on shore, and some of them occupied large storehouses which the natives
had built for drying their figs; and to the women, under direction of
Juanita, was allotted a great airy cave, with smaller caves branching from
it, where the natives had made palm baskets. Day after day they labored,
transferring all their goods and provisions to the land,--tools, and
horses, and mules, clothing, and simple furniture. Most of them joined
with pleasure in this toil, but others grew restless as they transferred
all their possessions to land, and sometimes the women especially would
climb to high places and gaze longingly towards Spain.
One morning a surprise came to Luis. Every night it was their custom to
have a great fire on the beach, and to meet and sing chants around it. One
night Luis had personally put out the blaze of the fire, as it was more
windy than usual, and went to sleep in his tent. Soon after midnight he
was awakened by a glare of a great light upon his tent's thin walls, and
hastily springing up, he saw their largest caravel on fire. Rushing out to
give the alarm, he saw a similar flame kindled in the second vessel, and
then, after some delay, in the third. Then he saw a dark boat pulling
hastily towards the shore, and going down to the beach he met their most
trusty captain, who told him that the ships had been burnt by order of the
archbishop, in order that their return might be hopeless, and that their
stay on the island might be forever.
There was some lamentation among the emigrants when they saw their
retreat thus cut off, but Luis when once established on shore did not
share it; to be near Juanita was enough for him, though he rarely saw her.
He began sometimes to feel that the full confidence of the archbishop was
withdrawn from him, but he was still high in office, and he rode with
Oppas over the great island, marking it out by slow degrees into seven
divisions, that each bishop might have a diocese and a city of his own.
Soon the foundations began to be laid, and houses and churches began to be
built, for the soft volcanic rock was easily worked, though not very solid
for building. The spot for the cathedral was selected with the unerring
eye for a fine situation which the Roman Catholic Church has always shown,
and the adjoining convent claimed, as it rose, the care of Juanita. As
general superintendent of the works, it was the duty of Luis sometimes to
be in that neighborhood, until one unlucky day when the two lovers,
lingering to watch the full moon rise, were interrupted by one of the
younger bishops, a black-browed Spaniard of stealthy ways, who had before
now taken it upon himself to watch them. Nothing could be more innocent
than their dawning loves, yet how could any love be held innocent on the
part of a maiden who was the kinswoman of an archbishop and was his
destined choice for the duties of an abbess? The fact that she had never
yet taken her preliminary vows or given her consent to take them, counted
for nothing in the situation; though any experienced lady-superior could
have told the archbishop that no maiden could be wisely made an abbess
until she had given some signs of having a vocation for a religious life.
From that moment the youthful pair met no more for weeks. It seemed
always necessary for Luis to be occupied elsewhere than in the Cathedral
city; as the best architect on the island, he was sent here, there, and
everywhere; and the six other churches rose with more rapidity because the
archbishop preferred to look after his own. The once peaceful natives
found themselves a shade less happy when they were required to work all
day long as quarry-men or as builders, but it was something, had they but
known it, that they were not borne away as slaves, as happened later on
other islands to so many of their race. To Luis they were always loyal for
his cheery ways, although there seemed a change in his spirits as time
went on. But an event happened which brought a greater change still.
A Spanish caravel was seen one day, making towards the port and showing
signals of distress. Luis, having just then found an excuse for visiting
the Cathedral city, was the first to board her and was hailed with joy by
the captain. He was a townsman of the youth's and had given him his first
lessons in navigation. He had been bound, it seemed, for the Canary
Islands, and had put in for repairs, which needed only a few days in the
quiet waters of a sheltered port. He could tell Luis of his parents, of
his home, and that the northern part of Spain, under Arab sway, was
humanely governed, and a certain proportion of Christian churches allowed.
In a few days the caravel sailed again at nightfall; but it carried with
it two unexpected passengers; the archbishop lost his architect, and the
proposed convent lost its unwilling abbess.
