As the messengers proceeded with their story
Huitzeck and Sigurd dropped their game and listened to what
was said with great attention, Ivar put various questions and
Biorn leant on the spear he was polishing. But when the
messengers came to the death of the chief, and told his expiring
words that the young bears would gnarl their tusks (literally
grunt) if they knew their parent's fate, Biorn grasped the handle
of his spear so tight with emotion that the marks of his fingers
remained on it, and when the tale was finished dashed it in pieces,
Huitzeck compressed a chessman he had taken so with his
fingers that the blood started from each whilst Sigurd Snakeseye
paring his nails with a knife was so wrapped up in attention
that he cut himself to the bone without feeling it.
All authorities down to the end of the Eighteenth century,
ascribe the first knowledge of chess in England, to the time of the
reign of William the Conqueror, or to that of the return of the
first Crusaders, some adding not earlier than 1100 A.D., H. T.
Buckle the author and historian who was foremost in skill among
chess amateurs, in his references to the game, satisfied apparently
with the evidence of Canute's partiality for it, (1017 to 1035)
thought it probable that it was familiarly known in England a
century or so before that monarch's reign.
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