"Which way, Lord Earl?" asked the laird of Bolton; "steer we shoreward?"
"Nay!" cried Ormiston, in his usual tone of banter, for now his spirits rose as the danger lessened; "nay—a malison on thee, Norway! Woe worth the day I again set foot on thy devilish shore, where there is nought but bran-bannocks and sour beer in summer, and bears' hams with toasted snowballs in winter!"
"To yonder ship?" continued Hepburn.
"Yes!" replied the Earl. "Row briskly, my merry men; she hath altered her course, and stands towards us. We must yield; but my mind misgives me sorely, that we shall have but sorry treatment."
A few minutes' pulling brought them under the lee of the lofty Norwegian ship—a ladder was lowered, and the Earl and his attendants sprang fearlessly on board. They immediately found themselves surrounded by a crowd of savage-looking Norwegian seamen and Danish soldiers, the former in garments of singular fashion, and the latter wearing armour of an age at least two centuries older than their own. Their red bushy beards protruded from their little steel caps, and flowed over their gourgerins, as they leaned upon their iron mauls, chain maces, and the bolls of their slackened bows, and gazed with wild eyes on the strangers who thus voluntarily yielded themselves prisoners.
The whole group were immediately led to the summit of the lofty poop, where the captain stood surrounded by his officers; and Bothwell could perceive, by many a splintered plank and battered boom—by many a torn rope and shattered block—by spots of blood, and broken heads, and bandaged arms, that the Biornen had not come off scatheless in the late encounter.
The Norwegian captain was a fat and pompous little man; his round bulbous figure was clad in a quilted doublet of fine crimson cloth, the gold lacing of which shone in the light of three large poop lanterns that were blazing close by; his short, thick legs were covered by yellow silk stockings; he wore a thick ruff that came up to his ears, and a beaver hat nearly four feet in diameter; his mustaches were preposterously long, and he rolled his saucer eyes in a way that was very appalling, as the Earl stepped up to him, and, in no degree abashed by the magnificence of his portly presence, raised his blue velvet bonnet, saying in French as he bowed gracefully—
"I believe I have the honour of addressing the knight Christian Alborg, captain of his Danish Majesty's galley, the Biornen?"
"Yes!" replied the captain gruffly; "and what art thou?"
"Boatswain of the Scottish ship."