This while Girolamo was peeping at the head of the Norman column; and he kept peeping until Ivo Taille-Bois and his brother Geoffroy and some half-score men-at-arms came upon the bridge and fairly crossed it. And then, as the rest of the diabolical band were about to follow, Elfric gave a shrill whistle, and tugged at his rope, and other good Saxons pulled hard at other ropes, and in the twinkling of an eye the bridge fell to pieces, and Ivo and his brother and such as had followed them remained on this side of the bridge, and the rest of the Normans remained on the other side of the bridge. And then a score of horns sounded lustily along the ambuscaded line, and fourscore well-armed Saxons vaulted from their wet lair to the top of the embankments, and set up a shout, and sent such a flight of arrows across the river as put the Normans on the other side to a rapid flight along the causeway. Ivo and his brother and the rest that had crossed the bridge ran along the inner bank of the river followed by hearty laughter and a few sharp arrows from the Saxons; but they had not gone far when what seemed hard and dry ground broke in under their feet, and let them all drop into a quagmire or pool, one not quite so foul as some of those by Crowland Abbey, but still foul enough.[145] It was not until he saw them safely deposited in this place that Elfric went in search of his master; and as he went off for the church he enjoined the Saxons, in Lord Hereward’s name, to do the Normans no further hurt. Now, as the Lord of Brunn strode down from the hill towards the river side, and as the Saxons on the embankment shouted, “Hereward for England!” Ivo Taille-Bois, all in his woeful plight, looked hard at the Saxon warrior, and as Hereward came nearer Ivo said, “Peste! brother Geoffroy, but this Hereward is the very man that shivered my shield with his battle-axe and unhorsed me at Hastings. An I had thought he had been so near I would not have come with thee on thy accursed wooing!” “Brother Ivo,” said Geoffroy, “it is thou that hast brought me into this evil with thy mad talk about Saxon heiresses. But let us confess our sins, for our last moment is at hand. My feet are sinking deeper and deeper in the mud: I can scarcely keep my mouth above the surface of this feculent pool!” When the Lord of Brunn came up to the edge of the pool with Elfric and Girolamo, and all his merry men who had been standing on the embankments, and who could no longer see the Normans who had fled from the opposite side of the river,[146] the Norman men-at-arms that were floundering in the pool with their leader set up a cry about misericorde and ransom; and even the great Taille-Bois himself called out lustily for quarter; while his brother, who was a shorter man, cried out that he would rather be killed by the sword than by drowning, and piteously implored the Saxons to drag out of that foul pool no less a knight than Geoffroy Taille-Bois.