"Enough," said the king, at last, breaking off the conference, and rising in wrath, "I wanted but to hear how far ye would push your impudent demands, and therefore let ye have your say. This is my answer. My former promise to the towns I have hitherto kept; if they content ye not, we Danes may easily learn to fetch what we want from foreign lands, and export what we want not. When guests and strangers are injured here they can complain; there is law and justice in the land; but they who take the law into their own hands on Danish ground or on the Danish seas shall be condemned as traitors and robbers, whether they be knight or burgher, whether they be native or stranger." So saying, the king turned his back upon the merchant ambassadors. Without heeding their angry looks, he hastened to join his princely guests, and the Swedish lords who awaited his coming, to set out on a hunting expedition, and left the Hanseatic burghers to the care of the Drost. The incensed merchants instantly quitted the castle with their followers, who had become intoxicated and unruly during their stay in the lower hall. The Marsk (to the merchants still greater annoyance) had taken upon himself to disarm them, as with bold presumption they had ventured on liberties which outraged both law and custom. Their weapons, however, were returned to them on reaching the shore, whither Drost Aage and some other knights accompanied them, with cold courtesy, partly to protect them from the assembled rabble, which had crowded round the intoxicated seamen, to gaze at and deride them. On their way to the strand the wrathful traders spoke not a word, but the blood appeared ready to start from Berner Kopmand's crimson visage, while there was a calm cold smile on the countenance of Henrik Gullandsfar. When these important personages, with their reeling train, had entered the boat, and pushed off from the shore, in order to row to their ships, the portly Rostocker suddenly raised his voice, and shouted with unrestrained wrath and bitterness, "Bring King Eric Ericson our parting greeting, Sir Drost! Tell him from me, Berner Kopmand of Rostock, and from Henrik Gullandsfar of Visbye, in our own and in the name of the great and mighty Hanse towns, that we threaten him with deadly strife, as the enemy of our liberty and of all noble burghership!" Henrik Gullandsfar nudged his colleague's elbow in alarm; but the proud choleric Rostocker continued, "Tell the King of Denmark, dearly shall he rue the scorn and contempt he hath this day shown us; he shall rue it, as surely as I am called the rich Berner Kopmand of Rostock! and as surely as I am the man to ask what is the price of this state and country, and how many pounds a king is worth, in our times, when the lightnings of excommunication play above his head!"