e is the Norse king? Has he drawn back in fear? Is he of the golden
helmet a craven?"

"Keep on as you are coming, if you wish to meet the Norsemen's king,"
shouted Haakon, throwing down his shield and grasping his sword with both
hands, as he sprang out before them all. Skreyja bounded towards him and
struck a furious blow, but it was turned aside by a Norse warrior and at
the same instant Haakon's sword cleft the foeman's head down to the
shoulders.

This kingly stroke gave new spirit to the Norsemen and they rushed with
double fury upon the foe, whom the fall of their best warrior filled with
fear. Back to the beach they were pressed, many being slain, many
drowned, a few only, Harold among them, reaching the ships by swimming.

The Norsemen had won against fearful odds, but their king was in deadly
peril. In the pursuit he had been struck in the right arm by an arrow
with an oddly-shaped head, and do what they would, the flow of blood
could not be stopped. It was afterwards said that Gunhild the sorceress
had bewitched the arrow and sent it with orders to use it only against
King Haakon.

In those days it was easy to have men believe tales like that, but,
witchcraft or not, the blood still ran and the king grew weaker. As night
came death seemed at hand and one of his friends offered to take his body
to England, after his death, that he might be laid in Christian soil.

"Not so," said Haakon. "Heathen are my people and I have lived among them
like a heathen. See then that I am laid in the grave like a heathen."

Thus he died, and he was buried as he wished, while all men mourned his
death, even his foes; for before breathing his last he bade his men to
send a ship after the sons of Gunhild; asking them to come back and rule
the kingdom. He had no sons, he said, and his daughter could not take the
throne.

Thus death claimed the noblest of the Norsemen, at once heathen and
Christian, but in his life and deeds as in his death a great and good
man.

_EARL HAAKON AND THE JOMSVIKINGS._

Chief among the nobles of Haakon the Good, of Norway, was Earl Sigurd of
Hlade; and first among those who followed him was Earl Haakon, Sigurd's
son. After the death of Haakon the Good, the sons of Gunhild became the
masters of Norway, where they ruled like tyrants, murdering Sigurd, whom
they most feared. This made the young Earl Haakon their bitter foe.

A young man then, of twenty-five, handsome, able in mind and bod