e 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 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