CHAPTER XIII.

THE FALL OF MICHAEL SUNLOCKS.

When the Fairbrothers, in the first days after their coming to

Iceland, started inquiries touching the position and influence of

Michael Sunlocks, thinking thereby to make sure of their birds in the

bush before parting with their bird in the hand, they frequented a

little drinking-shop in the Cheapstead where sailors of many nations

congregated, Danes, Icelanders, Norwegians, English, and Irish.

Hearing there what satisfied their expectations, their pride began to

swell, and as often as Michael Sunlocks was named with honor they

blew up their breasts like bantams and said he was their brother, so

to speak, and had been brought up in the same house with them since

he was a slip of a brat of two or three. And if any who heard them

glanced them over with doubtful eyes they straightway broke into

facetious stories concerning the boyhood of Sunlocks, showing all

their wondrous kindness to him as big brothers towards a little one.

Now these trifling events were of grave consequence to the fortunes

of the Fairbrothers, and the fate of Michael Sunlocks, at two great

moments. The first of the two was when Thurstan broke into open

rebellion against Jacob. Then, with a sense of his wise brother's

pitiable blunderheadedness, the astute Thurstan went off to the same

drinking-shop to console himself with drink, and there he was

addressed, when he was well and comfortably drunk, by a plausible

person who spoke an unknown tongue. The end of that conference was

nevertheless an idea firmly settled in Thurstan's mind that if he

could not get money out of Michael Sunlocks he could at least get

satisfaction.

This was the matter that Thurstan darkly hinted at when Jacob, being

utterly discomfited, had to leave all further schemes to his

brethren. So that day he returned to his rendezvous, met the

plausible person again, and later in the evening sought out his

brothers and said, "Didn't I tell ye to leave to me?"

"What's going doing?" said four voices at once.

"Plucking him down, the upstart, that's what's going doing," said

Thurstan.

Then to five pairs of eager ears it slowly leaked out that a Danish

ship lay in the harbor with a mysterious cargo of great casks,

supposed to contain tallow; that after discharging their contents

these casks were to be filled with shark's oil; that waiting the time

to fill them they were to be stored (as all other warehouses were

full of bonder's stock) in the little cell of detention under the

senate-house; and, finally and most opportunely, that a meeting of

Althing had been summoned on special business for the next night

following, and that Michael Sunlocks was to be present.

The Fairbrothers heard all this with eyes that showed how well they

understood it and keenly gloated over it. And late the same night the

cargo of great casks was unshipped at the jetty, wheeled up to the

senate-house and lodged there, carefully, silently, one by one.

Thurstan helping, a few stragglers looking on, the stammering

doorkeeper, long Jon, not anywhere visible, and no one else in the

little sleepy town a whit the wiser. This being done, Thurstan went

back to his lodging with the content of a soul at ease, saying to

himself, "As I say, if we don't get anything else, we'll get

satisfaction; and if we get what's promised I've a safe place to put

it until the trouble's over and we can clear away, and that's the

little crib under the turret of the cathedral church."

Then the worthy man lay down to sleep.

* * * * *

Before Thurstan was awake next morning Reykjavik was all astir.

It had become known that a special sitting of Althing had been

summoned for that night, and because nothing was known much was said

concerning the business afoot. People gathered in groups where the

snow of the heavy drifts had been banked up at the street corners,

and gossiped and guessed. Such little work as the great winter left

to any man was done in haste or not at all, that men might meet in

the stores, the drinking-shops, and on the Cheapstead and ask, "Why?"

"Wherefore?" and "What does it mean?" That some event of great moment

was pending seemed to be the common opinion everywhere, though what

ground it rested on no one knew, for no one knew anything. Only on

one point was the feeling more general, or nearer right; that the

President himself was at the root and centre of whatever was coming.

Before nightfall this vague sentiment, which ever hovers, like a dark

cloud over a nation when a storm is near to breaking upon it, had

filled every house in the capital, so that when the hour was come for

the gathering of Althing the streets were thronged. Tow-headed

children in goatskin caps ran here and there, women stood at the

doors of houses, young girls leaned out of windows in spite of the

cold, sailors and fishermen with pipes between their lips and their

hands deep in their pockets lounged in grave silence outside the

taverns, and old men stood under the open lamps by the street corners

and chewed and snuffed to keep themselves warm.

In the neighborhood of the wooden senate-house on the High Street the

throng was densest, and such of the members as came afoot had to

crush their ways to the door. All the space within that had been

allotted to the public was filled as soon as stammering Jon opened

the side door. When no more room was left the side door was closed

again and locked, and it was afterwards remembered, when people had

time to put their heads together, that long Jon was there and then

seen to pass the key of this side door to one of the six English

strangers who had lately come to the town. That stranger was Thurstan

Fairbrother.

The time of waiting before the proceedings commenced was passed by

those within the Senate House in snuff-taking and sneezing and

coughing, and a low buzz of conversation, full of solemn conjecture.

The members came in twos and threes, and every fresh comer was

quizzed for a hint of the secret of the night. But grave and silent,

when taken together, with the gravity and solemnity of so many oxen,

and some of the oxen's sullen stupidity, were the faces both of

members and spectators. Yet among both were faces that told of amused

unbelief; calculating spirits that seemed to say that all this

excitement was a bubble and would presently burst like one; sapient

souls who, when the world is dead, will believe in no judgment until

they hear the last trump.

There were two parties in the Senate--the Church party, that wanted

religion to be the basis of the reformed government; and the

Levellers, who wished the distinctions of clergy and laity to be

abolished so far as secular power could go. The Church party was led

by the Bishop, who was a member of the higher chamber, the Council,

by virtue of his office; the Levellers were led by the little man

with piercing eyes and the square brush of iron-gray hair who had

acted as spokesman to the Court at the trial of Red Jason. As each of

these arrived there was a faint commotion through the house.

Presently the Speaker came shuffling in, wiping his brow with his red

handkerchief, and at the same moment the thud of a horse's hoofs on

the hard snow outside, followed by a deep buzz as of many voices--not

cheering nor yet groaning--told of the coming of the President.

Then, amid suppressed excitement, Michael Sunlocks entered the

house, looking weary, pale, much older, and stooping slightly under

his flaxen hair, as if conscious of the gaze of many eyes fixed

steadfastly upon him.

After the Speaker had taken his chair, Michael Sunlocks rose in his

place amid dead stillness.

