he, bitterly, “the game is lost before it is begun.”
“God forbid, my beloved! What words are these?”