From this point both the Island of the Seven Cities and its escaping
lovers disappear from all definite records. It was a period when
expeditions of discovery came and went, and when one wondrous tale drove
out another. There exist legends along the northern coast of Spain in the
region of Santander, for instance, of a youth who once eloped with a
high-born maiden and came there to dwell, but there may have been many
such youths and many such maidens--who knows? Of Antillia itself, or the
Island of the Seven Cities, it is well known that it appeared on the maps
of the Atlantic, sometimes under the one name and sometimes under another,
six hundred years after the date assigned by the story that has here been
told. It was said by Fernando Columbus to have been revisited by a
Portuguese sailor in 1447; and the name appeared on the globe of Behaim in
1492.
The geographer Toscanelli, in his famous letter to Columbus, recommended
Antillia as likely to be useful to Columbus as a way station for reaching
India, and when the great explorer reached Hispaniola, he was supposed to
have discovered the mysterious island, whence the name of Antilles was
given to the group. Later, the first explorers of New Mexico thought that
the pueblos were the Seven Cities; so that both the names of the imaginary
island have been preserved, although those of Luis de Vega and his
faithful Juanita have not been recorded until the telling of this tale.
XVI
HARALD THE VIKING
Erik the Red, the most famous of all Vikings, had three sons, and once
when they were children the king came to visit Erik and passed through the
playground where the boys were playing. Leif and Biorn, the two oldest,
were building little houses and barns and were making believe that they
were full of cattle and sheep, while Harald, who was only four years old,
was sailing chips of wood in a pool. The king asked Harald what they were,
and he said, "Ships of war." King Olaf laughed and said, "The time may
come when you will command ships, my little friend." Then he asked Biorn
what he would like best to have. "Corn-land," he said; "ten farms." "That
would yield much corn," the king replied. Then he asked Leif the same
question, and he answered, "Cows." "How many?" "So many that when they
went to the lake to be watered, they would stand close round the edge, so
that not another could pass." "That would be a large housekeeping," said
the king, and he asked the same question of Harald. "What would you like
best to have?" "Servants and followers," said the child, stoutly. "How
many would you like?" "Enough," said the child, "to eat up all the cows
and crops of my brothers at a single meal." Then the king laughed, and
said to the mother of the children, "You are bringing up a king."
As the boys grew, Leif and Harald were ever fond of roaming, while Biorn
wished to live on the farm at peace. Their sister Freydis went with the
older boys and urged them on. She was not gentle and amiable, but full of
energy and courage: she was also quarrelsome and vindictive. People said
of her that even if her brothers were all killed, yet the race of Erik the
Red would not end while she lived; that "she practised more of shooting
and the handling of sword and shield than of sewing or embroidering, and
that as she was able, she did evil oftener than good; and that when she
was hindered she ran into the woods and slew men to get their property."
She was always urging her brothers to deeds of daring and adventure. One
day they had been hawking, and when they let slip the falcons, Harald's
falcon killed two blackcocks in one flight and three in another. The dogs
ran and brought the birds, and he said proudly to the others, "It will be
long before most of you have any such success," and they all agreed to
this. He rode home in high spirits and showed his birds to his sister
Freydis. "Did any king," he asked, "ever make so great a capture in so
short a time?" "It is, indeed," she said, "a good morning's hunting to
have got five blackcocks, but it was still better when in one morning a
king of Norway took five kings and subdued all their kingdoms." Then
Harald went away very humble and besought his father to let him go and
serve on the Varangian Guard of King Otho at Constantinople, that he might
learn to be a warrior.
So Harald was brought from his Norwegian home by his father Erik the Red,
in his galley called the _Sea-serpent_, and sailed with him through
the Mediterranean Sea, and was at last made a member of the Emperor Otho's
Varangian Guard at Constantinople. This guard will be well remembered by
the readers of Scott's novel, "Count Robert of Paris," and was maintained
by successive emperors and drawn largely from the Scandinavian races. Erik
the Red had no hesitation in leaving his son among them, as the young man
was stout and strong, very self-willed, and quite able to defend himself.