"Sir, and gentlemen," he said in a tense voice, speaking slowly,

calmly and well, "you are met here at my instance to receive a

message of some gravity. It is scarcely more than half a year since

it was declared and enacted by this present Council of Althing that

the people of Iceland were and should be constituted, established and

confirmed to be a Republic or Free State, governed by the Supreme

Authority of the Nation, the people's representatives. You were then

pleased to do me the honor of electing me to be your first President,

and though I well knew that no man had less cause to put himself

forward in the cause of his country than I, being the youngest among

you, the least experienced, and, by birth, an Englishman, yet I

undertook the place I am now in because I had taken a chief hand in

pulling down the old order, and ought, therefore, to lend the best

help I could towards putting up the new. Other reasons influenced me,

such as the desire to keep the nation from falling amid many internal

dissensions into extreme disorder and becoming open to the common

enemy. I will not say that I had no personal motives, no private

aims, no selfish ambitions in stepping in where your confidence

opened the way, but you will bear me witness that in the employment

to which the nation called me, though there may have been passion and

mistakes, I have endeavored to discharge the duty of an honest man."

There was a low murmur of assent, then a pause, then a hush, and then

Michael Sunlocks continued:

"But, gentlemen, I have come to see that I am not able for such a

trust as the burden of this government, and I now beg to be dismissed

of my charge."

Then the silence was broken by many exclamations of surprise. They

fell on the ear of Michael Sunlocks like the ground-swell of a

distant sea. His white face quivered, but his eye was bright, and he

did not flinch.

"It is no doubt your concernment to know what events and what

convictions have so suddenly influenced me, and I can only claim your

indulgence in withholding that part of both that touches the interests

of others. For myself, I can but say that I have made mistakes and

lost self-confidence; that being unable to manage my own affairs I am

unwilling to undertake the affairs of the nation; that I am convinced

I am unfit for the great place I hold; that any name were fitter than

mine for my post, any person fitter than I am for its work; and I say

this from my heart, God knows."

He was listened to in silence but amid a tumult of unheard emotion,

and as he went on his voice, though still low, was so charged with

suppressed feeling that it seemed in that dead stillness to rise to a

cry.

"Gentlemen," he said, "though this may come on you with surprise do

not think it has been lightly resolved upon, or that it is to me a

little thing to renounce the honor with the burden of government; I

will deal plainly and faithfully with you and say that all my heart

was in the work you gave me, and though I held my life in my hand, I

was willing to adventure it in that high place where the judgment of

Althing placed me. So if I beg of you to release me I sacrifice more

by my resignation than you by your dismissal. If I had pride, heaven

has humbled it, and that is a righteous judgment of God. Young and

once hopeful, I am withdrawing from all sight of hope. I am giving up

my cherished ambitions and the chances of success. When I leave this

place you will see me no more. I am to be as nothing henceforward,

for the pole-star of my life is gone out. So not without feeling, not

without pain, I ask you to dismiss me and let me go my ways."

He sat down upon these words amid the stunned stupefaction of those

who heard him, and when he had ceased to speak it seemed as if he

were still speaking. Presently the people recovered their breath and

there was the harsh grating of feet, and a murmur like a low sough of

wind.

Then rose the little man with the brush hair, the leader of the

Levellers, and the chief opponent of Michael Sunlocks in the

Presidency. His name was Grimmsson. Clearing his throat, raspily, he

began to speak in short, jerky sentences. This was indeed a surprise

that moved the house to great astonishment. There was a suspicion of

mock heroics about it that he, for his part, could not shake off, for

they all knew the President for a dreamer of dreams. The President

had said that it was within the concernment of Althing to know how it

stood that he had so suddenly and surprisingly become convinced of

his unfitness. Truly he was right there. Also the President had said

that he had undertaken his post not so much out of hope of doing any

good as out of a desire to prevent mischief and evil. Yet what was he

now doing? Running them headlong into confusion and disorder.

The leader of the Levellers sat down, and a dark-browed fellow from

among his followers rose in his place. What did this hubbub mean? If

the President had been crazy in his health they might have understood

it; but the Lord was pleased to preserve him. Perhaps they had to

look deeper. Whispers were abroad among some who had been near to the

President's person that the time had come to settle the order and

prosperity of Iceland on a new basis. He made no doubt such whispers

implied a Protectorate, perhaps even a Monarchy. Did the President

think to hasten the crisis that would lead to that change? Did he

hope to alter the name of President for Protector, or for something

yet higher? Was he throwing his sprat to catch a mackerel? Let them

look to it.

The dark-browed man sat down, with a grin of triumph, and his place

was taken by a pert little beardless person, with a smirk on his

face. They had all read the parable of how a certain man made a

feast, and did his friends the honor to invite them; but first one

friend for one halting reason, and then another for a reason yet more

lame, excused himself from sitting at the good man's table. Well, one

of these excuses was from a man who had married a wife, and therefore

could not come. Now the President had married a wife----

The little man got no further, for Michael Sunlocks, whose features

had flushed up, leaped to his feet again, against all order and

precedent in that rude chamber so reverent of law.

"I knew," he said, amid the silence of the wide-eyed people, "when I

came to this house to-day, that the censure of Iceland might follow

me when I left it, but its shame shall not pursue me. I also knew

that there were persons not well content with the present order of

things who might show their discontent as they had opportunity; but

before the insinuations of base motives that have just been made I

take you to witness that all that go with them are malicious

figments. My capacity any man may impeach, but my honest name none

shall question without challenge, for the sole pride I shall carry

away with me when I leave this place shall be the pride of an upright

life."

With that he put on his hat where he stood, and the people, thrilled

to their hearts by his ringing voice, and his eyes full of splendid

courage, broke into a great clamor of cheers.

"Peace, peace," cried a deep voice over the tumult. The old Bishop

had risen to speak.

"This is a quarrelsome age," he said, "an age when there seems to be

a strange itching in the spirits of men, when near every man seems to

seek his brother's disquiet all he may, when wretched jealousies and

the spirit of calumny turn everything to gall and wormwood. But can

we not take the President's message for what it claims to be, asking

him for no reasons that concern us not? When has he betrayed us? His

life since his coming here has been marked by strict integrity. When

has pride been his bane? His humility has ever been his praise. He

has been modest with the highest power and shown how little he valued

those distances he was bound to keep up. When has mammon been his

god? If he leaves us now he leaves us a poor man, as Althing may well

assure itself. But let us pray that this may not come to pass. When

he was elected to the employment he holds, being so young a man, many

trembled--and I among them--for the nation that had intrusted its

goods and its lives to his management, but now we know that only in

his merit and virtue can it find its safety and repose. Let me not be

prodigal of praise before his face, but honor and honesty require

this, that we say that so true a man is not to be found this day in

Iceland."

The Bishop's words had quickened the pulse of the people, and cheer

followed cheer again. "It is written," continued the Bishop, "that

whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth

himself shall be exalted. Our young President has this day sat down

in the lowest room; and if he must needs leave us, having his own

reasons that are none of ours, may the Lord cause His face to shine

upon him, and comfort him in all his adversities."

