The remaining ships of Hakon were woefully
shattered; they drove from their anchors, many were stranded on the
shore, others struck against shallows and rocks, or found equal disaster
by running foul of each other.
The next morning presented a beach covered with dead bodies and a sea
strewn with wreckage.
King Hakon himself had never so much as drawn his sword. His barons and
officers had urged him to remain on board his ship. Defeated, and
dismayed at his manifold disasters, he called for a truce for the burial
of his dead, and five days were spent by friend and foe in consort in
raising above the graves of the fallen warriors those rude memorials the
traces of which still remain to mark the field of battle.
Of the twenty thousand followers of the Norse king scarcely as many
hundreds remained alive, and of his splendid fleet but a score of
dismantled galleys were left afloat to carry back the defeated invaders
to their several homes.
Crossing to the outer seas, Hakon gathered about him the few pirate
chiefs who had joined him in the hope of plunder, and upon them he
bestowed as rewards for their service the islands of which he had made
imaginary conquest. He gave the isle of Arran to Earl Margad, who had
invaded it, and upon Roderic MacAlpin he bestowed the isle of Bute.
These chiefs, however, did not at once take possession of their estates,
but remained on the ships that they might help to replenish the
exhausted provisions of the fleet by forcible contribution from the isles.
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