As near the
sandy beach of Budle as they durst venture their ship came Prince Wynd
and his thirty-three men, then the rowers sat still, and the Prince
leapt out, shoulder deep, into the water, and waded to the shore. Like a
wounded tiger that has been baulked of its prey but gets it into its
power at last, the Laidley Worm came to meet him, and all who watched
thought his last hour had come. But like the white flash of a sea-bird's
wings as it dives into the blue sea, the Prince's broad sword gleamed
and fell on the loathsome monster's flat, scaly head, and in a great
voice he cried aloud on all living things to witness that if this
creature of evil magic did him any harm, he would strike her dead. Then
there befell a great wonder, for in human voice, but all hoarse and
strange and ugly, as though almost too great were the effort for human
soul to burst through brute form, the Laidley Worm spoke to her
conqueror: "Oh! quit thy sword and put aside thy bow!" it moaned--so
moans the sea through the crash of the waves on nights when the storm
strews the beach of the North Country with wreckage--"Oh! quit thy
sword, for, poisonous monster though I be, no scaith will I do thee."
Then those who heard the wonder felt sure that the Worm sought by
subtilty to destroy their Prince, for still as a white, dead man he
stood, and gazed at the brute that shivered before him like a whipped
dog that would fain lick his master's feet.
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