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h Boyesen

      The Modern Vikings Stories of Life and Sport in the Norseland

TO THE THREE VIKINGS:HJALMAR, ALGERNON, AND BAYARD

      Three little lovely Vikings

      Came sailing over the sea,

      From a fair and distant country,

      And put into port with me.

      The first – how well I remember —

      Sir Hjalmar was he hight.

      With a lusty Norseland war-whoop,

      He came in the dead of night.

      He met my respectful greeting

      With a kick and a threatening frown;

      He pressed all the house in his service,

      And turned it upside-down.

      He thrust, when I meekly objected,

      A clinched little fist in my face;

      I had no choice but surrender,

      And give him charge of the place.

      He heeded no creature’s pleasure;

      But oft, with a conqueror’s right,

      He sang in the small hours of morning,

      And dined in the middle of night.

      And oft, to amuse his Highness —

      For naught we feared as his frowns —

      We bleated and barked and bellowed,

      And danced like circus-clowns.

      Then crowed with delight our despot;

      So well he liked his home,

      He summoned his brother, Algie,

      From the realm beyond the foam.

      And he is a laughing tyrant,

      With dimples and golden curls;

      He stole a march on our heart-gates,

      And made us his subjects and churls.

      He rules us gayly and lightly,

      With smiles and cajoling arts;

      He went into winter-quarters

      In the innermost nooks of our hearts.

      And Bayard, the last of my Vikings,

      As chivalrous as your name!

      With your sturdy and quaint little figure,

      What havoc you wrought when you came!

      There’s a chieftain in you – a leader

      Of men in some glorious path —

      For dauntless you are, and imperious,

      And dignified in your wrath.

      You vain and stubborn and tender

      Fair son of the valiant North,

      With a voice like the storm and the north-wind,

      When it sweeps from the glaciers forth.

      With the tawny sheen in your ringlets,

      And the Norseland light in your eyes,

      Where oft, when my tale is mournful,

      The tears unbidden arise.

      For my Vikings love song and saga,

      Like their conquering fathers of old;

      And these are some of the stories

      To the three little tyrants I told.

      THARALD’S OTTER

      Tharald and his brother Anders were bathing one day in the lake. The water was deliciously warm, and the two boys lay quietly floating on their backs, paddling gently with their hands. All of a sudden Tharald gave a scream. A big trout leaped into the air, and almost in the same instant a black, shiny head rose out of the water right between his knees. The trout, in its descent, gave him a slap of its slimy tail across his face. The black head stared out at him, for a moment, with an air of surprise, then dived noiselessly into the deep.

      Anders hurried to shore as rapidly as arms and legs would propel him.

      “It was the sea-serpent,” said he.

      He was so frightened that he grew almost numb; his breath stuck in his throat, and the blood throbbed in his ears.

      “Oh, you sillibub!” shouted his brother after him, “it was an otter chasing a salmon-trout. The trout will always leap, when chased.”

      He had scarcely spoken when, but a few rods from Anders, appeared the black, shiny head again, this time with the trout in its mouth.

      “He has his lair somewhere around here,” said Tharald; “let us watch him, and see where he is going.”

      The otter was nearing the shore. He swam rapidly, with a slightly undulating motion of the body, so that, at a distance, he might well have been mistaken for a large water-snake. When he had reached the shore, he dragged the fish up on the sand, spied cautiously about him, to see if he was watched, and again seizing the trout, slid into the underbrush. There was something so delightfully wild and wary about it that the boys felt the hunter’s passion aroused in them, and they could scarcely take the time to fling on their clothes before starting in pursuit. Like Indians, they crept on hands and feet over the mossy ground, bent aside the bushes, and peered cautiously between the leaves.

      “Sh – sh – sh! we are on the track,” whispered Tharald, stooping to smell the moss. “He has been here within a minute.”

      “Here is a drop of fish-blood,” answered Anders, pointing to a twig, over which the fish had evidently been dragged.

      “Serves him right, the rascal,” murmured his elder brother.

      “If we haven’t got him now, my name is not Anders,” whispered the younger.

      They had advanced about fifty rods from the water, when their attention was arrested by two faint tracks among the stones – so faint, indeed, that no eyes but those of a hunter would have discovered them. A strange pungent odor, as of something wild, pervaded the air; the whirring of the crickets in the tree-tops seemed hushed and timid, and little silent birds hopped about in the elder-bushes as if afraid to make a noise.

      The boys lay down flat on the ground, and following the two tracks, discovered that they converged toward a frowsy-looking juniper-bush which grew among the roots of a big old pine. Very cautiously they bent the bush aside.

      What was that? There stood the old otter, tearing away at his trout, and three of the prettiest little black things your eyes ever fell upon were gambolling about him, picking up bits of the fish, and slinging them about in their efforts to swallow.

      The boys gave a cry of delight. But the otter – what do you think he did? He showed a set of very ugly teeth, and spat like an angry cat. It was evidently not advisable to molest him with bare hands.

      In hot haste Tharald and Anders by their united weight broke off a young elder-tree and stripped off the leaves. Now they could venture a battle. Eagerly they pulled aside the juniper. But alas, Mr. Otter was gone, and had taken his family with him.

      To track him through the tangled underbrush, where he probably knew a hundred hiding-places, would be a hopeless task. The boys were about to return, baffled and disappointed, to the lake, when it occurred to Tharald to explore the den.

      There was a hole under the tree-root, just big enough to put a fist through, and, without thought of harm, the boy flung himself down and thrust his arm in to the very elbow. He fumbled about for a moment – ah, what was that? – something soft and hairy, that slipped through his fingers. Tharald made a bold grab for it – then with a yell of pain pulled out his hand. The soft thing followed, but its teeth were not soft. As Tharald rose to his feet, there hung a tiny otter with its teeth locked through the fleshy part of

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