Then there was but one voice in that assembly, the voice of a loud

Amen. And Michael Sunlocks had risen again with a white face and dim

eyes, to return his thanks, and say his last word before the vote for

his release should be taken, when there was a sudden commotion, a

sound of hurrying feet, a rush, a startled cry, and at the next

moment a company of soldiers had entered the house from the cell

below, and stood with drawn swords on the floor.

Before anyone had recovered from his surprise one of the soldiers had

spoken. "Gentlemen," he said, "the door is locked--you are prisoners

of the King of Denmark."

"Betrayed!" shouted fifty voices at once, and then there was wild

confusion.

"So this mysterious mummery is over at last," said the leader of the

Levellers, rising up with rigid limbs, and a scared and whitened

face. "Now we know why we have all been brought here to-night.

Betrayed indeed,--and _there_ stands the betrayer."

So saying he pointed scornfully at Michael Sunlocks, who stood where

he had risen, with the look of deep emotion hardly yet banished from

his face by the look of bewilderment that followed it.

"False," Michael Sunlocks cried. "It is false as hell."

But in that quick instant the people looked at him with changed eyes,

and received his words with a groan of rage that silenced him.

That night Jorgen Jorgensen sailed up the fiord, and, landing at

Reykjavik, took possession of it, and the second Republic of Iceland

was at an end.

That night, too, when the Fairbrothers, headed by Thurstan, trudged

through the streets on their way to Government House, looking to

receive the reward that had been promised them, they were elbowed by

a drunken company of the Danes who frequented the drinking-shops on

the Cheapstead.

"Why, here are his brothers," shouted one of the roysterers, pointing

at the Fairbrothers.

"His brothers! His brothers!" shouted twenty more.

Thurstan tried to protest and Jacob to fraternize, but all was

useless. The brethren were attacked for the relation they had claimed

with the traitor who had fallen, and thus the six worthy and

unselfish souls who had come to Iceland for gain and lost everything,

and waited for revenge and only won suspicion, were driven off in

peril of their necks, with a drunken mob at full cry behind them.

They took refuge in a coasting schooner, setting sail for the eastern

fiords. Six days afterwards the schooner was caught in the ice at the

mouth of Seydis fiord, imprisoned there four months, out of reach of

help from land or sea, and every soul aboard died miserably.

Short as had been the shrift of Red Jason, the shrift of Michael

Sunlocks was yet shorter. On the order of Jorgen Jorgensen, the "late

usurper of the Government of Iceland" was sent for the term of his

natural life to the Sulphur Mines that he had himself established as

a penal settlement.

And such was the fall of Michael Sunlocks.

THE BOOK OF RED JASON.

CHAPTER I.

WHAT BEFELL OLD ADAM.

Now it would be a long task to follow closely all that befell the

dear old Adam Fairbrother, from the time when the ship wherein he

sailed for Iceland weighed anchor in Ramsey bay. Yet not to know what

strange risks he ran, and how in the end he overcame all dangers, by

God's grace and his own extreme labor, is not to know this story of

how two good men with a good woman between them pursued each other

over the earth with vows of vengeance, and came together at length in

heaven's good time and way. So not to weary the spirit with much

speaking, yet to leave nothing unsaid that shall carry us onward to

that great hour when Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks stood face to

face, let us begin where Adam's peril began, and hasten forward to

where it ended.

Fourteen days out of Ramsey, in latitude of 64 degrees, distant

about five leagues north of the Faroes, and in the course of west

northwest, hoping to make the western shores of Iceland, Adam with

his shipmates was overtaken by foul weather, with high seas and

strong wind opposing them stoutly from the northwest. Thus they were

driven well into the latitude of sixty-six off the eastern coast of

Iceland, and there, though the seas still ran as high as to the poop,

they were much beset by extraordinary pieces of ice which appeared to

come down from Greenland. Then the wind abated, and an unsearchable

and noisome fog followed; so dense that not an acre of sea could be

seen from the top-mast head, and so foul that the compasses would not

work in it. After that, though they wrought night and day with poles

and spikes, they were beaten among the ice as scarce any ship ever

was before, and so terrible were the blows they suffered that many a

time they thought the planks must be wrenched from the vessel's

sides. Nevertheless they let fall sail, thinking to force their way

through the ice before they were stowed to pieces, and, though the

wind was low, yet the ship felt the canvas and cleared the shoals

that encompassed her. The wind then fell to a calm, but still the fog

hung heavily over the sea, which was black and smelt horribly. And

when they thought to try their soundings, knowing that somewhere

thereabouts the land must surely be, they heard a noise that seemed

at first like the tract of the shore. It was worse than that, for it

was the rut of a great bank of ice, two hundred miles deep, breaking

away from the far shores of Greenland, and coming with its steady

sweep, such as no human power could resist, towards the coasts of

Iceland. Between that vast ice floe and the land they lay, with its

hollow and terrible voice in their ears, and with no power to fly

from it, for their sail hung loose and idle in the dead stillness of

the air.

Oh! it is an awful thing to know that death is swooping down on you

hour by hour; to hear it coming with its hideous thunder, like the

groans of damned souls, and yet to see nothing of your danger for the

day darkness that blinds you. But the shipmaster was a stout-hearted

fellow, and while the fog continued and he was without the help of

wind or compass, he let go a raven that he had aboard to see if it

could discover land. The raven flew to the northeast, and did not

return to the ship, and by that token the master knew that the land

of Iceland lay somewhere near on their starboard bow. So he was for

lowering the long boat, to stand in with the coast and learn what

part of Iceland it was, when suddenly the wind larged again, and

before long it blew with violence.

At this their peril was much increased, for the night before had been

bitterly cold, and the sails had been frozen where they hung

outspread, and some of the cables were as stiff as icicles and half

as thick as a man's body. Thus under wind that in a short space rose

to a great storm, with canvas that could not be reefed, an ocean of

ice coming down behind, and seas beneath of an untouchable depth,

they were driven on and on towards an unknown shore.

From the like danger may God save all Christian men, even as he

saved old Adam and his fellowship, for they had begun to prepare

themselves to make a good end of their hopeless lives, when in the

lift of the fog the master saw an opening in the coast, and got into

it, and his ship rode safely on a quick tide down the fiord called

Seydis fiord.

There the same night they dropped anchor in a good sound, and went

instantly to prayer, to praise God for His delivery of them, and Adam

called the haven where they moored, "The Harbor of Good Providence."

So with cheerful spirits, thinking themselves indifferently safe,

they sought their births, and so ended the first part of their peril

in God's mercy and salvation.

