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Ebook has 1067 lines and 101792 words, and 22 pages

I THE VIKINGS IN AMERICA 1

II THE CRUSADERS 7

V COLUMBUS 32

X RAJAH BROOKE 62

XX LORD STRATHCONA 142

XXX JOHN HAWKINS 215

XL DANIEL BOONE 272

XLI ANDREW JACKSON 280

XLII SAM HOUSTON 282

XLIV ALEXANDER MACKENZIE 292

XLV THE WHITE MAN'S COMING 298

XLVI THE BEAVER 302

L THE MAN WHO SHOT LORD NELSON 327

LI THE FALL OF NAPOLEON 333

LII RISING WOLF 340

LIV THE ALMIRANTE COCHRANE 357

LV THE SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS 363

LVI A TALE OF VENGEANCE 371

CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE

CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE

A. D. 984

THE VIKINGS IN AMERICA

A reverent study of heroes in novels, also in operas and melodramas, where one may see them for half-a-crown, has convinced me that they must be very trying to live with. They get on people's nerves. Hence the villains.

Now Harold of the Fair Hair was a hero, and he fell in love with a lady, but she would not marry him unless he made himself king of Norway. So he made himself the first king of all Norway, and she had to marry him, which served her right.

But then there were the gentlemen of his majesty's opposition who did not want him to be king, who felt that there was altogether too much Harold in Norway. They left, and went to Iceland to get away from the hero.

Iceland had been shown on the map since the year A. D. 115, and when the vikings arrived they found a colony of Irish monks who said they had come there "because they desired for the love of God to be in a state of pilgrimage, they recked not where."

Perhaps the vikings sent them to Heaven. Later on it seems they found a little Irish settlement on the New England coast, and heard of great Ireland, a colony farther south. That is the first rumor we have about America.

The Norsemen settled down, pagans in Christian Iceland. They earned a living with fish and cattle, and made an honest penny raiding the Mediterranean. They had internecine sports of their own, and on the whole were reasonably happy. Then in course of trade Captain Gunbjorn sighted an unknown land two hundred fifty miles to the westward. That made the Icelanders restless, for there is always something which calls to Northern blood from beyond the sea line.

Most restless of all was Red Eric, hysterical because he hated a humdrum respectable life; indeed, he committed so many murders that he had to be deported as a public nuisance. He set off exultant to find Gunbjorn's unknown land. So any natural born adventurer commits little errors of taste unless he can find an outlet. It is too much dog-chain that makes biting dogs.

When he found the new land it was all green, with swaths of wild flowers. I know that land and its bright lowlands, backed by sheer walled mountains, with splintered pinnacles robed in the splendors of the inland ice. The trees were knee high, no crops could possibly ripen, but Eric was so pleased that after two winters he went back to Iceland advertising for settlers to fill his colony. Greenland he called the place, because "Many will go there if the place has a fair name." They did, and when the sea had wiped out most of the twenty-five ships, the surviving colonists found Greenland commodious and residential as the heart could wish.

They were not long gone from the port of Skalholt when young Captain Bjarni came in from the sea and asked for his father. But father Heljulf had sailed for Greenland, so the youngster set off in pursuit although nobody knew the way. Bjarni always spent alternate yuletides at his father's hearth, so if the hearth-stone moved he had to find it somehow. These vikings are so human and natural that one can follow their thought quite easily. When, for instance, Bjarni, instead of coming to Greenland, found a low, well timbered country, he knew he had made a mistake, so it was no use landing. Rediscovering the American mainland was a habit which persisted until the time of Columbus, and not a feat to make a fuss about. A northerly course and a pure stroke of luck carried Bjarni to Greenland and his father's house.

