the midnight sun
Brief as had been the onslaught the carnage was already unspeakable . By dint of sheer physical numbers , animated by a valour that seemed as the frenzy of madmen or the hunger of wolves , hosts of the Britons had crossed trench and stream , seizing with their hands the points of the spears opposed to them , bounding over the corpses of their countrymen , and with yells of wild joy rushing upon the close serried lines drawn up before the fort . The stream seemed literally to run gore ; pierced by javelins and arrows , corpses floated and vanished , while numbers , undeterred by the havoc , leaped into the waves from the opposite banks . Like bears that surround the ship of a sea-king beneath the polar meteors , or the midnight sun of the north , came the savage warriors through that glaring atmosphere . Amidst all , two forms were pre-eminent : the one , tall and towering , stood by the trench , and behind a banner , that now drooped round the stave , now streamed wide and broad , stirred by the rush of men -- for the night in itself was breezeless . With a vast Danish axe wielded by both hands , stood this man , confronting hundreds , and at each stroke , rapid as the levin , fell a foe . All round him was a wall of his own -- the dead .