So, one morning just at sunrise the flag of the White Bear's Head was floating in the land breeze, as the longship made its way into harbour among a vast fleet of other craft,—so vast that Wulf was surprised into speech, and Ulf himself admitted that he never had seen the like. The shore was one great camp; an army gathered; and Ulf found himself nodding greeting to many an old acquaintance as they shouldered through it, Wulf and he, straight for the heart of the throng; Ulf still carrying in one hand his unbent sea-bow, and Wulf, the long, straight, two-handed sword of his father, as well as his own keen axe —of Star steel, both.
Under a large tent a consultation of leaders was going on, and a dark, thick-set, angry-looking man was laying down the law to them in the strongest words he knew—and he knew a great many—when Ulf strode in. The captain stopped. Flashes of recognition shot into a face here and there; a wrathful growl came from one group, in the back of which was the mean, crafty face of Thorfin the Viking. Then the dark man strode sharply forward with a hearty greeting.
"What, Ulf the Silent? So you too will help an old comrade? This is well indeed. But what are these fellows growling about, like so many white-toothed mastiffs?"
"I've met their mates and them at Sigurd's Vik," quoth Ulf. "These few are what were left," and the other roared with laughter.
"You are the man I want, to keep these wild blades in order. A man like you is needed over them. I make you a sea-king here and now, and my clerk shall give you it in writing." And a sea-king Ulf was from that day, or, as we should now call it, "admiral,"—that is to say, a captain over other captains. It made Thorfin very angry, but since he cared a great deal for his own skin, he took considerable pains to keep in good order for many a day to come.
"But first," said Ulf, cautiously, "Tell me what this is all about."
Now those were the days when a king looked on his kingdom very much as though it was his private farm. It, and the people in it, existed chiefly for his sole benefit; and if they objected, so much the worse for the people. So, when Duke William of Normandy told Ulf a long story about his troubles, how Edward the Confessor, King of England and his cousin, had promised that when he died he would leave the kingdom to William, Ulf saw nothing strange in that.
Why should not a man give a farm to his cousin when he died, especially when that cousin's wife, Matilda, was another cousin? Then Harold, Duke of Wessex, had sworn by a whole tubful of relics of dead saints that when Edward died he would not stand in William's way. That, too, was a great thing to do. A promise ought to be kept to the letter, and how much more a sacred oath like that!—although men do say that Harold did not know there was a relic within a mile of him at the time he gave the promise.
But that promise Harold had not kept. On the contrary, he had claimed, first, that when he made it he had been shipwrecked on the Norman coast; he was really a prisoner, and gave the promise that he might get away; which as a matter of honour but made a bad matter worse.
Then, more reasonably, from our point of view, he claimed that the kingdom of England belonged to the English, and was not his to give. Englishmen had made him King, not William, and that was the end of it,—an answer which was likely to drive William nearly wild. And it did. William swore a great oath that before he died he would be King of all England. And Ulf, with many another, promised to help him.