And bids the gloom retire.”
The Parson unrolled himself from his cloak and looked out; the night had fallen dark enough, and the rain, though it gave evident symptoms of having exhausted itself, was still falling, but scantily and sparingly. The mist was thicker and darker and blacker than ever; all, however, was bright light in the camp, for the bale-fires of Baldur could not have burnt more brightly than the watch-fires of the picket. The Captain had had plenty of spare hands and plenty of spare time, and had kept his men in work by collecting stores of fuel; besides which he had made use of an expedient which, common enough in winter camps, is seldom resorted to in summer. A full-grown pine, which seemed to have died of old age, and had dried up where it stood, was cut down; the head, already deprived of its branches by Time, was chopped off and laid alongside the butt, end for end, and the fires had been lighted on the top of these two pieces of timber. The interstice between them admitting the air from below, roared like a furnace, and blew up the bright flames on high; whilst the trunks themselves, which had speedily become ignited, contributed their own share to the general light and heat. There were several supplementary fires, for the great furnace was much too fierce for culinary operations; and the smoke from all these, pressed down, as it were, by the superincumbent mist, formed, by the reflection of the flames, a sort of luminous halo, beyond which it was impossible for eye to penetrate. Here and there fir branches were stuck into the ground to dry the clothes upon, for though the drizzle had not exactly ceased, the heat dried much faster than the rain moistened.
Full in the blaze of light, and as near as he could approach to it without burning himself, stood Birger; his neat little figure just as tidy, and just as carefully dressed, as if there had been no such thing as falling rain, or wet juniper, or prickly brambles in the world. He was standing with his back to the fire, and his hands in the pockets of his shooting-jacket, watching the preparations for a late supper, and singing, at the full pitch of a very powerful voice, the magic words which had recalled the Parson to a state of consciousness. The Captain, who had evidently been furbishing up with fresh chalk the “S. F.” on his cap, which looked quite white and new, notwithstanding the rain, had just returned from visiting his sentries, and was examining the lock of his American rifle, which he had carried with him, to see if it had sustained any damage from the wet. Jacob, and his attendant imps, were emerging from behind the flames with the everlasting black kettle, which was accompanied this time by a pile of steaks, cut from some mysterious animal, and served up on the splash-board of one of the carioles, by way of dish.
“Halloo! Birger,” said the Parson; “you here! Rather a change in the general aspect of affairs since we parted last!”
“You may well say that; I never saw such a determined day’s rain; I thought the twilight of the gods was come in real earnest.”
“To judge from the fire that you have got up,” said the Parson, emerging from the tent, “you seem inclined to realize the old prophecy, that that twilight is to finish off by a general conflagration.”
“You need not cast inquiring glances at me,” said Birger to the Captain, who, having satisfied himself about the state of his weapons, was trying to make out the allusion. “I am not going to tell you that long story now. The gods themselves, if we may trust the high song of Odin, used to take off the edge of their hunger, and thirst, too,—for they were thirsty souls,—before they called on Bragi, the god of minstrelsy, to sing even their own deeds. And, to tell you the truth, to say nothing of my being as hungry as a hunter, these steaks are most magnificent, and this kettle unusually savoury.”
“What have you got in it?” said the Parson.
“Andhrimnir cooks Sahrimnir in Eldhrimnir,” replied Birger, quoting from the cookery of the prose Edda. “Do you not see Odin has sent us a present of heavenly meat from Valhalla?”