yourselves!"
Except Bothwell and his knights, every man threw himself flat on the
deck; and while fire flashed from the wide muzzles of eight great
carthouns and as many demi-culverins, their shot tore across the
_Fleur-de-Lys_, splintering her bulwarks, rending her rigging and
canvass, but doing little other personal injury than slaying a few of
the arquebusiers, who occupied the little wooden turrets with which the
angles of the poop were furnished.
"A Bothwell! a Bothwell!" cried the Earl brandishing his sword;
"cannoniers to your lintstocks--crossbowmen to your duty, and show
yourselves men, my rough-footed Scots. Fight bravely! for know ye, that
if taken we shall all die the death of caitiffs and felons; for there is
not a man among us but will hang from the yards of yonder Norseman, for
so hath King Frederick sworn. Shoot aloft, and fire below! St. Bothan
and on!"
A volley of cannon, crossbows, and arquebuses was poured upon the great
quarter and stern of the _Biornen_, while her people were slowly and
laboriously re-charging their pieces. The bolts whistled from the
crossbows, the bullets whizzed from the arquebuses _a croc_, and the
cannon-shot boomed as they flew over the decks, or sank with a heavy
crash into the echoing hulls of the adverse ships; while, ascending from
the still bosom of that narrow inlet of the ocean, the reports were
reverberated like thunder, as the echoes rolled from peak to peak along
those high mountains that overlooked it.
From the poops and forecastles the arquebuses maintained an incessant
roar, and their bullets, each containing three ounces of lead, did
deadly execution, being fired point-blank, beating great pieces of buff
and mail into the bodies of those they slew.
"Yare, yare--my yeomen of the sheets and braces! Cheerily now--my
timoneer!" bellowed the skipper of the _Fleur-de-Lys_, through his
speaking trumpet, as he, by a rapidity of manoeuvre and superior
seamanship, sheered his vessel upon the larboard side of the _Biornen_
in the smoke, and poured another broadside upon the Norwegians, who did
not expect it from that point, and the sudden crash and slaughter filled
them with alarm and irresolution.
"By St. John of the Desart!" exclaimed Bothwell, in the excitement of
the moment forgetting his assumed Protestantism, "ye do well my true
cannoniers. Shoot--shoot, and spare not! or never again will ye see the
woods of Clyde, and the blooming bank of Bothwell. To it, Bolton, with
thy bowmen! Shoot me down those rascal archers on their tops; for by
St. Peter, who smote off the lug of a loon, I have wellnigh lost mine by
their hands. Shoot--shoot, and spare not!"
A loud cheer replied to the Earl, and his vassals bent to their toil
with renewed ardour and alacrity.
The decks were rapidly becoming encumbered with the dead and wounded;
for there were neither accommodation or due attendance for the latter,
and so they were permitted to lie just where they fell, with their blood
streaming away to leeward, and dripping from the scuppers into the
ocean; while the shot ploughed and tore up the oak planking of the deck,
beat down the bulwarks, rending mast and boom and spars to shreds and
splinters; and each time the ponderous stone bullets of the great Danish
carthouns thundered and crashed through the side of the _Fleur-de-Lys_,
she staggered and trembled in every rib and plank.
"Sweep me the gunwall with your arquebuses!" cried the Earl, leaping
upon the corpse-strewn forecastle, where Ormiston, like a swarthy Moor,
was handling one of those ponderous fire-arms as easily as a bird
caliver; "for one more salvoe from those accursed carthouns will hurl us
from the ocean like a flash of lightning!"
"Cock and pie!" said Ormiston, as he levelled the long arquebuse in its
iron sling; "we have been putting pelloks into their doublets ever since
the tulzie began; and I doubt not have scored a hundred by the head, but
the gloomy night is increasing so fast that we aim now at random."
The darkness, as he said, had increased very much. The clouds were
gathering in heavy masses, and the red sheet lightning was gleaming
behind the rocky peaks of those hills, where the northern lights had
been flashing one hour before. Dark as ink grew the waters of the
fiord, and the increasing wind that blew down it, between the high
shores on either side, flecked its surface with foam, as it passed away
into the turbulent waste of the Skager Rack. This change was unseen or
unheeded by the combatants, who were now lying to with their foresails
backed, and pouring their missiles upon each other with a deadly
animosity, that increased as the slaughter and the darkness deepened
around them together. Notwithstanding the superior size of the Norwegian
ship, and the heavier metal of her cannon, the little _Fleur-de-Lys_
stood to her bravely; for she was manned by bold and desperate hearts,
whom outlawry and revenge had urged to the utmost pitch of rashness and
valour.
