“And nine-and-forty of them,” says the chronicler, “he chose to guard Bourne,” seemingly the lands which had been his nephew Morcar’s, till he should come back and take them for himself. Godiva’s lands, of Witham, Toft and Mainthorpe, Gery his cousin should hold till his return, and send what he could off them to his mother at Crowland. Then they went down to the water and took barge, and laid the corpse therein; and Godiva and Hereward sat at the dead lad’s head; and Winter steered the boat, and Gwenoch took the stroke-oar. And they rowed away for Crowland, by many a mere and many an ea; through narrow reaches of clear brown glassy water; between the dark-green alders; between the pale-green reeds; where the coot clanked, and the bittern boomed, and the sedge-bird, not content with its own sweet song, mocked the song of all the birds around; and then out into the broad lagoons, where hung motionless, high overhead, hawk beyond hawk, buzzard beyond buzzard, kite beyond kite, as far as eye could see. Into the air, as they rowed on, whirred up the great skeins of wild fowl innumerable, with a cry as of all the bells of Crowland, or all the hounds of Bruneswold; and clear above all the noise sounded the wild whistle of the curlews, and the trumpet-note of the great white swan. Out of the reeds, like an arrow, shot the peregrine, singled one luckless mallard from the flock, caught him up, struck him stone dead with one blow of his terrible heel, and swept his prey with him into the reeds again. “Death! death! death!” said Lady Godiva, as the feathers fluttered down into the boat and rested on the dead boy’s pall. “War among man and beast, war on earth, war in air, war in the water beneath,” as a great pike rolled at his bait, sending a shoal of white fish flying along the surface. “And war, says holy writ, in heaven above. O Thou who didst die to destroy death, when will it all be over?” And thus they glided on from stream to stream, until they came to the sacred isle of “the inheritance of the Lord, the soil of St. Mary and St. Bartholomew; the most holy sanctuary of St. Guthlac and his monks; the minster most free from worldly servitude; the special almshouse of the most illustrious kings; the sole place of refuge for any one in all tribulations; the perpetual abode of the saints; the possession of religious men, especially set apart by the Common Council of the kingdom; by reason of the frequent miracles of the most holy Confessor, an ever fruitful mother of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi; and, by reason of the privileges granted by the kings, a city of grace and safety to all who repent.”