THE WATCH FIRE.
“Fire will be needful
For him who enters
With his knees frozen.
Of meat and clothing
Stands he in need
Who journeys o’er mountains.
“Water is needful,—
A towel and kindness,
For the guest’s welcome.
Kind inclinations
Let him experience;—
Answer his questions.”
_Hávamál._
Sound and deep were the Parson’s slumbers, complete and absolute was
his state of unconsciousness. Noises there were in the camp, no doubt,
noises of every description: eight or ten people without any particular
occupation, without any reason whatever for keeping silence—rather the
reverse,—are apt to be noisy. But it was all one to him, the Seven
Sleepers themselves could not have slept more soundly; and the next
four or five hours were to him as though they had not been. His first
perception of sublunary matters was awakened by the words of a well
known air, which at first mingled with his dreams, and then presented
themselves to his waking senses:—
“O, never fear though rain be falling,—
O, never fear the thunder dire,—
O, never heed the wild wind’s calling,
But gather closer round the fire.
For thus it is, through storm and rain,
The weary midnight hours must wane,
Ere joyous morning comes again,
And bids the gloom retire.”
The Parson unrolled himself from his cloak and looked out; the night had
fallen dark enough, and the rain, though it gave evident symptoms of
having exhausted itself, was still falling, but scantily and sparingly.
The mist was thicker and darker and blacker than ever; all, however, was
bright light in the camp, for the bale-fires of Baldur could not have
burnt more brightly than the watch-fires of the picket. The Captain had
had plenty of spare hands and plenty of spare time, and had kept his men
in work by collecting stores of fuel; besides which he had made use of
an expedient which, common enough in winter camps, is seldom resorted to
in summer. A full-grown pine, which seemed to have died of old age, and
had dried up where it stood, was cut down; the head, already deprived of
its branches by Time, was chopped off and laid alongside the butt, end
for end, and the fires had been lighted on the top of these two pieces
of timber. The interstice between them admitting the air from below,
roared like a furnace, and blew up the bright flames on high; whilst the
trunks themselves, which had speedily become ignited, contributed their
own share to the general light and heat. There were several supplementary
fires, for the great furnace was much too fierce for culinary operations;
and the smoke from all these, pressed down, as it were, by the
superincumbent mist, formed, by the reflection of the flames, a sort of
luminous halo, beyond which it was impossible for eye to penetrate. Here
and there fir branches were stuck into the ground to dry the clothes
upon, for though the drizzle had not exactly ceased, the heat dried much
faster than the rain moistened.
Full in the blaze of light, and as near as he could approach to it
without burning himself, stood Birger; his neat little figure just as
tidy, and just as carefully dressed, as if there had been no such thing
as falling rain, or wet juniper, or prickly brambles in the world. He
was standing with his back to the fire, and his hands in the pockets of
his shooting-jacket, watching the preparations for a late supper, and
singing, at the full pitch of a very powerful voice, the magic words
which had recalled the Parson to a state of consciousness. The Captain,
who had evidently been furbishing up with fresh chalk the “S. F.” on
his cap, which looked quite white and new, notwithstanding the rain, had
just returned from visiting his sentries, and was examining the lock
of his American rifle, which he had carried with him, to see if it had
sustained any damage from the wet. Jacob, and his attendant imps, were
emerging from behind the flames with the everlasting black kettle, which
was accompanied this time by a pile of steaks, cut from some mysterious
animal, and served up on the splash-board of one of the carioles, by way
of dish.
“Halloo! Birger,” said the Parson; “you here! Rather a change in the
general aspect of affairs since we parted last!”
“You may well say that; I never saw such a determined day’s rain; I
thought the twilight of the gods was come in real earnest.”
“To judge from the fire that you have got up,” said the Parson, emerging
from the tent, “you seem inclined to realize the old prophecy, that that
twilight is to finish off by a general conflagration.”
