But a great shout came from aft, and then a silence that seemed strange. We were still, to hear what we might, and I think that others listened for us.
"Surely we have cleared the ship?" I said. "Let us go and see."
Then I hailed our men, asking how they fared--and half I feared to hear the howl and rush of pirates coming back on us. But it was a Danish voice that called back to me that the last foe was gone.
We stumbled back now along either gunwale, over the bodies of friend and foe that cumbered all the deck, and most thickly and in heaps amidships, where our first rush fell. One by one from aft met us those who were left of the men who had fought their way to the stern. Well for us was it that the darkness had hindered the Jomsburgers from knowing how few we were and how divided. But shoulder to shoulder we had fought as vikings will, never giving back, but ever taking one step forward as our man went down before us.
Now I called to Thormod, and his voice answered me from shoreward.
"Here am I, Wulfric. How have you sped?"
"Some of us are left, but no foemen," I answered.
"Call your names," he said. And when we counted I had but sixteen left of my thirty, so heavy had been the fighting. Yet I thought that the Jomsburgers were two to our one as we fell on them, and of them was not one left.
"What now?" asked Thormod. "There are more of these men in the town. Here have I been keeping them back from the ship."
"Let us go up to the hall," I answered. "We could find our way in the dark, and they cannot tell where they are in this fog."