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ALFRED THE GREAT 103 course to another system of tactics. " They used," says Burke, " suddenly to land and ravage a part of the country ; when a force opposed them they retired to their ships and passed to some other part, which in a like manner they rav- aged, and then retired as before, until the country, entirely harassed, pillaged, and wasted by their incursions, was no longer able to resist them. Then they vent- ured safely to enter a desolated and disheartened country and to establish them- selves in it." To meet this system of warfare it was necessary to create a navy at a time when the Saxons knew not how to build ships, or to manage them when built But the genius of Alfred triumphed over every obstacle. He brought shipwrights from the Continent, himself assisted the workmen in their labors, and engaged Frisian seamen, the neighbors of the Danes, and, like them, pirates. The new armament being completed, Alfred fell upon a Danish fleet which was bringing round a large force from Wareham to the relief of their friends, be- sieged in Exeter. These he defeated at all points, taking or destroying no less than one hundred and twenty, already damaged by a previous storm, and perhaps, on that account, less capable of defence. The Danes, whom he held cooped up in Exeter, found themselves in consequence compelled to surrender, and, giving host- ages not to trouble Wessex any longer, they settled themselves in Mercia, after the example of so many of their countrymen, and became occupants of the land they had before ravaged. Thus Alfred, in the seventh year of his reign, had lost nothing by the war waged under so many difficulties and disadvantages, enough to have overwhelmed a man of less energy and genius ; he still retained that por- tion of the kingdom which lies south of the Thames, the only part ever belonging to him in separate sovereignty, while the Danes possessed all the country on the northern side of the river. The rest of the land was thus divided : Halfdane reigned in Northumberland ; his brother in East Anglia ; and Guthrum, Osketel, and Amund, governed with their subordinate king, Ceowulph, in Mercia. There now occurs a difficulty in the life of Alfred, unexplained by the most industrious of his historians from any satisfactory record. We have just seen him triumphant, and at peace with his defeated enemies. Suddenly, without the notice of any lost battle, we find him seeking refuge in the cottage of a herdsman in the Isle of Ethclingcye, or Island of Nobles, now called Athelney. This spot, scarcely comprising two acres of ground, was surrounded on all sides by marshes, so that it could be approached only in a boat, and in it nourished a considerable grove of alders, in which were stags, goats, and other animals. Here it is that the roman- tic incident of the burnt cake is supposed to have occurred ; a story told by many of the old writers, but nowhere so fully as in the Latin life of St. Neot. There we read that " Alfred, a fugitive, and exiled from his people, came by chance and entered the house of a poor herdsman, and there remained some days in pov- erty, concealed and unknown. " Now it happened that on the Sabbath day, the herdsman, as usual, led his cattle to their accustomed pastures, and the king remained alone with the man's wife. She, as necessity required, placed a few loaves, which some call loudas, on