Then someone touched my arm, and there was Father Phelim, with a face full of trouble.

With him were two men, dressed in somewhat the same way as himself.

They were Hakon's English chaplains, and they could not understand his Erse.
"Malcolm," he said, "what of our brethren on the island?
There are the wild Danes yet there--on the shore.

I can see them." Hakon asked with some concern what was amiss with the hermit, and I told him, adding that they had only too much reason to fear the Danes.

And when he heard he turned to Earl Osric, who seemed to be his shipmaster, and asked him to send a boat with men enough to take these Danes, if possible, and anywise to see that the hermits came to no harm.
"If we are to fight this Heidrek," the earl said doubtfully, "you will want us all.