The bowl of hydromel was empty—Frotho was looking into it disconsolately with one eye (for the other was asleep), and growing angry with his nobles, who had assisted him too heartily, and been over-zealous in obeying his commands to pledge him to the health of their entertainer. After grumbling and growling for some time over the huge and now dismal-looking bowl, his majesty took it into his head to be displeased with the inattention of his host, who had failed to remark and replenish, as he ought to have done, the empty bowl of departed hydromel. “Lord beast of the island,” said his majesty, at length, having thought till his thirst grew intolerable; “lord beast of the island, I will permit thee to be viceroy in Moskoe, but thou must not spare thy hydromel when thy master deigns to visit thee. For thy good cheer, I thank thee; thy meat is of the best, and abundant, but, by the burning wheel on Balder’s breast, thy drink was scanty; and I command thee hither to supply me with more.” A rumbling of thunder and a long terrific howl was the answer to the speech of the monarch. Frotho shivered with affright, for he thought he recognised, amid the uproar, the voices of his old acquaintances the illustrious snake and wolf, cousins of his sorcerer friend Biorno; and, as he was a little diffident of their conduct, notwithstanding his services to Surter, he did not altogether relish the meeting, under present circumstances; so, ensconcing himself in the centre of his gallant little band of valiant warriors, he patiently awaited what was to be the second part of his entertainment. This was settled in an instant; neither Fenris nor Midgard broke upon the supper party of the monarch, but a being more horrible than either, and infinitely more hideous than his or any imagination had already conceived of the monster of the Maelstrom gulf. A stern gigantic shape entered the hall, and stood steadily face to face with king Frotho and his nobles: his features were frightfully flat, and two sunken fiery eyes shot terrific glances from a visage almost entirely covered with dark and grisly hair; long black elf locks hung down upon his shoulders, huge teeth grinned through his grisly beard, and his fingers and feet were furnished with claws which were worthy of Nebuchadnezzar himself; his enormous body was covered with black bear-skins, so disposed as to serve him for a whole suit; and his huge hand grasped a monstrous club, which seemed very desirous of a nearer acquaintance with his majesty of Denmark’s brains. The monster contemplated the group for a moment in silence; he suffered them even to draw their swords and advance exactly one step towards him, when he suddenly lifted his terrible club, and, without striking a single blow, laid them all prostrate at his feet. He then approached king Frotho; the son of Olave shrunk from the uplifted club, and bellowed out, in terror and haste, that he was the king of Denmark. “And thy errand?” said the monster. King Frotho was silent. “I know it,” observed the spectre; “and for its presumption, but for one thing which I expect of thee, would bind thy trembling feet for ever to the spot where thou standest staring at me. Hark thee! thou fool of Surter’s making! who hopest to overcome the invincible by human arms,—hear, and obey what I shall command thee. I do not hate thee, and would not harm thee, for thou art the friend of Lok; but my wrath against the kingdoms must be appeased, and my divinity acknowledged. I demand thy daughter. A spotless virgin of royal blood must come voluntarily hither to be sacrificed on this island, and thou must conduct her: do this, and henceforth I too am thy friend; neglect it, and my thunders shall shake thy palace of Sandaal, and this club dash out thy brains and scatter them over thy sovereign throne.”
King Frotho looked aghast—not at the condition of his safety, but his utter inability to fulfil it—there was no cheating such an enemy as this—so he told him the plain truth, that he had no daughter, and humbly apologised for the want of one. The monster yelled at him, and again lifted up his club. Frotho, in agony, besought him to have pity, and then suddenly recollected that he had a niece who was his prisoner, and whom he very readily offered to his disposal. The monster hesitated;—at length, in reply to Frotho’s earnest entreaties, he consented to spare his life, upon condition that, in the space of twenty days, he should land the princess on the island, and deliver her safely into his hands, to be sacrificed by his own high priest in his palace; and promising, should Frotho fail in his engagement, on the very next day, to shake Sandaal about his ears, and dish up his carcass as a meal for Midgard. Frotho sealed his promise with a solemn oath, and the monster dismissed him with a kick on the throne-honouring part of his person, which sent him not only through the palace gates, but one mile forward in his journey to the coast, which long before he had gained, his panting train overtook him, being driven out by the lord beast, to wait upon and console their disgraced and afflicted master.
