Part 7

He was all impatience to be gone. It tried him more now to think how long it would be before Erica could hear of his preservation than to bear all that had gone before. Being without clothes, however, it was necessary to visit the cave, and bring away what was there. In truth, Oddo was not sorry for this. His curiosity about the cave was so great that he felt it impossible to go home without seeing it; and the advantage of holding the secret knowledge of such a place was one which he would not give up. He seized an oar, gave another to Rolf; and they were presently off the mouth of the cave. Peder sighed at their having to leave him again; but he believed what Rolf said of there being no danger, and of their remaining close at hand. One or the other came popping up beside the boat every minute, with clothes, or net, or lines, or brandy-flask, and finally with the oars of the poor broken skiff, being obliged to leave the skiff itself behind. Rolf did not forget to bring away whole handfuls of beautiful shells, which he had amused himself with collecting for Erica.

At last they entered the boat again; and while they were dressing, Oddo charmed his grandfather with a description of the cave--of the dark, sounding walls, the lofty roof, and the green tide breaking on the white sands. It almost made the listener cool to hear of these things; but, as Oddo had remarked, the heat had abated. It was near midnight, and the sun was going to set. Their row to the shore would be in the cool twilight; and then they should take in companions, who, fresh from rest, would save them the trouble of rowing home.

When all were too tired to talk, and the oars were dipping somewhat lazily, and the breeze had died away, and the sea-birds were quiet, old Peder, who appeared to his companions to be asleep, raised his head, and said--

"I heard a sob. Are you crying, Oddo?"

"Yes, grandfather."

"What is your grief, my boy?"

"No grief, anything but grief now. I have felt more grief than you know of, though, or anybody. I did not know it fully myself till now."

"Right, my boy; and right to say it out too."

"I don't care now who knows how miserable I have been. I did not believe, all the time, that Nipen had anything to do with these misfortunes----"

"Right, Oddo!" exclaimed Rolf now.

"But I was not quite certain; and how could I say a word against it when I was the one to provoke Nipen? Now Rolf is safe, and Erica will be happy again, and I shall not feel as if everybody's eyes were upon me, and know that it is only out of kindness that they do not reproach me as having done all the mischief. I shall hold up my head again now--as some may think I have done all along; but I did not, in my own eyes--no, not in my own eyes, for all these weary days that are gone."

"Well, they are gone now," said Rolf. "Let them go by and be forgotten."

"Nay, not forgotten," said Peder. "How is my boy to learn if he forgets----"

"Don't fear that for me, grandfather," said Oddo, as the tears still streamed down his face. "No fear of that. I shall not forget these last days;--no, not as long as I live."

The comrades who were waiting and watching on the point were duly amazed to see three heads in the boat, on her return; and duly delighted to find that the third was Rolf--alive and no ghost. They asked question upon question, and Rolf answered some fully and truly, while he showed reserve upon others; and at last, when closely pressed, he declared himself too much exhausted to talk, and begged permission to lie down in the bottom of the boat and sleep. Upon this a long silence ensued. It lasted till the farmhouse was in sight at which one of the rowers was to be landed. Oddo then exclaimed--

"I wonder what we all have been thinking about. We have not settled a single thing about what is to be said and done; and here we are almost in sight of home, and Hund's cunning eyes."

"I have settled all about it," replied Rolf, raising himself up from the bottom of the boat, where they all thought he had been sleeping soundly. "My mind," said he, "is quite clear. The first thing I have decided upon is that I may rely on the honour of our friends here to say nothing yet. You have proved your kindness, friends, in coming on this expedition, but for which I should have died in my hole, like a superannuated bear in its den. This is a story that the whole country will hear of; and our grandchildren will tell it, on winter nights, when there is talk of the war that brought the pirates on our coasts. The best way will be for you to set me ashore some way short of home, and ask Erlingsen to meet me at the Black Tarn. There cannot be a quieter place; and I shall be so far on my way to the seater."

"If you will just make a looking-glass of the Black Tarn," said Oddo, "you will see that you have no business to carry such a face as yours to the seater. Erica will die of terror at you for the mountain-demon, before you can persuade her it is only you."

"I was thinking," observed one of the rowers, who relished the idea of going down to posterity in a wonderful story, "I was just thinking that your wisest way will be to take a rest in my bed at Holberg's, without anybody knowing, and shave yourself with my razor, and dress in my Sunday clothes, and show yourself to your betrothed in such a trim as that she will be glad to see you."

"Do so, Rolf," urged Peder. Everybody said "do so," and agreed that Erica would suffer far less by remaining five or six hours longer in her present state of mind, than by seeing her lover look like a ghastly savage, or perhaps hearing that he was lying by the roadside, dying of his exertions to reach her. Rolf tried to laugh at all this; but he could not contradict it.