Meanwhile, Konrad and Hans Knuber watched with beating hearts the
varying ebb and flow of the tide of battle in which they had so suddenly
been involved. They remained passive spectators, exposed to the fire of
their friends and countrymen, by whose hands they expected every instant
to be decimated or decapitated. Whenever a barbed crossbow-shot from
the _Biornen_ struck down a poor Scottish mariner to writhe in agony and
welter in his blood, or when a shot tore up plank and beam almost
beneath his feet, Hans growled a Norse malediction, and thought of the
ruin these Scots had that day brought upon him. Suddenly he grasped
Konrad by the hand, and pointed to a part of the water that appeared
covered with white froth.
"Seest thou that, Master Konrad?--hah!" he exclaimed.
"The lesser moskenstrom--the eddy that swallowed up thy ship. God
shield us!" said Konrad; "for we are just upon its verge."
"Those accursed Scots perceive it not; but Christian Alborg doth. See,
he hath hauled his wind and braced up his foreyard--another moment will
see us sucked into the whirl, or stranded on the shoal made between us
and the coast by the eddy, ha! ha!" and Hans, who was pale as death
under the influence of wrath and fear, laughed like a hyena at the
terrors about to replace those of the battle.
A shout of triumph burst from the little crew of Bothwell's shattered
ship; but it was answered by one of derision and exultation from the
Norwegian; for at that moment, as Hans had predicted, the _Fleur-de-Lys_
bilged upon the reef or rocky shoal that lay between the eddy and the
shore--striking with a crash that made her foremast bend like a willow
wand ere it went by the board, bringing down the main-topmast; the heavy
culverins went surging all to leeward, and, crashing away the bulwarks,
plunged into the sea, which, being agitated by the increasing gale,
broke in foam upon the ridgy summit of the reef, and hurled its breakers
over the parting frame of the _Fleur-de-Lys_, which thus in a moment
became a shattered and desolate wreck.
The shout of the Norsemen was their last display of hostility; for, on
beholding the terrible trap into which the foe had so suddenly fallen,
the gallant old Knight of the Dannebrog suspended his firing, and
lowered his boats to pick up the survivors of the battle and wreck; for
so fierce was the tumult of water that boiled around her, and so great
his dread of the whirlpool, that he continued rather to stand off than
towards the scene of the catastrophe.
The towering forecastle of the bilged ship was highest above the water,
and to that Konrad, after seeing poor Hans Knuber washed from his side,
to be dashed again and again a lifeless corpse upon the brow of the
reef, clung with all the energy of despair, clambering up step by step,
clutching the ruin of spars and cordage that hung over it, till he
reached the iron rail enclosing the top, which he embraced with both
arms, and looked down upon the scene of terror and desolation presented
by the lower half of the wreck, which was submerged in water.
Fitfully the white moon gleamed upon it, through the openings in the
hurrying clouds; its cold lustre rather adding to, than lessening, the
ghastly horror of the wreck and reef.
Far down in the deep waste, which was full of water--for every instant
the surf broke over it in mountains of foam--was a swarm of struggling
men, many of them in armour, clinging to whatever would support them.
Ever and anon they sent forth cries of terror and despair; while every
plank and spar creaked and groaned as the waves beat and lashed around,
as if eager to overwhelm and engulf them all.
The wind was increasing, and, urged by the long fetch of the Skager
Rack, the waves broke in stupendous volumes over the reef and the bilged
wreck, at every return washing away some unfortunate into the abyss of
the whirlpool, that yawned and foamed and growled on one side; while on
the other lay the wide waste of the ocean, and the _Biornen_ about a
mile distant, with her white canvass gleaming, like the garments of a
spirit, in the light of the fitful moon. Behind the reef towered up the
black Norwegian hills, like a wall of steep and frowning rock, fringed
by nodding pines, and bordered by a white line of froth, that marked
where the breakers reared their fronts to lash and roar upon the
impending cliffs--but all these were buried in the long and sombre
shadow which the tremendous bluffs threw far on the restless sea.
Meanwhile, Bothwell and his knights, though landsmen, and more at home
in the tiltyard, in the tavern, the castle hall, or on the mountain
side, never for a moment lost their presence of mind. Throwing off the
heavier parts of their armour, they contrived to secure one of the
boats, into which the Earl, with Ormiston, Bolton, Hay of Tallo, French
Paris, and several others, sprang with all the speed that fear of a
terrible fate could lend them.
