Only the steersman, who had come forward to wonder at the hippopotamus, and to help in dragging the unwieldy brute on board, seemed to keep genuine and unornamented the costume of his race, the white linen leggings, strapped with thongs of deerskin, the quilted leather cuirass, the bears'-fur cloak, the only ornaments of which were the fangs and claws of the beast itself, and a fringe of grizzled tufts, which looked but too like human hair.

The language which they spoke was utterly unintelligible to Philammon, though it need not be so to us.
'A well-grown lad and a brave one, Wulf the son of Ovida,' said the giant to the old hero of the bearskin cloak; 'and understands wearing skins, in this furnace-mouth of a climate, rather better than you do.' 'I keep to the dress of my forefathers, Amalric the Amal.

What did to sack Rome in, may do to find Asgard in.' The giant, who was decked out with helmet, cuirass, and senatorial boots, in a sort of mongrel mixture of the Roman military and civil dress, his neck wreathed with a dozen gold chains, and every finger sparkling with jewels, turned away with an impatient sneer.
'Asgard--Asgard! If you are in such a hurry to get to Asgard up this ditch in the sand, you had better ask the fellow how far it is thither.' Wulf took him quietly at his word, and addressed a question to the young monk, which he could only answer by a shake of the head.
'Ask him in Greek, man.' 'Greek is a slave's tongue.

Make a slave talk to him in it, not me.' 'Here--some of you girls! Pelagia! you understand this fellow's talk.
Ask him how far it is to Asgard.' 'You must ask me more civilly, my rough hero,' replied a soft voice from underneath the awning.

'Beauty must be sued, and not commanded.' 'Come, then, my olive-tree, my gazelle, my lotus-flower, my--what was the last nonsense you taught me ?--and ask this wild man of the sands how far it is from these accursed endless rabbit-burrows to Asgard.' The awning was raised, and lying luxuriously on a soft mattress, fanned with peacock's feathers, and glittering with rubies and topazes, appeared such a vision as Philammon had never seen before.
A woman of some two-and-twenty summers, formed in the most voluptuous mould of Grecian beauty, whose complexion showed every violet vein through its veil of luscious brown.