The father knew also that the Varangian Guard, though hated by the people,
held to one another like a band of brothers; and that any one brought up
among them would be sure of plenty of fighting and plenty of gold,--the
two things most prized by early Norsemen. For ordinary life, Harald's
chief duties would be to lounge about the palace, keeping guard, wearing
helmet and buckler and bearskin, with purple underclothes and golden
clasped hose; and bearing as armor a mighty battle-axe and a small
scimitar. Such was the life led by Harald, till one day he had a message
from his father, through a new recruit, calling him home to join an
expedition to the western seas. "I hear, my son," the message said, "that
your good emperor, whom may the gods preserve, is sorely ill and may die
any day. When he is dead, be prompt in getting your share of the plunder
of the palace and come back to me."
The emperor died, and the order was fulfilled. It was the custom of the
Varangians to reward themselves in this way for their faithful services of
protection; and the result is that, to this day, Greek and Arabic gold
crosses and chains are to be found in the houses of Norwegian peasants and
may be seen in the museums of Christiania and Copenhagen. No one was
esteemed the less for this love of spoil, if he was only generous in
giving. The Norsemen spoke contemptuously of gold as "the serpent's bed,"
and called a generous man "a hater of the serpent's bed," because such a
man parts with gold as with a thing he hates.
When the youth came to his father, he found Erik the Red directing the
building of one of the great Norse galleys, nearly eighty feet long and
seventeen wide and only six feet deep. The boat had twenty ribs, and the
frame was fastened together by withes made of roots, while the oaken
planks were held by iron rivets. The oars were twenty feet long, and were
put through oar holes, and the rudder, shaped like a large oar, was not at
the end, but was attached to a projecting beam on the starboard
(originally steer-board) side. The ship was to be called a Dragon, and was
to be painted so as to look like one, having a gilded dragon's head at the
bow and a gilded tail on the stern; while the moving oars would look like
legs, and the row of red and white shields, hung along the side of the
boat, would resemble the scales of a dragon, and the great square sails,
red and blue, would look like wings. This was the vessel which young
Harald was to command.
He had already made trips in just such vessels with his father; had
learned to attack the enemy with arrow and spear; also with stones thrown
down from above, and with grappling-irons to clutch opposing boats. He had
learned to swim, from early childhood, even in the icy northern waters,
and he had been trained in swimming to hide his head beneath his floating
shield, so that it could not be seen. He had learned also to carry tinder
in a walnut shell, enclosed in wax, so that no matter how long he had been
in the water he could strike a light on reaching shore. He had also
learned from his father acts of escape as well as attack. Thus he had once
sailed on a return trip from Denmark after plundering a town; the ships
had been lying at anchor all night in a fog, and at sunlight in the
morning lights seemed burning on the sea. But Erik the Red said, "It is a
fleet of Danish ships, and the sun strikes on the gilded dragon crests;
furl the sail and take to the oars." They rowed their best, yet the Danish
ships were overtaking them, when Erik the Red ordered his men to throw
wood overboard and cover it with Danish plunder. This made some delay, as
the Danes stopped to pick it up, and in the same way Erik the Red dropped
his provisions, and finally his prisoners; and in the delay thus caused he
got away with his own men.
But now Harald was not to go to Denmark, but to the new western world,
the Wonderstrands which Leif had sought and had left without sufficient
exploration. First, however, he was to call at Greenland, which his father
had first discovered. It was the custom of the Viking explorers, when they
reached a new country, to throw overboard their "seat posts," or
_setstokka_,--the curved part of their doorways,--and then to land
where they floated ashore. But Erik the Red had lent his to a friend and
could not get them back, so that he sailed in search of them, and came to
a new land which he called Greenland, because, as he said, people would be
attracted thither if it had a good name. Then he established a colony
there, and then Leif the Lucky, as he was called, sailed still farther,
and came to the Wonderstrand, or Magic Shores. These he called Vinland or
Wine-land, and now a rich man named Karlsefne was to send a colony thither
from Greenland, and the young Harald was to go with it and take command of
it.
