Whereat the veteran took great umbrage and, slapping
his sword, let the King know that he had served him well and was
entitled to better treatment. Christian snatched the weapon in anger
and struck him with the scabbard. The sailor never got over it. "He
withered away and died," says the tradition. It was the old
superstition; but whether that killed him or not, the King lost a
good man in Jens Munk.
He was not averse to hearing the truth, though, when boldly put.
When Ole Vind, a popular preacher, offended some of the nobles by
his plain speech and they complained to the King, he bade him to the
court and told him to preach the same sermon over. Master Vind was
game and the truths he told went straight home, for he knew well
where the shoe pinched. But King Christian promptly made him court
preacher. "He is the kind we need here," he said. There was never a
day that the King did not devoutly read his Bible, and he was
determined that everybody should read it the same way. The result
was a kind of Puritanism that filled the churches and compelled the
employment of men to go around with long sticks to rap the people on
the head when they fell asleep. Christian the Fourth was not the
first ruler who has tried to herd men into heaven by battalions.
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