But the storm that had driven them into their place of refuge drove

their dread enemy after them, and in the night, while they lay in the

first sleep of four days, the ice encompassed them and crushed them

against the rocks. The blow struck Adam out of a tranquil rest, and

he thought nothing better than that he was awakening for another

world. All hands were called to the pumps, for the master still

thought the ship was staunch and might be pushed along the coast by

the shoulders with crows of iron, and thus ride out to sea. But

though they worked until the pumps sucked, it was clear that the poor

vessel was stuck fast in the ice, and that she must soon get her

death-wound. So, at break of day, the master and crew, with Adam

Fairbrother, took what they could carry of provisions and clothes,

and clambered ashore, leaving the ship to her fate.

It was a bleak and desolate coast they had landed upon, with never a

house in sight, never a cave that they might shelter in, or a stone

that would cover them against the wind; with nothing around save the

bare face of a broad fell, black and lifeless, strewn over with small

light stones sucked full of holes like the honeycomb, but without

trees, or bush, or grass, or green moss. And there they suffered more

privations than it is needful to tell, waiting for the ice to break,

looking on at its many colors of blue, and purple, and emerald green,

and yellow, and its many strange and wonderful shapes, resembling

churches, and castles, and spires, and turrets, and cities, all

ablaze in the noonday sun.

They built themselves a rude hut of the stones like pumice, and,

expecting the dissolution of the ice, they kept watch on their ship,

which itself looked like an iceberg frozen into a ship's shape. And

meantime some of their company suffered very sorely. Though the year

was not yet far advanced towards winter, some of the men swooned of

the cold that came up from the ice of the fiord; the teeth of others

became loose and the flesh of their gums fell away, and on the soles

of the feet of a few the frost of the nights raised blisters as big

as walnuts.

Partly from these privations and partly from loss of heart when at

last one evil day he saw his good ship crushed to splinters against

the rocks, the master fell sick, and was brought so low that in less

than a week he lay expecting his good hour. And feeling his extremity

he appointed Adam to succeed him as director of the company, to guide

them to safety over the land, since Providence forbade that they

should sail on the seas. Then, all being done, so far as his help

could avail, he stretched himself out for his end, only praying in

his last hours that he might be allowed to drink as much ale as he

liked from the ship's stores that had been saved. This Adam ordered

that he should, and as long as he lived the ale was brought to him in

the hut where he lay, and he drank it until, between draught and

draught, it froze in the jug at his side. After that he died--an

honest, a worthy, and strong-hearted man.

And Adam, being now by choice of the late master and consent of his

crew the leader of the company, began to make a review of all men and

clothes and victuals, and found that there were eleven of them in

all, with little more than they stood up in, and provisions to last

them, with sparing, three weeks at utmost. And seeing that they were

cut off from all hope of a passage by sea, he set himself to count

the chances of a journey by land, and by help of the ship's charts

and much beating of the wings of memory to recover what he had

learned of Iceland in the days when his dear lad Sunlocks had left

him for these shores, he reckoned that by following the sea line

under the feet of the great Vatna-Jokull, they might hope, if they

could hold out so long, to reach Reykjavik at last. Long and weary

the journey must be, with no town and scarce a village to break it,

and no prospect of shelter by the way, save what a few farms might

give them. So Adam ordered the carpenter to recover what he could of

the ship's sails to make a tent, and of its broken timbers to make a

cart to carry victuals, and when this was done they set off along the

fell side on the first stage of their journey.

The same day, towards nightfall, they came upon a little group of

grass-covered houses at the top of the fiord, and saw the people of

Iceland for the first time. They were a little colony cut off by

impassable mountains from their fellows within the island, and having

no ships in which they dare venture to their kind on the seas

without; tall and strong-limbed in their persons, commonly of yellow

hair, but sometimes of red, of which neither sex was ashamed; living

on bread that was scarce eatable, being made of fish that had been

dried and powdered; lazy and unclean; squalid and mean-spirited, and

with the appearance of being depressed and kept under. It was a

cheerless life they lived at the feet of the great ice-bound jokull

and the margin of the frozen sea, so that looking around on the

desolate place and the dumb wilderness of things before and behind,

Adam asked himself why and how any living souls had ever ventured

there.

But for all that the little colony were poor and wretched, the hearts

of the shipwrecked company leapt up at sight of them, and in the

joyful gabble of unintelligible speech between them old Adam found

that he could understand some of the words. And when the islanders

saw that in some sort Adam understood them they singled him out from

the rest of his company, falling on his neck and kissing him after

the way of their nation, and concluding among themselves that he was

one of their own people who had gone away in his youth and never been

heard of after. And Adam, though he looked shy at their musty kisses,

was nothing loth to allow that they might be Manxmen strayed and

lost.

For Adam and his followers two things came of this encounter, and the

one was to forward and the other to retard their journey. The first

was that the islanders sold them twelve ponies, of the small breed

that abound in that latitude, and gave them a guide to lead them the

nearest way to the capital. The ponies cost them forty kroner, or

more than two pounds apiece, and the guide was to stand to them in

two kroner, or two shillings, a day. This took half of all they had

in money, and many were the heavy groans of the men at parting with

it; but Adam argued that their money was of no other value there than

as a help out of their extremity, and that all the gold in the banks,

if he had it, would be less to him then than the little beast he was

bestriding.

The second of the two things that followed on that meeting with the

islanders was that, just as they had started afresh on their way, now

twelve in all, each man on his horse, and a horse in the shafts of

the cart that held the victuals, a woman came running after them with

a child in her arms, and besought them to take her with them. That

anyone could wish to share their outcast state was their first

surprise, but the woman's terrified looks, her tears and passionate

pleadings, seemed to say that to be homeless and houseless on the

face of that trackless land was not so awful a fate but that other

miseries could conquer the fear of it. So, failing to learn more of

her condition, than that she was friendless and alone, Adam ordered

that, with her child, she should be lifted into the cart that was

driven ahead of them.

But within an hour they were overtaken by a man, who came galloping

after them, and said the woman had stolen the child--that it was his

child, and that he had come to carry it back with him. At that Adam

called on the woman to answer through the guide, and she said that

the man was indeed the child's father, but that she was its mother;

that he was a farmer, and had married her only that he might have a

son to leave his farm to; that having given him this child he had

turned her out of doors, and that in love and yearning for her little

one, from whom she had been so cruelly parted, she had stolen into

her old home, plucked up the babe and run away with it. Hearing this

story, which the woman told through her tears, Adam answered the man

that if the law of his country allowed a father to deal so with the

mother of his child it was a base and unnatural law, and merited the

obedience of no man; so he meant to protect the woman against both it

and him, and carry her along with their company. With that answer the

man turned tail, but Adam's victory over him was dearly bought, at

the cost of much vexation afterwards and sore delay on the hard

journey.