"A Bothwell! a Bothwell!" cried the Earl waving his hand, as the light
shallop was one moment buoyed aloft like a cork, and the next plunged
down into the deep, dark trough of the midnight sea. "Save yourselves
by spars and booms, my brave hearts!" he cried to those whom his heart
bled to leave behind--but it was impossible that one boat could save
them all; "or lash yourselves to the wreck, and we will return for you."
"Bend to your oars, my stout knaves, cheerily," cried Wood, the skipper.
"Yare!" added Ormiston, whose tall figure loomed in the labouring
shallop like that of an armed giant; "cheerily, ho! for if it is our
fate to be hanged we will never be drowned."
"Hold!" exclaimed the Earl, as they pulled under the lee of the lofty
poop, "yonder is one whom I would rather die than leave behind to
perish, for then I would forfeit mine honour."
"Cock and pie! Lord Earl, art thou mad?" cried Ormiston, in great
wrath; "is this a time to have thy qualms about honour, when ten minutes
more may see us all in the pit of hell?"
"Peace, peace; shame on thee, laird of Ormiston!" cried David Wood.
"Mother of God, watch over us!"
"Hob, peace with thy blasphemy!" said the Earl, "or I will have thee
cast into the sea. Is this a time for such dreadful thoughts as thine?
By the bones of my father, I _shall_ save him. Ho, there! Konrad of
Saltzberg, I pledged my word to land thee on thy native shore, and even
in this moment of dread I will redeem it, or perish with thee. Leap
with a bold heart, and a ready will, and gain our boat if thou canst,
albeit that it is laden so heavily."
Aware that the chance was a last one, Konrad, who could swim like a
duck, sprang at once into the waters of his native fiord, and, rising a
short distance from the boat, was pulled in by the athletic Ormiston.
Then the oars were dipped in the frothy water, and, urged by wind and
tide, the laden boat shot away from the desolate wreck.
At that moment a wild shriek--the last despairing cry of the strong and
the brave, who had never flinched when the arrow flew and the culverin
boomed around them--ascended from the seething ocean to the sky; the
wreck parted into a thousand fragments, that covered the face of the
water; and these, with the poor fellows who clung to them with the blind
tenacity of despair and death, were again and again, at the sport of the
waves, dashed against the ridgy summits, that were one moment visible in
terrible array in the moonlight, and the next were hidden, as a mountain
of foam swept over them, hurrying into the deep vortex of the whirlpool
the last fragments and the corpses of the _Fleur-de-Lys_.
*CHAPTER XX.*
*CHRISTIAN ALBORG.*
Where the wave is tinged with red,
And the russet sea-leaves grow;
Mariners, with prudent dread,
Shun the whelming reefs below.
Thus, all to soothe the chieftain's woe,
Far from the maid he loved so dear,
The song arose so soft and slow,
He seem'd her parting sigh to hear.
_Leyden's Mermaid._
"Which way, Lord Earl?" asked the laird of Bolton; "steer we shoreward?"
"Nay!" cried Ormiston, in his usual tone of banter, for now his spirits
rose as the danger lessened; "nay--a malison on thee, Norway! Woe worth
the day I again set foot on thy devilish shore, where there is nought
but bran-bannocks and sour beer in summer, and bears' hams with toasted
snowballs in winter!"
"To yonder ship?" continued Hepburn.
"Yes!" replied the Earl. "Row briskly, my merry men; she hath altered
her course, and stands towards us. We must yield; but my mind misgives
me sorely, that we shall have but sorry treatment."
A few minutes' pulling brought them under the lee of the lofty Norwegian
ship--a ladder was lowered, and the Earl and his attendants sprang
fearlessly on board. They immediately found themselves surrounded by a
crowd of savage-looking Norwegian seamen and Danish soldiers, the former
in garments of singular fashion, and the latter wearing armour of an age
at least two centuries older than their own. Their red bushy beards
protruded from their little steel caps, and flowed over their
gourgerins, as they leaned upon their iron mauls, chain maces, and the
bolls of their slackened bows, and gazed with wild eyes on the strangers
who thus voluntarily yielded themselves prisoners.