“You need not cast inquiring glances at me,” said Birger to the Captain,
who, having satisfied himself about the state of his weapons, was trying
to make out the allusion. “I am not going to tell you that long story
now. The gods themselves, if we may trust the high song of Odin, used to
take off the edge of their hunger, and thirst, too,—for they were thirsty
souls,—before they called on Bragi, the god of minstrelsy, to sing even
their own deeds. And, to tell you the truth, to say nothing of my being
as hungry as a hunter, these steaks are most magnificent, and this kettle
unusually savoury.”
“What have you got in it?” said the Parson.
“Andhrimnir cooks Sahrimnir in Eldhrimnir,” replied Birger, quoting from
the cookery of the prose Edda. “Do you not see Odin has sent us a present
of heavenly meat from Valhalla?”
“Nonsense! what is the meat of Valhalla called here on earth?”
“Goat’s flesh,” said Birger, demurely.
“Humph!” said the Parson, turning over, with his crimping knife, a bone
almost big enough to have belonged to a small ox; “and this is a goat’s
rib, is it?”
“Valhalla was always remarkable for its breed of goats,” said Birger:
“but never you mind what rib it is, there’s a biscuit to eat with it,
that is all you need care about, just now. I am afraid our host, the
Skalfogdar” (bowing to the Captain), “cannot find you any currant jelly
to eat with it.”
“I can find you some cranberry jelly, though,” said the Captain, “which
is a much better thing, and much more characteristic of the country.
Here, Jacob, hand me that mess-tin, will you. The very first thing I did,
after reconnoitring my post, was to lay in a store of these cranberries,
and to make them into jelly. I had not to go far for them. You would not
like them in the Swedish fashion—pickled,—would you? I think the men have
got some which they have made for themselves.”
“Thank you, yes; and a little of the forbidden stuff, too, to wash it
down with. Never mind the water, Piersen, I have taken my share of that
already.”
Here Jacob made his appearance, with four or five orre grouse, spitted
upon a strip of fir;—Jacob piqued himself on his fjeld cuisine, and
really did serve up his dinners admirably. The whole was concluded with
split grayling, by way of cheese, for being north of the Wener Sjön, they
were in the grayling country,—a circumstance which the Captain, whose
post was not a mile from the river, had not been slow to profit by;—on
the sunny morning of the preceding day, he had caught them by dozens.
The grayling, which are seldom caught in Norway, where the rivers are
mostly too rough for such tender fish, abound throughout the whole north
of Sweden, and are worth anything to the fisherman; they render his
chances of sport, as well as of provisions, very much less precarious,
because they do everything which trout do not; they are stationary
when—in Sweden, at all events—the trout is migratory; they come into
high season when the trout are going out; they will not rise in a stormy
day, which the trout loves; but, when the sun is bright and the wind is
low, and not a ripple curls the surface, and not a trout stirs beneath
it, the swift, shadow-like grayling dot it with their rises like so many
hail-stones. They are very good eating, too, when dressed in any way man
can devise; but a very excellent method, and a very common method in
Sweden, is to split them down the back, pepper them well, and dry them in
the hot sun before broiling them, or making them into plok-fiske. This
Jacob was unable to do on the present occasion, for the rain had been
falling from the time of the Captain’s return from the river; so he had
substituted for the sun that which was scarcely less hot—the Captain’s
blazing fire; and his imitation was unanimously pronounced to have
exceeded the original.
“I do not think I should have fared like this at any of the farm houses,”
said the Parson, stretching himself at full length on his cloak and
basking at the fire, for the rain had now entirely ceased, and the
bivouac began to look home-like and comfortable. “I must say it required
a pretty firm determination to keep steadily onward, with soaked clothes
and chilled bones and empty stomachs, such as we had this morning. I was
sorely tempted to make for shelter; but I set before me the comforts of
persevering, and I am very glad I did so. To say nothing of your company
and Jacob’s dinner, this glorious blaze is far better than a farm-house
stove, and my old cloak than a dirty sheep-skin. Well, virtue is its own
reward. Jacob, fill the pot with hot water, and let us have a few embers
here to keep it warm. Have you got any sugar?”
