"Earl Harold, are you a heathen or a believer? Do you hope for the Valhalla of Odin or the Heaven of the Christians?"
"I believe in my strong arm and sharp sword," said he, haughtily. "Am I a woman or a boy, that thou, a mitred monk, shouldst question me thus? Moreover, remember that I would rather be addressed as Morrar na Shean—Lord of the Venison—than as lord of all our uncounted isles."
And from that time he hated the old bishop in his heart; so much so, that John of Harpidale, one of his chief followers, proposed to have the prelate boiled alive in the great hunting cauldron, and given in broth to their hounds.
The earl's galley had thirty benches of rowers; its prow was adorned by the head of a horse, richly gilded, and its sides and stern shone with gilding and plates of burnished brass; its sails were purple, and along its sides hung the shields of John of Harpidale, Thorolf Starkadder, and others, who were his vassals. In its prow sat twenty bearded harpers, with their harps, and to their songs the long sweeps of the rowers kept time.
Wolves are said to have followed this great war-galley along the shore, and screaming eagles, carrion crows, and other birds ventured out to sea in expectation of the banquet that awaited them; for in his quarrels and feuds with his island neighbours, Morrar na Shean carried havoc and dismay wherever he went, and frequently appropriated, without inquiry, the ships that sailed between the Baltic coasts, the Elbe, and Flanders.
Then when his galley, with its purple sails shining in the sun, and its long red streamers floating on the wind, was seen cleaving with gilded prow the stormy seas that roll round the Orcades and Thule, it spread terror, for the simple people of the isles believed it had been built by the gnomes who abode in the sea-riven caves of Cape Wrath, and that they had constructed it with such powerful spells, that whenever the sails were spread, they directed its course wherever the earl wished, without an order being issued.
On the 16th of April, 1150, the festival of St. Magnus the Martyr, John of Harpidale and Thorolf Starkadder, on feeling some unpleasant twinges of temporary compunction for their misdeeds, urged the earl to visit either Rome or Kirkwall; for so great was the sanctity of the Patron of the Isles, that the Orcadians were long wont to decide by a throw of the dice whether they should pay their devotions at the shrine of St. Peter or the Martyr of Orkney.
But Morrar na Shean laughed at them, and swore with a great oath that he would visit neither, as he had merrier work to do. Then, collecting a great train of followers, he sailed away north, up the Cattegat, to the assistance of the King of Denmark, Waldemar the Great, who had recently repaired the wall of Gotrick, subdued the pagans of Rugen, and called himself lord of all the countries northward of the Elbe.
Earl Harold was long gone, and silence and emptiness reigned in the hall and chambers of Braal; but there were peace and repose in Caithness and the Isles. The red deer roamed on the hills, unscared by the bay of hound or the blast of horn; without fear, the fishers put forth to cast their nets in Scapa Flow and the Sound of Yell, to hunt the huge whale in the sandy bays, or the tusky walrus on the seaweedy rocks; and the white-haired Bishop of Caithness began to hope that they had all seen the last of the terrible Morrar na Shean.
But lo! one day, when the dark scud was driving fast across the northern sky, when the boiling foam rose high on every storm-beat cape and bluff, when the wild sea-fowl were flying far inland, and the hissing waves rolled white as snow over the Skerries of the Pentland Firth and the black Boars of Dungisbay Head, the well-known purple sails of the great birlinn were seen, as she came flying through the mist and spray, with her long sweeps flashing and the sheen of helmets and bucklers glittering above her bulwarks in the partial gleams of a stormy setting sun.