"Hurrah! We will win yet!" Vagn echoed the cry, for their attacker was slowly withdrawing.
"Cast a grapnel on them!" ordered Vagn, and as the Norse ship was secured he leaped into her, followed by Sigurd and his forecastle men. The Norsemen gave way, but as the Jomsvikings pressed forward a new burst of horns arose, and into the press sailed a dozen fresh ships.
"Back for your lives!" called Sigurd, as he saw a crowd of the enemy pouring aboard. "Back to our ship!"
They could see nothing of the battle on either hand, for they were surrounded by the Norse ships; but as they gained the deck of their own vessel they heard a wild shout from Bui's ships, and again the Norse line shrank backward. As Sigurd looked around, he saw Jarl Hakon's ship just behind their own.
"Look there, Vagn! Order the men to turn their spears on Hakon!"
Vagn did so, and a storm of spears and arrows poured upon the Jarl's ship. He stood proudly in the forecastle, and for a moment the rain of weapons almost hid him; then he reappeared, smiling, but his armor was ripped to pieces, and he shook himself free of it.
Now a fresh burst of foemen bore down on Vagn's division, and only the higher sides of the vikings' ships saved them. Men were falling fast, but as yet the vikings had not suffered nearly so much as had the enemy. The fighting had not yet become hand to hand, and in the thickly crowded Norse ships not a Jomsborg spear failed of its mark, and the trained skill of the vikings told heavily against the unskilled levies of Hakon.
Suddenly Sigurd laughed, and staggered. "What means the laugh, Fairhair?" called Vagn, who was directing his men in the waist.
"An arrow, but in the arm only," replied Sigurd. A shaft had pierced his arm, just above the elbow, but he snapped off the barb and drew it through the wound, and continued fighting. The next moment, however, another arrow flew past his head and was buried in the rail behind him; a third followed it, glancing from his helmet.
Sigurd realized that someone was aiming at him steadily, and marking the direction from which the arrows came, he saw the face of Thorkel Leira in one of the ships below. The man was just aiming a fourth shaft, half covered by the shield of a follower.