“There is nothing your countrymen are so remarkable for,” said
Birger, “as a steady, resolute perseverance against difficulties and
discouragements.”
“Pluck?” suggested the Captain.
“Yes, Pluck! you did not know when you were beaten at Waterloo, and so
you won the battle; Wellington would have got an army of Englishmen out
of the scrape of Moscow, if he had ever been ass enough to get them into
it.”
“I think,” said the Parson, “that this may be traced to a national
peculiarity of ours—love of adventure. Other men will undergo hardships
and incur dangers, in search of gain, or even in the pursuit of some
definite object, but the Englishman seeks his hardships for the pleasure
of undergoing them,—courts his dangers for the pleasure of surmounting
them, and follows out his adventure for adventure’s sake.”
“In fact,” said the Captain, “he does just what we are all doing now.”
“Well,” said Birger, “and let no one say—what is the use of it?—what is
the Englishman the better for diving into mines, and scaling mountains,
and crossing deserts?—what has he to show for it? He has this to show
for it,—a manliness of character,—a spirit to encounter the dangers of
life, and a heart to overcome its difficulties. Depend upon it, while
your aristocracy—men brought up and nourished in the very lap of luxury
and ease—seek their pleasures in the dangers of the wild ocean, or the
hardships of the stormy mountain-side, you will see no symptoms of
degeneracy in the hardihood and manliness of your national character.
Pluck is a genuine English word, slang though it be.”
“I think you may translate it into Swedish,” said the Captain, “for our
English blood has a cross of Scandinavian in it, and there really is as
great a similarity in our national characteristics as there is in the
structure of our languages.”
“I think,” said the Parson, “your word ‘Mod’ implies pluck, with a dash
of fierceness in it. When it is said of some grand berserkar, ‘har
oprist syn mod,’ it means that he has summoned his pluck, with the full
intention of making his enemies aware of that fact. Still, however, it is
a fair rendering of our more peaceable word, and you have a right to it;
but I am quite sure you cannot translate that expression into any other
language under the sun, without losing some part of its force.”
“Whether any foreigners can translate the word into their own language,”
said the Captain, “is more than I will undertake to say, but they
perfectly understand and appreciate this peculiarity of our English
character. Last year I was arranging with one of the Chamouny guides an
expedition into the higher Alps; I had with me a jolly talking little
French marquis, whom I had picked up at St. Gervais. He was an ambitious
little fellow, and volunteered—Heaven help him!—to be my companion.
My guide—(you recollect old Couttet, Parson?)—looked rather blank at
this, and taking me aside, said in a low voice, ‘_absolument je n’irais
pas avec ce Monsieur lá_.’ ‘Why?’ said I, rather astonished at the man
refusing that which would certainly have put some additional francs into
his pocket. ‘_Je connais bien ces Francais_,’ said he—‘an Englishman
is fearful enough in the valleys, always saying he will not do this,
and he cannot do that, because in truth he is so proud that he does not
like to take anything in hand and be beat in it; but once get him on the
mountain, and fairly in for it, and be the danger what it may, he faces
it, and be the fatigue what it may, he keeps up a good heart, and in the
end gets through it all as well as we do ourselves. Your Frenchman is as
bold as brass in the valleys, and does not do badly for a spurt if he
thinks people are admiring him, but he gets cowed when danger comes and
no one to see him, and sits down and dies when he is tired.’”
“Mr. Couttet was a sensible fellow, and knew his man,” said Birger, who,
descended from the old aristocracy of Sweden, hated and despised the
French party most cordially; “and how did you get rid of your travelling
companion?”
