a distinguished viking, became thrice distinguished by his style of
sea-fighting in this battle; and awakened great expectations in the
viking public; of him we shall hear again.

The Jomsburgers, one might fancy, after this sad clap went visibly
down in the world; but the fact is not altogether so. Old King
Blue-tooth was now dead, died of a wound got in battle with his
unnatural (so-called "natural") son and successor, Otto Svein of the
Forked Beard, afterwards king and conqueror of England for a little
while; and seldom, perhaps never, had vikingism been in such flower as
now. This man's name is Sven in Swedish, Svend in German, and means
boy or lad,--the English "swain." It was at old "Father Bluetooth's
funeral-ale" (drunken burial-feast), that Svein, carousing with his
Jomsburg chiefs and other choice spirits, generally of the robber
class, all risen into height of highest robber enthusiasm, pledged the
vow to one another; Svein that he would conquer England (which, in a
sense, he, after long struggling, did); and the Jomsburgers that they
would ruin and root out Hakon Jarl (which, as we have just seen, they
could by no means do), and other guests other foolish things which
proved equally unfeasible. Sea-robber volunteers so especially
abounding in that time, one perceives how easily the Jomsburgers could
recruit themselves, build or refit new robber fleets, man them with
the pick of crews, and steer for opulent, fruitful England; where,
under Ethelred the Unready, was such a field for profitable enterprise
as the viking public never had before or since.

An idle question sometimes rises on me,--idle enough, for it never can
be answered in the affirmative or the negative, Whether it was not
these same refitted Jomsburgers who appeared some while after this at
Red Head Point, on the shore of Angus, and sustained a new severe