The Modern Vikings

“Hallo! How is your brother Mons?” they jeered, when they saw him.

Occasionally they stopped and glanced into his basket; and Tharald noticed that they glowered unpleasantly at him, whenever he had caught a fine fish. The fact was, he had had extraordinary luck this week; for Mons was getting to be such an expert, that he scarcely ever dived without bringing something or other ashore.

He had almost money enough now to pay for a year’s schooling, and he could scarcely sleep for joy when he thought of the bright future that stretched out before him. He saw himself in all manner of delightful situations. Mons, in the meanwhile, who was not troubled with this kind of ambition, snoozed peacefully in his box, at the foot of his master’s bed. He did not dream what a rude awakening was in store for him.

It had been a very bad week for John Bamle and his comrades. Morning after morning their traps were empty, or one solitary fish lay sprawling at the bottom of the box.

“I tell you, boys,” said John, spitting into his fist, and shaking it threateningly against the sky, “I am bewitched; that’s what I am. And so are you, boys – every mother’s son of you. It is that Gimlehaug boy that has bewitched us. Are you fools enough to suppose that it is a natural beast – that black thing – that trots at his heels, and empties the river of its fish for his benefit? Not by a jugful, lads – not by a big jugful! The devil it is – the black Satan himself – or my name is not John Bamle. You never saw a beast act like that before, plunging into the yellow whirlpools, and coming back unscathed every time, and with a fish as big as himself dangling after him. Now, shall we stand that any longer, boys? We have wives and babies at home, crying for food! And here we come daily, and find empty traps. Now wake up, lads, and be men! There has come a day of reckoning for him who has sold himself to the devil. I, for my part, am just mad enough to venture on a tussle with old Nick himself.”

Every word that John uttered fell like a firebrand into the men’s hearts. They shouted wildly, shook their fists, and swung their long boat-hooks.

“We’ll kill him, the thief,” they cried, “the scoundrel! He has sold himself to the devil.”

Up they rushed from the river-bank, up the green hillsides, up the rocky slope, until they reached the gate at Gimlehaug. It was but a small turf-thatched cottage, with tiny lead-framed window-panes and a rude stone chimney. The father was out working by the day, and the two boys were at home alone. Tharald, who was sitting at the window reading, felt suddenly a paw tapping him on the cheek. It was Mons. In the same instant an angry murmur of many voices reached his ear, and he saw a crowd of excited fishermen, with boat-hooks in their hands, thronging through the gate. There were twenty or thirty of them at the very least. Tharald sprang forward and bolted the door. He knew why they had come. Then he snatched Mons up in his arms, and hugged him tightly.

“Let them do their worst, Mons,” he said; “whatever happens, you and I will stand by each other.”

Anders, Tharald’s brother, came rushing in by the back door. He, too, had seen the men coming.

“Hide yourself, hide yourself, Tharald!” he cried in alarm; “it is you they are after.”

Hide yourself! That was more easily said than done. The hut was now surrounded, and there was no escape.

“Climb up the chimney,” begged Anders; “hurry, hurry! you have no time to lose.”

Happily there was no fire on the hearth, and Tharald, still hugging Mons tightly, allowed himself to be pushed by his brother up the sooty tunnel. Scarcely was Anders again out on the floor, when there was a tremendous thump at the door, so that the hut trembled.

“Open the door, I say!” shouted John Bamle without.

Anders, knowing how easily he could force the door, if he wished, drew the bolt and opened.

“I want the salmon-fisher,” said John, fiercely.

“Yes, we want the salmon-fisher,” echoed the crowd, wildly.

“What salmon-fisher?” asked Anders, with feigned surprise.

“Don’t you try your tricks on me, you rascal,” yelled John, furiously; and seizing the boy by the collar, flung him out through the door. The crowd stormed in after him. They tore up the beds, and scattered the straw over the floor; upset the furniture, ransacked drawers and boxes. But no trace did they find of him whom they sought. Then finally it occurred to someone to look up the chimney, and a long boat-hook was thrust up to bring down whatever there might be hidden there. Tharald felt the sharp point in his thigh, and he knew that he was discovered. With the strength of despair he tore himself loose, leaving part of his trousers on the hook, and, climbing upward, sprang out upon the roof. His thigh was bleeding, but he scarcely noticed it. His eyes and hair were full of soot, and his face was as black as a chimney-sweep’s. The men, when they saw him, jeered and yelled with derisive laughter.

“Hand us down your devilish beast there, and we won’t hurt you!” cried John Bamle.

“No, I won’t,” answered Tharald.

“By the heavens, lad, if you don’t mind, it will go hard with you.”

“I am not afraid,” said Tharald.

“Then we’ll make you, you beastly brat,” yelled a furious voice in the crowd; and instantly a stone whistled past the boy’s ear, and fell with a thump on the turf below.

“Now, will you give up your beast?”

Tharald hesitated a moment. Should he give up Mons, who had been his friend and playmate for two years, and see him stoned to death by the cruel men? Mons fixed his black, liquid eyes upon him as if he would ask him that very question. No, no, he could not forsake Mons. A second stone, bigger than the first, flew past him, and he had to dodge quickly behind the chimney, as the third and fourth followed.

“Tharald, Tharald!” cried Anders, imploringly; “do let the otter go, or they will kill both you and him.”