Because they had no timber, and driftwood was scarce, the colonists were much excited when they heard of forests, and cursed Bjarni for not having landed. Anyway, here was a fine excuse for an expedition in search of fire-wood, so Leif, the son of Red Eric, bought Bjarni's ship. Being tall and of commanding presence he rallied thirty-five of a crew, and, being young, expected that his father would take command. Eric indeed rode a distance of four hundred feet from his house against the rock, which was called Brattelid, to the shore of the inlet, but his pony fell and threw him, such a bad omen that he rode home again. Leif Ericsen, therefore, with winged helmet and glittering breastplate, mounted the steerboard, laid hands on the steer-oar and bade his men shove off. The colonists on rugged dun ponies lined the shore to cheer the adventurers, and the ladies waved their kerchiefs from the rock behind the house while the dragon ship, shield-lines ablaze in the sun, oars thrashing blue water, and painted square-sail set, took the fair wind on that famous voyage. She discovered Stoneland, which is the Newfoundland-Labrador coast, and Woodland, which is Nova Scotia. Then came the Further Strand, the long and wonderful beaches of Massachusetts, and beyond was Narragansett Bay, where they built winter houses, pastured their cattle, and found wild grapes. It was here that Tyrkir, the little old German man slave who was Leif's nurse, made wine and got most gorgeously drunk. On the homeward passage Leif brought timber and raisins to Greenland.

Leif went away to Norway, where as a guest of King Olaf he became a Christian, and in his absence his brother Thorwald made the second voyage to what is now New England. After wintering at Leif's house in Wineland the Good he went southward and, somewhere near the site of New York, met with savages. Nine of them lay under three upturned canoes on the beach, so the vikings killed eight just for fun, but were fools, letting the ninth escape to raise the tribes for war. So there was a battle, and Thorwald the Helpless was shot in the eye, which served him right. One of his brothers came afterward in search of the body, which may have been that same seated skeleton in bronze armor that nine hundred years later was dug up at Cross Point.

Two or three years after Thorwald's death his widow married a visitor from Norway, Eric's guest at Brattelid, the rich Thorfin Karlsefne. He also set out for Vinland, taking Mrs. Karlsefne and four other women, also a Scottish lad and lass and an Irishman, besides a crew of sixty and some cattle. They built a fort where the natives came trading skins for strips of red cloth, or to fight a battle, or to be chased, shrieking with fright, by Thorfin's big red bull. There Mrs. Karlsefne gave birth to Snorri the Firstborn, whose sons Thorlak and Brand became priests and were the first two bishops of Greenland.

After Karlsefne's return to Greenland the next voyage was made by one of Eric's daughters; and presently Leif the Fortunate came home from Norway to his father's house, bringing a priest. Then Mrs. Leif built a church at Brattelid, old Eric the Red being thoroughly disgusted, and Greenland and Vinland became Christian, but Eric never.

As long as Norway traded with her American colonies Vinland exported timber and dried fruit, while Greenland sent sheepskins, ox hides, sealskins, walrus-skin rope and tusks to Iceland and Europe. In return they got iron and settlers. But then began a series of disasters, for when the Black Death swept Europe, the colonies were left to their fate, and some of the colonists in despair renounced their faith to turn Eskimo. In 1349 the last timber ship from Nova Scotia was lately returned to Europe when the plague struck Norway. There is a gap of fifty-two years in the record, and all we know of Greenland is that the western villages were destroyed by Eskimos who killed eighteen Norsemen and carried off the boys. Then the plague destroyed two-thirds of the people in Iceland, a bad winter killed nine tenths of all their cattle, and what remained of the hapless colony was ravaged by English fishermen. No longer could Iceland send any help to Greenland, but still there was intercourse because we know that seven years later the vicar of Garde married a girl in the east villages to a young Icelander.

Meanwhile, in plague-stricken England, Bristol, our biggest seaport, had not enough men living even to bury the dead, and labor was so scarce that the crops rotted for lack of harvesters. That is why an English squadron raided Iceland, Greenland, perhaps even Vinland, for slaves, and the people were carried away into captivity. Afterward England paid compensation to Denmark and returned the folk to their homes, but in 1448 the pope wrote to a Norse bishop concerning their piteous condition. And there the story ends, for in that year the German merchants at Bergen in Norway squabbled with the forty master mariners of the American trade. The sailors had boycotted their Hanseatic League, so the Germans asked them to dinner, and murdered them. From that time no man knew the way to lost America.