“O! Couttet took the management of that upon his own hands; he made
the poor little marquis’s hair stand on end, with all sorts of stories
about snow storms, and whirlwinds, and frozen travellers; which no doubt
were true enough, for there is not a pass in the High Alps without
its well-authenticated tale of death; so the little fellow came to me
heartily ashamed of himself, and looking like a dog that was going to be
whipped, with his ‘mille excuses,’ and so forth, and in fact, we then and
there parted company, and I have not seen him from that time to this. He
certainly was rather an ambitious Tom Thumb for the Col du Géant.—Hallo!
there is something on foot there,” said he, interrupting himself, “hark
to that! there goes another.” And in fact, three or four shots not very
distant from them were distinctly heard, though they came, not sharp
and ringing as such sounds generally strike upon the ear through the
clear air of the north, but deadened by the mist, as if, so to speak,
the sound had been smothered by a feather-bed. “There goes another! and
another!” then came a whole platoon—“O, by George! I must go and visit my
sentries.”
“All nonsense,” said Birger, “one fellow fires at a rustling
leaf, and then all the rest crack off their pieces, by the way of
follow-the-leader; you may just as well make yourself comfortable,”
drawing his cloak round him by way of suiting the action to the word.
“Hand me over the bottle, Jacob! some more hot water in the pot!”
“I shall go, however,” said the Captain, who was young at picket work,
and proportionably anxious; so shouldering his rifle, and calling to Tom,
his corporal and interpreter, he disappeared into the outer darkness,
while his friends settled themselves more comfortably in their cloaks,
and threw half a dozen additional, not to say superfluous, logs into the
glorious blaze.
The dispositions at the foot of the pass had been made with great
judgment; the object was, if possible, to prevent anything from passing
during the night, but at any rate to arrange matters so that nothing
should pass without being seen.
For this purpose a pretty large fire was lighted so near to the
perpendicular part of the rock that nothing would be likely to go behind
it, the shrubs of course being cleared away from its vicinity; and on the
opposite side of the passage was a little sentry-box of fir branches,
under which sat two Swedes, with directions to let fly at anything that
crossed between them and the fire; so that if they missed, as most likely
they would, the picket above might at least be prepared.
The men, who had been excited by the firing, were sharp as needles, and
indeed, were not very far from letting fly at their own commander, but
they had seen nothing that they could be very certain about, though of
course their imaginations were full of half the beasts in Noah’s Ark; and
so, after straining his eyes into the thick darkness for half an hour
or more, the Captain heaped fresh fuel on the fire, recommended a sharp
look-out, returned slowly up the pass, and was well laughed at for his
pains as he resumed his seat by the blazing tree.
“By the way, Birger, what is that story that you and the Parson were
alluding to just before dinner, I hope you have eaten and drank enough by
this time to qualify you for relating it.”
“What, the twilight of the gods? the Ragnarök, as the Edda calls it; that
is not a story, it is a bit of heathenism.”
“It seems to me,” said the Captain, “that you Swedes keep your heathenism
a great deal better than you do your Christianity.”
“The Norwegians do, certainly,” said Birger, “the fact is, their
conversion was effected by force of arms, rather than by force of
argument; the party of Olaf the Christian was stronger than the party of
Hakon the heathen, so they killed and converted, and the people became
Christians, and very appropriately adopted the saint’s battle-axe for
their national emblem. As for their Reformation, that was simply an order
from a despotic court, not resisted, only because the people did not care
much about the matter. ‘It will not make herrings dear,’ was the popular
remark on the subject. The creed of Odin was the only religion that they
were in earnest about, and that is why the legends that they cling to,
are, nine times in ten, heathen rather than Christian.”
“I think I have read that story about the herrings in Geijer, but applied
to a different nation,” said the Parson; “it will not do for you Swedes
to be throwing stones at Norway, in the matter of that Reformation; your
original conversion by St. Ansgar, was a good deal more creditable than
theirs, but your Reformation was simply the party of Gustaf stronger than
the party of Christiern—you reformed your Church because you wanted to
dissolve the union of Kalmar.”
“What do you say about your own Reformation?” said Birger.
