CHAPTER IX.
Through the blue skies over England there rushed the bright stranger--
a meteor, a comet, a fiery star! "such as no man before ever saw;" it
appeared on the 8th, before the kalends of May; seven nights did it
shine [235], and the faces of sleepless men were pale under the angry
glare.
The river of Thames rushed blood-red in the beam, the winds at play on
the broad waves of the Humber, broke the surge of the billows into
sparkles of fire. With three streamers, sharp and long as the sting
of a dragon, the foreboder of wrath rushed through the hosts of the
stars. On every ruinous fort, by sea-coast and march, the warder
crossed his breast to behold it; on hill and in thoroughfare, crowds
nightly assembled to gaze on the terrible star. Muttering hymns,
monks hudded together round the altars, as if to exorcise the land of
a demon. The gravestone of the Saxon father-chief was lit up, as with
the coil of the lightning; and the Morthwyrtha looked from the mound,
and saw in her visions of awe the Valkyrs in the train of the fiery
star.
On the roof of his palace stood Harold the King, and with folded arms
he looked on the Rider of Night. And up the stairs of the turret came
the soft steps of Haco, and stealing near to the King, he said:
"Arm in haste, for the bodes have come breathless to tell thee that
Tostig, thy brother, with pirate and war-ship, is wasting thy shores
and slaughtering thy people!"