Now as Harald was to be presented to the rich Karlsefne, he thought he
must be gorgeously arrayed. So he wore a helmet on his head, a red shield
richly inlaid with gold and iron, and a sharp sword with an ivory handle
wound with golden thread. He had also a short spear, and wore over his
coat a red silk short cloak on which was embroidered, both before and
behind, a yellow lion. We may well believe that the sixty men and five
women who composed the expedition were ready to look on him with
admiration, especially as one of the women was his own sister, Freydis,
now left to his peculiar care, since Erik the Red had died. The sturdy old
hero had died still a heathen, and it was only just after his death that
Christianity was introduced into Greenland, and those numerous churches
were built there whose ruins yet remain, even in regions from which all
population has gone.
So the party of colonists sailed for Vinland, and Freydis, with the four
older women, came in Harald's boat, and Freydis took easily the lead among
them for strength, though not always, it must be admitted, for amiability.
The boats of the expedition having left Greenland soon after the year
1000, coasted the shore as far as they could, rarely venturing into open
sea. At last, amidst fog and chilly weather, they made land at a point
where a river ran through a lake into the sea, and they could not enter
from the sea except at high tide. It was once believed that this was
Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, but this is no longer believed. Here
they landed and called the place Hóp, from the Icelandic word _hópa_,
meaning an inlet from the ocean. Here they found grape-vines growing and
fields of wild wheat; there were fish in the lake and wild animals in the
woods. Here they landed the cattle and the provisions which they had
brought with them; and here they built their huts. They went in the
spring, and during that summer the natives came in boats of skin to trade
with them--men described as black, and ill favored, with large eyes and
broad cheeks and with coarse hair on their heads. These, it is thought,
may have been the Esquimaux. The first time they came, these visitors held
up a white shield as a sign of peace, and were so frightened by the
bellowing of the bull that they ran away. Then returning, they brought
furs to sell and wished to buy weapons, but Harald tried another plan: he
bade the women bring out milk, butter, and cheese from their dairies, and
when the Skraelings saw that, they wished for nothing else, and, the
legend says, "the Skraelings carried away their wares in their stomachs,
but the Norsemen had the skins they had purchased." This happened yet
again, but at the second visit one of the Skraelings was accidentally
killed or injured.
The next time the Skraelings came they were armed with slings, and raised
upon a pole a great blue ball and attacked the Norsemen so furiously that
they were running away when Erik's sister, Freydis, came out before them
with bare arms, and took up a sword, saying, "Why do you run, strong men
as you are, from these miserable dwarfs whom I thought you would knock
down like cattle? Give me weapons, and I will fight better than any of
you." Then the rest took courage and began to fight, and the Skraelings
were driven back. Once more the strangers came, and one of them took up an
axe, a thing which he had not before seen, and struck at one of his
companions, killing him. Then the leader took the axe and threw it into
the water, after which the Skraelings retreated, and were not seen again.
The winter was a mild one, and while it lasted, the Norsemen worked
busily at felling wood and house-building. They had also many amusements,
in most of which Harald excelled. They used to swim in all weathers. One
of their feats was to catch seals and sit on them while swimming; another
was to pull one another down and remain as long as possible under water.
Harald could swim for a mile or more with his armor on, or with a
companion on his shoulder. In-doors they used to play the tug of war,
dragging each other by a walrus hide across the fire. Harald was good at
this, and was also the best archer, sometimes aiming at something placed
on a boy's head, the boy having a cloth tied around his head, and held by
two men, that he might not move at all on hearing the whistling of the
arrow. In this way Harald could even shoot an arrow under a nut placed on
the head, so that the nut would roll down and the head not be hurt. He
could plant a spear in the ground and then shoot an arrow upward so
skilfully that it would turn in the air and fall with the point in the end
of the spear-shaft. He could also shoot a blunt arrow through the thickest
ox-hide from a cross-bow. He could change weapons from one hand to the
other during a fencing match, or fence with either hand, or throw two
spears at the same time, or catch a spear in motion. He could run so fast
that no horse could overtake him, and play the rough games with bat and
ball, using a ball of the hardest wood. He could race on snowshoes, or
wrestle when bound by a belt to his antagonist. Then when he and his
companions wished a rest, they amused themselves with harp-playing or
riddles or chess. The Norsemen even played chess on board their vessels,
and there are still to be seen, on some of these, the little holes that
were formerly used for the sharp ends of the chessmen, so that they should
not be displaced.