All took place as it was settled in the boat. Before the people on a neighbour's farm had come in to breakfast, Rolf was snug in bed, with a large pitcher of whey by the bedside, to quench his still insatiable thirst. No one but the neighbours knew of his being there; and he got away unseen in the afternoon, rested, shaven, and dressed, so as to look more like himself, though still haggard. Packing his old clothes into a bundle, which he carried with a stick over his shoulder, and laden with nothing else but a few rye-cakes and a flask of the everlasting corn-brandy, he set forth, thanking his hosts very heartily for their care, and somewhat mysteriously assuring them that they would hear something soon, and that meantime they had better not have to be sought far from home.

As he expected, he met no one whom he knew. Nine-tenths of the neighbours were far away on the seaters; and of the small remainder, almost all were attending the bishop on the opposite shore of the lake. Rolf shook his head at every deserted farmhouse that he passed, thinking how the pirates might ransack the dwellings if they should happen to discover that few inhabitants remained in them but those whose limbs were too old to climb the mountain. He shook his head again when he thought what consternation he might spread through these dwellings by dropping at the doors the news of how near the pirate schooner lay. It seemed to be out of the people's minds now, because it was out of sight, and the bishop had become visible instead. As for the security which some talked of from there being so little worth taking in the Nordland farmhouses--this might be true if only one house was to be attacked, and that one defended; but half-a-dozen ruffians, coming ashore to search eight or ten undefended houses in a day, might gather enough booty to pay them for their trouble. Of money they would find little or none; but in some families there were gold chains, crosses, and earrings, which had come down from a remote generation; or silver goblets and tankards. There were goats worth carrying away for their milk, and spirited horses and their harness to sell at a distance. There were stores of the finest bed and table linen in the world, sacks of flour, cellars full of ale, kegs of brandy, and a mass of tobacco in every house. Fervently did Rolf wish, as he passed by these comfortable dwellings, that the enemy would cast no eye or thought upon their comforts till he should have given such information in the proper quarters as should deprive them of the power of doing mischief in this neighbourhood.

The breeze blew in his face, refreshing him with its coolness, and with the fragrance of the birch, with which it was loaded. But it brought something else--a transient sound which surprised Rolf--voices of men, who seemed, if he could judge from so rapid a hint, to be talking angrily. He began to consider whom, besides Oddo, Elringsen could have thought it safe or necessary to bring with him, or whether it was somebody met with by chance. At all events, it would be wisest not to show himself, and to approach with all possible caution. Cautiously, therefore, he drew near, keeping a vigilant watch all around, and ready to pop down into the grass on any alarm. Being unable to see anyone near the tarn, he was convinced the talkers must be seated under the crags on its margin; and he therefore made a circuit to get behind the rocks, and then climbed a huge fragment, which seemed to have been toppled down from some steep, and to have rolled to the brink of the water. Two stunted pines grew out from the summit of this crag; and between these pines Rolf placed himself, and looked down from thence.

Two men sat on the ground in the shadow of the rock. One was Hund, and the other must undoubtedly be one of the pirate crew. His dress, arms, and broken language all showed him to be so; and it was, in fact, the same man that Erica had met near the same place, though that she had had such an adventure was the last thing her lover dreamed of as he surveyed the man's figure from above.

This man appeared surly. Hund was extremely agitated.

"It is very hard," said he, "when all I want is to do no harm to anybody--neither to my old friends nor my new acquaintances--that I cannot be let alone. I have done too much mischief in my life already. The demons have made sport of me. It is their sport that I have as many lives to answer for as any man of twice my age in Nordland; and now that I would be harmless for the rest of my days----"

"Don't trouble yourself to talk about your days," interrupted the pirate, "they will be too few to be worth speaking of, if you do not put yourself under our orders again. You are a deserter--and as a deserter you go back with me, unless you choose to go as a comrade."

"And what might I expect that your orders would be, if I went with you?"

"You know very well that we want you for a guide. That is all you are worth. In a fight, you would only be in the way--unless indeed you could contrive to get out of the way."

"Then you would not expect me to fight against my master and his people?"

"Nobody was ever so foolish as to expect you to fight, more or less, I should think. No, your business would be to pilot us to Erlingsen's, and answer truly all our questions about their ways and doings."

"Surprise them in their sleep!" muttered Hund. "Wake them up with the light of their own burning roofs! And they would know me by that light! They would point me out to the bishop;--they would find time in their hurry to mark me for the monster they might well think me!"

"Yes; you would be in the front, of course," observed the pirate. "But there is one comfort for you--if you are so earnest to see the bishop, as you told me you were, my plan is the best. When once we lock him down on board our schooner, you can have him all to yourself. You can confess your sins to him the whole day long; for nobody else will want a word with either of you. You can show him your enchanted island, down in the fiord, and see if he can lay the ghost for you."

