A BERSERKER.
Following with saddened eyes the light _holker_ that carried away the
warrior maid, Gaëlo remained silent and pensive, while his champions
rested upon their oars. The steersman, a man of about thirty years, of a
merry face and clad in the coat and wide breeches of the skippers of the
Seine, was named Simon Large-Ears. He owed his surname to an enormous
pair of ears, that stood out far from his temples, and which were as red
as his nose. Simon, once a serf of the fisheries attached to the abbey
of St. Paterne, had, jointly with three other companions, who were
seated on the oarsmen's benches, and who wore the Northman pointed
casque and cuirass of iron scales, run away to the pirates and offered
them their services in the capacity of pilot and oarsmen, the moment
that the numerous Northman fleet had appeared at the mouth of the Seine.
Simon and his comrades, as well as many other Gallic serfs, who availed
themselves of the opportunity to drop their servitude and revenge upon
their masters the ill-treatment that the latter subjected them to, only
demanded from their Northman allies a share of the prospective booty.[1]
Leaning on his harpoon, silent and pensive, Gaëlo contemplated the
_holker_ of the Beautiful Shigne as it rowed back and became indistinct
in the light mist that frequently rises at sunset from the surface of
the river's waters. Simon Large-Ears, seated at the poop, and, as pilot,
holding the rudder in his hand, said to one of his companions surnamed
Robin Jaws, by reason of his lower jaw-bones protruding like a
Molossian's:
"Did you hear the conversation between the Beautiful Shigne and Gaëlo?
What savage she-devils are these Northman virgins! They must be courted
with rough sword whacks, caressed with battle-axe cracks, and their
hearts can be reached only by boring through their breasts, and if you
don't, then these furies make you wed death. How do you like such
betrothals?"
"I would prefer to court one of those African lionesses of which Ibrahim
the Saracen was telling us the other day," and turning towards his
bench-mate, a gigantic Northman of a beard so blonde that it seemed
almost white, Robin said: "Helloa, Lodbrog! If all the women of your
race receive their lovers in that manner, there must be more dead bodies
than new-born ones in your country."
"Yes--but the children of these virgin warriors, whom none possesses
until after he has vanquished his chosen one with the sword, become men,
everyone of whom are worth ten others in vigor and bravery," answered
the giant gravely, and raising his enormous head he proceeded: "All such
children are born, like myself, berserkers."
"Aye, aye!" put in the other Northman oarsmen in a low voice and with an
accent of deference that bordered on fear. "Lodbrog was born a
berserker!"
"I do not deny it, comrades," replied Simon; "but by the devil! Explain
to me what 'berserker' means."
"A warrior who is always terrible to his enemies," explained one of the
Northmans, "and sometimes dangerous to his friends."
The giant Lodbrog nodded his head affirmatively, while Simon and Robin
looked at him in astonishment, not having understood the mysterious
words of the pirates. At this moment Gaëlo approached his men. He had
awakened from the profound revery into which the disappearance of the
Buckler Maiden plunged him. The Northman chieftain looked determined.
"My champions," said Gaëlo in a resonant voice, "we must be ahead of the
Beautiful Shigne and seize the abbey of St. Denis ourselves! Yours shall
be the booty, mine the glory!"
"Gaëlo," observed Simon, "when I heard you mention the feat to your
warrior maid, I, who am well acquainted with the abbey of St. Denis,
where I have recently been more than once, when I was a serf of the
fishery of St. Paterne, may hell consume it, I took your words simply as
a lover's jest. Guarded as the abbey is, and fortified with thick walls,
the place can resist five or six hundred determined men. How can you
think of taking it with only fifteen? Come, Gaëlo, you must give up the
plan."
"My braves," resumed Gaëlo, after a moment's silence, "if I were to tell
you that a serf, a swine-herd, is at this very hour a count, the
seigneur and master of a province that Charles the Bald, grandfather of
Charles the Simple, who is now king of the Franks, presented him with,
you would answer me: 'A serf, a swine-herd, become master and seigneur
of a province? It is impossible!'"
"By the faith of Large-Ears, that would, indeed, be my answer. A
swine-herd can never become a count!"
"You think not?" replied Gaëlo. "And who is the present Count of
Chartres and master of the country if not a pirate who one time was a
swine-herd at Trancout, a poor village located near Troyes?"[2]
"Oh! Oh! Chief," put in Robin Jaws, "you have Hastain in mind, the old
bandit who fought in the ranks of the Northman pirates! We know the
song:
"When he had sacked the Franks,
Saw all his ships full rigged,
Hastain of Rome heard tell,
Vowed he would go there.
