Ebarvin seized the symbol of the Ebergau: the boar's head with threatening tusks fastened to a cross-pole on a lofty spear. Adalo grasped a similar shaft, which supported a pair of huge stag's antlers. Almost all the monsters of the primeval forest and the animals sacred to the gods were used in a similar way. Beside the huge horns of the aurochs and the bison rose the broad antlers of the elk. Odin's wolf, Donar's bear, and Löki's fox opened their jaws threateningly. Zio's sword, pointing straight upward, surmounted a shaft painted blood-red; another had Donar's hammer between two zigzag red lightnings forged from iron; three lances bore each a horse's head and neck, and from the necks the manes--respectively black, red, and brown--still fluttered. On other poles the bald eagle, the golden eagle, and the Alpine vulture spread their wings and extended their talons in attitudes of menace. A winged dragon carved from wood had been covered with the skins of the ring adder and the copper adder, which rustled in the wind. And as, like the manes of the horses, the hair of the wild beasts had been left hanging in a strip from the head to the tail, and long red, yellow, and blue streamers fluttered from the cross-poles, there was no lack of the rustling, waving motion, to which we moderns are accustomed in banners. Under these streamers was also many a trophy,--a fragment cut from a captured dragon standard, or a scrap of a purple pennon which the Roman squadrons and cohorts had long carried under the _labarum_ or standard of the cross, for they had abjured the pagan eagles. When the representatives of the districts and families had received their beloved and honored emblems and returned to the ranks, the Duke went on: "Hail to you, ancient symbols of conflict and witnesses of victory! Hail and greeting, ye emblems consecrated to the gods! In your presence, looking into the future, seized by the power of the gods invisibly hovering around you, I will venture to utter a prophecy: "Comrades in arms, Alemanni! do not doubt this time that victory will be ours. You know that it is not the custom of old Hariowald to boast before acting: but this time I predict to you certain, complete, glorious, joyous victory. "All our gods will unite to aid us to-morrow. Not least of them Löki, the flame-creator. Tents and ships will vanish in fire. The lake nymph will drag many hundreds down in her net. The terrible earth-goddess will open her mysterious bosom, on which the insolent aliens have trodden with iron feet: she will pour forth the avengers, the sons of her country, into the midst of the enemy's strongest fortress! For the Lofty One blinded the hated foe, so that they chose in our whole district the spot for their camp most fatal to them. And when they fly from the tents to the galleys, amid the terrors of the night, by the flickering glare of their burning fortifications--they will find on the lake the same destruction in fire and blood.