The comrades who were waiting and watching on the point were duly amazed
to see three heads in the boat on her return; and duly delighted to find
that the third was Rolf,--alive, and no ghost. They asked question upon
question, and Rolf answered some fully and truly, while he showed
reserve upon others; and at last, when closely pressed, he declared
himself too much exhausted to talk, and begged permission to lie down in
the bottom of the boat and sleep. Upon this, a long silence ensued. It
lasted till the farm-house was in sight at which one of the rowers was
to be landed. Oddo then exclaimed, "I wonder what we have all been
thinking about. We have not settled a single thing about what is to be
said and done; and here we are almost in sight of home, and Hund's
cunning eyes."
"I have settled all about it," replied Rolf, raising himself up from the
bottom of the boat, where they all thought he had been sleeping soundly.
"My mind," said he, "is quite clear. The first thing I have decided
upon is that I may rely on the honour of our friends here. You have
proved your kindness, friends, in coming on this expedition, but for
which I should have died in my hole, like a superannuated bear in its
den. This is a story that the whole country will hear of; and our
grandchildren will tell it on winter nights, when there is talk of the
war that brought the pirates on our coasts. Your names will go abroad
with the story, comrades, and, on one condition, with high honour: and
that condition is, that you say not a word beyond the family you live
in, for the next few days, of the adventure of this night, or of your
having seen me. More depends on this than you know of now; more than I
will tell, this day, to any person but my master. My good old friend
there will help me to a meeting with my master, without asking a
question as to what I have to say to him. Will you not, Peder?"
"Surely. I have no doubt you are right," replied Peder.
The neighbours were rather sorry, but they could not object. They
smiled at Oddo, and nodded encouragement, when he implored Rolf to fix a
time when everything might be known, and to answer just this and just
that little inquiry.
"Oddo," said his grandfather, "be a man among us men. Show that your
honour is more to you than your curiosity."
"Thank you, grandfather, I will. I will ask only one more question; and
that Rolf will thank me for. Had we not better fix some place, far away
from Hund's eyes and thoughts, for my master and Rolf to have their
talk; and then I will guide my master--"
"Guide your master," cried Rolf, laughing, "when your master knew every
rock and every track in the country years enough before you were born!"
"You did not let me finish," said Oddo. "You may want a messenger,--he
or you; and I know every track in the country: and there is no one
swifter of foot, or that can keep counsel better."
"That is true, Rolf," said Peder. "If the boy is too curious to know
everything, it is not for the sake of telling it again. If you should
happen to want a messenger, it may be worth attending to what he says."
"I have no objection to add that to my plan, if Erlingsen pleases," said
Rolf. "I must see Erlingsen; but there is another person that I must
make haste to see,--that I would fly to if I could. What I wish is,
that my master would meet me on the road to where she is; supposing Hund
to remain at home."
He was told that there was no fear of Hund's roving while the bishop was
daily expected. Rolf having been out of the way, the whole story of the
journey of the bishop of Tronyem had to be told him. It made him
thoughtful; and he dropped a word or two of satisfaction, as if it had
thrown new light upon what he was thinking of.
"All this," said he, "only makes me wish the more to see Erlingsen
immediately. I should say the best way will be for you to set me ashore
somewhere short of home, and ask Erlingsen to meet me at the Black Tarn.
There cannot be a quieter place: and I shall be so far on my way to the
seater."
"If you will just make a looking-glass of the Black Tarn," said Oddo,
"you will see that you have no business to carry such a face as yours to
the seater. Erica will die of terror at you for the mountain-demon,
before you can persuade her it is only you."
"I was thinking," observed one of the rowers, who relished the idea of
going down to posterity in a wonderful story,--"I was just thinking that
your wisest way will be to take a rest in my bed at Holberg's, without
anybody knowing, and shave yourself with my razor, and dress in my
Sunday clothes, and so show yourself to your betrothed in such a trim as
that she will be glad to see you."
"Do so, Rolf," urged Peder. Everybody said "Do so," and agreed that
Erica would suffer far less by remaining five or six hours longer in her
present state of mind, than by seeing her lover look like a ghastly
savage, or perhaps hearing that he was lying by the roadside, dying of
his exertions to reach her. Rolf tried to laugh at all this: but he
could not contradict it. He would not hear a word of any messenger
being sent. He declared that it would only torment her, as she would
not believe in his return till she saw him: and he dropped something
about everybody being so wanted at home that nobody ought to stray.
