So little Jarl made his way up to the bowery, where was a minstrel’s
window looking down into the hall. Sticking out his head so that he
might see down to where the council was sitting, “If you give up the
castle, I will tell Duke Jarl!” he cried. Hearing his young master’s
voice, the Constable raised his eyes; but not able to see him for tears
in them, called out: “Tell him quick, for here it is all against one!
Only for one day more have they promised to follow my bidding, and keep
the carrion crows from coming to Jarl’s nest.”
And even as he spoke came the renewed cry of attack, and the answering
shout of “Jarl, Jarl!” from the defenders upon the walls. Then all leapt
up, over-turning the council-board, and ran out to the battlements to
carry on with what courage was left to them a hopeless contest for one
more day.
Little Duke Jarl remained like a beating heart in the great empty keep.
He ran wildly from room to room, calling in rage and desperation on Old
Jarl to return and fight. From roof to basement he ran, commanding the
spirit of his ancestor to appear, till at last he found himself in the
deepest cellars of all. Down there he could hear but faintly the sound
of the fighting; yet it seemed to him that through the stone he could
hear the slow booming of the sea, and as he went deeper into the
castle’s foundations the louder had grown its note. “Does the sea come
in all the way under the castle?” he wondered. “Oh that it would sap the
foundations and sink castle and all, rather than let them give up old
Jarl’s stronghold to his enemies!”
All was quite dark here, where the castle stood embedded; but now
and then little Duke Jarl could feel a puff of wind on his face, and
presently he was noticing how it came, as if timed to the booming of the
sea underneath: whenever came the sound of a breaking wave, with it came
a draught of air. He wondered if, so low down, there might not be some
secret opening to the shore.
Groping in the direction of the gusts, his feet came upon stairs. So low
and narrow was the entrance, he had to turn sideways and stoop; but
when he had burrowed through a thickness of wall he was able to stand
upright; and again he found stairs leading somewhere.
Down, these led down. He had never been so low before. And what a storm
there must be outside! Against these walls the thunders of: the sea grew
so loud he could no longer hear the tramp of his own feet descending.
And now the wind came at him in great gusts; first came the great boom
of the sea, and then a blast of air. The way twisted and circled, making
his head giddy for a fall; his feet slipped on the steepness and slime
of the descent, and at each turn the sound grew more appalling, and the
driving force of the wind more and more like the stroke of a man’s fist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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