“That it has nothing to do with the twilight of the gods, which the
Captain wants to hear about—tell us what you Swedes believe about that.”
“Why, we Swedes do not believe in it at all; it is not like the legends
of the Walpurgis Night, or the death of Baldur, which are annually kept
alive by the change of seasons which they commemorate. This legend
has lost its hold on the popular mind; but it is a curious theory,
notwithstanding, because it contains evident traces of a revelation
corrupted, because disjoined from that people to whose guardianship had
been committed the oracles of Divine Truth. In the twilight of the gods
may be clearly traced a representation of the end of the world, such as
is revealed to us:—a fierce winter, the most terrible natural affliction
to the northern mind, is to usher it in; then comes the general falling
away, which we are ourselves taught to expect.[57]
“The sun and the moon are to be devoured by the wolves, that have
been continually pursuing them ever since creation, and every now and
then, by seizing them, have caused eclipses; the stars fall, the earth
quakes so that the trees are shaken from their roots, and the mountains
totter;—then the Midgard Serpent turns on its ocean bed, and an immense
wave rushes over the land, upon which floats the phantom ship, Naglfar,
which is built of the nails of dead men—the wolf, Fenrir, together with
the midgard serpent,—both of them the offspring of Loki, the Principle
of Evil,—which hitherto have been chained down by the Æsir, are now
permitted to break loose; the heavens are cleft in twain, and the sons
of Muspell, the Band of Brightness, headed by Surtur the Avenger, ride
through the breach, and advance by the bridge of Bifrost which bursts
asunder beneath them. For the time the Avengers join their bright bands
with Loki and the Children of Darkness, and advance to the battle-field
of Vigrid, where the destinies of the world are to be decided.
“In the mean while the gods are fully prepared; Heimdall, the Warder
of Heaven, has sounded the Horn Gjallar, and the gods assemble in
council;—Valhalla pours out from its five hundred and forty gates its
hosts of heroes; these, which are the men who have been slain in battle
from the beginning of the world, and ever since have been trained by
daily tournaments for this very purpose, are eager for the combat; and
Odin, having previously ridden over for the last time to the Well of
Mimir, and consulted the Norna, marshalls his hosts on the field of
Vigrid; loud and desperate is the battle, the Powers of Evil fall one by
one before the gods, but very few of these survive the conflict. Thor,
having killed the Midgard Serpent, falls exhausted with his efforts and
dies; Frey, who has parted with the sword of victory, falls before the
avenger, Surtur; Loki and Heimdall engage in battle and mortally wound
each other; Odin himself is swallowed up by the wolf Fenrir, which is
instantly destroyed by Vidar; and last of all, Tyr, the God of Victory,
falls in the very act of overcoming the dog Garm.
“Surtur the Avenger, having now no opponent, sets the earth and the
heavens on fire with his excessive brightness, and the whole race of men
is consumed, with the exception of certain chosen individuals who lie
hid and protected in the forest of Hodmimir. Then Surtur himself retires
before Vidar, the God of Silence, who, calling to him Modi and Magni
(Courage and Might) the sons of Thor (Violence), and summoning Baldur
(Innocence) from the realms of Hela (Night or Invisibility), founds a new
heaven and a new earth, and a new race of inhabitants, and they dwell on
the plains of Ida (perpetual youth), where Asgard formerly stood, and
their descendants shall spread over the new earth, which shall be lighted
by a new sun.
“‘The radiant sun
A daughter bears
Ere Fenrir takes her;—
On her mother’s course
Shall ride that maid
When the gods have perished.’
“And now, to quote the conclusion of the Prose Edda, ‘If thou hast any
further questions to ask, I know not who can answer thee, for I never
heard tell of any one who could relate what will happen in the other ages
of the world. Make, therefore, the best use thou canst of what has been
imparted to thee.’”
“Why,” said the Captain, “this is Revelation!”
