THIS, then, was the way into that Isle of Refuge to which the Normans directed their best efforts. At the crossing of the Ouse, the fascines and hurdles, bags of earth and bundles of reeds, that had thus far afforded a foundation, were no longer of use, and a wooden bridge had of necessity to be constructed in the face of the enemy. Disaster attended it, for the unlucky timbering gave way while the advance was actually in progress, and hundreds were drowned. A second bridge was begun, and William, calling in supernatural aid, brought a "pythonissa"--a sorceress--to curse Hereward and his merry men and to weave spells while the work was going forward. William himself probably believed little in her unholy arts, but his soldiers and the vast army of helpers and camp-followers gathered together in this unhealthy hollow, dying of ague and marsh-sickness, and disheartened by failure and delay, fancied forces of more than earthly power arrayed against them. So the pythonissa was provided with a wooden tower whence she could overlook the work and exercise her spells while the second bridge was building. Fishermen from all the countryside were impressed to aid in the work. Among them, in disguise, came Hereward, so the legends tell, and when all was nearly done, he fired the maze of woodwork, so that the sorceress in her tower was sent, shrieking, in flames to Ahrimanes, and this, the second bridge, was utterly consumed. Kingsley, in his very much overrated romance of _Hereward the Wake_, makes him fire the reeds, but the Fenland reed does not burn and refuses to be fired outside the pages of fiction.