Vowed he would take the place,
Plunder and pillage it,
And make of Rome the King
His friend Boern Iron Sides."
"Simon," said Gaëlo, interrupting Robin's song, "listen well with both
your large ears to the end of the song! Proceed my champion!"
"The song ends well," answered Robin, resuming the thread of the ballad:
"Down Into Italy,
Plundering, the pirates went,
Laded their ships with rich
Spoils of the Churches.
Then Hastain gave the word,
For the return to France,
And to the Frankish shores
Steered they their way back.
"But the old Frankish King,
Dreading the pirates' band,
Quoth unto Hastain then:
'Strike not the abbeys;
Touch not nor plunder them,
Nor the seigniorial burgs,--
I shall establish you
Count of the Chartres.'
"Hastain the pirate Chief,
Well with the offer pleased,
Answered agreeably,
'Lo, I am willing!'
Thus was the bargain struck,
Thus he became the Count
Of the vast Chartres land,
He, once a swine-herd!"
"By the devil and his horns! Long live Hastain! All is possible!" cried
Simon Large-Ears, saying which he joined his piercing voice to the deep
voices of the pirates, who, striking with their oars upon the row of
bucklers that hung from the sides of the _holker_, sang fit to rend the
welkin:
"Thus was the bargain struck,
Thus he became the Count
Of the vast Chartres land,
He, once a swine-herd!"
"And now," Gaëlo resumed after his champions had finished the martial
refrain, "if a swine-herd serf could become the master of a province,
do you hold it impossible for fifteen resolute champions to take
possession of the abbey of St. Denis, the richest abbey of all Gaul?"
"No! No!" cried the pirates fired with the prospect of pillage, and
again smiting with their oars the bucklers that hung from the sides of
the _holker_. "To St. Denis! To St. Denis! Death to its tonsured
masters! Pillage! Pillage! Fire and blood!"
The thundering voice of Lodbrog the Giant dominated the din that
proceeded from the Northmans' throats and the clangor of the smitten
shields. Standing on his bench and whirling in one hand his long oar
with the ease that he would have handled a reed, he bellowed at the top
of his voice: "To St. Denis! To St. Denis!" And intoxicating and lashing
himself into a fury with his own clamor, his savage features speedily
betokened a degree of exaltation that developed into a kind of delirium.
His eyes rolled rapidly in their orbits; his lips whitened with foam;
and finally, emitting a terrible cry, he bent his oar in his hands and
broke it in two as if it had been a cane.
At the sight of such a display of superhuman strength, the Northmans,
who had for some little while before been observing Lodbrog with anxious
looks, now cried out in chorus:
"Beware all! He is berserk! He will kill us all!" And before Gaëlo had
time to prevent it, all the pirates threw themselves upon the giant, and
by their united efforts rolled him overboard into the Seine.
Gaëlo had anchored his vessel at a short distance from one of the woody
islets, washed by the river. Lodbrog fell heels over head into the water
between the _holker_ and the nearby shore. With one bound the giant
leaped out of the river, which was deep and rapid at that spot, and
gained the shore, where he ran about shouting: "To St. Denis! To St
Denis!" The frenzy that possessed the giant increased ten-fold the man's
prodigious strength. He uprooted a twenty-foot poplar, and armed with
the tree as with a mace, smote and crushed the other trees within his
reach. The largest branches flew into splinters, the trunks broke in
two, and still the furious vertigo of the colossus was on the increase.
Not far from the shore stood the ruins of a house still partly covered
by its roof; its walls arrested for a moment the demented course of the
berserker. But the obstacle redoubled his rage. The trunk of the poplar
served him for a ram. Its repeated blows broke through a portion of the
lower wall, which thereupon came tumbling down with a great crash. Held
up by the iron work in the opposite wall, a portion of the roof still
remained in place. The giant clambered over the debris, grasped the
beams of the roof with both hands and shook them furiously, ever
bellowing: "To St. Denis! To St. Denis!" At last the beams yielded, and
the worm-eaten roof, still partly covered with tiles, sank down upon
Lodbrog with a deafening crash. For an instant the raging maniac
disappeared under a cloud of dust, but presently reappeared unscathed
from the falling timber and tiles. His casque and iron armor had
protected him. He mounted the heap of ruins, looked around, and seeing
nothing more to destroy, descended, pulled up the joists and beams,
lifted up enormous stones and hurled them about with the irresistible
force of those engines of war that are called catapults. Suddenly the
berserker was heard to emit a roar like that of a lion; he raised his
powerful arms heavenward, his body became rigid; for a moment he
remained motionless like a gigantic iron statue, and then, like a
colossus about to tumble from its base, swayed for an instant in air,
dropped to the ground and rolled like a solid block from the top of the
heap of ruins down to its foot, where he lay prone, seemingly as
inanimate as a corpse.
