Then through the flying vapour, where, parted by the levin brand, the misty rain poured down in torrents on the pathless sea, and the goodwives of Bergen told their beads, and muttered a Hail Mary! or a prayer to Saint Erick the Martyr for the souls of the poor mariners, who, they were assured, would find their graves at the bottom of the deep Skager Rack ere morning brightened on the waters of the Sound.
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.
"By Saint Olaus!" cried another, "unless some one boards and pilots her, another quarter of an hour will see her run full plump on the reef; and then God assoilzie both master and mariner!"
"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."
"No boat could live in such a sea," muttered the fishermen as they drew back, none appearing solicitous of the selection which they expected the young man would make.