Before Tharald could answer, a shower of stones fell about him. One hit him in the forehead; the sparks danced before his eyes. A warm current rushed down his face; dizziness seized him; he fell, he did not know where or how. John Bamle with a yell sprang forward, climbed up the low wall to the roof, and saw the boy lying, as if dead, behind the chimney. He turned to call for his boat-hook, when suddenly something black shot toward him from the chimney-top, and a set of terrible teeth buried themselves in his throat. The mere force of the leap made him lose his balance, and he tumbled backward into the yard.

In the same instant Mons bounded forward, lighted on somebody’s shoulder, and made for the woods. Before anybody had time to think, he was out of sight.

Thus ended the famous battle of Gimlehaug, of which the salmon-fishers yet speak in the valley. Or rather, I should say, it did not end there, for John Bamle lay ill for several weeks, and had to have his wound sewed up by the doctor.

As for Tharald, he got well within a few days. But a strange uneasiness came over him, and he roamed through the woods early and late, seeking his lost friend. At the end of a week, as he was sitting, one night, on the rocks at the river, he suddenly felt something hairy rubbing against his nose. He looked up, and with a scream of joy clasped Mons in his arms. Then he hurried home, and had a long talk with his father. And the end of it was, that with the money which Mons had earned by his salmon-fishing, tickets were bought for New York for the entire family. About a month later they landed at Castle Garden.

Tharald and Mons are now doing a large fish-business, without fear of harm, in one of the great lakes of Wisconsin. Some day, he hopes yet, it may lead to a parsonage. Since he learned that some of the apostles were fishermen, he feels that he is on the right road to the goal of his ambition.

BETWEEN SEA AND SKY

I

“Iceland is the most beautiful land the sun doth shine upon,” said Sigurd Sigurdson to his two sons.

“How can you know that, father,” asked Thoralf, the elder of the two boys, “when you have never been anywhere else?”

“I know it in my heart,” said Sigurd, devoutly.

“It is, after all, a matter of taste,” observed the son. “I think if I were hard pressed, I might be induced to put up with some other country.”

“You ought to blush with shame,” his father rejoined warmly. “You do not deserve the name of an Icelander, when you fail to see how you have been blessed in having been born in so beautiful a country.”

“I wish it were less beautiful and had more things to eat in it,” muttered Thoralf. “Salted codfish, I have no doubt, is good for the soul, but it rests very heavily on the stomach, especially when you eat it three times a day.”

“You ought to thank God that you have codfish, and are not a naked savage on some South Sea isle, who feeds, like an animal, on the herbs of the earth.”

“But I like codfish much better than smoked puffin,” remarked Jens, the younger brother, who was carving a pipe-bowl. “Smoked puffin always makes me sea-sick. It tastes like cod-liver oil.”

Sigurd smiled, and, patting the younger boy on the head, entered the cottage.

“You shouldn’t talk so to father, Thoralf,” said Jens, with superior dignity; for his father’s caress made him proud and happy. “Father works so hard, and he does not like to see anyone discontented.”

“That is just it,” replied the elder brother; “he works so hard, and yet barely manages to keep the wolf from the door. That is what makes me impatient with the country. If he worked so hard in any other country he would live in abundance, and in America he would become a rich man.”

This conversation took place one day, late in the autumn, outside of a fisherman’s cottage on the north-western coast of Iceland. The wind was blowing a gale down from the ice-engirdled pole, and it required a very genial temper to keep one from getting blue. The ocean, which was but a few hundred feet distant, roared like an angry beast, and shook its white mane of spray, flinging it up against the black clouds. With every fresh gust of wind, a shower of salt water would fly hissing through the air and whirl about the chimney-top, which was white on the windward side from dried deposits of brine. On the turf-thatched roof big pieces of drift-wood, weighted down with stones, were laid lengthwise and crosswise, and along the walls fishing-nets hung in festoons from wooden pegs. Even the low door was draped, as with decorative intent, with the folds of a great drag-net, the clumsy cork-floats of which often dashed into the faces of those who attempted to enter. Under a driftwood shed which projected from the northern wall was seen a pile of peat, cut into square blocks, and a quantity of the same useful material might be observed down at the beach, in a boat which the boys had been unloading when the storm blew up. Trees no longer grow in the island, except the crippled and twisted dwarf-birch, which creeps along the ground like a snake, and, if it ever dares lift its head, rarely grows more than four or six feet high. In the olden time, which is described in the so-called sagas of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Iceland had very considerable forests of birch and probably also of pine. But they were cut down; and the climate has gradually been growing colder, until now even the hardiest tree, if it be induced to strike root in a sheltered place, never reaches maturity. The Icelanders therefore burn peat, and use for building their houses driftwood which is carried to them by the Gulf Stream from Cuba and the other well-wooded isles along the Mexican Gulf.

“If it keeps blowing like this,” said Thoralf, fixing his weather eye on the black horizon, “we shan’t be able to go a-fishing; and mother says the larder is very nearly empty.”

“I wish it would blow down an Englishman or something on us,” remarked the younger brother; “Englishmen always have such lots of money, and they are willing to pay for everything they look at.”

“While you are a-wishing, why don’t you wish for an American? Americans have mountains and mountains of money, and they don’t mind a bit what they do with it. That’s the reason I should like to be an American.”