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Meanwhile Olaf did not lose sight of the fact that the foolish policy of King Ethelred, instead of having the effect of securing the kingdom against invasion, only set forth a very strong encouragement to the vikings to repeat their incursions as often as they were in want of money.
And the Sons of the Vikings, taking the hint, shouldered the litter once more, and reached Skull-Splitter's home in time for supper. The Sons of the Vikings were much troubled. Every heroic deed which they plotted had this little disadvantage, that they were in danger of going to jail for it.
'Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. No, louder and nearer swells 'the voice of many waters, 'the countless laugh of ocean, like the mirth of ten thousand girls, before us, behind us, round us; and the oily swell darkens into crisp velvet-green, till the air strikes us, and heels us over; and leaping, plunging, thrashing our bows into the seas, we spring away close-hauled upon the ever-freshening breeze, while Claude is holding on by ropes and bulwarks, and some, whose sea-legs have not yet forgot their craft, are swinging like a pendulum as they pace the deck, enjoying, as the Norse vikings would have called it, 'the gallop of the flying sea-horse, and the shiver of her tawny wings.
In the Middle Ages that is, in the thousand years between the irruption of the barbarians into the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the discovery of the New World in the fifteenth the chief stages of history which affect the extension of men's knowledge of the world were: the voyages of the Vikings in the eighth and ninth centuries, to which we have already referred; the Crusades, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and the growth of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
To make treaties and to offer blackmail was a worse than useless policy; the Vikings came in bands which operated separately, or united in this year to scatter and form new combinations in the next. One leader could not bind another; to buy off one fleet was merely to invite the coming of a second.
This comparison never occurred to me for a moment when I saw this assemblage of ordinary, everyday men-brushing their teeth. But now that they were busy with the dishes, I was bound to acknowledge its aptitude; for our forefathers the vikings could not possibly have attacked their food with greater energy than these nine men did.
At last, he was among real Space Vikings, on a Space Viking planet, and he was trying to be everywhere and see everything at once. No doubt he would be imagining himself a Space Viking, returning to Marduk with a vast armada to rescue his father and the King from Zaspar Makann. Trask was satisfied with that; as a host he left much to be desired.
After long continued raids, the Vikings no doubt saw that much of the land along the shore was fair and fertile compared with their own, and finally they came not merely to plunder and depart, but to settle and stay.
Then Griffin tells him that he was with Hodulf, and knew all the secret of the making away with the boy, and how that came to naught. Then he says that Hodulf had heard from certain Vikings that they had fallen on Grim's ship, and that in the grappling of the vessel the boy and a lady had been drowned. It is quite likely that they, or some of them, thought so in truth, seeing how that happened.
The place of the gathering of the forces was to be Ipswich, in East Anglia, and the time of meeting was to be the middle of the harvest month in the next summer. Olaf did not wait in the Orkneys for an answer to this message. His vikings were already growing weary of idleness and eager to be again upon the sea.
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