That night a Scottish ship of war, which was commanded by two knights of distinction, and had been sent by the Earl of Moray in pursuit of Bothwell, anchored in the Jelta fiord, and to their care were consigned the shipwrecked followers of the captive noble; and soon after these knights set sail for Scotland.
But many hours before they had come into Bergen, the Biornen had vanished from that narrow inlet of the ocean, and was bearing the great Scottish captive along the shores of western Gothland, and breasting the frothy waves of the Cattegat.
The sun, as he set in the western ocean, shed a mellow light upon the wide expanse of shore that stretched upon their lee—on many an impending cliff, on the dark summits of which waved the old primeval pines of Scandinavia, and on whose bases the waters of the west were dashing in foam—on many a wooded wilderness, amid the recesses of which the wolves were prowling by the Druid stones of Loda, and the long-forgotten grave of many a gothic chief.
Buried in reverie, with folded arms and saddened eyes, Bothwell watched the changing features and windings of that foreign shore, with all its pathless woods, volcanic rocks, and dark blue hills, throwing their deepening shadows on each other, as the burning sun sank in the distant sea, and the dusky tints of night shed upon the scenery a gloom in unison with his own dark thoughts and bitter memories.
Bitter and sad they were truly; but how unavailing!
Now separated from the evil influence of Ormiston and others, he deplored his wickedness and folly with an intensity that amounted to agony. Had the universe been his, he would have given it that he might live the last year of his life over again, with the experience in his mind of what the guilt, the terrors, the anxieties, and remorse of that year had been.
With sorrow, with envy, yea, with agony, he looked back to the position he had held in the estimation of others, and of himself; and felt, in the bitterness of his soul, that the eminence could never more be re-won.
Never more, never more! It was a terrible reflection.
He thought, too, of the native land he might never see again; and—
"Of many a tale of love and war
That mingled with the scene;
Of Bothwell's bank that bloom'd so dear,
And Bothwell's bonny Jean."