And then a man would look to the after line from the ship to the bollard on the wharf, and leaped on the after deck close to me.
"Out of the way, you Saxon!" he said savagely, and with that sent me across the deck with a fierce push which was almost a blow; and that was the spark which was all I needed to set my smouldering impatience alight.
I recovered myself, and without a word hit him fairly in the face with all my weight behind a good blow from the shoulder, and sent him spinning in turn.

He went headlong over the edge of the raised deck, and lit among a group of his comrades, thereby saving himself from what would have been a heavy fall on his head and shoulders.
"Well hit, Saxon!" shouted a man from the nearest ship, and there was a great roar of laughter thence.
However, before his comrades, who had been watching the fires they had lighted, knew rightly how the man had thus been hurled on them, and were abusing him for clumsiness, he had his sword out, swearing to end me; and I suppose he might have done so without any of the others interfering had they understood the matter.

But he was a heavy man, and mailed moreover; whereby three or four were smarting under his weight.

So they fell on him and held his arm, thinking, no doubt, that he was resenting their words; which was the saving of me, for at that moment a roar came from the wharf, and slowly out of the lane end we had been watching came Thorleif's men.

Their faces were toward the foe, and those who led the retreat were at work with their bows, shooting over the heads of those before them at the press which drove them back.