A flush crossed the handsome face of Konrad of Saltzberg. He looked seaward a moment. The wind was roaring fearfully among the bare summits of the cliffs that towered abruptly from the shore to the very clouds—absolute mountains of rock rising peak above peak; and when the blue lightning flashed among them, their granite tops were seen stretching away in the distance, while the giant pines that flourished in their clefts and gorges, were tossing like black ostrich feathers in the storm.
At the harbour mouth the waves of snow-white foam were visible through the gloom, as they lashed, and hissed, and burst in successive mountains on the rocks of worn granite that fringed the entrance of the haven.
Konrad cast a rapid glance around him, and the appalling fury of the northern storm made even his gallant heart waver for a moment in its generous purpose; but a fair female face, that with all its waving ringlets appeared at a little casement overlooking the portal, and a kiss wafted to him from "a quick small hand," decided him. His eyes sparkled, and turning briskly round to the fishermen, he said,—
"By my honour, Sirs, though knowing less of pilot-craft than of handling the boll of an arblast, I will prove to you that I require nothing of any man that I dare not myself attempt—so thus will I put forth alone—and even if I perish shame you all."
And, throwing aside his sword and short mantle, the young man rushed down the steep pathway that led to the little pier, and leaped on board one of the long light whaleboats that lay there; but ere his ready hand had quite cast off the rope that bound it to a ringbolt on the mole, both Hans Knuber and Jans Thorson, fired by his example, sprang on board, and with more of the action of elephants, in their wide fur boots and mighty breeches, than the agility of seamen, they seized each an oar, and pushed off.
In Denmark and Norway, there were and are few titles of honour; but there has always existed in the latter an untitled nobility, like our Scottish lairds and English squires, consisting of very old families, who are more highly revered than those ennobled by Norway's Danish rulers; and many of these can trace their blood back to those terrible vikingr or ocean kings, who were so long the conquerors of the English Saxons, and the scourge of the Scottish shores.
Konrad of the Saltzberg (for he had no other name than that which he took from a solitary and half-ruined tower overlooking the fiord) was the representative of one of those time-honoured races.
The fame his brave ancestors had won under the enchanted banner of Regner Lodbrog, Erick with the bloody axe, and Sigwardis Ring, yet lived in the songs and stories of the northern harpers; and Konrad was revered for these old memories of Norway's ancient days, while his own bravery, affability, and handsome exterior, gained him the love of the Norse burghers of Bergen, the Danish bowmen he commanded, the fishermen of the fiord, and the huntsmen of the woods of Aggerhuis.
By the glare of the beacon on the castle wall, his boat was briefly seen amid the deepening gloom as it rose on the heaving swell, and the broad-bladed oars of his lusty companions flashed as they were dipped in the sparkling water. A moment, and a moment only, they were visible; Konrad was seen to move his plumed cap, and his cheerful hallo was heard; the next, they had vanished into obscurity.
The fishers gazed on the gloom with intensity, but could discover nothing; and there was no other sound came on the bellowing wind, save the roar of the resounding breakers as they broke on the impending bluffs.