“To be sure it is,” said the Parson; “and my wonder is not that so much
of revealed truth should have been corrupted, but that so much should
have been preserved. There is no occasion for the sneers of those who
say that in the conversion of Scandinavia, St. Ansgar merely substituted
Valentine for Vali, St. Philip for Iduna, and our Lord for Baldur. He
had, in truth, little to teach his converts beyond explaining allegories,
and shewing them that their religion was only a mild, yet tolerably
faithful type of that which was actually true,—that Thor and Odin
were attributes, not persons, and that Asgard and Gimli, and Hela and
Nifleheim, were states and conditions, not places.”
It must not be supposed that this conversation had been continued
altogether without interruption. Shots had from time to time rung through
the night-air; some faintly and from great distances; some, as it would
seem, within a few hundred yards of them; there was evidently something
restless in the circle of the skal, but their own sentries gave no
notice, and the ear becoming accustomed to such noises, the shots had of
late been little regarded.
One moment, however, changed the whole aspect of affairs, and recalled
the thoughts of the party from the heights of Asgard to the affairs of
middle earth.
A shot from the foot of the pass; then another! “Hjortarne! hjortarne!”
(the stags! the stags!) roared out the sentries.
The Captain sprang into a dark corner, bringing the whole blaze before
him, and cocked his rifle. Then came a sound like a troop of horse
at full gallop—a rush!—a charge! Jacob flying into the arms of the
sportsmen, his coffee pot scattering around its fragrant contents,—dark
forms bounding across the bright spot of light, scattering the men,
and the wet clothes, and the cookery, and the crockery! A crack from
the Captain’s rifle! a crash! and the whole scene passed away like an
illusion, leaving the circle tenantless, in the midst of which the great
fire was blazing away as quietly and peaceably as if nothing unusual had
ever been illumined by its light.
“By the Thousand! that shot told somewhere,” said Birger, picking himself
up. “By George, it is Jacob! poor devil! Well, I am sorry for him, the
old scoundrel.”
But Jacob, when he could be brought to his senses, could not find out
that he had been wounded at all, though his great unwieldy frock-coat
was split up the back, and the tails rolled in some unaccountable way
round his head. His ideas, which were never peculiarly bright, had got
completely bewildered, and nothing could convince him that a legion of
Trolls had not been making a ball-room of his ample back.
“It was not Jacob I fired at,” said the Captain, quietly reloading his
rifle; “take a pine knot, and look a little further up the pass; I
suspect you will find something more valuable than our fat friend. Oh,
that’s it!” as a loud shout was heard; “I thought it could not be far
off,—bring him into the light.”
Birger repeated the command in Swedish, and presently three or four of
the men emerged from the outer darkness, bearing, with some difficulty,
an enormous elk, the patriarch of the forest.
“Well done,” said Birger; “capital shot! Here! Tom, Torkel, out with your
knives, and off with the skin; do not think twice about it. Ten to one
we shall have Moodie here; he will not mind his own people much, but he
knows that we are not in the habit of firing into the air, and he will be
coming to see what has been disturbing the camp all night. There, look
sharp! never mind a tear or two; make that beast into goat’s flesh as
soon as you can. Cut off the head at once, you cannot disguise the horns!”
“Well, but what if Moodie does see it?” said the Parson.
“Why,” said the Captain, “Birger is quite right. Moodie is in command,
and he would consider it his duty to report us; and besides, I will
answer for it he would jump at the chance of playing Brutus, and delating
his own friends. There was a good deal of significance in the way he
cautioned us that elks and red-deer were strictly preserved. It is a
fact, too, that with all that immense range of royal forest at his
undivided command, he has never shot a stag or an elk yet. He considers
himself on honour, and behaves like a gentleman and a kammerjunker, as he
is.”[58]
“He is the only man in Sweden who does, then,” said Birger. “I will
engage for it. Bjornstjerna, Hof Ofwer Jagmästere, as he writes himself,
never loses a chance if he can get one on the sly. By the way, how nicely
the mist has cleared off, without any one seeing it. Positively I can see
the stars again. I told you it would be so:—
“Through storm and rain,
The weary midnight hours must wane,
Ere joyous morning come again,
And bid the gloom retire.”