They could not find that any European had ever visited this place; but
some of the Skraelings told them of a place farther south, which they
called "the Land of the Whiteman," or "Great Ireland." They said that in
that place there were white men who clothed themselves in long white
garments, carried before them poles to which white cloths were hung, and
called with a loud voice. These, it was thought by the Norsemen, must be
Christian processions, in which banners were borne and hymns were chanted.
It has been thought from this that some expedition from Ireland--that of
St. Brandan, for instance--may have left a settlement there, long before,
but this has never been confirmed. The Skraelings and the Northmen were
good friends for a time; until at last one of Erik's own warriors killed a
Skraeling by accident, and then all harmony was at an end.
They saw no hope of making a lasting settlement there, and, moreover,
Freydis who was very grasping, tried to deceive the other settlers and get
more than her share of everything, so that Harald himself lost patience
with her and threatened her. It happened that one of the men of the party,
Olaf, was Harald's foster-brother. They had once had a fight, and after
the battle had agreed that they would be friends for life and always share
the same danger. For this vow they were to walk under the turf; that is, a
strip of turf was cut and held above their heads, and they stood beneath
and let their blood flow upon the ground whence the turf had been cut.
After this they were to own everything by halves and either must avenge
the other's death. This was their brotherhood; but Freydis did not like
it; so she threatened Olaf, and tried to induce men to kill him, for she
did not wish to bring upon herself the revenge that must come if she slew
him.
This was the reason why the whole enterprise failed, and why Olaf
persuaded Harald, for the sake of peace, to return to Greenland in the
spring and take a load of valuable timber to sell there, including one
stick of what was called massur-wood, which was as valuable as mahogany,
and may have been at some time borne by ocean currents to the beach. It is
hardly possible that, as some have thought, the colonists established a
regular trade in this wood for no such wood grows on the northern Atlantic
shores. However this may be, the party soon returned, after one winter in
Vinland the Good; and on the way back Harald did one thing which made him
especially dear to his men.
A favorite feat of the Norsemen was to toss three swords in the air and
catch each by the handle as it came down. This was called the
_handsax_ game. The young men used also to try the feat of running
along the oar-blades of the rowers as they were in motion, passing around
the bow of the vessel with a spring and coming round to the stern over the
oars on the other side. Few could accomplish this, but no one but Harald
could do it and play the _handsax_ game as he ran; and when he did
it, they all said that he was the most skilful man at _idrottie_ ever
seen. That was their word for an athletic feat. But presently came a time
when not only his courage but his fairness and justice were to be tried.
It happened in this way. There was nothing of which the Norsemen were
more afraid than of the _teredo_, or shipworm, which gnaws the wood
of ships. It was observed in Greenland and Iceland that pieces of wood
often floated on shore which were filled with holes made by this animal,
and they thought that in certain places the seas were full of this worm,
so that a ship would be bored and sunk in a little while. It is said that
on this return voyage Harald's vessel entered a worm-sea and presently
began to sink. They had, however, provided a smaller boat smeared with
sea-oil, which the worms would not attack. They went into the boat, but
found that it would not hold more than half of them all. Then Harald said,
"We will divide by lots, without regard to the rank; each taking his
chance with the rest." This they thought, the Norse legend says, "a
high-minded offer." They drew lots, and Harald was among those assigned to
the safer boat. He stepped in, and when he was there a man called from the
other boat and said, "Dost thou intend, Harald, to separate from me here?"
Harald answered, "So it turns out," and the man said, "Very different was
thy promise to my father when we came from Greenland, for the promise was
that we should share the same fate."
Then Harald said, "It shall not be thus. Go into the boat, and I will go
back into the ship, since thou art so anxious to live." Then Harald went
back to the ship, while the man took his place in the boat, and after that
Harald was never heard of more.
XVII
THE SEARCH FOR NORUMBEGA