and so forth, the doggerel sounding very melodious as the blended voices sent it out over the water.
The singing was an aid to their work, for it took away the attention of their guards. The greasy strap for a time resisted all his efforts. His teeth slid over the slippery surface and could not pierce it. Once there was a sharp crack, a twinge of pain, and a tooth broke in two. He was dismayed for a moment, but soon found the accident helped him.
The jagged edge of the broken bone soon made an incision in the leather, and with considerable pain he severed it at last.
The relief to Cerdic was extreme. They had tied his wrists so tightly that the thongs had cut deep into the flesh. For a moment or two his hands were quite lifeless and he could not move them. Then as the blood came flowing back into the stiffened fingers, pricking as though it were full of powdered glass, his mind also began to recover from its torpor and fear. He became alert, and his thoughts moved rapidly. He reached down cautiously for his knife and, inch by inch, withdrew it from the sheath. The jerkins which covered him were so thickly spread that more vigorous movements could hardly have been seen, but he trusted nothing to chance.
Soon Hyla's hands were free, and the thongs binding his ankles severed. They began to whisper a plan of escape.
Hyla was a good swimmer, and Cerdic a poor one, but death in the lake or the deep fen pools was far better than death with all the hideousness that would attend it at Hilgay Castle. The plan was this: When the men rested for a morning meal, which, they calculated would be at sunrise, they would make a sudden dash for freedom. By that time the lake would have been traversed, and the boat slowly threading the mazy water-ways of the fen. It would go hard with them if they could not get away from the heavily clad men-at-arms, all unused as they were to the country.
Meanwhile the rowers had got three parts of the way over the water. The sky was quite light now, with that cold grey-green which lasts for a few minutes before the actual sunrise.
"Sun will soon rise," said Heraud; "it's colder now, I will put on my jerkin."
"And I also," said several others, and the pile of clothes began to be lifted from the serfs.
It was a terribly anxious moment for them. If it was seen that bonds were cut, then they must risk everything, and jump into the lake, for they knew the boat could not have won the fen as yet.