‘Then came another portent. Tronda still stood upon the poop, when she started to hear a sudden pattering of feet, and a squeaking and scratching all around her. Immediately there poured forth from every hatchway a whole legion of rats—young ones and old—brown and grey—all of them making for the side of the vessel, and then plunging with a loud shrill squeaking into the sea, which was speedily dotted with their little heads, all swimming merrily to land. When the last had leaped overboard, the figure of Torquil Randa glided softly aft and confronted the witch.
‘“Rats,” quoth the figure, “leave a sinking ship.” And, as he spoke, the galley appeared to float in the water more heavily and deeply than ever, while the swells rose in great rocking billows, and the moan of a coming wind hurtled over the sea. Still Tronda confronted the apparition with a lip which never quivered, and an eye which never blinked.
“My ancestors,” said she, “were champions and heroes; one of them—Eric Westra—descended into the tomb of Sigismund, the sea king, and bore from thence the bronze sepulchral lamp which burns beneath, although it was guarded by monsters and potent spells. What art thou, then, that one in whose veins runs the blood of such a hero, should tremble and quake before thee?”
‘But the apparition said—
‘“I come from a power which is mightier than that of Odin and of Thor, and I am commissioned to pronounce to thee the doom thou shalt undergo as a punishment for thy wicked sorceries, even until the end of time.”
‘At that there rose a mighty wind, and the galley started away before it. In vain Tronda bade the elements to cease their strife—in vain she knelt upon the poop, and, with her drenched hair all streaming in the tempest, sung her magic rhymes and screamed out her most potent charms. The winds blew, and the clouds lowered, and the waves rose, unheedful of her spells, and so at last she started up from the deck, and cried in a lamentable voice—
‘“Alas! alas! my power is gone from me, and the elements obey me no more!”
‘At these words there was a flutter and a croak, and the ravens, flying from the cabin, soared up into the tempest-tossed air, wheeling round and round the rocking masts of the labouring ship.
‘“And you too,” said Tronda, looking up at them, “leave me!”
‘The sentence, comrades, was no sooner spoken than the foul birds darted off, each his separate way, and were speedily lost in the darkness. Then the storm burst out with all its fury. Had it been a bark manned by mortals, the galley would not have lived an hour in that sea; but enchantment kept it afloat until it had finished its destined course. For some space the Lapland witch and the figure of Torquil Randa were the only forms visible in the ship. But as the night fell, and the darkness grew intense, pale flashes of lightning showed troops of phantoms upon the deck, who worked the ropes and sails as mariners in a gale. These shapes, comrades, were the spirits of the seamen whom Tronda by her incantations had drowned. But still the witch stood erect and fearless through all this tumult of horror, lifting up her unabashed forehead to the gale, and flashing all around her wild grey eyes. The figure of Torquil stayed ever by her side.