"Thou canst swim," said Ulric, "and thy seax will sever hemp; but if thou waitest here until I come, how wilt thou know in the dark of my coming, or how wilt thou know where to ply the sharp edge?"
"When I hear thee whistle thrice," said Biorn, "as if thou wert calling thy hawk, I will know of thy coming. If the whistle is from this shore, I meet thee here. If it is from seaward, I swim to the trireme. Thou wilt know the hemp is severed when thou hearest my own falcon call."
"I go with thee, O jarl!" shouted Olaf, eagerly, "that I may be thy pilot."
"Well for thee, O Biorn the Berserker," said Ulric; "thou art of the heroes!"
"Here sit I down," replied Biorn. "It is a pleasant place. I think this taking of the trireme will depend upon thee and thy sword more than upon a man a fish cutting hemp!"
"Haste, now," said Ulric to his men. "The Sword is far from us and this is to be a night of great deeds, and not of ale and feasting."
Olaf led, as the guide of their rapid marching, and Biorn sat down upon a rock to gaze at the doings around the river mouth and at the fort.
"There come the Britons out of the woods," he said to himself. "If they had been well led they would have pursued more closely—only that few care to press too hard upon even the wreck of a Roman army. Now are all the Romans within the stockade."
The Britons were many, but their prey had escaped them. The camp fort was too strong for them to storm, and their showers of darts flew over the palisades without much harm to any within. The taunting clangor of their harps and trumpets sounded furiously for a while, and then the multitude swiftly vanished as if it had melted away.
"If these Britons had a captain," said Biorn, "instead of a herd of priests, and if he would arm them well, the Romans would disappear from Britain. But I think Ulric the Jarl will find many swords on yonder trireme. Even now they go out in small boats. Biorn the Berserker will be with him when the Saxons are on the Roman deck!"