from feeling assured, and save one or two, that were afterwards proved to be false traitors in their hearts, they all returned to Ely sadder men than they were when they left it to go to meet Knut. That which the white-headed sea-rover had said, and a great deal more than he uttered, speedily came to pass: north and south the English coast was plundered; and, ascending the many rivers in their lighter vessels and in their boats, the Danes went far into the interior of the country, pillaging, burning, and destroying, even as their forefathers had done in the heathenish times. Up the broad Humber they went until they got into the Yorkshire Ouse, and they would have gone on to the city of York, but that it was strongly garrisoned by Normans, and the whole country a desert—a desert which Osbiorn and his evil company had made in the preceding year. On the river Yare they went as high as the good city of Norwich, but they ventured not to attack the Normans in that place.[195] The Waveney, too, and the Ald they visited, nor left the poor Saxons there so much as a fishing-boat. Up the river Deeben as far as the wood bridge, where a pleasant town hath since risen; and between the pleasant, green-wooded banks of the Orwell, they sailed many a league. After ravaging the banks of the Stour, Knut collected all his ships together and then spread his sails on the smooth Medway and the broad Thamesis, going up the Thamesis almost to London; and then mooring his ships, and making a great show as though he intended to land an army and lay siege to the Tower of London, which the Normans were then busily enlarging and strengthening. Not all the doings of the Danes, and the robberies and cruelties they committed upon poor defenceless Saxons, could be known in the Camp of Refuge; yet enough was known by the report of the country people to grieve every English heart in the camp, and to confirm the worst suspicions which Abbat Thurstan had conceived. On the other hand, it was made apparent that the Normans were greatly distracted by this new invasion, and that, while their vicomtes and knights and men-at-arms were marching in almost every other direction, none of them came near to the last asylum of Saxon liberty. In truth, the posts which had previously been drawn round the fen country were so far weakened that the Lord Hereward, who had again taken a direct and entire command in the Camp of Refuge, made several good sallies from the fens and brought back not a few Norman prisoners, together with good store of provision.