And now it would be long to tell of the trials of that passage over

those gaunt solitudes, where there was no fingerpost or mark of other

human travellers. The men bore up bravely, loving most to comfort the

woman and do her any tender office, or carry her child before them on

their saddles. And many a time, at sight of the little one, and at

hearing its simple prattle in a tongue they did not understand, the

poor fellows would burst into tears, as if remembering, with a

double pang, that they were exiles from that country far away, where

other mothers held their own children to their breasts. Two of them

sickened of the cold, and had to be left behind at a farm, where the

people were kind and gentle and promised to nurse them until their

companions could return for them. But the heaviest blow to all that

company was the sickness and death of the child. Tenderly the rude

sailor men nursed the little fellow one by one, and when nothing

availed to keep his sweet face among them they mourned his loss as

the worst disaster that had yet befallen them. The mother herself was

distraught, and in the madness of her agony turned on Adam and

reproached him, saying he had brought her child into this wilderness

to kill it. Adam understood her misery too well to rebuke her

ingratitude, and the same night that her babe was laid in his rest

with a cross of willow wood to mark the place of it, she disappeared

from their company, and where she went or what became of her no one

knew, for she was seen by them no more.

But next morning they were overtaken by a number of men riding hard,

and one of them was the woman's husband, and another the High Sheriff

of the Quarter. These two called on Adam to deliver up the child, and

when he told them that it was dead, and the mother gone, the husband

would have fallen upon him with his knife, but for the Sheriff, who,

keeping the peace, said that, as accessory after the fact of theft,

Adam himself must go to prison.

Now, at this the crew of the ship began to set up a woeful wail, and

to double their fists and measure the strength of nine sturdy British

seamen against that of ten lanky Icelanders. But Adam restrained them

from violence, and indeed there was need for none, for the Sheriff

was in no mood to carry his prisoner away with him. All he did was to

take out his papers, and fill them up with the name and description

that Adam gave him, and then hand them over to Adam himself, saying

they were the warrant for his imprisonment, and that he was to go on

his way until he came to the next district, where there was a house

of detention, which the guide would find for him, and there deliver

up the documents to the Sheriff in charge.

With such instructions, and never doubting but they would be

followed, the good man and his people wheeled about, and returned as

they came.

And being so easily rid of them the sailors began to laugh at their

simpleness, and, with many satisfied grunts, to advise the speedy

destruction of the silly warrant that was the sole witness against

Adam. But Adam himself said, no--that he was touched by the

simplicity of a people that could trust a man to take himself to

prison, and he would not wrong that confidence by any cheating. So he

ordered the guide to lead on where he had been directed.

They reached the prison towards nightfall, and there old Adam bade a

touching farewell of his people, urging them not to wait for him, but

to push on to Reykjavik where alone they could find ships to take

them home to England. And some of the good fellows wept at this

parting, though they all thought it foolish, but one old salt named

Chalse shed no tears, and only looked crazier than ever, and chuckled

within himself from some dark cause.

And indeed there was small reason to weep, because, simple as the

first Sheriff's conduct had been, that of the second Sheriff was yet

simpler, for when Adam presented himself as a prisoner the Sheriff

asked for his papers, and then diving into his pocket to find them,

the good man found that they were gone--lost, dropped by the way or

destroyed by accident--and no search sufficed to recover them. So

failing of his warrant the Sheriff shook his head at Adam's story and

declined to imprison him, and the prisoner had no choice but to go

free. Thus Adam returned to his company, who heard with laughter and

delight of the close of his adventure, all save Chalse, who looked

sheepish and edged away whenever Adam glanced at him. Thus ended in

merriment an incident that threatened many evil consequences, and was

attended by two luckless mischances.

The first of these two was that, by going to the prison, which lay

three Danish miles out of the direct track to the capital, Adam and

his company had missed young Oscar and Zoega's men, whom Michael

Sunlocks had sent out from Reykjavik in search of them. The second

was that their guide had disappeared and left them, within an hour of

bringing them to the door of the Sheriff. His name was Jonas; he had

been an idle and a selfish fellow; he had demanded his wages day by

day; and seeing Adam part from the rest, he had concluded that with

the purse-bearer the purse of the company had gone. But he alone had

known the course, and, worthless as he had been to them in other

ways, the men began to rail at him when they found that he had

abandoned them and left them to struggle on without help.

"The sweep!" "the thief!" "the wastrel!" "the gomerstang!" they

called him, with wilder names beside. But old Adam rebuked them and

said, "Good friends, I would persuade myself that urgent reasons

alone can have induced this poor man to leave us. Were we not

ourselves constrained to forsake two of our number several days back,

though with the full design of returning to them to aid them when it

should lie in our power? Thus I cannot blame the Icelander without

more knowledge of his intent, and so let us push on still and trust

in God to deliver us, as he surely will."

And, sure enough, the next day after they came upon a man who

undertook the place of the guide who had forsaken them. He was a

priest and a very learned man, but poor as the poorest farmer. He

spoke in Latin, and in imperfect Latin Adam made shift to answer him.

His clothes were all but worn to rags, and he was shoeing his horse

in the little garth before his door. His house, which stood alone

save for the wooden church beside it, looked on the outside like a

line of grass cones, hardly higher to their peaks than the head of a

tall man, and in the inside it was low, dark, noisome, and noisy. In

one room to which Chalse and the seamen were taken, three or four

young children were playing, an old woman was spinning, and a younger

woman, the priest's wife, was washing clothes. This was the living

room and sleeping room, the birth room and death room of the whole

family. In another room, to which Adam was led by the priest himself,

the floor was strewn with saddles, nails, hammers, horseshoes, whips,

and spades, and the walls were covered with bookshelves, whereon

stood many precious old black-letter volumes. This was the workshop

and study, wherein the good priest spent his long, dark days of

winter.

And, being once more fully equipped for the journey, Adam ordered

that they should lose no time in setting out afresh, with the priest

on his own pony in front of them. Two days then passed without

misadventure of any kind, and in that time they had come to a

village, at which they should have forsaken the coast line and made

for the interior, in order that they might cross to Reykjavik by way

of Thingvellir, and so cut off the peninsula ending in the Smoky

Point. But a heavy fall of snow coming down suddenly, they were

compelled to seek shelter at a farm, the only one for more than a

hundred miles to east or west of them. There they rested while the

snowstorm lasted, and it was the same weary downfall that kept Greeba

to her house while Red Jason lay in his brain fever in the cell in

the High Street, and Michael Sunlocks was out on the sea in search of

themselves.

And when the snow had ceased to fall, and the frost that followed had

hardened it, and the country, now white instead of black, was again

fit to travel upon, it was found that the priest was unwilling to

start. Then it appeared that downright drinking had been his sole

recreation and his only bane; that the most serious affairs of night

and day had always submitted to this great business; that in the

interval of waiting for the passing of the snow, finding himself with

a few kroner at command, he had begun on his favorite occupation, and

that he now was too deeply immersed therein to be disturbed in less

than a week.

Once again the seamen railed at their guide, as well as at the whole

race of Icelanders, but Adam was all for lenity towards the priest

and hope for themselves.

