With a brief reverence the Earl retired into his cabin, where French Paris attended to relieve him of part of that armour which he wore constantly; for he was in hourly expectation of being assailed—from the seaward, by ships sent in pursuit of him from Scotland—or from the land, for his piracies and plundering on the Danish and Norwegian shores.
"The raven's fate befall thee!" muttered Hans, thrusting his clenched hands farther into his pockets, and gazing with blank despair upon the vortex that, almost in sight of his haven, had swallowed up his ship.
The wind blew freshly from the fiord ahead of them, and David Wood, the Earl's skipper, found the impossibility of making the point where he desired to land their captives; and the sudden appearance of a large three-masted vessel of war, which, under easy sail, came round one of those steep headlands that overhung the water, made him bear away into the open channel; for so great was the rage and terror their depredations had spread on both sides of the Skager Rack, that the Earl knew he must greet a foe in every ship under the banner of Frederick of Denmark.
The sun had set, but the clear twilight of the long northern night played upon the dark blue waters of the fiord, which still rippled in silver against the wall-like rocks that hemmed them in; the air was mild and balmy; the whole sky had that clear, cold blue, which it exhibits among our lowland hills before sunrise; but the northern lights, that gleamed from Iceland's snow-clad peaks, the bright pole-star, and the myriad spangles of the milky-way, were all coming forth in their glory; nothing could surpass the beauty of the former, as their rays, like the gleams of a gigantic sword, flashed along the cerulean sky, behind the wooded summits of the dark and distant hills.
"Dost thou know aught of yonder ship, Sir Skipper?" asked Bothwell of Hans Knuber, who had been observing her approach with a stern joy which he took no pains to conceal.
"Yes, I know her!" said Hans. "Ay, by St. Olaf! every plank in her hull and every rope in her rigging—for my own hands helped to nail one and reeve the other. There sails not a better craft, nor a swifter, in the Danish waters."
"A swifter!" rejoined the Earl, looking over his poop at the waves that curled under the counter. "I need care little for that, as Scottish men are unused to run either on sea or land, Master Knuber. She is a warship, I perceive."
"Thou art right, Lord Earl. She is the Biornen, or Great Bear, a ship of King Frederick's, carrying sixteen great carthouns, and as many demi-culverins; manned by three hundred mariners, and as many more crossbowmen and cannoniers. Christian Alborg commands—an old sea-horse as ever dipped his whiskers in salt-water—Knight of the Dannebrog and Commandant of Ottenbrocht. Ha! dost thou behold?"
At that moment, the red Norwegian flag, bearing a golden lion grasping a blue battle-axe, was unfurled upon the wind; the redder flash of a cannon, gleaming across the darkening water, and the whiz of the ball, as it passed through the rigging of the Earl's ship, announced his recognition by the stranger.
Hans drew his hands out of his chocolate-coloured breeches, and capered with revenge and joy as he heard it.