Hund sprang to his feet in an agony of passion. The well-armed pirate was up as soon as he. Rolf drew back two paces, to be out of sight, if by chance they should look up, and armed himself with a heavy stone. He heard the pirate say--

"You can try to run away, if you like; I shall shoot you through the head before you have gone five yards. And you may refuse to return with me; and then I shall know how to report of you to my captain. I shall tell him that you are lying at the bottom of this lake--if it has a bottom--with a stone tied round your neck, like a drowned wild cat. I hope you may chance to find your enemy there, to make the place the pleasanter."

Rolf could not resist the impulse to send his heavy stone into the middle of the tarn, to see the effect upon the men below. He gave a good cast, on the very instant; and prodigious was the splash, as the stone hit the water, precisely in the middle of the little lake. The men did not see the cause of the commotion that followed; but, staring and turning at the splash, they saw the rings spreading in the dark waters which had lain as still as the heavens but a moment before. How could two guilty, superstitious men doubt that the waters were thrown into agitation by the pirate's last words? Yet they glanced fearfully round the whole landscape, far and near. They saw no living thing but a hawk which, startled from its perch on a scathed pine was wheeling round in the air in an unsteady flight. The pirate pointed to the bird with one hand, while he laid the other on the pistol in his belt.

"Yes," said Hund, trembling, "the bird saw it. Did you see it?"

"See what?"

"The water-sprite, Uldra. Before you throw me in to the water-sprite, we will see which is the strongest."

And in desperation Hund, unarmed as he was, threw himself upon the pirate, sprang at his throat, and both wrestled with all their force. Rolf could not but look; and he saw that the pirate had drawn forth his pistol, and that all would be over with Hund in a moment if he did not interfere. He stood forward between the two pine stems, on the ridge of the rock, and uttered very loud the mournful cry which had so terrified his enemies at Vogel islet. The combatants flew asunder, as if parted by a flash of lightning. Both looked up to the point whence the sound had come; and there they saw what they supposed to be Rolf's spectre, pointing at them, and the eyes staring as when looking up from the waters of the fiord. How could these guilty and superstitious men doubt that it was Rolf's spectre, which, rising through the centre of the tarn, had caused the late commotion in its waters? Away they fled--at first in different directions; but it amused Rolf to observe that rather than be alone, Hund turned to follow the track of the tyrant, who had just been threatening and insulting him, and driving him to struggle for his life.

"Ay," thought Rolf, "it is his conscience that makes me so much more terrible to him than that ruffian. I never hurt a hair of his head; and yet, through his conscience, my face is worse than the blasting lightning to his eyes. Heigh-ho! Where is Erlingsen? It is nothing short of cruel to keep me waiting to-day, of all days; and in this spot, of all places--almost within sight of the seater where my poor Erica sits pining, and seeing nothing of the pastures, but only, with her minds' eye, the sea-caves where she thinks these limbs are stretched, cold and helpless, as in a grave. A pretty story I shall have to tell her, if she will only believe it, of another sort of sea-cave."

To pass the time he took out the shells he had collected for Erica, and admired them afresh, and planned where she would place them, so as best to adorn their sitting-room, when they were married. Erlingsen arrived before he had been thus engaged five minutes; and indeed before he had been more than a quarter of an hour altogether at the place of meeting.

"My dear master!" exclaimed Rolf, on seeing him coming, "have pity on Erica and me, and hear what I have to tell you, that I may be gone."

"You shall be gone at once, my good fellow! I will walk with you, and you shall tell your story as we go."

Rolf shook his head, and objected that he could not, in conscience, take Erlingsen a step further from home than was necessary, as he was only too much wanted there.

"Is that Oddo yonder?" he asked. "He said you would bring him."

"Yes; he has grown trustworthy of late. We have had fewer heads and hands among us than the times require since Peder grew old and blind, and you were missing, and Hund had to be watched instead of trusted. So we have been obliged to make a man of Oddo, though he has the years of a boy, and the curiosity of a woman. I brought him now, thinking that a messenger might be wanted to raise the country against the pirates; and I believe Oddo, in his present mood, will be as sure as we know he can be swift."

"It is well we have a messenger. Where is the bishop?"

"Just going to his boat, at this moment, I doubt not," replied Erlingsen, measuring with his eye the length of the shadows. "The bishop is to sup with us this evening."

"And how long to stay?"

"Over to-morrow night, at the least. If many of the neighbours should bring their business to him, it may be longer. My little Frolich will be vexed that he should come while she is absent. Indeed I should not much wonder if she sets out homeward when she hears the news you will carry, so that we shall see her at breakfast."

"It is more likely," observed Rolf, "that we shall see the bishop up the mountain at breakfast. Ah! you stare; but you will find I am not out of my wits when you hear what has come to my knowledge since we parted, and especially within this hour."

