BEOWULF spake, bairn of Ecgtheow: "Sorrow not, sage! It beseems us better friends to avenge than fruitlessly mourn them. Each of us all must his end abide in the ways of the world; so win who may glory ere death! When his days are told, that is the warrior's worthiest doom. Rise, O realm-warder! Ride we anon, and mark the trail of the mother of Grendel. No harbor shall hide her -- heed my promise! -- enfolding of field or forested mountain or floor of the flood, let her flee where she will! But thou this day endure in patience, as I ween thou wilt, thy woes each one." Leaped up the graybeard: God he thanked, mighty Lord, for the man's brave words. For Hrothgar soon a horse was saddled wave-maned steed. The sovran wise stately rode on; his shield-armed men followed in force. The footprints led along the woodland, widely seen, a path o'er the plain, where she passed, and trod the murky moor; of men-at-arms she bore the bravest and best one, dead, him who with Hrothgar the homestead ruled. On then went the atheling-born o'er stone-cliffs steep and strait defiles, narrow passes and unknown ways, headlands sheer, and the haunts of the Nicors. Foremost he {21a} fared, a few at his side of the wiser men, the ways to scan, till he found in a flash the forested hill hanging over the hoary rock, a woful wood: the waves below were dyed in blood. The Danish men had sorrow of soul, and for Scyldings all, for many a hero, 'twas hard to bear, ill for earls, when Aeschere's head they found by the flood on the foreland there. Waves were welling, the warriors saw, hot with blood; but the horn sang oft battle-song bold. The band sat down, and watched on the water worm-like things, sea-dragons strange that sounded the deep, and nicors that lay on the ledge of the ness -- such as oft essay at hour of morn on the road-of-sails their ruthless quest, -- and sea-snakes and monsters. These started away, swollen and savage that song to hear, that war-horn's blast. The warden of Geats, with bolt from bow, then balked of life, of wave-work, one monster, amid its heart went the keen war-shaft; in water it seemed less doughty in swimming whom death had seized. Swift on the billows, with boar-spears well hooked and barbed, it was hard beset, done to death and dragged on the headland, wave-roamer wondrous. Warriors viewed the grisly guest.