A. D. 1248

THE CRUSADERS

In the seventh century of the reign of Our Lord Christ, arose the Prophet Mahomet. To his followers he generously gave Heaven, and as much of the earth as they could get, so the true believers made haste to occupy goodly and fruitful possessions of Christian powers, including the Holy Land. The owners were useful as slaves.

Not having been consulted in this matter, the Christians took offense, making war upon Islam in seven warm campaigns, wherein they held and lost by turns the holy sepulcher, so that the country where our Lord taught peace, was always drenched with blood. In the end, our crusades were not a success.

About Saint Louis and the sixth crusade:

At the opening of the story, that holy but delightful king of France lay so near death that his two lady nurses had a squabble, the one pulling a cloth over his face because he was dead, while the other snatched it away because he was still alive. At last he sent the pair of them to fetch the cross, on which he vowed to deliver the Holy Land. Then he had to get well, so he did, sending word to his barons to roll up their men for war.

Among the nobles was the young Lord of Joinville, seneschal of Champagne--a merry little man with eight hundred pounds a year of his own. But then, what with an expensive mother, his wife, and some little worries, he had to pawn his lands before he could take the field with his two knights-banneret, nine knights, their men-at-arms, and the servants. He shared with another lord the hire of a ship from Marseilles, but when they joined his majesty in Cyprus he had only a few pounds left, and the knights would have deserted but that the king gave him a staff appointment at eight hundred pounds a year.

The king was a holy saint, a glorious knight errant, full of fun, but a thoroughly incompetent general. Instead of taking Jerusalem by surprise, he must needs raid Egypt, giving the soldan of Babylon the Less plenty of time to arrange a warm reception. The rival armies had a battle on the beach, after which Saint Louis sat down in front of Damietta, where he found time to muddle his commissariat.

On the other hand, the soldan was not at all well, having been poisoned by a rival prince, and paid no heed to the carrier pigeons with their despairing messages from the front. This discouraged the Moslems, who abandoned Damietta and fled inland, hotly pursued by the French. As a precaution, however, they sent round their ships, which collected the French supplies proceeding to the front. The Christians had plenty of fighting and a deal of starving to do, not to mention pestilence in their ill-managed camps. So they came to a canal which had to be bridged, but the artful paynim cut away the land in front of the bridge head, so that there was no ground on which the French could arrive. In the end the Christians had to swim and, as they were heavily armored, many were drowned in the mud. Joinville's party found a dry crossing up-stream, and their troubles began at the enemy's camp whence the Turks were flying.

"While we were driving them through their camp, I perceived a Saracen who was mounting his horse, one of his knights holding the bridle. At the moment he had his two hands on the saddle to mount, I gave him of my lance under the armpit, and laid him dead. When his knight saw that, he left his lord and the horse, and struck me with his lance as I passed, between the two shoulders, holding me so pressed down that I could not draw the sword at my belt. I had, therefore, to draw the sword attached to my horse, and when he saw that he withdrew his lance and left me."

Here in the camp Joinville's detachment was rushed by six thousand Turks, "who pressed upon me with their lances. My horse knelt under the weight, and I fell forward over the horse's ears. I got up as soon as ever I could with my shield at my neck, and my sword in my hand.

"Again a great rout of Turks came rushing upon us, and bore me to the ground and went over me, and caused my shield to fly from my neck."

So the little party gained the wall of a ruined house, where they were sorely beset: Lord Hugh, of Ecot, with three lance wounds in the face, Lord Frederick, of Loupey, with a lance wound between the shoulders, so large that the blood flowed from his body as from the bung hole of a cask, and my Lord of Sivery with a sword-stroke in the face, so that his nose fell over his lips. Joinville, too badly wounded to fight, was holding horses, while Turks who had climbed to the roof were prodding from above with their lances. Then came Anjou to the rescue, and presently the king with his main army. The fight became a general engagement, while slowly the Christian force was driven backward upon the river. The day had become very hot, and the stream was covered with lances and shields, and with horses and men drowning and perishing.

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