The Pirate
prevent our availing ourselves of the quarrels of these robbers, to
assert the independence of which we are deprived?"
"To hoist the raven standard on the Castle of Scalloway," said
Cleveland, in imitation of her tone and manner, "and proclaim your
father Earl Magnus the First!"
"Earl Magnus the Seventh, if it please you," answered Minna; "for six of
his ancestors have worn, or were entitled to wear, the coronet before
him.--You laugh at my ardour,--but what _is_ there to prevent all this?"
"Nothing _will_ prevent it," replied Cleveland, "because it will never
be attempted--Any thing _might_ prevent it, that is equal in strength to
the long-boat of a British man-of-war."
"You treat us with scorn, sir," said Minna; "yet yourself should know
what a few resolved men may perform."
"But they must be armed, Minna," replied Cleveland, "and willing to
place their lives upon each desperate adventure.--Think not of such
visions. Denmark has been cut down into a second-rate kingdom, incapable
of exchanging a single broadside with England; Norway is a starving
wilderness; and, in these islands, the love of independence has been
suppressed by a long term of subjection, or shows itself but in a few
muttered growls over the bowl and bottle. And, were your men as willing
warriors as their ancestors, what could the unarmed crews of a few
fishing-boats do against the British navy?--Think no more of it, sweet
Minna--it is a dream, and I must term it so, though it makes your eye so
bright, and your step so noble."
"It is indeed a dream!" said Minna, looking down, "and it ill becomes a
daughter of Hialtland to look or to move like a freewoman--Our eye
should be on the ground, and our step slow and reluctant, as that of one
who obeys a taskmaster."
"There are lands," said Cleveland, "in which the eye may look bright
upon groves of the palm and the cocoa, and where the foot may move
light as a galley under sail, over fields carpeted with flowers, and
savannahs surrounded by aromatic thickets, and where subjection is
unknown, except that of the brave to the bravest, and of all to the most
beautiful."
Minna paused a moment ere she spoke, and then answered, "No, Cleveland.
My own rude country has charms for me, even desolate as you think it,
and depressed as it surely is, which no other land on earth can offer to
me. I endeavour in vain to represent to myself those visions of trees,
and of groves, which my eye never saw; but my imagination can conceive
no sight in nature more sublime than these waves, when agitated by a
storm, or more beautiful, than when they come, as they now do, rolling
in calm tranquillity to the shore. Not the fairest scene in a foreign
land,--not the brightest sunbeam that ever shone upon the richest
landscape, would win my thoughts for a moment from that lofty rock,
misty hill, and wide-rolling ocean. Hialtland is the land of my deceased
ancestors, and of my living father; and in Hialtland will I live and
die."
"Then in Hialtland," answered Cleveland, "will I too live and die. I
will not go to Kirkwall,--I will not make my existence known to my
comrades, from whom it were else hard for me to escape. Your father
loves me, Minna; who knows whether long attention, anxious care, might
not bring him to receive me into his family? Who would regard the length
of a voyage that was certain to terminate in happiness?"
"Dream not of such an issue," said Minna; "it is impossible. While you
live in my father's house,--while you receive his assistance, and share
his table, you will find him the generous friend, and the hearty host;
but touch him on what concerns his name and family, and the
frank-hearted Udaller will start up before you the haughty and proud
descendant of a Norwegian Jarl. See you,--a moment's suspicion has
fallen on Mordaunt Mertoun, and he has banished from his favour the
youth whom he so lately loved as a son. No one must ally with his house
that is not of untainted northern descent."
"And mine may be so, for aught that is known to me upon the subject,"
said Cleveland.
"How!" said Minna; "have you any reason to believe yourself of Norse
descent?"
"I have told you before," replied Cleveland, "that my family is totally
unknown to me. I spent my earliest days upon a solitary plantation in
the little island of Tortuga, under the charge of my father, then a
different person from what he afterwards became. We were plundered by
the Spaniards, and reduced to such extremity of poverty, that my father,
in desperation, and in thirst of revenge, took up arms, and having
become chief of a little band, who were in the same circumstances,
became a buccanier, as it is called, and cruized against Spain, with
various vicissitudes of good and bad fortune, until, while he interfered
to check some violence of his companions, he fell by their hands--no
uncommon fate among the captains of these rovers. But whence my father
came, or what was the place of his birth, I know not, fair Minna, nor
have I ever had a curious thought on the subject."
"He was a Briton, at least, your unfortunate father?" said Minna.
"I have no doubt of it," said Cleveland; "his name, which I have
rendered too formidable to be openly spoken, is an English one; and his
acquaintance with the English language, and even with English
literature, together with the pains which he took, in better days, to
teach me both, plainly spoke him to be an Englishman. If the rude
bearing which I display towards others is not the genuine character of
my mind and manners, it is to my father, Minna, that I owe any share of
better thoughts and principles, which may render me worthy, in some
small degree, of your notice and approbation. And yet it sometimes seems
to me, that I have two different characters; for I cannot bring myself
to believe, that I, who now walk this lone beach with the lovely Minna
Troil, and am permitted to speak to her of the passion which I have
cherished, have ever been the daring leader of the bold band whose name
was as terrible as a tornado."