King Frotho had no intention, rogue as he was, to cozen the Moskoe monster; on the contrary, he was desirous to obtain his friendship and forbearance towards his subjects and the little Norwegian children for whom he had evinced such cannibal prepossessions. He was not sorry, either, so effectually to dispose of Ildegarda, whose union with his son he had such good reason to fear. The difficulty would be to persuade the princess to go voluntarily to be eaten. He was ingenious however—naturally fertile in expedients—and he soon hit upon a method of persuasion which he deemed infallible: he told the poor princess that the monster demanded her or her father as prisoners; that he allowed her to choose, and if she thought proper to decline, he should ship off old Haquin immediately, to be stewed in whale fat, and served up for supper with milk sauce, according to the pleasure of the monster, in the marble palace of Moskoe: for his own part, in relation to herself, he pretended he did not clearly understand to what the lord of the island had destined her, but he hoped nothing so terrible as a roast or a hash. Ildegarda wept, but came into the scheme quicker than Frotho had anticipated. Haldane was dead, and her father’s life in danger; by the sacrifice of her own, which was now really become indifferent to her, she could at least preserve the last of these beloved beings, and therefore she did not hesitate. Making Frotho swear a tremendous oath (which she knew no Dane dared break), to release her father on his return from Moskoe, she prepared to accompany the king, and, in less than twenty days, Frotho and his beautiful victim landed on the island, and prepared to march to the black palace alone.
They had not proceeded far on their journey, when their progress was arrested by the appearance of a singular cavalcade coming to meet them; this consisted of a magnificently painted chariot, drawn by four snow-white rein-deer, each of whom, to the astonishment of Ildegarda, had feet of pure gold: behind it came the monster-man himself, mounted upon a coal-black steed of extraordinary size and beauty, who pawed the earth impatiently, and, snorting and foaming as he reared, threw his magnificent mane from side to side, as if weary of the slight restraint which his rider appeared to impose upon him;—the latter had now a bear-skin cap upon his head, on the top of which sat a monstrous raven, decorating it by way of crest; and another on his wrist, with infinite grace and gravity, seemed ready to serve him in quality of falcon extraordinary. The cavalcade paused on remarking the strangers; and the grim monster, advancing to Frotho, sternly demanded, “Comes the maid willingly?” “She does,” replied Frotho; “and”—But the monster no longer gave him any attention: he did not even look at Ildegarda, but, bending his head down towards his horse’s ears, gravely and mildly asked, “Steed of heaven, art thou weary?” “No,” replied the horse; “but I have to-day been so long upon the earth, that its gross air is beginning to affect me—the sod is heavy to my feet, and somewhat checks my swiftness: let me relieve my legs, I pray thee.” The strange monster nodded his grisly head in reply, and Frotho beheld the courser slowly and deliberately draw up his four black legs, and let down three white ones in their places. The king began now to guess his company; “It is the wondrous steed of Odin,” said he in a whisper to Ildegarda; “the immortal eight-legged Sleipner: but what is he who rides him?” The princess had no time to answer this question, even had she been able, for the monster seemed determined to have all the conversation to himself. He spoke to the raven on his head: “Hugo,” said he, “take the reins, guide my rein-deer smoothly, and conduct the lady to the palace: and you, Mumin,” added he to the bird on his wrist, “hasten homewards, and see that all be prepared for the victim.” At these terrible words, the tears of Ildegarda began to flow, and Frotho prepared himself to make a speech. The monster heeded neither the one nor the other, but nodded to Ildegarda to ascend the chariot, which when she had done, he turned round to Frotho, lifted up his terrible club, and exclaimed, in a voice of thunder, “Go!” It was but one word, but the tone and the action weighed more than five hundred with Frotho, who, fearing to hear it repeated, darted from the party, and set sail for Denmark without once looking behind him.
In the mean time, Ildegarda was conducted by her ill-looking escort to the marble palace, and left by him in the same hall in which Frotho had rested on his first arrival: here, too, she found a supper prepared for her, though in a somewhat different taste from the former; but the princess had no inclination to eat—indeed she felt determined not to be fattened before killing, and threw herself upon the earth in a paroxysm of grief and despair. Suddenly, soft and sweet music broke upon her ear, and the beautiful voice of some holy unseen thing thus sung soothingly to her sorrow:—
When the thunder-bolt cleaveth
The trembling sky—
When the mad ocean heaveth
His wild waves on high—
When the coiling snake waketh
From the heaving earth curled,
And upreareth and shaketh
An agonised world—
When his coil thrice he foldeth
Around the night-born,
Till the gazer beholdeth
Red blood fill her horn—
When Valkyries scatter
The clouds which they tear,
And their steed hoof’s loud clatter
Is heard in the air—
When on oak tops the tramping
Of their hoofs echo loud,
While their snorting and champing
Is lost in the cloud—
When wizards are breaking
The sleep of the dead,
And the shadows are waking
From each gory bed—
When the dog of hell howleth,
As the sheeted dead glide
Where the queen of death scowleth,
Grim Fenris beside—
When Surter assembleth
The lost round his throne—
Then the murderer trembleth,
And the murderer alone.
But then, guiltless beauty,
What hast thou to fear?
All owe thee their duty,
All homage thee here;
The life thou hast given
The immortals will claim;
And Rinda in heaven
Stamps thy star-written name.