The woman herself would not go inside--she dared not. But the Norskman, though full of shrinkings, slid down over the glittering ice fragments into the cold, black cave beyond. And there, in the half gloom, lit only by the few rays which struggled in through the hole they had dug, and the cold green light from the ice, what a sight it was that met his eyes! He was in the treasure-house of the Lapps, a regular Aladdin's cave, crammed with the plunder of centuries.
In ordinary sacks of skin were the _kroner_ of recent years, and the national silver coinage which obtained before that. There in heaps were the heterogeneous coins of past ages and every country. And beyond was a curious litter of pewter candlesticks, jewelled sword-hilts, a gold Communion chalice, a rusted iron mace, a bone crucifix, bowls, chains, ladles, knives, some of precious metal, some mere valueless relics: and outside, the ghosts of the ice creaked and rustled incessantly.
Here, then, was the tale of how those old sea rovers, who stormed Scarborough, and burned the Humber villages, and ravaged the coasts of England and France, obtained meat to victual their galleys. Here was the plunder they had brought back from their distant piracies, peddled away to buy deer meat for fresh expeditions. But the man who looked on it all did not stop to make more than a hasty catalogue. The whispering ghosts of the ice scared him, the cold darkness of the place chilled his blood, and without, in the daylight, the Fin-ne woman incessantly whimpered and cried out that he should come back to her....
This is the tale as it was told to me beside the relics of that murdered cow-elk in Namsdalen, and this is all I know about the matter. A glow for treasure-hunting warmed in me. I wanted to set off at once and see that cave by the glacier for myself, and finger its contents. But the hunter was not to be persuaded; he said he had forgotten its whereabouts. That, of course, was absurd for a man who knew every tree and every rock on the fjeld. But I rather think the Lapps had scared him into holding his tongue about the matter. He had a very real terror of their powers of sorcery, as I had learned already, and I was inclined to credit his tale about the hoard--he had not got the necessary power of invention to have made it up. Besides, the viking "local colour" which he gave me (and which I have forgotten) was clean beyond him.