No, lord, you need not try to talk this out of my head. It has
been there nigh twenty years; and I say it over to myself every night
before I sleep, lest I should forget the one thing which I must do before
I die. Find him I will, and find him I shall, if there be justice in
heaven above."
So Hereward asked Ranald for ships, and got at once two good vessels as
payment for his doughty deeds.
One he christened the _Garpike_, from her narrow build and long beak,
and the other the _Otter_, because, he said, whatever she grappled
she would never let go till she heard the bones crack. They were
excellent, new "snekrs," nearly eighty feet long each; with double banks
for twelve oars a side in the waist, which was open, save a fighting
gangway along the sides; with high poop and forecastle decks; and with one
large sail apiece, embroidered by Sigtryg's Princess and the other ladies
with a huge white bear, which Hereward had chosen as his ensign.
As for men, there were fifty fellows as desperate as Hereward himself, to
take service with him for that or any other quest. So they ballasted their
ships with great pebbles, stowed under the thwarts, to be used as
ammunition in case of boarding; and over them the barrels of ale and pork
and meal, well covered with tarpaulins. They stowed in the cabins, fore
and aft, their weapons,--swords, spears, axes, bows, chests of
arrow-heads, leather bags of bowstrings, mail-shirts, and helmets, and
fine clothes for holidays and fighting days.
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