"The Norsemen's king, the skalds relate,
Has ta'en the heathen town of Saet:
The slinging engine with dread noise
Gables and roofs with stones destroys.
The town wall totters too,--it falls;
The Norsemen mount the blackened walls.
He who stains red the raven's bill
Has won,--the town lies at his will."
Thereafter King Sigurd went to his ships and made ready to leave
Palestine. They sailed north to the island Cyprus; and King Sigurd
stayed there a while, and then went to the Greek country, and came
to the land with all his fleet at Engilsnes. Here he lay still for a
fortnight, although every day it blew a breeze for going before the wind
to the north; but Sigurd would wait a side wind, so that the sails might
stretch fore and aft in the ship; for in all his sails there was silk
joined in, before and behind in the sail, and neither those before nor
those behind the ships could see the slightest appearance of this, if
the vessel was before the wind; so they would rather wait a side wind.