"My faithful companions," he said, "be not dismayed by any of these

disasters, but let us put our whole trust in God. If it be our

fortune to end our days in this desolate land, we are as near heaven

here as at home. Yet let us use all honest efforts to save our

natural lives, and we are not yet so far past hope of doing so but

that I see a fair way by which we may effect it."

With that they set out again alone, and within an hour they had

fallen on the second mischance of their journey, for failing to find

the pass that would have led them across country through Thingvellir,

they kept close by the sea line in the direction of the Smoky Point.

Now these misadventures, first with the mother and child, next with

the Sheriffs, and then with the guides, though they kept back Adam

and his company from that quick deliverance which they would have

found in meeting with the messengers of Michael Sunlocks or with

Michael Sunlocks himself, yet brought them in the end in the way of

the only persons who are important to this story. For pursuing their

mistaken way by the line of sea they came upon the place called

Krisuvik. It was a grim wilderness of awful things, not cold and dead

and dumb like the rest of that haggard land, but hot and alive with

inhuman fire and clamorous with devilish noises. A wide ashen plain

within a circle of hills whereon little snow could rest for the

furnace that raged beneath the surface; shooting with shrill whistles

its shafts of hot steam from a hundred fumeroles; bubbling up in a

thousand jets of boiling water; hissing from a score of green

cauldrons; grumbling low with mournful sounds underneath like the

voice of subterranean wind, and sending up a noxious stench through

heavy whorls of vapor that rolled in a fetid atmosphere overhead. Oh,

it was a fearsome place, like nothing on God's earth but a mouldering

wreck of human body, vast and shapeless, and pierced deep with

foulest ulcers; a leper spot on earth's face; a seething vat full of

broth of hell's own brewing. And all around was the peaceful snow,

and beyond the lines of the southern hills was the tranquil sea, and

within the northern mountains was a quiet lake of water as green as

the grass of spring.

Coming upon the ghastly place, printed deep with Satan's own features

on the face of it, Adam thought that surely no human footstep was

ever meant by God to echo among bodeful noises. But there he found

two wooden sheds busy with troops of men coming and going about them,

and a third house of the same kind in an early stage of building.

Then asking questions as well as he was able he learned that the

boiling pits were the Sulphur Mines that the new Governor, the

President of the Republic, had lately turned to account as a penal

settlement, that the two completed sheds were the workshops and

sleeping places of the prisoners, and that the unfinished house was

intended for their hospital.

And it so chanced that while with his poor broken company Adam rested

on his horse, to look on at this sight with eyes of wonder and fear,

a gang of four prisoners passed on to their work in charge of as many

warders, and one of the four men was Red Jason. His long red hair was

gone, his face was thin and pale instead of full and tawny, and his

eyes, once so bright, were heavy and slow. He walked in file, and

about his neck was a collar of iron, with a bow coming over his head

and ending on the forehead in a bell that rang as he went along. The

wild vitality of his strong figure seemed lost, he bent forward as he

walked, and looked steadfastly on the ground.

Yet, changed as he was, Adam knew him at a glance, and between

surprise and terror, called on him by his name. But Jason heard

nothing, and strode on like a man who had suddenly become deaf and

blind under the shock of some evil day.

"Jason! Jason!" Adam cried again, and he dropped from the saddle to

run towards him. But the warders raised their hands to warn the old

man off, and Jason went on between them, without ever lifting his

eyes or making sign or signal.

"Now, God save us! what can this mean?" cried Adam; and though with

the lame help of his "old Manx" he questioned as well as he was able

the men who were at work at the building of the hospital, nothing

could he learn but one thing, and that was the strange and wondrous

chance that his own eyes revealed to him: namely, that the last face

he saw as he was leaving Mann, on that bad night when he stole away

from Greeba while she slept, was the first face he had seen to know

it since he set foot on Iceland.

Nor was this surprise the only one that lay waiting for him in that

gaunt place. Pushing on towards Reykjavik, the quicker for this sight

of Red Jason, and with many troubled thoughts of Michael Sunlocks,

Adam came with his company to the foot of the mountain that has to be

crossed before the lava plain is reached which leads to the capital.

And there the narrow pass was blocked to them for half-an-hour of

precious time by a long train of men and ponies coming down the

bridle path. They were Danes, to the number of fifty at least,

mounted on as many horses, and with a score of tired horses driven on

ahead of them. What their work and mission was in that grim waste

Adam could not learn until he saw that the foremost of the troop had

drawn up at one of the two wooden sheds, and then he gathered from

many signs that they were there as warders to take charge of the

settlement in place of the Icelandic officers who had hitherto held

possession of it.

Little time he had, however, to learn the riddle of these strange

doings, or get knowledge of the double rupture of state of affairs

that had caused them, for presently old Chalse came hurrying back to

him from some distance ahead, with a scared face and stammering

tongue, and one nervous hand pointing upwards to where the last of

the men and horses were coming down the bridle path.

"Lord-a-massy, who's this," cried Chalse; and following the direction

of his hand Adam saw what the old fellow pointed at, and the sight

seemed to freeze the blood at his heart.

It was Michael Sunlocks riding between two of the Danish warders as

their prisoner, silent, fettered and bound.

Then Adam felt as if he had somewhere fallen into a long sleep, and

was now awakening to a new life in a new world, where the people were

the same as in the old one but everything about them was strange and

terrible. But he recovered from his terror as Michael Sunlocks came

on, and he called to him, and Sunlocks heard him, and turned towards

him with a look of joy and pain in one quick glance of a moment.

"My son! my boy!" cried Adam.

"Father! Father!" cried Michael Sunlocks.

But in an instant the warders had closed about Sunlocks, and hurried

him on in the midst of them, while their loud shouts drowned all

other voices.

And when the troop had passed him, Adam sat a moment silent on his

little beast, and then he turned to his company and said:

"My good friends and faithful companions, my journey is at an end,

and you must go on without me. I came to this land of Iceland only to

find one who is my son indeed, though not flesh of my flesh, thinking

to rest my old arm on his young shoulder. I have found him now, but

he is in trouble, from some cause that I have yet to learn, and it is

my old shoulder that his young arm must rest upon. And this that you

have witnessed is not the meeting I looked for, and built my hopes

on, and buoyed up my failing spirits with, through all the trouble of

our many weary days. But God's will be done! So go your ways and

leave me where His wisdom has brought me, and may His mercy fetch you

in safety to your native country, and to the good souls waiting for

you there."

But the rough fellows protested that come what might, leave him they

never would, and old Chalse without more ado began to make ready to

pitch their tent on the thin patch of grass where they stood.

