I caught him looking after us as we went down the street and
shaking his head at those "wild Americans" who accounted nothing
holy, not even the official record of murder done while their
ancestors were yet savages roaming the plains. We had laughed at the
coal-heavers on the frontier carrying coal in baskets up a ladder
to the waiting engine and emptying it into the fender. And now,
after parting company with my fellow-traveller at Hamburg, I was
nearing the land where once more I should see old Dannebrog, the
flag that fell from heaven with victory to the hard-pressed Danes.
Literally out of the sky it fell in their sight, the historic fact
being apparently that the Christian bishops had put up a job with
the Pope to wean the newly converted Danes away from their heathen
pirate flag and found their opportunity in one of the crusades the
Danes undertook on their own hook into what is now Prussia. The
Pope had sent a silken banner with the device of a white cross in
red, and at the right moment, when the other was taken, the priest
threw it down from a cliff into the thick of the battle and turned
its tide.
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