Page:The North Star (1904).djvu/50

32 an altar. Like Isaac on the olden mountain, the boy wondered where was the victim; and as he wondered, the wild earl seized him. Erling cried out in terror of the blazing eyes bent upon him, but he was hushed and bound and hurled upon the altar. No pitying tone came through the parted sky to stay the father’s hand, as came the voice of Jehovah to Abraham of old.

Earl Haakon laid his left hand over Erling’s eyes, shutting out their bright beauty that seemed to stab his soul. Then raising his right hand, with one swift blow of his unerring dagger he cut off the fair young life. Placing the dripping weapon in his belt, he lighted the funeral pyre, and turned to leave. The midnight sun shone down, and to the wild earl it seemed floating upon a sea of blood.

When Haakon returned to the combat, he found his foes weakened and ready to retreat. He leaped upon the deck of his own ship. Holding aloft the blood-stained dagger, he pointed to the shore. The smoke of his sacrifice was rising to the sun. It seemed as another Riukard, when the vapor of the cataract ascends, smoky and mysterious.

“Victory! Victory!” shouted the earl. “The day shall be ours. See ye not the smoke of the sacrifice? See ye not the groups of Valkyries that stand at the prow of my ship, to lead us to victory?”

As he spoke the sun grew black in eclipse. A storm of hail-stones beat down from the sky. The