The whole group were immediately led to the summit of the lofty poop,
where the captain stood surrounded by his officers; and Bothwell could
perceive, by many a splintered plank and battered boom--by many a torn
rope and shattered block--by spots of blood, and broken heads, and
bandaged arms, that the _Biornen_ had not come off scatheless in the
late encounter.
The Norwegian captain was a fat and pompous little man; his round
bulbous figure was clad in a quilted doublet of fine crimson cloth, the
gold lacing of which shone in the light of three large poop lanterns
that were blazing close by; his short, thick legs were covered by yellow
silk stockings; he wore a thick ruff that came up to his ears, and a
beaver hat nearly four feet in diameter; his mustaches were
preposterously long, and he rolled his saucer eyes in a way that was
very appalling, as the Earl stepped up to him, and, in no degree abashed
by the magnificence of his portly presence, raised his blue velvet
bonnet, saying in French as he bowed gracefully--
"I believe I have the honour of addressing the knight Christian Alborg,
captain of his Danish Majesty's galley, the _Biornen_?"
"Yes!" replied the captain gruffly; "and what art thou?"
"Boatswain of the Scottish ship."
"And where is the pirate, thy master?"
"He stands before thee," replied the Earl, pointing to David Wood; for
he was anxious to preserve an incognito which he hoped his disordered
attire might favour.
"Thou hast but little the air of a shipman," rejoined the captain of the
_Biornen_ incredulously; "and I think that, were this knave thy leader,
_he_ would have addressed me, and not _thou_. So, sirrah, art thou
really captain of that ship which dared to abide my cannon in the Danish
seas?"
"Yes!" replied Wood boldly; "and how darest thou, Sir Captain, to doubt
the word of a true Scottishman?"
"Because I would save thee, if I could, from the doom such an
acknowledgment merits--away with him to the yard-arm!"
And in another moment, almost ere a word could be spoken or a hand
raised in his defence, a rope was looped round the neck of David Wood,
and he was run up to the arm of the main-yard, where he hung, quivering
and writhing in the moonlight, while his last half-stifled shriek
tingled in the ears of his companions, who were silenced and appalled by
a catastrophe so sudden.
"By St. Paul! my poor skipper," thought the Earl, "if thou farest so for
telling the truth, how shall I fare for telling a falsity? Knave of a
Norseman! thou hast destroyed the cadet of a gallant race--the line of
Bonnington, in Angus!"
"Hah! this is not the bearing of a Scottish boatswain," said old
Christian Alborg, stepping back a pace at the menacing aspect of his
prisoner; "and now, I bethink me that such wear neither corselets of
steel nor spurs of gold; so tell me who thou art, or, by the hand of the
king, I will run thee up at the other arm of yonder yard. Thy name?"
"James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, and Duke of Orkney, Knight of the
Thistle, and Governor of the Kingdom of Scotland!" replied the Earl,
drawing himself up with an aspect of dignity and pride, that was not
lost upon the portly Norseman and his helmeted officers.
"Unhappy lord!" replied Christian Alborg, making a profound reverence;
"I have heard of thine evil fame, and envy thee not the grandeur of thy
titles."
"Thou sayest truly," said Bothwell, in a tone of sadness, "I am not to
be envied; but withhold thy pity, for I am not yet fallen so low as find
commiseration acceptable from any man."
"But if thou art governor of the kingdom of Scotland, what brought thee
into these seas?"
"Foul wind, or fatality--which you will."
"And wherefore hast thou sacked the villages, stormed the castles,
plundered the ships of thine own countrymen, who have done thee no
wrong, and also committed innumerable piracies on the subjects of his
Danish majesty, with whom thy people are at peace?"
"Because of my sore extremity!"
"That will form but a lame excuse to King Frederick, at whose palace of
Kiobenhafen the tidings of thine outrages were sent from his castle of
Bergenhuis, whither I have an order to convey thee, dead or alive.
Though a bold man and a bad one, thou hast fought as became a Scottish
noble, and I can respect valour wherever I find it. I had resolved to
chain thee neck and heels, like a villanous pirate; but trusting to
thine honour, that thou wilt not attempt to compromise me by escaping, I
will permit thee to retain thy sword, to be at liberty, and to receive
all due courtesy, till thou art committed to the custody of the king's
garrison at Bergen."
The Earl was led to a cabin, and there left to his own melancholy
reflections, which were rendered a hundred degrees worse by the reaction
consequent to such a day of stirring activity and wild excitement.