And that evening, while Adam wandered over the valley, trying to get

better knowledge of the strange events which he had read as if by

flashes of lightning, and hearing in broken echoes of the rise and

fall of the Republic, of the rise and fall of Michael Sunlocks, of

the fall and return of Jorgen Jorgensen, a more wondrous chance than

any that had yet befallen him was fast coming his way.

For late that night, when he sat in his grief, with his companions

busied about him, comforting him with what tender offices and soft

words their courageous minds could think of, a young Icelander came

to the gap of the tent and asked, in broken English, if they would

give a night's shelter to a lady who could find no other lodging, and

was alone save for himself, who had been her guide from Reykjavik.

At that word Adam's own troubles were gone from him in an instant,

and, though his people would have demurred, he called on the

Icelander to fetch the lady in, and presently she came, and then all

together stood dumbfounded, for the lady was Greeba herself.

It would be hard to tell how at first every other feeling was lost in

one of surprise at the strange meeting of father and daughter, how

surprise gave place to joy, and joy to pain, as bit by bit the

history of their several adventures was unfolded each to the other.

And while Greeba heard of the mischances that had overtaken old Adam,

he, on his part, heard of the death of her mother and her brother's

ill-usage, of the message that came from Michael Sunlocks and her

flight from home, of how she came to Iceland and was married, and of

how Sunlocks went in pursuit of himself, and, returning to the

capital, was betrayed into the hands of his enemies. All the long

story of plot and passion he heard in the wild tangle of her hot and

broken words, save only that part of it which concerned her quarrel

with her husband; but when he mentioned Red Jason, saying that he had

seen him, he heard that sad passage of her story also, told with fear

and many bitter tears.

Adam comforted Greeba with what words of cheer he could command, in

an hour when his own heart was dark and hopeless, and then amid the

turmoil of so many emotions, the night being worn to midnight, they

composed themselves to sleep.

Next morning, rising anxious and unrested, Adam saw the Icelandic

warders, who had been supplanted in their employment by the Danes,

start away from the settlement for their homes, and after them went a

group of the Danish prisoners as free men, who had been imprisoned by

the Republic as spies of the Government of Denmark. By this time Adam

had decided on his course.

"Greeba," he said, "this imprisonment of Michael Sunlocks is unjust,

and I see a way to put an end to it. No governor shall sentence him

without judge or jury. But I will go on to Reykjavik and appeal to

this Jorgen Jorgensen. If he will not hear me, I will appeal to his

master, the King of Denmark. If Denmark will not listen, I will

appeal to England, for Michael Sunlocks is a British subject, and may

claim the rights of an Englishman. And if England turns a deaf ear to

me, I will address my prayer to God, who has never yet failed to

right the wronged, or humble the arrogance of the mighty. Thank

Heaven, that has brought me here. I thought I was coming to end my

days in peace by his side who would shelter my poor foolish gray

head, that had forgotten to protect itself. But strange are the ways

of Providence. God has had his own purposes in bringing me here thus

blindfolded, and, thanks to His mercy! I am not yet so old but I may

yet do something. So come, girl, come, make ready, and we will go on

our great errand together."

But Greeba had her own ends from the first in following Michael

Sunlocks to the place of his imprisonment, and she answered and said,

"No, father, no. You may go on to Reykjavik, and do all this if you

can, but my place is here, at my husband's side. He lost faith in my

affection, and said I had married him for the glory that his place

would bring me; but he shall see what a woman can go through for sake

of the man she loves. I have my own plan of life in this place, and

the power to carry it out. Therefore do not fear to leave me, but go,

and God prosper you!"

"Let it be so," said Adam, and with that, after some words of

explanation with the brave fellows who had followed him from the hour

when, as ship-broken men, they set out on foot from the eastern

fiord, he started on his journey afresh, leaving the tent and the

last of their ship's victuals behind with Greeba, for Reykjavik was

no more than a day's ride from Krisuvik.

When he was gone, Greeba went down to the tents at the mouth of the

mines, and asked for the Captain. A Danish gentleman who did not know

her, and whom she did not know, answered to that title, and then she

said that hearing that a hospital was being built she had come out

from Reykjavik to offer herself as a nurse if a nurse was wanted.

"A nurse _is_ wanted," said the Captain, "and though we had no

thought of a woman you have come in the nick of time."

So Greeba, under some assumed name, unknown to the contingent of

Danish officers fresh from Denmark, who had that day taken the places

of the Icelandic warders, and recognizable in her true character by

two men only in Krisuvik, Michael Sunlocks and Red Jason, if ever

they should see her, took up her employment as hospital nurse to the

sick prisoners of the Sulphur Mines.

But having attained her end, or the first part of it, her heart was

torn by many conflicting feelings. Would she meet with her husband?

Would he come to be in her own charge? Oh, God forbid that it should

ever come to pass. Yet God grant it, too, for that might help him to

a swifter release than her dear old father could compass. Would she

see Red Jason? Would Michael Sunlocks ever see him? Oh! God forbid

that also. And yet, and yet, God grant it, after all.

Such were her hopes and fears, when the hospital shed was finished,

and she took her place within it. And now let us see how heaven

fulfilled them.

CHAPTER II.

THE SULPHUR MINES.

Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks were together at last, within the

narrow stockade of a penal settlement. These two, who had followed

each other from land to land, the one on his errand of vengeance, the

other on his mission of mercy, both now nourishing hatred and lust of

blood, were thrown as prisoners into the Sulphur Mines of Krisuvik.

There they met, they spoke, they lived and worked side by side yet

neither knew the other for the man he had sought so long and never

found. This is the strange and wondrous chance that has now to be

recorded, and only to think of it, whether as accident or God's

ordinance, makes the blood to tingle in every vein. Poor and petty

are the passions of man, and God's hand is over all.

The only work of Michael Sunlocks which Jorgen Jorgensen did not undo

in the swift reprisals which followed on the restoration of his power

was the use of the Sulphur Mines as a convict settlement. All he did

was to substitute Danish for Icelandic guards, but this change was

the beginning and end of the great event that followed. The

Icelandic guards knew Red Jason, and if Michael Sunlocks had been

sent out to them they would have known him also, and thus the two men

must have soon known each other. But the Danish warders knew nothing

of Jason, and when they brought out Michael Sunlocks they sent the

Icelandic guards home. Thus Jason never heard that Michael Sunlocks

was at the Sulphur Mines, and though in the whirl of many vague

impressions, the distant hum of a world far off, there floated into

his mind the news of the fall of the Republic he could never suspect,

and there was no one to tell him, that the man whom he had pursued

and never yet seen, the man he hated and sought to slay, was a

convict like himself, working daily and hourly within sight and sound

of him.

