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Torarin broke off his praises of the Scotsmen at once. "What ails you now, Grim, my dog?" he said. "Do you think I stay here too long, wasting the time in talk?" He made ready to drive off. "Well, God be with you all!" he cried. Torarin drove in to Marstrand by the narrow channel between Klovero and Koo. When he had come within sight of the town, he noticed that he was not alone on the ice.
But the skipper, who lay there with his great gallias full-laden with herring barrels, and who had been caught by the ice in a bay near Marstrand just as he was ready to put to sea, gave Torarin a sharp look and said: "So then you call this fine weather?" "What should I call it else?" said Torarin, looking as innocent as a child.
I may lie waiting here many days yet." Just as he said this, he saw a man come driving on the ice. He came out of a narrow channel on the Marstrand side, and he drove as calmly on the ice as if he did not know the waves had begun once more to carry ships and boats. As he drove under the stern of the gallias he hailed the skipper: "Ho, you there, frozen in the ice, do you lack food aboard?
And so he took the step next to the last on the ladder of his ambition. Within seven months he took Marstrand.
And before one can turn the page he is discovered swooping down upon Marstrand, taking town and fleet anchored there, and the castle itself with its whole garrison, all with two hundred men, swelled by stratagem into an army of thousands.
Coming now to shorter cables connecting Britain with the Continent, we have those of the Great Northern Telegraph Company, namely, Peterhead to Ekersund, Norway, 267 miles . Newbiggin, near Newcastle, to Arendal, Norway, 424 miles, and thence to Marstrand, Sweden, 98 miles. The great Northern Company has altogether twenty-two cables, of a total length of 6,110 miles.
His horse's hoofs were just touching the shadow of the hat plumes. "Grim," said Torarin, "shall we ask if he will drive with us to Marstrand?" The dog began to bristle up at once, but Torarin laid his hand upon his back. "Be quiet, Grim, my dog! I can see that you have no love for the Scotsmen." Sir Archie had not noticed that any one was so close to him. He walked on without looking round.
At Marstrand they had been up all night listening to the cannonading and the crash upon crash as the big ships blew up. They knew that Tordenskjold was abroad with his men. In the morning, when they were all in church, he walked in and sat down by his chief, the old Admiral Judicher, who was a slow-going, cautious man.
Listen to this: As we came over the ice toward Marstrand here, we met our comrades and countrymen, who had been banished by King John from his land. They had not been able to leave Marstrand because of the ice, and they helped us in our need, so that we got clothes. Since then we have gone about here in Marstrand and been in no danger.
But even as the line of women advanced, the wind and waves broke in behind them and tore up the ice over which they had but lately passed; and when they came to Marstrand with Elsalill, all the gates of the sea stood open.
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