Their chant stopped of itself. With blanched faces and trembling knees
they fled, regardless of all discipline, up into the minster tower, and
from the leads looked out northeastward on the fen.
The first rays of the summer sun were just streaming over the vast sheet
of emerald, and glittering upon the winding river; and on a winding line,
too, seemingly endless, of scarlet coats and shields, black hulls, gilded
poops and vanes and beak-heads, and the flash and foam of innumerable
oars.
And nearer and louder came the oar-roll, like thunder working up from the
northeast; and mingled with it that grim yet laughing Heysaa, which
bespoke in its very note the revelry of slaughter.
The ships had all their sails on deck. But as they came nearer, the monks
could see the banners of the two foremost vessels.
The one was the red and white of the terrible Dannebrog. The other, the
scarcely less terrible white bear of Hereward.
"He will burn the minster! He has vowed to do it. As a child he vowed, and
he must do it. In this very minster the fiend entered into him and
possessed him; and to this minster has the fiend brought him back to do
his will. Satan, my brethren, having a special spite (as must needs be)
against St. Peter, rock and pillar of the Holy Church, chose out and
inspired this man, even from his mother's womb, that he might be the foe
and robber of St.
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