We cannot sully our pages by detailing the thirteen different "games" or modes of martyrdom that were in use at Bergen. Our more civilized age could not tolerate the recital. In those days they attracted a crowd of eager spectators, who applauded the more vociferously the more cruel and barbarous the tortures. The most popular were those practices known as the smoke, water, and flogging games; mad, cruel pranks, calculated to cause a freshman to lose health and reason. Truly Dantesque hell tortures were these initiations into Hansa mysteries. Merely to indicate their nature we will mention that for the smoke game the victim was pulled up the big chimney of the Schutting while there burnt beneath him the most filthy materials, sending up a nauseous stench and choking wreaths of smoke. While in this position he was asked a number of questions, to which he was forced, under yet more terrible penalties, to reply. If he survived this torture he was taken out into the yard and plied under the pump with six tons of water. The "water" game that took place at Whitsuntide consisted in first treating the probationer to food, and then taking him out to sea in a boat. Here he was stripped, thrown into the ocean, ducked three times, made to swallow much sea-water, and thereafter mercilessly flogged by all the inmates of the boats. The third chief game was no less dangerous to life and limb. It took place a few days after, and was a rude perversion of the May games. The victims had first to go out into the woods to gather the branches with which later they were to be birched. Returned to the factory, rough horse-play pranks were practised upon them. Then followed an ample dinner, which was succeeded by mock combats, and ended in the victims being led into the so-called Paradise, where twenty-four disguised men whipped them till they drew blood, while outside this black hole another party made hellish music with pipes, drums, and triangles to deafen the screams of the tortured. The "game" was considered ended when the shrieks of the victims were sufficiently loud to overtone the pandemonic music. When all the ordeals were ended a herald, who also occupied the _rôle_ of fool, announced in a loud voice that the games were over, adding the fervent wish that the noble practice of ordeals might never be abandoned, and that for the honour and prosperity of the Hansa commerce and the Hanseatic factory they might ever be held in veneration. Only those who survived and sustained these rites were admitted into the corporation at Bergen and could rise to the highest grades, with the prospect of assisting as spectators at the games in which before they had themselves played a part. Not till 1671 were these barbarous practices, which every year increased in ferocity, suppressed by order of Christian V. of Denmark, and only, of course, after the Hansa had sunk from its pristine power. V. THE HANSEATIC COMMERCE WITH DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND RUSSIA.