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Before many hours, Hakon's royal or quasi-royal barge steers gaily into this fjord; is a little surprised, perhaps, to see within the jaws of it two big ships at anchor, but steers gallantly along, nothing doubting.
Asbiorn might manage them though, and with Hakon's men they will learn manners." He spoke our own tongue of course, and the king asked what he said. Dalfin said that Hakon would take them away altogether if the clemency of the king would allow it. Whereon the king waved his hand, and said that they should be sent down with the oxen. Now, I did not think that this pleased the men of the court.
Glumm, however, did not keep close to him this time, but made direct for Hakon's ship, for he remembered that he was Ada's father, and thought he might do him some service. As he was coming near he saw Swankie, a famous berserk, fighting furiously on board Hakon's ship, and roaring, as was the wont of berserkers sometimes, like a wild bull.
This seems to have been King Hakon's finest battle, and the most conspicuous of his victories, due not a little to his own grand qualities shown on the occasion. But, alas! it was his last also.
Hakon gathered his wrecks together, and sorrowfully made for Orkney. But poor Hakon's heart was now broken. He went to Orkney; died there in the winter; never beholding Norway more. Hakon was a great Politician in his time; and succeeded in many things before he lost Largs. Snorro's death by murder had happened about twenty years before Hakon's by broken heart.
Hakon Jarl and these pirates, robbing Hakon's subjects and merchants that frequented him, were naturally in quarrel; and frequent fightings had fallen out, not generally to the profit of the Jomsburgers, who at last determined on revenge, and the rooting out of this obstructive Hakon Jarl.
Following the footprints they had come into the middle of the morass, and there they found the horse itself struggling in the mire, with Hakon's cloak lying near, seeming to show that the morass had been his death. "Earl Hakon is wily enough to have put both horse and cloak in the morass with intent to deceive his pursuers," said one of the bystanders.
The good hermits were ready to praise them and their ways to the king, while, as for Asbiorn's men, they had given no trouble at all, for they were tied up in the cell we had used. One or two of Hakon's men, who were from Dublin, could speak the Erse, and that had been good.
'Tis true he has lost his castles of Rothesay and Kilmory, but " "Kenric of Bute has done well," said the King. "We have already heard of all that he has done for the people of Bute. It was from one of his own messengers that we first heard of Hakon's arrival on our coasts. Kenric shall not be forgotten. Our only regret is that he did not put an end to that villainous outlaw his uncle.
In brief, what we know is, fragments of ancient human bones and armor have occasionally been ploughed up in this locality, proof positive of ancient fighting here; and the fight fell out not long after Hakon's beating of the Jomsburgers at the Cape of Stad. And in such dim glimmer of wavering twilight, the question whether these of Loncarty were refitted Jomsburgers or not, must be left hanging.
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