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Updated: May 10, 2025
For our fleet numbers but eleven keels, while our foes have fully two score of dragons!" The king stood on the lypting of the Long Serpent as he heard these tidings. He turned to his mariners. "Down with the sails! Out with the oars!" he cried with a loud voice that could be clearly heard across the waters; and the men quickly obeyed.
Then Olaf strode back to the lypting deck and once more surveyed the battle from on high. He saw that his stem defenders, to whom he had served new weapons, had now become so furious that they leapt upon the gunwales in order to reach their foes with their swords and kill them. But many of Earl Erik's ships did not lie so close to the Serpent as to afford any hand to hand fighting.
"Come, then, on board my ship, and let us pledge to him in a full horn of mead," said the viking. And he drew Sigurd with him across the gangplank, and they went below and sat drinking until one of the shipmen standing on the vessel's lypting, or poop deck, sounded a shrill horn as a sign that the ship was about to leave the harbour.
Banners of silk streamed from the masthead and from the yardarms, and a most beautiful standard fluttered from a tall staff on the lypting. The midships tent, which shielded the rowers from the glare of the strong light, was striped with red and blue.
Sigurd pointed outward to the ship that was afar off upon the dim horizon. "Jarl Klerkon, of whom you speak," said he, "is now upon yonder ship." "And well do I know it," returned Olaf. "Today when I stood upon the vessel's gangplank I saw him standing on the lypting; and I knew him by the token that his nose was flat against his face.
They had watched every movement of the tall and splendid form of the Norse king as he fought in his shining armour and his bright red tunic on the Serpent's lypting.
King Olaf's own private cabin was under the "lypting", or poop. It was very splendidly furnished, with beautifully carved wood and tapestries of woven silk. Only his chosen companions and his personal servants were allowed to enter this apartment. Above it there was a large deck which in the time of battle was occupied by the king and his most valiant warriors.
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