Now it chanced that Queen Brunhild was walking on the terrace of her sea-guarded castle with King Gunther when she saw a number of sails approaching.
'Whose can these ships be?' she cried in quick alarm.
'These are my warriors who have followed me from Burgundy,' answered the King, for thus had Siegfried bidden him speak.
'We will go to welcome the fleet,' said Brunhild, and together they met the brave Nibelung army and lodged them in Isenland.
'Now will I give of my silver and my gold to my liegemen and to Gunther's warriors,' said Queen Brunhild, and she held out the keys of her treasury to Dankwart that he might do her will. But so lavishly did the knight bestow her gold and her costly gems and her rich raiment upon the warriors that the Queen grew angry.
'Nought shall I have left to take with me to Rhineland,' she cried aloud in her vexation.
'In Burgundy,' answered Hagen, 'there is gold enough and to spare. Thou wilt not need the treasures of Isenland.'
But these words did not content the Queen. She would certainly take at least twenty coffers of gold as well as jewels and silks with her to King Gunther's land.
At length, leaving Isenland to the care of her brother, Queen Brunhild, with twenty hundred of her own warriors as a body-guard, with eighty-six dames and one hundred maidens, set out for the royal city of Worms.
For nine days the great company journeyed homeward, and then King Gunther entreated Siegfried to be his herald to Worms.