the fleet were put ashore south of the Seine, but the strong people were kept to serve as slaves. The handsomest were retained ashore, and the ugly and black were kept on board ship as rowers. In the Fly the plunder was divided, but, without their knowing it, they divided the punishment too. Of those who were placed in the foreign ships six died of colic. It was thought that the food and drink were poisoned, so it was all thrown overboard, but the colic remained all the same. Wherever the slaves or the goods came, there it came too. The Saxsenmen took it over to their marches. The Jutlanders brought it to Schoonland and along the coasts of the Baltic Sea, and with Askar's mariners it was taken to Britain. We and the people of Grênegâ did not allow either the people or the goods to come over our boundaries, and therefore we remained free from it. How many people were carried off by this disease I cannot tell; but Prontlik, who heard it afterwards from the maidens, told me that Askar had helped out of his states a thousand times more free-men than he had brought dirty slaves in. When the pest had ceased, the Twisklanders who had become free came to the Rhine, but Askar would not put himself on an equality with the princes of that vile degenerate race. He would not suffer them to call themselves Frya's children, as Reintja had offered them, but he forgot then that he himself had black hair. Among the Twisklanders there were two tribes who did not call themselves Twisklanders. One came from the far south-east, and called themselves Allemannen. They had given themselves this name when they had no women among them, and were wandering as exiles in the forests. Later on they stole women from the slave people like the Lithauers, but they kept their name. The other tribe, that wandered about in the neighbourhood, called themselves Franks, not because they were free, but the name of their first king was Frank, who, by the help of the degenerate maidens, had had himself made hereditary king over his people. The people nearest to him called themselves Thioth--his sons--that is, sons of the people. They had remained free, because they never would acknowledge any king, or prince, or master except those chosen by general consent in a general assembly. Askar had already learned from Reintja that the Twisklander princes were almost always at war with each other. He proposed to them that they should choose a duke from his people, because, as he said, he was afraid that they would quarrel among themselves for the supremacy. He said also that his princes could speak with the Gauls. This, he said, was also the opinion of the mother. Then the princes of the Twisklanders came together, and after twenty-one days they chose Alrik as duke. Alrik was Askar's nephew. He gave him two hundred Scotch and one hundred of the greatest Saksmannen to go with him as a bodyguard, The princes were to send twenty-one of their sons as hostages for their fidelity. Thus far all had gone