Norseman's face flash gloriously;
With look that makes the foeman reel:
His mirror from of old was steel.
And still he wields, in battle's hour,
That old Thor's hammer of Norse power;
Strikes with a desperate arm of might,
And at the last tug turns the fight:
For never yields the Norseman."

"That is true," said Jan; "and Snorro knows not the way to yield.
Once, on the river Songibusar, when we were attacking Sherif Osman,
there was danger that a battery would be taken in reverse. 'The Ajax'
had come up to assist the 'Hydra,' and her commander sent a sergeant
to tell Snorro that he had better spike his gun and retreat."

Suneva laughed scornfully, and asked, "Well, then, what did Snorro
answer?"

"'Thou tell him that sent thee, that Michael Snorro takes his orders
only from Captain Jan Vedder, and Captain Vedder has not said
"retreat." No, indeed!' Then he got his gun round to bear on the
enemy, and he poured such a fire down on them that they fled, fled
quick enough. As for Snorro, he did things almost impossible."

"Well, Jan, Osman was a very bad man. It is not well to pity the
downfall of tyrants. He had made Borneo, it seems, a hell upon
earth."

"My minister, he was a devil and no man. But five hundred free blue
jackets were more than he could bear. We utterly destroyed all his
forts, and took all his cannon, and made the coast habitable."

"To-day," said Margaret, "I heard thee say to Snorro, 'when thou comes
next on shore, bring with thee that idol of Chappo's for the
minister.' Who then is Chappo?"

"A wretch worth fighting. A Chinese pirate who came out against us
with forty junks, each junk carrying ten guns and a crew of fifty men.
He had been blockading the island of Potoo, where many English ladies
had taken refuge. It is not fit to name the deeds of these devils. We
took from them sixty wretched captives, destroyed one hundred of their
crafts and two hundred of their guns, and thus enabled a large number
of merchant vessels which had been shut up in different rivers for
ransom, to escape. There was even a worse state of affairs on the
Sarabas. There we were assisted by an American ship called 'The
Manhattan,' and with her aid destroyed a piratical expedition
numbering one hundred and twenty proas carrying more than twelve
hundred men. These wretches before starting beheaded and mutilated all
their women captives, and left their bodies with that of a child about
six years