"Nay, 'tis his grace the Duke of Orkney."
"And by whom shall I be paid?"
"The lords of the secret council at Edinburgh—ha! ha!—gif thou bringest to them our heads, thou old sea-dog! Mass! Hans Knuber, knowest thou not mine is well worth a hundred merks of silver, and that of his grace of Orkney two thousand pounds of Scottish gold. But I trifle. Back, fellow! and desire thy knaves to open the hatch and up with these wheaten bags; for, by St. Mary! my mouth waters at the thought of the bannocks."
Rendered furious by the prospect of being jocularly plundered by marauders, for such adventures were far from uncommon on the ocean in those days of ill-defined liberty and right, the long smothered passion of Hans broke forth; and, swinging the handspike aloft, he dealt a deadly blow at the head of Ormiston, who without much effort avoided it. The stroke glanced harmlessly off his polished helmet; but, ere it could be repeated, he grasped the portly assailant like a child, and with a strength that astonished Konrad, and none more than Hans himself, lifted him over the gunnel and dropped him into the boat alongside, saying,—
"Thank Heaven and thy patron, Sir Skipper, that I have not popped thee into the sea, with a bunch of cannon-balls at thy neck; yet for that rash blow I shall punish thee with a severity I meant not to practise."
Other boats now came off from the Earl's frigate; the hatches were raised, and in a few minutes fifty bags of flour, that had grown on the corn rigs of fertile Lothian, and been ground in the mills of Leith, were transferred to the possession of Bothwell, whose outlawed crew, hollow-eyed and wolfish with long travail, danger, and scanty fare, received them with shouts of rapture—greeting each white dusty sack with a round of applause as it was hoisted on board. Last of all, Ormiston came off, bringing Hans Knuber and fourteen men who composed the crayer's crew.
"Now, sirrah," said he sternly to Hans; "lift thy pumpkin head, and behold how I will punish thee for that dirl on the sconce thou gavest me!"
Hans, whom rage and the shock of falling into the boat, had reduced to a state bordering on stupefaction, raised his heavy leaden-like grey eyes, and gazed at his crayer. The sprit-sail and fore-topsail had been hastily re-rigged and braced up—the helm lashed, to keep her head to the wind; she was again under sail, and, without a soul on board, was bearing full towards a dangerous eddy, that in those days boiled near the shore of Bergen; and Hans, as the distance increased between him and his vessel, gradually raised his hands to the ears of his fur cap, which he grasped with a tenacity that tightened as she neared the vortex, or little moskenstrom.
The rowers paused with their oars in the air, and looked back with curiosity and interest; for there was something very absorbing in the aspect of the abandoned ship, running full tilt on the career of destruction with all her sails set. Onward she went, rolling over the heavy swells caused by the waters of the fiord meeting those of the Skager Rack; the sun shone full upon her stern windows from the western hills—on her white canvass and the sparkling water that curled under her counter—and nearer and nearer she drew to the boiling circle, that with rapidity whirled white and frothy under the brow of an almost perpendicular cliff, that was overhung by an ancient wood of drooping pine.
Drawn within its influence, and dragged round by its irresistible current, with sails torn, cordage snapping, and her yards flying round like those of a windmill, she was borne about in a circle that narrowed at every turn—faster and faster, deeper and deeper, round she went, till in one wild whirl, with a sound that came over the water like the sob of a drowning giant, she vanished—sucked into the watery profundity of the abyss!