“I wish I could take you up to our day look-out place,” said the Captain;
“we should have a good view of the watch-fires from it now. I stood there
for an hour together on the first night, looking at the fires of the
hållet; and by this time the dref must have come quite near enough for us
to see them too.”
“Well,” said Birger, “come along! I think I know the way,—it is the path
I came down by this morning, is it not?”
“Yes it is, but it will never do on a dark night like this; it is not
over-safe by day, and there are shreds of the mist hanging about us
still. We want light for that path.”
“And light you shall have,” said Birger. “Here, Tom, split me this
fir-root, it is as full of turpentine as it can hold. There,” continued
he, thrusting the end of one of the slips into the blaze, and striking up
the song of the Dalecarlian miners:—
“‘Brother, kindle thy bright light,
For here below ’tis dark as night;
Gloomy may be on earth thy way,
But light and good shall make it day.’
“Now then, I think we start by this ledge; light another of these
pine-slips, Tom, and bring the whole bundle with you.”
The path was not altogether a safe one, certainly, for it was a narrow
ledge, winding round the face of the cliff that formed the northern side
of the pass, and leading to a sort of promontory which jutted forward
somewhat in advance of the range; but there were plenty of branches to
hold on by, and there was no real danger as long as there was light
enough to see where to place the feet; and when they had got fairly out
of the range of their own enormous fire, the stars were glimmering, and
the night was not, after all, so very dark. A withered ash, the bare
trunk of which stretched out horizontally, like a finger-post, from the
extreme point, was their look-out, and bore the strip of calico, once
white, but now sullied and dishonoured by twenty-four hours of continuous
rain, which marked the position of their picket.
The look-out commanded completely the position of the hållet, the
encampment of which was placed among some straggling copse that feathered
the reverse slope of the spur of rock which connected the range of
hills with the rapids and falls of the river. Among this bushwood were
scattered, irregularly, the cooking and sleeping fires, glancing every
now and then on the huts of boughs and other temporary shelter which had
been run up to protect the men from the wet, while, on the bare crest
of the spur, which had been entirely denuded of what little timber it
possessed, was a line of fifty watch-fires, one to each skalfogde’s
command; each of these had its stoker, who from time to time replenished
its blaze with fresh logs,—and its sentry, who, sitting or lying in
some dark recess, was to fire at everything that came within the circle
of the light. Everything betokened extreme watchfulness; not a fire
burnt dim,—black figures were continually passing and repassing before
them,—and every now and then a straggling shot waked up the echoes, and
kept the whole line in a state of continual agitation.
The dref, which had advanced a little during the day, was still five or
six miles off, and their fires, which formed a vast semicircle, were,
for the most part, hidden by the trees; but a hazy and continuous line
of misty light defined the whole position, tinging the very sky with
redness, so that the receding skirts of the mist looked luminous, like a
terrestrial aurora borealis.
While they yet gazed, the tree tops, which, beyond the reflection of the
fires, had hitherto been one unbroken sea of blackness, came gradually
into view: first the spiry tops of the firs, then the rounder and softer
outlines of the birch and ash, grew more and more defined; then the
character of the foliage became distinguishable,—the glaucous white of
the poplar and the fringiness of the ash and rowan: then a soft pale
light, interspersed with deep broad shadows, was cast over the scene,
slightly dimming the glow of the watch-fires, and contrasting strangely
with their yellow light; and then the half moon rose up from the cliffs
behind them, illuminating the distant landscape, but bringing that
immediately beneath their feet into blacker and darker shade.
“Your friend Bjornstjerna is a plucky fellow,—that I will say for him;
most men would have turned tail at such a drench of rain as we have had;
and now virtue promises to be its own reward—we shall have a glorious day
to-morrow.”