He heard the ripple of the water as the waves that had swallowed up his
companions flowed past; he heard the straining of the timbers, the
creaking of the decks and cordage, as the wind bellied the full spread
canvass of the _Biornen_, and urged her up the fiord of Bergen; but his
thoughts were far away in the land he had left behind him, in the island
tower of that lonely lake, overlooked by steep hills and girdled by the
guarding water, where Mary of Scotland mourned in crownless captivity
the shame, the contumely, and the hopeless fate _his_ wiles and ambition
had brought upon her.
*CHAPTER XXI.*
*THE CASTELLANA.*
No waking dream shall tinge my thought
With dyes so bright and vain;
No silken net so slightly wrought,
Shall tangle me again.
No more I'll pay so dear for wit,
I'll live upon mine own;
Nor shall wild passion trouble it,
I'll rather dwell alone.
_Scott._
Next day the _Biornen_ cast anchor in the Jelta fiord, and, under a
strong guard of crossbowmen, Christian Alborg carried Konrad and his
prisoners ashore in a great red pinnace which bore the yellow lion of
Norway floating at its stern.
They landed about half a mile from the citadel, to which he was
conveying the captives, and Konrad accompanied them, for he knew not
where else to bestow himself; but every step of the well-known way was
full of bitter memories, and fraught with the idea of Anna.
And where was she?
Of Christian Alborg, who had conveyed her from Scotland, he never made
an enquiry; for though he knew perfectly well that it was he who had
received her from the Scottish council, he had no opportunity of an
interview; and, on the other hand, Alborg knew not how deep was the
young man's interest still in the fate of Anna, though he knew his story
well; and thus no communication on the subject passed between them.
In all their old familiar features, his native hills were towering
around that ancient fortress, which tradition averred to have been the
work of the Sitonian giants; while, amid the deep recesses of their
woods, the distant cry of the wolf was ringing as of old, and the wiry
foliage of the Scandinavian pines, when they vibrated in the summer
wind, as the Norse say, filled the air with the music of fairy harps,
that mingled with the hum of the evening flies, and the rustle of the
long reedy grass, as it waved in the rising wind like the surface of a
rippled lake.
Every old familiar feature brought back its own sad train of memories.
By the winding path they traversed, here and there lay an ancient runic
monument, covered with uncouth characters, and those fantastic
hieroglyphics with which the ancient Scandinavians handed down to
posterity the history of their battles, and of the mighty men of the
days of other years. There, too, was the ancient chapel of St. Olaus,
still perched in a cleft of the mountains, with its bell swinging on the
rocks that overhung it--rocks where the wild myrtle, the geranium, and
the yellow pansy, all flourished together in one luxuriant blush of
flowers.
As they ascended from the shore, the rocks became bolder and bolder,
more sterile and abrupt; not a blade of grass waved on their basaltic
faces, yet from their summits the tall and aged pines locked their
branches together, and excluded the daylight from the deep chasm at the
bottom of which the roadway wound.
Rents in the volcanic rock afforded at times, far down below, glimpses
of the narrow fiord, a deep, blue inlet of the ocean, dotted with white
sails, and overlooked by the strong, dark tower of Bergen, with its rude
and clustering ramparts, little windows, and loopholes for arrows.
As they approached it, Konrad's sadness increased; for every stone in
its walls seemed like the face of an old friend, and every feature of
the scenery was associated with that first and early love which had
become part of his very being.
With Bothwell it was quite otherwise.
He looked around him with the utmost nonchalance, and scarcely thought
of Anna, though the scene was quite enough to bring her fully back to
his mind; but his passion for Mary had completely absorbed or
obliterated every other fancy, feeling, and sentiment.
A change had come over his features; his forehead was paler and more
thoughtful, his eyes had lost much of their bold and reckless
expression, and there was a decided melancholy in his fine face, which
excited the interest of all who regarded him. He had become more
taciturn; even Hob Ormiston had lost much of his loquacity, and now,
depressed by the gloomy prospect of their fortunes, walked in silence by
the side of the dejected and miserable Hepburn of Bolton.
"Captain Alborg," said Bothwell, "whither dost thou wend with us now?"
"To the royal castle of Bergen--to the hereditary governor of which I
must deliver thee."
"Thank Heaven! 'tis not Erick Rosenkrantz who holds command there now,
or I warrant me we would have had but a short shrift, and shorter mercy,
for the trick I now remember me to have played him. I marvel much what
manner of person this new castellan may be; for in sooth, much of our
comfort, in this most dolorous case, depends thereon."