"
The knight looked round on the fierce ring of faces, in the midst of which
he stood alone.
"To none but Hereward."
"Hereward am I."
"Ah," said the knight, "had I but hit a little harder!"
"You would have broke your sword into more splinters. My armor is
enchanted. So yield like a reasonable and valiant man."
"What care I?" said the knight, stepping on to the earthwork, and sitting
down quietly. "I vowed to St. Mary and King William that into Ely I would
get this day; and in Ely I am; so I have done my work."
"And now you shall taste--as such a gallant knight deserves--the
hospitality of Ely."
It was Torfrida who spoke.
"My husband's prisoners are mine; and I, when I find them such
_prudhommes_ as you are, have no lighter chains for them than that
which a lady's bower can afford."
Sir Dade was going to make an equally courteous answer, when over and
above the shouts and curses of the combatants rose a yell so keen, so
dreadful, as made all hurry forward to the rampart.
That which Hereward had foreseen was come at last. The bridge, strained
more and more by its living burden, and by the falling tide, had
parted,--not at the Ely end, where the sliding of the sow took off the
pressure,--but at the end nearest the camp. One sideway roll it gave, and
then, turning over, engulfed in that foul stream the flower of Norman
chivalry; leaving a line--a full quarter of a mile in length--of wretches
drowning in the dark water, or, more hideous still, in the bottomless
slime of peat and mud.
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