Gaëlo removed his armor, rolled up the sleeve of his reindeer jacket, and left his bleeding arm bare. In himself trying to extract the arrow from his wound, the pirate had broken the shaft, leaving the sharp arrowhead imbedded under the flesh. The operation of extraction was thereby rendered more difficult. Nevertheless, Eidiol succeeded in taking hold of a portion of the shaft that still obtruded above the flesh, and by dint of no little dexterity finally drew out the arrowhead itself. Greatly pained during the operation, Gaëlo felt relieved when the missile was at last extracted. Before placing the lint on the wound, the old skipper moistened a piece of cloth in water and was about to wash away the clotted blood that covered almost all the upper arm, when he uttered a cry of surprise, took a step back, gazed anxiously upon Gaëlo and exclaimed with intense curiosity: "Who burnt into your arm these two Gallic words: '_Brenn_--_Karnak_'--that I see here? Speak, young man!" "My father; he burnt the inscription into my arm shortly after my birth." "Where is your father?" "He, as well as my mother, are dead." "He surely was not of the Northman race?" "No, although he was born in their country, and always went to battle with them. He was of the Gallic race--" "In what year did your father's father go to live among the Northmans?" "Towards the middle of the last century." "Was that not after a fresh and violent insurrection broke out in Brittany, when the Bretons, in order to make a head against the Franks, applied for aid from the Northmans, who happened to have their camp at the mouth of the Loire?" "Yes," answered Gaëlo. "But how come you to know all that? Who told you of it?" "What were the circumstances that induced your grandfather to join the Northmans?" "After the fresh insurrection of Armorica, which at first bade fair to succeed, dissensions broke out among the Breton chiefs. Even my grandfather's family was divided. In the course of a violent altercation with one of his brothers, the two drew their swords. Wounded in that fratricidal duel, my grandfather left Brittany forever, and embarked with a troop of Northmans who were just then setting sail at the mouth of the Loire to return to Denmark, where my father and myself were born." "Your grandfather's name was Ewrag," Eidiol proceeded with increasing emotion; "he was the son of Vortigern,[5] one of the most valiant companions-in-arms of Morvan, who heroically resisted the arms of Louis the Pious on the moor of Kennor, the marsh of Peulven and across the defiles of Armorica. Vortigern's grandfather was Amael, who lived to be more than a hundred years, declined to be the jailor of the last descendant of Clovis, and was one of the chiefs of the bands of Charles Martel, the ancestor of Charles the Great, whose descendant reigns to-day under the name of Charles the Simple." "Old man!" cried Gaëlo, "who could have informed you so accurately on the history of my family?"