The Frenchman has strengthened it with one of his
accursed keeps, and without battering-engines you may sit before it a
month."
"What if I asked you to go in thither yourself, and try the mettle and the
luck which, they say, never failed Hereward yet?"
"I should say that it was a child's trick to throw away against a paltry
stone wall the life of a man who was ready to raise for you in
Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, five times as many men as you will lose
in taking Dover."
"Hereward is right," said more than one Earl. "We shall need him in his
own country."
"If you are wise, to that country you yourselves will go. It is ready to
receive you. This is ready to oppose you. You are attacking the Frenchman
at his strongest point instead of his weakest. Did I not send again and
again, entreating you to cross from Scheldtmouth to the Wash, and send me
word that I might come and raise the Fen-men for you, and then we would
all go north together?"
"I have heard, ere now," said Earl Osbiorn, haughtily, "that Hereward,
though he be a valiant Viking, is more fond of giving advice than of
taking it."
Hereward was about to answer very fiercely. If he had, no one would have
thought any harm, in those plain-spoken times. But he was wise; and
restrained himself, remembering that Torfrida was there, all but alone, in
the midst of a fleet of savage men; and that beside, he had a great deed
to do, and must do it as he could.
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