“I think we shall,” said Birger,—“indeed, I am sure we shall, as far as
the weather is concerned; but I am afraid that will not prevent us from
suffering some loss by what we have had already. You may depend on it
every beast within our circle has gone the rounds and tried the weak
points of it,—some have escaped, at all events. The wolves last night,
and the stags just now, have forced the passage with very little loss;
and certainly ours is not the most unguarded spot in the line.”
“By George! Birger! that shot is from our post!”
“Not a doubt of that;—and there’s another! Wait a bit, it may be nothing
after all.”
“O! but it is something!” said the Captain, in an agony, as three or four
more shots rang from the out-post itself, followed by confused cries and
shouts, as if men were engaged in mortal conflict.
The Captain threw himself on the steep descent, the whole of which he
would have accomplished very much quicker than was at all salutary for
his bones, had not Birger caught him by the collar as he was disappearing.
“For God’s sake, mind what you are about! Take a torch in your hand, if
you must go; or, better still, let Tom go first. Whatever it is, the
thing must be over long before you can get there. All you will do at that
headlong speed will be to break your neck down the precipice!”
Tom, much more cool, had already taken the lead, and was throwing a light
on the narrow and broken pathway for the Captain to see where to place
his footsteps. Birger’s selection of Tom for a leader was a good one,
for it was absolutely impossible for one man to pass another during the
descent, and no threats or entreaties from the Captain could urge the
phlegmatic Norwegian beyond the bounds of strict prudence. The last ten
feet of the rock the Captain leaped, and pounced down from above into the
midst of the picket.
Before the great fire lay a full-grown bear, dead, and bleeding from a
dozen wounds, and round him were grouped the whole picket—including the
sentries, who had deserted their posts,—whooping, and hallooing, and
screaming, and making all sorts of unintelligible noises.
The story was soon told, when the men had been reduced to something like
order. The bear had been attempting to steal past the first fire, and,
sidling away from it, had almost run over the two sentries, who were
much too frightened to fire with any aim or effect. The bear, almost as
frightened as they, had rushed forward, but, startled at the great blaze
upon which he came suddenly at the turn of the pass, hesitated a moment,
and received Torkel’s spear in his breast. The rifles and guns, which
were lying about, were caught up and discharged indiscriminately, and,
as luck would have it, without taking effect on any of the party. Some
rushed on with their axes, some with knives, some with blazing brands;
and the bear dropped down among them, mobbed to death, every individual
of the party being firmly convinced that it was he, and none but he, who
had struck the victor stroke.
“Well!” said Birger, “there is the bear, at all events; and a good thing
for us that he is there; we should not have heard the last of it from
Moodie for some time, if he had slipped off. Hang him up, my men; we will
skin him when we have time and daylight; we do not want to make goat’s
meat of that fellow, at all events. Hang him up openly, by the side of
the wolf.”
“Bother that moon,” said the Captain, sulkily, for he did not enter into
the spirit of ‘_quod facit per alium facit per se_.’ “What a set of
lunatics we were to go staring after the picturesque instead of minding
our business; all of us together, too!”
“It was very poetical,” said the Parson.
“Yes, that is the very thing. Birger, you do not take in the allusion, I
can see—a ‘grāte powut,’ as they pronounce it, is, in Ireland, slang for
an irrecoverable fool.”
“Well! well!” said Birger, laughing,—for, being an old bear-hunter, he
was not jealous, and could afford to laugh,—“we have not got to the
higher flights of poetry yet, and we will take good care not to leave our
posts again. As for you, Captain, _pends-toi, brave Crillon, nous nous
sommes combattus à Arcques et tu n’y étais pas_. However, I think we had
better get a little sleep, those who can, for the chances are we shall
want steady nerves to-morrow.”
So, sending back the sentries to their posts, the whole party, with their
weapons by their sides, and everything ready for a sudden emergency,
rolled themselves up in their cloaks, with their feet to the fire, one of
them (taking it by turns of an hour each) walking up and down, rifle in
hand, within the circle of its light.