"You had not been permitted," said Minna, "to use that bold language
towards the daughter of Magnus Troil, had you _not_ been the brave and
undaunted leader, who, with so small means, has made his name so
formidable. My heart is like that of a maiden of the ancient days, and
is to be won, not by fair words, but by gallant deeds."
"Alas! that heart," said Cleveland; "and what is it that I may do--what
is it that man can do, to win in it the interest which I desire?"
"Rejoin your friends--pursue your fortunes--leave the rest to destiny,"
said Minna. "Should you return, the leader of a gallant fleet, who can
tell what may befall?"
"And what shall assure me, that, when I return--if return I ever
shall--I may not find Minna Troil a bride or a spouse?--No, Minna, I
will not trust to destiny the only object worth attaining, which my
stormy voyage in life has yet offered me."
"Hear me," said Minna. "I will bind myself to you, if you dare accept
such an engagement, by the promise of Odin,[9] the most sacred of our
northern rites which are yet practised among us, that I will never
favour another, until you resign the pretensions which I have given to
you.--Will that satisfy you?--for more I cannot--more I will not give."
"Then with that," said Cleveland, after a moment's pause, "I must
perforce be satisfied;--but remember, it is yourself that throw me back
upon a mode of life which the laws of Britain denounce as criminal, and
which the violent passions of the daring men by whom it is pursued, have
rendered infamous."
"But I," said Minna, "am superior to such prejudices. In warring with
England, I see their laws in no other light than as if you were engaged
with an enemy, who, in fulness of pride and power, has declared he will
give his antagonist no quarter. A brave man will not fight the worse for
this;--and, for the manners of your comrades, so that they do not infect
your own, why should their evil report attach to you?"
Cleveland gazed at her as she spoke, with a degree of wondering
admiration, in which, at the same time, there lurked a smile at her
simplicity.
"I could not," he said, "have believed, that such high courage could
have been found united with such ignorance of the world, as the world is
now wielded. For my manners, they who best know me will readily allow,
that I have done my best, at the risk of my popularity, and of my life
itself, to mitigate the ferocity of my mates; but how can you teach
humanity to men burning with vengeance against the world by whom they
are proscribed, or teach them temperance and moderation in enjoying the
pleasures which chance throws in their way, to vary a life which would
be otherwise one constant scene of peril and hardship?--But this
promise, Minna--this promise, which is all I am to receive in guerdon
for my faithful attachment--let me at least lose no time in claiming
that."
"It must not be rendered here, but in Kirkwall.--We must invoke, to
witness the engagement, the Spirit which presides over the ancient
Circle of Stennis. But perhaps you fear to name the ancient Father of
the Slain too, the Severe, the Terrible?"
Cleveland smiled.
"Do me the justice to think, lovely Minna, that I am little subject to
fear real causes of terror; and for those which are visionary, I have no
sympathy whatever."
"You believe not in them, then?" said Minna, "and are so far better
suited to be Brenda's lover than mine."
"I will believe," replied Cleveland, "in whatever you believe. The whole
inhabitants of that Valhalla, about which you converse so much with that
fiddling, rhyming fool, Claud Halcro--all these shall become living and
existing things to my credulity. But, Minna, do not ask me to fear any
of them."
"Fear! no--not to _fear_ them, surely," replied the maiden; "for, not
before Thor or Odin, when they approached in the fulness of their
terrors, did the heroes of my dauntless race yield one foot in retreat.
Nor do I own them as Deities--a better faith prevents so foul an error.
But, in our own conception, they are powerful spirits for good or evil.
And when you boast not to fear them, bethink you that you defy an enemy
of a kind you have never yet encountered."
"Not in these northern latitudes," said the lover, with a smile, "where
hitherto I have seen but angels; but I have faced, in my time, the
demons of the Equinoctial Line, which we rovers suppose to be as
powerful, and as malignant, as those of the North."
"Have you, then, witnessed those wonders that are beyond the visible
world?" said Minna, with some degree of awe.
Cleveland composed his countenance, and replied,--"A short while before
my father's death, I came, though then very young, into the command of a
sloop, manned with thirty as desperate fellows as ever handled a musket.
We cruized for a long while with bad success, taking nothing but
wretched small-craft, which were destined to catch turtle, or otherwise
loaded with coarse and worthless trumpery. I had much ado to prevent my
comrades from avenging upon the crews of those baubling shallops the
disappointment which they had occasioned to us. At length, we grew
desperate, and made a descent on a village, where we were told we should
intercept the mules of a certain Spanish governor, laden with treasure.
We succeeded in carrying the place; but while I endeavoured to save the
inhabitants from the fury of my followers, the muleteers, with their
precious cargo, escaped into the neighbouring woods. This filled up the
measure of my unpopularity. My people, who had been long discontented,
became openly mutinous. I was deposed from my command in solemn council,
and condemned, as having too little luck and too much humanity for the