Gaëlo and the Northman pirates were not amazed at the frenzy of Lodbrog.
They knew well that many a Northman mariner was subject to these
frightful fits, frightful like the fury of the insane, a sort of
epilepsy peculiar to the berserkers, with whom the anticipation or the
ardor of battle, anger or drunkenness brought on the spell. Simon
Large-Ears and Robin Jaws, however, now witnessed the spectacle for the
first time; they gazed at it with surprise and affright. Finally, seeing
from the distance that Lodbrog lay unconscious and rigid amidst the
wreck that he had wrought, Simon cried:
"He is now fortunately dead! We have nothing more to fear!"
"The Northmans are right," put in Robin; "such frantic folks are as
dangerous to their friends as to their enemies. If that berserker had
remained among us in the _holker_, he would have strangled or drowned us
all!"
"After which he would have flung the vessel over his head like a wooden
shoe. He could have done it. I saw him flinging around beams and rocks
that must have surely weighed three times as much as any man," added
Large-Ears. "What an amount of strength all wasted! How he would have
scattered about death and desolation in the abbey of St. Denis, where he
thought he was fighting. After all, it is a pity that he is dead and
gone."
"He is not dead--weigh anchor, my champions! With two strokes of the
oars we can reach the isle, and presently you will see Lodbrog return to
himself as if awakening from a dream."
"By the horns of the devil!" exclaimed Simon. "Out of fear that he may
take to dreaming again and harpoon me, I prefer to stay on the vessel
with my friend Robin;" and Large-Ears never once took his eyes off the
berserker who continued motionless only a hundred feet from the shore
and in plain sight of his companions.
"The Northmans may go alone to the assistance of the maniac, if they so
desire," observed Robin as the _holker_ approached the shore. "It will
be a sweet sensation for Lodbrog to recognize the faces of folks from
his native land, when he regains consciousness, will it not?"
"It sometimes happens that fires, thought to be extinct, suddenly flame
up," Large-Ears rejoined sagely.
The vessel touched land, and Gaëlo and the Northmans approached the
colossus, not, however, without caution. One of the pirates took off his
casque, filled it half-full with water, threw into it a handful of sand
that he picked up from the shore and shook up the mixture, while his
companions vainly sought to raise Lodbrog into a sitting posture. The
body was rigid like a bar of iron. They found it impossible to extract
from his clenched fist a stone that he still held as firmly as in a vise
between his fingers. His face, surrounded by the borders of his casque,
was livid and motionless, his jaws were set, his lips were covered with
froth, his eyes fixed, dilated, glassy. The Northman, dipping out of his
casque the sand moistened with cold water, threw it by handfuls upon the
prostrate giant's face.
"Be careful!" called out Gaëlo. "You will blind him with the moist
sand."
"No, no!" confidently answered the pirate, redoubling his sandy douches.
"It is especially when the fine gravel enters the eye that the good
effect is produced."
The pirate's experience did not deceive him. Soon slight convulsive
tremors began to agitate the lines on Lodbrog's face. His rigid fingers
loosened and allowed the stone that they clenched to roll off. A few
minutes later his limbs became supple. One of the Northmans ran to the
river and dipped up some fresh water and dashed it in the berserker's
face. The latter was soon heard to mumble in a ruffled voice while he
rubbed his eyelids:
"My eyes burn me. Am I in the celestial Walhalla promised by Odin to
departed warriors?"
"You are here among your companions of war, my brave champion," Gaëlo
answered him. "You have broken down a score of huge trees and demolished
a house. Was that enough to limber up your strength? What do you still
want?"
"Oh! Oh!" mumbled the giant, shaking his enormous head, and without
ceasing to rub his eyes with his fists. "I am not at all surprised at
having played such havoc. I began to feel myself berserk when I cried
out, 'To St. Denis!' and all the time after I imagined myself
demolishing the abbey and slaughtering the monks and their soldiers. I
was trying to exterminate them all."
"Do not be disappointed, my Hercules," Gaëlo replied encouragingly. "The
moon will rise early; we shall row all night; to-morrow evening we shall
be at St. Denis, and day after to-morrow at Paris."