A Prisoner
When Edmund recovered his senses he found that he was being carried along on a rough litter through the forest. It was some little time before he realized his position and recalled the circumstances of the attack. After the Dragon had moved safely out into the fiord, its assailants had returned to the spot where they had attacked the three Saxons who had landed. Two of them were without life, but they found that the third, who, from his habiliments was evidently of higher rank, and whom they judged, although still but a youth, to be the commander of the Saxon party, had only been stunned by the blow of the club which had felled him.

It was at once resolved to carry him to the jarl of the district, who would assuredly wish to learn from him the meaning of the coming of the strange ship. That the Dragon was a Saxon vessel the Northmen were sure. Many of them had been on expeditions across the seas, and knew the Saxons both from their dress and manner of wearing their hair, but the ship was unlike anything they had seen before, and it seemed above all things strange that when, as they understood, England had been completely conquered, Saxon warships should be entering a northern fiord.