All took place as it was settled in the boat. Before the people on
Holberg's farm had come in to breakfast, Rolf was snug in bed, with a
large pitcher of whey by the bedside, to quench his still insatiable
thirst. No one but the Holbergs knew of his being there; and he got
away unseen in the afternoon, rested, shaven, and dressed, so as to look
more like himself, though still haggard. Packing his old clothes into a
bundle, which he carried with a stick over his shoulder, and laden with
nothing else but a few rye-cakes, and a flask of the everlasting
corn-brandy, he set forth, thanking his hosts very heartily for their
care, and somewhat mysteriously assuring them that they would hear
something soon, and that meantime they had better not have to be sought
far from home.
As he expected, he met no one whom he knew. Nine-tenths of the
neighbours were far away on the seaters, and of the small remainder,
almost all were attending the bishop on the opposite shore of the lake.
Rolf shook his head at every deserted farm-house that he passed,
thinking how the pirates might ransack the dwellings, if they should
happen to discover that few inhabitants remained in them but those whose
limbs were too old to climb the mountain. He shook his head again when
he thought what consternation he might spread through these dwellings by
dropping at the doors the news of how near the pirate-schooner lay. It
seemed to be out of the people's minds now because it was out of sight,
and the bishop had become visible instead. As for the security which
some talked of from there being so little worth taking in the Nordland
farm-houses,--this might be true if only one house was to be attacked,
and that one defended: but half-a-dozen ruffians, coming ashore, to
search eight or ten undefended houses in a day, might gather enough
booty to pay them for their trouble. Of money they would find little or
none; but in some families there were gold chains, crosses, and
ear-rings, which had come down from a remote generation, or silver
goblets and tankards. There were goats worth carrying away for their
milk, and spirited horses and their harness, to sell at a distance.
There were stores of the finest bed and table linen in the world; sacks
of flour, cellars full of ale, kegs of brandy, and a mass of tobacco in
every house. Fervently did Rolf wish, as he passed by these comfortable
dwellings, that the enemy would cast no eye or thought upon their
comforts till he should have given such information in the proper
quarters as should deprive them of the power of doing mischief in this
neighbourhood.
Leaving the last of the farm-houses behind, he ascended the ravine, and
came out upon the expanse of rich herbage which Erica had trodden but a
few days before. He thought, as she had done, of his own description of
their journeying together to the seater, and of the delight with which
she would leap from the cart to walk with him on the first sight of the
waving grass upon the upland. His heart beat joyously at the thought,
instead of mourning like hers. He was transported with happiness when
he thought how near he was to her now, and on the eve of a season of
delight,--a few balmy summer weeks upon the pastures, to be followed by
his marriage. This affair of the pirates once finished, was ever man so
happy as he was going to be? The thought made him spring as lightly
through the tall grass that lay between him and the Black Tarn as the
reindeer from point to point of the mountain steep.
The breeze blew in his face, refreshing him with its coolness, and with
the fragrance of the birch, with which it was loaded. But it brought
something else,--a transient sound which surprised Rolf,--voices of men,
who seemed, if he could judge from so rapid a hint, to be talking
angrily. He began to consider whom, besides Oddo, Erlingsen could have
thought it safe or necessary to bring with him, or whether it was
somebody met with by chance. At all events, it would be wisest not to
show himself, and to approach with all possible caution. Cautiously,
therefore, he drew near, keeping a vigilant watch all around, and ready
to pop down into the grass on any alarm. Being unable to see any one
near the tarn, he was convinced the talkers must be seated under the
crags on its margin, and he therefore made a circuit, to get behind the
rocks, and then climbed a huge fragment, which seemed to have been
toppled down from some steep, and to have rolled to the brink of the
water. Two stunted pines grew out from the summit of this crag, and
between these pines Rolf placed himself, and looked down from thence.
Two men sat on the ground in the shadow of the rock: one was Hund, and
the other must undoubtedly be one of the pirate crew. His dress, arms,
and broken language all showed him to be so; and it was, in fact, the
same man that Erica had met near the same place; though that she had had
such an adventure was the last thing her lover dreamed of as he surveyed
the man's figure from above. This man appeared surly. Hund was
extremely agitated.
"It is very hard," said he, "when all I want is to do no harm to
anybody,--neither to my old friends nor my new acquaintances,--that I
cannot be let alone. I have done too much mischief in my life already.
The demons have made sport of me;--it is their sport that I have as many
lives to answer for as any man of twice my age in Nordland; and now that
I would be harmless for the rest of my days--"
"Don't trouble yourself to talk about your days," interrupted the
pirate; "they will be too _few_ to be worth speaking of, if you do not
put yourself under our orders again. You are a deserter; and as a
deserter you go back with me, unless you choose to go as a comrade."
"And what might I expect that your orders would be, if I went with you?"
"You know very well that we want you for a guide. That is all you are
worth. In a fight, you would only be in the way, unless--indeed, you
could contrive to get out of the way."
"Then you would not expect me to fight against my master and his
people?"
"Nobody was ever so foolish as to expect you to fight, more or less, I
should think. No; your business would be to pilot us to Erlingsen's,
and answer truly all our questions about their ways and doings."
"Surprise them in their sleep!" muttered Hund. "Wake them up with the
light of their own burning roofs! And they would know me by that light!
They would point me out to the bishop;--they would find time in their
hurry to mark me for the monster they might well think me."
"Yes; you would be in the front, of course," observed the pirate. "But
there is one comfort for you,--if you are so earnest to see the bishop
as you told me you were, my plan is the best. When once we lock him
down on board our schooner, you can have him all to yourself. You can
confess your sins to him the whole day long; for nobody else will want a
word with either of you. You can show him your enchanted island down in
the fiord, and see if he can lay the ghost for you."
Hund sprang to his feet in an agony of passion. The well-armed pirate
was up as soon as he. Rolf drew back two paces to be out of sight, if
by chance they should look up, and armed himself with a heavy stone. He
heard the pirate say--
"You can try to run away, if you like. I shall shoot you through the
head before you have gone five yards. And you may refuse to return with
me; and then I shall know how to report of you to my captain. I shall
tell him that you are lying at the bottom of this lake--if it has a
bottom--with a stone tied round your neck, like a drowned wild cat. I
hope you may chance to find your enemy there, to make the place the
pleasanter."
Rolf could not resist the impulse to send his heavy stone into the
middle of the tarn, to see the effect upon the men below. He gave a
good cast on the very instant, and prodigious was the splash as the
stone hit the water precisely in the middle of the little lake. The men
did not see the cause of the commotion that followed; but, starting and
turning at the splash, they saw the rings spreading in the dark waters
which had lain as still as the heavens but a moment before. How could
two guilty, superstitious men doubt that the waters were thrown into
agitation by the pirate's last words? Yet they glanced fearfully round
the whole landscape, far and near. They saw no living thing but a hawk,
which, startled from its perch on a scathed pine, was wheeling round in
the air in an unsteady flight. The pirate pointed to the bird with one
hand, while he laid the other on the pistol in his belt.
"Yes," said Hund, trembling; "the bird saw it. Did you see it?"
"See what?"
"The water-sprite, Uldra. Before you throw me in to the water-sprite,
we will see which is the strongest." And in desperation, Hund, unarmed
as he was, threw himself upon the pirate, sprang at his throat, and both
wrestled with all their force. Rolf could not but look; and he saw that
the pirate had drawn forth his pistol, and that all would be over with
Hund in a moment if he did not interfere. He stood forward between the
two pine stems on the ridge of the rock, and uttered very loud the
mournful cry which had so terrified his enemies at Vogel islet. The
combatants flew asunder as if parted by a flash of lightning. Both
looked up to the point whence the sound had come, and there they saw
what they supposed to be Rolf's spectre pointing at them, and the eyes
staring as when looking up from the waters of the fiord. How could
these guilty and superstitious men doubt that it was Rolf's spectre
which, rising through the centre of the tarn, had caused the late
commotion in its waters? Away they fled, at first in different
directions; but it amused Rolf to observe that, rather than be alone,
Hund turned to follow the track of the tyrant who had just been
threatening and insulting him, and driving him to struggle for his life.
"Ay," thought Rolf, "it is his conscience that makes me so much more
terrible to him than that ruffian. I never hurt a hair of his head; and
yet, through his conscience, my face is worse than the blasting
lightning to his eyes.--When will all the people hereabouts find out, as
my mistress said when I was a boy,--when will people find out that the
demons and sprites they live in fear of all come out of their own heads
and hearts? Here, in Hund's case, is guilt shaping out visions
whichever way he turns. Not one of his ghost-stories is there for
months past, but I am at the bottom of; and that only through his
consciousness of hating and wanting to injure me. Then, in the opposite
case--of one as innocent as the whitest flower in all this pasture--in
my Erica's case, the ghosts she sees are all from passions that leave
her heart pure, but bewilder her eyes. It is the fear that she was
early made subject to, and the grief that she feels for her mother, that
create demons and sprites for her. The day may come, if I can make her
happy enough, when I may convince her that, for all she now thinks, she
never yet saw a token of any evil spirit--of any spirit but the Good One
that rules all things. What a sigh she will give--what a free breathing
hers will be, the day when I can show her, as plainly as I see myself,
that it is nothing but her own fears and griefs that have crossed her
path, and she never doubting that they were demons and sprites!
Heigh-ho! Where is Erlingsen? It is nothing short of cruel to keep me
waiting to-day, of all days, and in this spot of all places, almost
within sight of the seater where my poor Erica sits pining, and seeing
nothing of the pastures, but only with her mind's eye, the sea-caves
where she thinks these limbs are stretched, cold and helpless, as in a
grave. A pretty story I shall have to tell her, if she will only
believe it, of another sort of sea-cave."
To pass the time, he took out the shells he had collected for Erica, and
admired them afresh, and planned where she would place them, so as best
to adorn their sitting-room, when they were married. Erlingsen arrived
before he had been thus engaged five minutes; and indeed before he had
been more than a quarter of an hour altogether at the place of meeting.
"My dear master!" exclaimed Rolf, on seeing him coming, "have pity on
Erica and me; and hear what I have to tell you, that I may be gone."
"You shall be gone at once, my good fellow! I will walk with you, and
you shall tell your story as we go."
Rolf shook his head, and objected that he could not, in conscience, take
Erlingsen a step further from home than was necessary, as he was only
too much wanted there.
"Is that Oddo yonder?" he asked. "He said you would bring him."
"Yes: he has grown trustworthy of late. We have had fewer heads and
hands among us than the times require since Peder grew old and blind,
and you were missing, and Hund had to be watched instead of trusted. So
we have been obliged to make a man of Oddo, though he has the years of a
boy, and the curiosity of a woman. I brought him now, thinking that a
messenger might be wanted, to raise the country against the pirates; and
I believe Oddo, in his present mood, will be as sure as we know he can
be swift."
"It is well we have a messenger. Where is the bishop?"
"Just going to his boat, at this moment, I doubt not," replied
Erlingsen, measuring with his eye the length of the shadows. "The
bishop is to sup with us this evening."
"And how long to stay?"
"Over to-morrow night, at the least. If many of the neighbours should
bring their business to him, it may be longer. My little Frolich will
be vexed that he should come while she is absent. Indeed, I should not
much wonder if she sets out homeward when she hears the news you will
carry, so that we shall see her at breakfast."
"It is more likely," observed Rolf, "that we shall see the bishop up the
mountain at breakfast. Ah! you stare; but you will find I am not out of
my wits when you hear what has come to my knowledge since we parted, and
especially within this hour."
Erlingsen was indeed presently convinced that it was the intention of
the pirates to carry off the Bishop of Tronyem, in order that his ransom
might make up to them for the poverty of the coasts. He heard besides
such an ample detail of the plundering practices which Rolf had
witnessed from his retreat as convinced him that the strangers, though
in great force, must be prevented by a vigorous effort from doing
further mischief. The first thing to be done was to place the bishop in
safety on the mountain; and the next was so to raise the country as that
these pirates should be certainly taken when they should come within
reach.
Oddo was called, and entrusted with the information which had to be
conveyed to the magistrate at Saltdalen. He carried his master's
tobacco-pouch as a token,--this pouch, of Lapland make, being well known
to the magistrate as Erlingsen's. Oddo was to tell him of the danger of
the bishop, and to request him to send to the spot whatever force could
be mustered at Saltdalen; and moreover to issue the budstick, [Note 1]
to raise the country. The pirates having once entered the upper reach
of the fiord, might thus be prevented from ever going back again, and
from annoying any more the neighbourhood which they had so long
infested.
Erlingsen promised to be wary on his return homewards, so as not to fall
in with the two whom Rolf had put to flight. He said, however, that if
by chance he should cross their path, he did not doubt he could also
make them run, by acting the ghost or demon, though he had not had Rolfs
advantage of disappearing in the fiord before their eyes. They were
already terrified enough to fly from anything that called itself a
ghost.
The three then went on their several ways,--Oddo speeding over the
ridges like a sprite on a night errand, and Rolf striding up the grassy
slopes like (what he was) a lover anxious to be beside his betrothed,
after a perilous absence.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. When it is desired to send a summons or other message over a
district in Norway where the dwellings are scattered, the budstick is
sent round by running messengers. It is a stick, made hollow, to hold
the magistrate's order, and a screw at one end to secure the paper in
its place. Each messenger runs a certain distance, and then delivers it
to another, who must carry it forward. If any one is absent, the
budstick must be laid upon the "house-father's great chair, by the
fire-side;" and if the house is locked, it must be fastened outside the
door, so as to be seen as soon as the host returns. Upon great
occasions it was formerly found that a whole region could be raised in a
very short time. The method is still in use for appointments on public
business.