“By the Thousand! that shot told somewhere,” said Birger, picking himself up. “By George, it is Jacob! poor devil! Well, I am sorry for him, the old scoundrel.”
But Jacob, when he could be brought to his senses, could not find out that he had been wounded at all, though his great unwieldy frock-coat was split up the back, and the tails rolled in some unaccountable way round his head. His ideas, which were never peculiarly bright, had got completely bewildered, and nothing could convince him that a legion of Trolls had not been making a ball-room of his ample back.
“It was not Jacob I fired at,” said the Captain, quietly reloading his rifle; “take a pine knot, and look a little further up the pass; I suspect you will find something more valuable than our fat friend. Oh, that’s it!” as a loud shout was heard; “I thought it could not be far off,—bring him into the light.”
Birger repeated the command in Swedish, and presently three or four of the men emerged from the outer darkness, bearing, with some difficulty, an enormous elk, the patriarch of the forest.
“Well done,” said Birger; “capital shot! Here! Tom, Torkel, out with your knives, and off with the skin; do not think twice about it. Ten to one we shall have Moodie here; he will not mind his own people much, but he knows that we are not in the habit of firing into the air, and he will be coming to see what has been disturbing the camp all night. There, look sharp! never mind a tear or two; make that beast into goat’s flesh as soon as you can. Cut off the head at once, you cannot disguise the horns!”
“Well, but what if Moodie does see it?” said the Parson.
“Why,” said the Captain, “Birger is quite right. Moodie is in command, and he would consider it his duty to report us; and besides, I will answer for it he would jump at the chance of playing Brutus, and delating his own friends. There was a good deal of significance in the way he cautioned us that elks and red-deer were strictly preserved. It is a fact, too, that with all that immense range of royal forest at his undivided command, he has never shot a stag or an elk yet. He considers himself on honour, and behaves like a gentleman and a kammerjunker, as he is.”[58]
“He is the only man in Sweden who does, then,” said Birger. “I will engage for it. Bjornstjerna, Hof Ofwer Jagmästere, as he writes himself, never loses a chance if he can get one on the sly. By the way, how nicely the mist has cleared off, without any one seeing it. Positively I can see the stars again. I told you it would be so:—
“Through storm and rain,
The weary midnight hours must wane,