quarrel; and frequent fightings had fallen out, not generally to the
profit of the Jomsburgers, who at last determined on revenge, and the
rooting out of this obstructive Hakon Jarl. They assembled in force
at the Cape of Stad,--in the Firda Fylke; and the fight was dreadful
in the extreme, noise of it filling all the north for long afterwards.
Hakon, fighting like a lion, could scarcely hold his own,--Death or
Victory, the word on both sides; when suddenly, the heavens grew
black, and there broke out a terrific storm of thunder and hail,
appalling to the human mind,--universe swallowed wholly in black
night; only the momentary forked-blazes, the thunder-pealing as of
Ragnarok, and the battering hail-torrents, hailstones about the size
of an egg. Thor with his hammer evidently acting; but in behalf of
whom? The Jomsburgers in the hideous darkness, broken only by
flashing thunder-bolts, had a dismal apprehension that it was probably
not on their behalf (Thor having a sense of justice in him); and
before the storm ended, thirty-five of their seventy ships sheered
away, leaving gallant Bue, with the other thirty-five, to follow as
they liked, who reproachfully hailed these fugitives, and continued
the now hopeless battle. Bue's nose and lips were smashed or cut
away; Bue managed, half-articulately, to exclaim, "Ha! the maids
('mays') of Funen will never kiss me more. Overboard, all ye Bue's
men!" And taking his two sea-chests, with all the gold he had gained
in such life-struggle from of old, sprang overboard accordingly, and
finished the affair. Hakon Jarl's renown rose naturally to the
transcendent pitch after this exploit. His people, I suppose chiefly
the Christian part of them, whispered one to another, with a shudder,
"That in the blackest of the thunder-storm, he had taken his youngest
little boy, and made away with him; sacrificed him to Thor or some
devil, and gained his victory by art-magic, or something worse." Jarl
Eric, Hakon's eldest son, without suspicion of art-magic, but already