Erlingsen was indeed presently convinced that it was the intention of the pirates to carry off the Bishop of Tronyem, in order that his ransom might make up to them for the poverty of the coasts. He heard besides such an ample detail of the plundering practices which Rolf had witnessed from his retreat as convinced him that the strangers, though in great force, must be prevented by a vigorous effort from doing further mischief. The first thing to be done was to place the bishop in safety on the mountain; and the next was so to raise the country as that these pirates should be certainly taken when they should come within reach.

Oddo was called, and entrusted with the information which had to be conveyed to the magistrate at Saltdalen. He carried his master's tobacco-pouch as a token--this pouch, of Lapland make, being well known to the magistrate as Erlingsen's. Oddo was to tell him of the danger of the bishop, and to request him to send to the spot whatever force could be mustered at Saltdalen; and moreover to issue the budstick,[5] to raise the country. The pirates having once entered the upper reach of the fiord, might thus be prevented from ever going back again, and from annoying any more the neighbourhood which they had so long infested.

[5] When it is desired to send a summons or other message over a district in Norway where the dwellings are scattered, the budstick is sent round by running messengers. It is a stick made hollow, to hold the magistrate's order, and a screw at one end to secure the paper in its place. Each messenger runs a certain distance, and then delivers it to another, who must carry it forward. If any one is absent, the budstick must be laid upon the "housefather's great chair, by the fireside;" and if the house is locked, it must be fastened outside the door, so as to be seen as soon as the host returns. Upon great occasions, it was formerly found that a whole region could be raised in a very short time. The method is still in use for appointments on public business.

Erlingsen promised to be wary on his return homewards, so as not to fall in with the two whom Rolf had put to flight. He said, however, that if by chance he should cross their path, he did not doubt he could also make them run, by acting the ghost or demon, though he had not had Rolf's advantage of disappearing in the fiord before their eyes. They were already terrified enough to fly from anything that called itself a ghost.

The three then went on their several ways--Oddo speeding over the ridges like a sprite on a night errand, and Rolf striding up the grassy slopes like (what he was) a lover anxious to be beside his betrothed after a perilous absence.

This was the day when the first cheese of the season was found to be perfect and complete. Frolich, Stiorna, and Erica examined it carefully, and pronounced it a well-pressed, excellent Gammel cheese, such as they should not be ashamed to set before the bishop, and therefore one which ought to satisfy the demon. It now only remained to carry it to its destination--to the ridge where the first cheese of the season was always laid for the demon, and where, it appeared, he regularly came for his offering, as no vestige of the gift was ever to be found the next morning--only the round place in the grass where it had lain, and the marks of some feet which had trodden the herbage.

"Help me up with it upon my head, Stiorna," said Erica.

"I know why you will not let me carry the cheese," said Frolich, smiling. "You are thinking of Oddo with the cake and ale. Nobody but you must deposit offerings henceforward. You are afraid I should eat up that cheese, almost as heavy as myself. You think there would not be a paring left for the demon by the time I got to the ridge."

"Not so," replied Erica. "I think that he to whom this cheese is destined had rather be served by one who does not laugh at him. And it is a safer plan for you, Frolich."

And off went Erica with her cheese.

The ridge on which she laid it would have tempted her at any other time to sit down. It was green and soft with mosses, and offered as comfortable a couch to one tired with the labours of the day as any to be found at the farm. But to-night it was to be haunted; so Erica merely stayed to do her duty. She selected the softest tuft of moss on which to lay the cheese, put her offering reverently down, and then diligently gathered the brightest blossoms from the herbage around, and strewed them over the cheese. She then walked rapidly homewards, without once looking behind her. If she had had the curiosity and courage to watch for a little while, she would have seen her offering carried off by an odd little figure, with nothing very terrible in its appearance--namely, a woman about four feet high, with a flat face, and eyes wide apart, wearing a reindeer garment like a waggoner's frock, a red comforter about her neck, a red cloth cap on her head, a blue worsted sash, and leather boots up to the knee--in short, such a Lapland girl as Erica would have given a rye-cake to as charity, but would not have thought of asking to sit down even in her master's kitchen; for the Norwegian servants are very high and saucy towards the Laps who wander to their doors. It is not surprising that the Lapps, who pitch their tents on the mountain, should like having a fine Gammel cheese for the trouble of picking it up; and the company whose tents Erica had passed on her way up to the seater, kept a good look-out upon all the dairy people round, and carried off every cheese meant for the demon. While Erica was gathering and strewing the blossoms, this girl was hidden near; and trusting to Erica's not looking behind her, the rogue swept off the blossoms, and threw them at her before she had gone ten yards, trundled the cheese down the other side of the ridge, made a circuit, and was at the tents with her prize before supper-time. What would Erica have thought if she had beheld this fruit of so many milkings and skimmings, so much boiling and pressing, devoured by greedy Lapps in their dirty tent?