The Modern Vikings

Gradually, as they mounted higher, the trees became more stunted in their growth, and the whole character of the vegetation changed. The low dwarf-birch stretched its long, twisted branches along the earth, the silvery-white reindeer-moss clothed in patches the barren ground, and a few shivering alpine plants lifted their pale, pink flowers out of the general desolation. As they reached the ridge of the lower mountain range the boys saw before them a scene the magnificence of which nearly took their breath away. Before them lay a wide mountain plain, in the bottom of which two connected lakes lay coldly glittering. Round about, the plain was settled with rude little log-houses, the so-called saeters, or mountain dairies, where the Norse peasants spend their brief summers, pasturing their cattle.

They started at a lively trot down the slope toward this highland plain, intending to reach the Hasselrud saeter, where they expected to spend the night; for it was already several hours past noon, and there could be no thought of hunting reindeer so late in the day. Judging by appearances, the boys concluded that fifteen or twenty minutes would bring them to the saeter; but they rode on for nearly two hours, and always the cottages seemed to recede, and the distance showed no signs of diminishing. They did not know how deceptive all distances are in this wondrously clear mountain air, whose bright transparency is undimmed by the dust and exhalations of the lower regions of the earth. They would scarcely have believed that those huge glacier peaks, which seemed to be looming up above their very heads, were some eight to twelve miles away, and that the eagle which soared above them was far beyond the range of their rifles.

It was about five o’clock when they rode in upon the saeter green, where the dairy-maids were alternately blowing their horns and yodelling. Their long flaxen braids hung down their backs, and their tight-fitting scarlet bodices and white sleeves gave them a picturesque appearance. The cattle were lowing against the sky, answering the call of the horn. The bells of cows, goats, and sheep were jangled in harmonious confusion; and the noise of the bellowing bulls, the bleating sheep, and the neighing horses was heard from all sides over the wide plain.

The three brothers were received with great cordiality by the maids, and they spent the evening, after the supper was finished, in listening to marvellous stories about the ogres who inhabited the mountains, and the hunting adventures with which Bjarne Sheepskin’s life had been crowded, and which he related with a sportsman’s usual exaggerations. The beds in one of the saeter cottages were given up to the boys, and they slept peacefully until about four o’clock in the morning, when Grim aroused them and told them that everything was ready for their departure. They swallowed their breakfast hastily, and started in excited silence across the plateau. Edwin and the horses they left behind in charge of the dairy-maids, but took with them an old staghound who had some good blood in him, and a finer scent than his sedate behavior and the shape of his nose would have led one to suppose.

Light clouds hovered under the sky; the mist lay like a white sheet over the mountain, and drifted in patches across the plain. Bjarne and Grim were carrying the guns, while Olaf led the hound, and Magnus trotted briskly along, stopping every now and then to examine every unfamiliar object that came in his way. The wind blew toward them, so that there was no chance that their scent could betray them, in case there were herds of deer toward the north at the base of the glaciers. They had not walked very far, when Bjarne put his hand to his lips and stooped down to examine the ground. The dog lifted his nose and began to snuff the air, wag his tail, and whine impatiently.

“Hush, Yutul,” whispered Bjarne; “down! down, and keep still!”

The dog crouched down obediently and held his peace.

“Here is a fresh track,” the hunter went on, pointing to a hardly perceptible depression in the moss. “There has been a large herd here – one buck and at least a dozen cows. Look, here is a stalk that has just been bitten off, and the juice is not dry yet.”

“How long do you think it will be before we shall meet them?” asked Magnus, breathlessly. The hunting-fever was throbbing in his veins, and he crawled cautiously among the bowlders with his rifle cocked.

“Couldn’t tell; may be an hour, may be three. Hand me your field-glass, Lieutenant, and I will see if I can catch sight of ’em. A gray beast ain’t easily seen agin the gray stone. It was fer the same reason I wanted ye to wear gray clothes; we don’t want to give the game any advantage, fer the sentinels be allers on the lookout fer the herd, and at the least bit of unfamiliar color, they give their warnin’ snort, and off starts the flock, scudding away like a drift of mist before the wind.”

Crouching down among the lichen-clad rocks, all listened in eager expectation.

“Down!” whispered Bjarne, “and cock rifles! A pair of antlers agin the snow! Hallo! it is as I thought – a big herd. One, two, three – five – seven – ten – fourteen! One stunnin’ buck, worth his forty dollars at least. Now follow me slowly. Look out for your guns! You, Grim, keep the dog muzzled.”

The boys strained their eyes above the edge of the stones, but could see nothing. Their hearts hammered against their sides, and the blood throbbed in their temples. As far as their eyes could reach they saw only the gray waste of bowlders, interrupted here and there by patches of snow or a white glacier-stream, which plunged wildly over a precipice, while a hovering moke indicated its further progress through the plain. Nevertheless, trusting the experience of their leader, they made no remark, but crept after him, choosing like him every available stone for cover. After half an hour of this laborious exercise, Bjarne suddenly stretched himself flat upon the ground, and the others, though seeing no occasion for such a manœuvre, promptly followed his example. But the next moment enlightened them. Looming up against the white snow, some sixty or a hundred feet from them, they saw a magnificent pair of antlers, and presently the whole body of a proud animal was distinctly visible against the glacier. In the ravine below a dozen or more cows with their calves were nibbling the moss between the stones, but with great deliberateness, lifting their heads every minute and snuffing the air suspiciously; they presently climbed up on the hard snow and began a frolic, the like of which the boys had never seen before. The great buck raised himself on his hind-legs, shook his head, and made a leap, kicking the snow about him with great vehemence. Several of the cows took this as an invitation for a general jollification, and they began to frisk about, kicking their heels against the sky and shaking their heads, not with the wanton grace of their chief, but with half-pathetic attempts at imitation. This, Magnus thought, was evidently a reindeer ball; and very sensible they were to have it early in the morning, when they felt gay and frisky, rather than in the night, when they ought to be asleep. What troubled him, however, was that Bjarne did not shoot; he himself did not venture to send a bullet into the big buck, although it seemed to him he had an excellent aim. The slightest turn in the wind would inevitably betray them, and then they would have had all their toil for nothing. He would have liked to suggest this to Bjarne; but in order to do this, he would have to overtake him, and Bjarne was still wriggling himself cautiously forward among the stones, pushing himself on with his elbows, as a seal does with his flippers. In his eagerness to impart his counsel to Bjarne, Magnus began to move more rapidly; raising himself on his knees he quite inadvertently showed his curly head above a bowlder. The buck lifted his superb head with a snort, and with incredible speed the whole herd galloped away; but in the same moment two bullets whistled after them, and the buck fell flat upon the snow. The cow which had stood nearest to him reared on her hind-legs, made a great leap, and plunged headlong down among the stones. With a wild war-whoop, the boys jumped up, and Magnus, who had come near ruining the whole sport, seized, in order to make up for his mishap, a long hunting-knife and rushed forward to give the buck the coup-de-grace,9 in accordance with the rules of the chase. Bounding forward with reckless disregard of all obstacles, he was the first down on the snow. In one instant he was astride of the animal, and had just raised his knife, when up leaped the buck and tore away along the edge of the snow like a gust of wind. The long-range shot, hitting him in the head, had only stunned him, but had not penetrated the skull. And, what was worse, in his bewilderment at the unexpected manœuvre, Magnus dropped his knife, seizing instinctively the horns of the reindeer to keep from falling. Away they went with a terrific dizzying speed. The frightened boy clung convulsively to the great antlers; if he should fall off, his head would be crushed against the bowlders. The cold glacier-wind whistled in his ears, and stung his face like a multitude of tiny needles. He had to turn his head in order to catch his breath; and he strained his eyes to see if anything was being done by his companions for his rescue. But he could see nothing except a great expanse of gray and white lines, which ran into each other and climbed and undulated toward him and sloped away, but seemed associated with no tangible object. He thought, for a moment, that he saw Grim Hering-Luck aiming his gun, but he seemed to be up in the sky, and to be growing huger and huger until he looked more like a fantastic cloud than a man. The thought suddenly struck him that he might be fainting, and it sent a thrill of horror through him. With a vehement effort he mastered his fear and resolved that, whatever happened, he would not give way to weakness. If he was to lose his life, he would, at all events, make a hard fight for it; it was, on the whole, quite a valuable life, he concluded, and he did not mean to sell it cheaply.

Troubling himself little about the direction his steed was taking, he shut his eyes, and began to meditate upon his chances of escape; and after some minutes, he was forced to admit that they seemed very slim. When the buck should have exhausted his strength, as in the course of time he must, he would leave his rider somewhere in this vast trackless wilderness, where the biting wind swept down from the eternal peaks of ice, where wolves roamed about in great hungry companies, and where, beside them, the reindeer and the ptarmigan were the only living things amid the universal desolation. When he opened his eyes again, Magnus discovered that the buck had overtaken the fleeing herd, which, however, were tearing away madly at his approach, being evidently frightened at the sight and the scent of the unfamiliar rider. The animal was still galloping on, though with a less dizzying rapidity, and Magnus could distinguish the general outline of the objects which seemed to be rushing against him, as if running a race in the opposite direction. The herd were evidently betaking themselves into the upper glacier region, where no foot less light and swift than theirs could find safety among the terrible ravines and crevasses.

Fully an hour had passed, possibly two, and it seemed vain to attempt to measure the distance which he had passed over in this time. At all events, the region did not present one familiar object, and of Olaf and his companions Magnie saw no trace. The only question was, what chance had they of finding him, if they undertook to search for him, as, of course, they would. If he could only leave some sign or mark by which they might know the direction he had taken, their search might perhaps be rewarded with success. He put one hand in his pocket, but could find nothing that he could spare except a red silk handkerchief. That had the advantage of being bright, and would be sure to attract attention. The dog would be likely to detect it or to catch the scent of it. But he must have something heavy to tie up in the handkerchief, or it might blow “all over creation.” The only thing he could find was a silver matchbox which he had obtained by a trade with Olaf, and which bore the latter’s initials. He carefully emptied it, and put the matches (which he foresaw might prove useful) in his vest-pocket; then tied up the box securely and dropped it, with the handkerchief, upon a conspicuous rock, where its bright color might appear striking and unnatural. He was just on the ridge of what proved to be a second and higher mountain plateau, the wild grandeur of which far transcended that of the first. Before him lay a large sheet of water of a cool green tint, and so clear that the bottom was visible as far as the eye could reach. A river had made its way from the end of this lake and plunged, in a series of short cataracts, down the slope to the lower plain.

It made Magnus shiver with dread to look at this coldly glittering surface, and what was his horror when suddenly his reindeer, in his pursuit of the herd, which were already in the water, rushed in, and began, with loud snorts, to swim across to the farther shore! This was an unforeseen stratagem which extinguished his last hope of rescue; for how could Bjarne track him through the water, and what means would he find of crossing, in case he should guess that the herd had played this dangerous trick on him? He began to dread also that the endurance of the buck would be exhausted before he reached dry land again, and that they might both perish miserably in the lake. In this horrible distress nothing occurred to him except to whisper the Lord’s Prayer; but as his terror increased, his voice grew louder and louder, until he fairly shouted the words, “And deliver us from evil,” and the echoes from the vast solitudes repeated, first clearly and loudly, then with fainter and fainter accents: “And deliver us from evil – and deliver us from evil.” His despairing voice rang strangely under the great empty sky, and rumbled among the glaciers, which flung it back and forth until it died away in the blue distance. It was as if the vast silent wilderness, startled at the sound of a human voice, were wonderingly repeating the strange and solemn words.

A vague sense of security stole over him when he had finished his prayer. But the chill of the icy water had nearly benumbed his limbs, and he feared that the loss of heat would conquer his will, and make him unconscious before the buck should reach the shore. He felt distinctly his strength ebbing away, and he knew of nothing that he could do to save himself. Then suddenly a daring thought flashed through his brain. With slow and cautious movements he drew his legs out of the water, and, standing for a moment erect on the buck’s back, he crawled along his neck and climbed up on the great antlers, steadying himself carefully and clinging with all his might. His only fear was that the animal would shake him off and send him headlong into the icy bath from which he was endeavoring to escape. But, after two futile efforts, during which the boy had held on only by desperate exertion, the buck would probably have resigned himself to his fate, if he had not been in imminent danger of drowning. Magnus was, therefore, much against his will, forced to dip his limbs into the chilly water, and resume his former position. It was a strange spectacle, to see all the horned heads round about sticking out of the water, and Magnus, though he had always had a thirst for adventures, had never expected to find himself in such an incredible situation. Fortunately, they were now approaching the shore, and whatever comfort there was in having terra firma under his feet would not be wanting to him. The last minutes were indeed terribly long, and again and again the buck, overcome with fatigue, dipped his nose under the water, only to raise it again with a snort, and shake his head as if impatient to rid himself of his burden. But the boy, with a spark of reviving hope, clung only the more tenaciously to the antlers, and remained unmoved.

At last – and it seemed a small eternity since he had left his brother and companions – Magnus saw the herd scramble up on the stony beach. The buck he rode was soon among the foremost, and, having reached the land, shook his great body and snorted violently.

“Now’s my chance,” thought Magnus; “now I can slide off into the snow before he takes to his heels again.”

But, odd as it may seem, he had a reluctance to part company with the only living creature (except the wolves) that inhabited this awful desert. There was a vague chance of keeping from freezing to death as long as he clung to the large, warm animal; while, seated alone upon this bleak shore, with his clothes wringing wet, and the cold breath of the glacier sweeping down upon him, he would die slowly and miserably with hunger and cold. He was just contemplating this prospect, seeing himself in spirit lying dead upon the shore of the lake, and picturing to himself the grief of his brother and father, when suddenly his glance was arrested by what seemed a faint column of smoke rising from among the bowlders. The herd of reindeer had evidently made the same discovery, for they paused, in a startled manner, and wheeled about toward the easterly shore, past which a branch of the glacier was pushing downward into the lower fiord-valley.

Magnie, who had by this time made up his mind not to give up his present place except for a better one, strained his eye in the opposite direction, to make sure that he was not deceived; and having satisfied himself that what he saw was really smoke, he determined to leap from his seat at the very first opportunity. But as yet the speed of the buck made such a venture unsafe. With every step, however, the territory was becoming more irregular, and made the progress even of a reindeer difficult.

Magnus drew up his feet, and was about to slide off, having planned to drop with as slight a shock as possible upon a flat moss-grown rock, when, to his utter amazement, he saw a human figure standing at the edge of the glacier, and aiming a rifle, as it appeared, straight at his head. He tried to scream, but terror choked his voice. He could not bring forth a sound. And before even the thought had taken shape in his bewildered brain he saw a flash, and heard the report of a shot which rumbled away with tremendous reverberations among the glaciers. There was a surging sound in his ears, and strange lights danced before his eyes. He thought he must be dead.

II

Magnie never knew how long he was unconscious. The first thing he remembered was a delicious sense of warmth and comfort stealing through him, and strange, unintelligible sounds buzzing in the air about him. Somebody was talking kindly to him, and a large, warm hand was gliding over his forehead and cheeks. The peace and warmth were grateful to him after the intense strain of his dangerous ride. He was even loth to open his eyes when his reviving memory began to make the situation clear to him.

“It was a reckless shot, Harry,” he heard someone say in a foreign tongue, which he soon recognized as English, “even if it did turn out well. Suppose you had sent your bullet crashing through the young fellow instead of the buck. How would you have felt then?”

“I should have felt very badly, I am sure,” answered a younger voice, which obviously belonged to Magnie’s rescuer; “but I followed my usual way of doing things. If I didn’t act that way, I shouldn’t act at all. And you will admit, Uncle, it is a queer sort of thing to see a fellow come riding on a reindeer buck, in the midst of a wild herd, and in a trackless wilderness like this, where nobody but wolves or geologists would be apt to discover any attractions. Now, I saw by the young man’s respectable appearance that he couldn’t be a geologist; and if he was a wolf, I didn’t mind much if I did shoot him.”

At this point Magnie opened his eyes and stared wonderingly about him. He found himself in a small, cramped room, the walls of which were draped with canvas, and scarcely high enough under the ceiling to allow a man to stand erect. Against the walls a number of shining brass instruments were leaning, and in a corner there was a hearth, the smoke of which escaped through a hole in the roof. Two bunks filled with moss, with a sheet and a blanket thrown over each, completed the outfit of the primitive dwelling. But Magnie was more interested in the people than in the looks of the room. A large, blond, middle-aged man, inclined to stoutness, was holding Magnie’s hand as if counting his pulse-beat, and a very good-looking young fellow, of about his own age, was standing at the hearth, turning a spit upon which was a venison steak.

“Hallo! Our young friend is returning from the land of Nod,” said the youth who had been addressed as Harry. “I am glad you didn’t start on a longer journey, young chap, when I fired at you; for if you had you would have interfered seriously with my comfort.”

Magnie, who was a fair English scholar, understood perfectly what was said to him, but several minutes elapsed before he could collect himself sufficiently to answer. In order to gain time, he made an effort to raise, himself and take a closer look at his surroundings, but was forced by the older man to abandon the attempt.

“Not so fast, my dear, not so fast;” he said, stooping over him, and gently pushing him back into a reclining position. “You must remember that you have a big lump on your head from your fall, and it won’t do to be frisky just yet. But before conversing further, it might be well to ascertain whether we understand each other.”

“Yes, I think – I think – I do,” stammered Magnie. “I know some English.”

“Ah, then we shall get along charmingly,” the man remarked, with an encouraging smile. “And I think Harry’s venison steak is done by this time; and dinner, as you know, affords the most delightful opportunity for getting acquainted. Gunnar, our guide, who is outside skinning your reindeer buck, will soon present himself and serve the dinner. Here he is, and he is our cook, butler, chambermaid, laundress, beast of burden, and interpreter, all in one.”

The man to whom the professor alluded was at this moment seen crawling on his hands and knees through the low door-way, which his bulky figure completely filled. He was a Norwegian peasant of the ordinary sort, with a square, rudely cut face, dull blue eyes, and a tuft of towy hair hanging down over his forehead. With one hand he was dragging the skin of the buck, and between his teeth he held an ugly-looking knife.

“Ve haf got to bury him,” he said.

“Bury him!” cried Harry. “Why, you blood-thirsty wretch, don’t you see he is sitting there, looking as bright as a sixpence?”

“I mean de buck,” replied Gunnar, imperturbably.

“And why do you wish to bury the buck? I would much rather eat him. This steak here has a most tempting flavor, and I am quite tired of canned abominations by this time.”

“De volves vill be sure to scent de meat, now dat it is flayed, and before an hour ve might haf a whole congregation of dem here.”

“Well, then, we will shoot them down,” insisted the cheerful Harry. “Come, now, Uncle, and let us have a civilized dinner. I don’t pretend to be an expert in the noble art of cookery; but if this tastes as good as it smells, I wouldn’t exchange it for a Delmonico banquet. And if the wolves, as Gunnar says, can smell a dead reindeer miles away, they would be likely to smell a venison steak from the ends of creation. Perhaps, if we don’t hurry, all the wolves of the earth may invite themselves to our dinner.”

Gunnar, upon whom this fanciful raillery was lost, was still standing on all-fours in the door, with his front half in the warm room and his rearward portion in the arctic regions without. He was gazing helplessly from one to another, as if asking for an explanation of all this superfluous talk. “Vill you cawme and help me, Mester Harry?” he asked at last, stolidly.

“Yes, when I have had my dinner I will, Mester Gunnar,” answered Harry, gayly.

“Vel, I haf notting more to say, den,” grumbled the guide; “but it vould vonder me much if, before you are troo, you von’t have some unbidden guests.”

“All right, Gunnar – the more the merrier,” retorted Harry as, with exaggerated imitation of a waiter’s manner, he distributed plates, knives, and napkins to Magnie and his uncle.