"Bless this warrior maid! Oh, my father! Thanks to her I have escaped being outraged by the pirates!"
"How sorry I am for having shot that arrow at you!" Guyrion was at the same moment saying to Gaëlo, whom he saw endeavoring to extract the arrow that had struck him in the arm. "I now recognize you, worthy pirate! It was you who opened the doors of our cells in the abbey of St. Denis!"
Still with his cutlass in his hand and contemplating Simon, who was making wry faces while holding his hand to one side of his bleeding head, "I also regret to have cut off half the ear of this Northman, but it stuck out clean beyond his casque!" exclaimed Rustic the Gay.
"Another meeting," cried Simon Large-Ears, shaking his fist at Rustic, "it is that insolent tongue of yours that I mean to cut out, by the faith of Simon!"
"Why, you are as little of a Northman as myself, honest pirate!" exclaimed Rustic as he recognized his countryman. "My regret is then only all the deeper for leaving you in so ridiculous a state. I should have clipped off both your ears. But that can still be done."
Simon made no answer to the renewed joke. He was kept busy stanching the flow of blood from his wound, which he washed with fresh water that he dipped up from the river with his casque, while his friend Robin Jaws tried to console him saying:
"If we only had here some fire; I would heat the point of my sword red, and would quickly burn your wound dry."
Shortly after the boarding that was stopped so happily, the grappling irons of the Parisian vessel were removed. Jumping from the holker of the Buckler Maiden on board her own father's vessel, Anne the Sweet related to him, to Guyrion and to Rustic how she had recovered her senses in the midst of the pirates who took her to Rolf just at the moment when the warrior maid stepped into the apartment; how she threw herself at Shigne's feet; how Shigne, touched with pity, obtained from Rolf the freedom of his prisoner and took her to her own holker, where she remained in safety until the unexpected encounter with her father. Eidiol, in turn, informed Anne that, enraged at seeing her in the hands of the Northmans, and knowing from experience that they were in the habit of expediting some light craft ahead of the main fleet, he placed himself in ambush behind the breakwater of the port of Grève, determined to wreak vengeance for the death of Martha upon all the pirates whom he could seize, and to keep their chiefs alive in order to exchange them for Anne.
The two holkers, as well as the Parisian vessel, thereupon proceeded jointly towards Paris, and disembarked all their crews upon the river bank at a little distance from the ramparts. There the Northmans were to await the return of Shigne and Gaëlo, who were charged with carrying the will of Rolf to the Count of Paris.
At a point of the river bank whence the road led inland toward the city, which could not be entered save by one of the bridges, both of which were defended by towers, Eidiol said to Gaëlo: