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CHAPTER
It was the autumn of a bleak day in the September of 1566.
Enveloped in murky clouds, through which, at times, its red rays shot along the crested waves, the Norwegian sun was verging to the westward. From the frozen Baltic a cold wind swept down the Skager Rack, and, urged by the whole force of the Atlantic ocean, the sullen waves poured their foam upon the rocky bluffs and fissured crags that overhang the fiord of Christiana.
In those days, a vessel in the fiord proved an object of the greatest interest to the inhabitants of the hamlet; and it was with growing fears that the anxious housewives and weatherwise fishermen of Bergen, a little wooden town situated on the bay of Christiana, watched the exertions made by the crew of a small crayer or brigantine, of some eighty tons or so, that under bare poles, or having at least only her great square spritsail and jib set, endeavoured to weather the rocky headland to the east, and gain their little harbour, within which the water lay smooth as a millpond, forming by its placidity a strong contrast to the boiling and heaving ocean without.
The last rays of the September sun had died away on the pine-clad hills of Christiana and the cathedral spire of Bergen. Night came on sooner than usual, and the sky was rendered opaque by sable clouds, through which the red streaks of lightning shot red and forklike; while the hollow thunder reverberated afar off among the splintered summits of the Silverbergen.
The royal castle of Bergen, a great square tower of vast strength and unknown antiquity, reared on a point of rock, still overlooks the town that in the year of our story was little more than a fisher hamlet. Swung in an iron grating on its battlement, a huge beacon fire had been lighted by order of the governor to direct the struggling ship; and now the flames from the blazing mass of tarred fagots and well-oiled flax streamed like a torn banner on the stormy wind, and lit up the weatherbeaten visages of a few Danish soldiers who were grouped on the keep, glinting on their steel caps and mail shirts, and on the little brass minions and iron drakes that peeped between the timeworn embrasures.
Another group, which since sunset had been watching the strange ship, was crowded under the sheltering arch of the castle gate, watching for the dispersion of the clouds or the rising of the moon to reveal her whereabouts.
"Hans Knuber," said a young man who appeared at the wicket, and whose half military attire showed that he was captain of the king's crossbowmen at Bergen, "dost thou think she will weather the Devil's Nose on the next tack?"
"I doubt it much, Captain Konrad," replied the fisherman, removing his right hand from the pocket of his voluminous red breeches to the front of his fur cap, "unless they steer with the keep of Bergen and the spire of the bishop's church in a line; which I saw they did not do. Ugh! yonder she looms! and what a sea she shipped! How heavily her fore and after castles and all her top-hamper make her heel to leeward!"
"They who man her seem to have but small skill in pilot-craft," said one.
"Luff--luff--timoneer!" exclaimed the first seaman. "Now keep her full! Would I had my hands on thy tiller!"
"Every moment the night groweth darker," said the young man whom they called Konrad, and whom they treated with marked respect: "as the clouds darken the lightning brightens. A foul shame it were to old Norway, to have it said that so many of us--stout fellows all--stood idly and saw yonder struggling ship lost for lack of a little pilot-craft: for as thou sayest, Hans, if she runs so far again eastward on the next tack she must strike on the sunken reefs."
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