Michael Sunlocks, on his part, knew well that Red Jason had been sent

to the Sulphur Mines; but he also knew that he had signed Jason's

pardon and ordered his release. More than this, he had learned that

Jorgen Jorgensen had liberated all who had been condemned by the

Republic, and so he concluded that Jason had become a free man when

he himself became a prisoner. But there had been a delay in the

despatch of Jason's pardon, and when the Republic had fallen and the

Danish officers had taken the place of the Icelanders, the captain of

the mines had released the political prisoners only, and Jason, as a

felon, had been retained. The other prisoners at the mines, some

fifty in all, knew neither Michael Sunlocks nor Red Jason. They were

old criminals from remote districts, sentenced to the jail at

Reykjavik, during the first rule of Jorgen Jorgensen, and sent out to

Krisuvik in the early days of the Republic.

Thus it chanced from the first that though together within a narrow

space of ground Jason and Sunlocks were cut off from all knowledge of

each other such as might have been gleaned from those about them. And

the discipline of the settlement kept them back from that knowledge

by keeping them for many months apart.

The two houses used as workshops and sleeping places were at opposite

sides of the stockade, one at the north, the other at the south; one

overlooking a broad waste of sea, the other at the margin of a dark

lake of gloomy shore. Red Jason was assigned to the house near the

sea, Michael Sunlocks to the house by the lake. These houses were

built of squared logs with earthen floors, and wooden benches for

beds. The prisoners entered them at eight o'clock in the evening, and

left them at five in the morning, their hours of labor in summer

being from five a. m. to eight p. m. They brought two tin cans, one

tin containing their food, their second meal of the day, a pound of

stock fish, and four ounces of bread; the other tin intended for

their refuse of slops and victuals and dirt of other kinds. Each

house contained some twenty-five men and boys, and so peopled and

used they had quickly become grimy and pestilential, the walls

blotched with vermin stains, the floors encrusted with hard trodden

filth that was wet and slippery to the feet, and the atmosphere damp

and foul to the nostrils from the sickening odors of decayed food.

It had been a regulation from the beginning that the latest comer at

each of these houses should serve three months as housekeeper, with

the duty of cleansing the horrible place every morning after his

housemates had left it for their work. During this time he wore the

collar of iron and the bell over his forehead, for it was his period

of probation and of special degradation. Thus Red Jason served as

housekeeper in the house by the sea, while Michael Sunlocks did the

same duty in the house by the lake. Jason went through his work

listlessly, slowly, hopelessly, but without a murmur. Michael

Sunlocks rebelled against its horrible necessities, for every morning

his gorge rose at the exhalations of five-and-twenty unwashed human

bodies, and the insupportable odor that came of their filthy habits.

This state of things went on for some two months, during which the

two men had never met, and then an accident led to a change in the

condition of both.

The sulphur dug up from the banks of the hot springs was packed in

sacks and strapped upon ponies, one sack at each side of a pony and

one on its back, to be taken to Hafnafiord, the nearest port for

shipment to Denmark. Now the sulphur was heavy, the sacks were large,

the ponies small, and the road down from the solfataras to the valley

was rough with soft clay and great basaltic boulders. And one day as

a line of the ponies so burdened came down the breast of the

mountain, driven on by a carrier who lashed them at every step with

his long whip of leather thongs, one little piebald mare, hardly

bigger than a donkey, stumbled into a deep rut and fell. At that the

inhuman fellow behind it flogged it again, and showered curses on it

at every blow.

"Get up, get up, or I'll skin you alive," he cried, with many a

hideous oath beside.

And at every fresh blow the little piebald struggled to rise but she

could not, while its terrified eyeballs stood out from the sockets

and its wide nostrils quivered.

"Get up, you little lazy devil, get up," cried the brute with the

whip, and still his blows fell like raindrops, first on the mare's

flanks, then on its upturned belly, then on its head, its mouth, and

last of all on its eyes.

But the poor creature's load held it down, and, struggle as it would,

it could not rise. The gang of prisoners on the hillside who had just

before burdened the ponies and sent them off, heard this lashing and

swearing, and stopped their work to look down. But they thought more

of the carrier than of the fallen pony, and laughed aloud at his vain

efforts to bring it to its feet.

"Send him a hand up, Jonas," shouted one of the fellows.

"Pick him up in your arms, old boy," shouted another, and at every

silly sally they all roared together.

The jeering incensed the carrier, and he brought down his whip the

fiercer and quicker at every fresh blow, until the whizzing of the

lash sang in the air, and the hills echoed with the thuds on the

pony's body. Then the little creature made one final, frantic effort,

and plunging with its utmost strength it had half risen to its

forelegs when one of the sacks slid from its place and got under its

hind legs, whereupon the canvas gave way, the sulphur fell out, and

the poor little brute slipped afresh and fell again, flat, full

length, and with awful force and weight, dashing its head against a

stone. At sight of this misadventure the prisoners above laughed once

more, and the carrier leaped from his own saddle and kicked the

fallen piebald in the mouth.

Now this had occurred within the space of a stone's-throw from the

house which Red Jason lived in and cleaned, and hearing the commotion

as he worked within he had come out to learn the cause of it. Seeing

everything in one quick glance, he pushed along as fast as he could

for the leg-fetters that bound him, and came upon the carrier as he

was stamping the life out of the pony with kicks on its palpitating

sides. At the next moment he had laid the fellow on his back, and

then, stepping up to the piebald, he put his arms about it to lift it

to its feet. Meantime the prisoners above had stopped their laughing,

and were looking on with eyes of wonder at Jason's mighty strength.

"God! Is it possible he is trying to lift a horse to its feet?" cried

one.

"What? and three sacks of sulphur as well?" cried another.

"Never," cried a third; and all held their breath.

Jason did not stop to remove the sacks. He wound his great arms first

under the little beast's neck, and raised it to its forefeet, and

then squaring his broad flanks above his legs that held the ground

like the hoofs of an ox, he made one silent, slow, tremendous upward

movement, and in an instant the piebald was on its feet, affrighted,

trembling, with startled eyeballs and panting nostrils, but secure

and safe, and with its load squared and righted on her back.

"Lord bless us!" cried the convicts, "the man has the strength of

Samson."

And at that moment one of the warders came hurrying up to the place.

"What's this?" said the warder, looking at the carrier on the ground,

who was groaning in some little blood that was flowing from the back

of his head.

At that question the carrier only moaned the louder, thinking to

excite the more commiseration, and Jason said not a word. But the

prisoners on the hillside very eagerly shouted an explanation;

whereupon the carrier, a prisoner who had been indulged, straightway

lost his privileges as punishment for his ill use of the property of

the Government; and Jason, as a man whose great muscles were thrown

away on the paltry work of prison-cleaning, was set to delving

sulphur on the banks of the hot springs.

Now this change for the better in the condition of Red Jason led to a

change for the worse in that of Michael Sunlocks, for when Jason was

relieved of his housekeeping and of the iron collar and bell that had

been the badge of it, Sunlocks, as a malcontent, was ordered to clean

Jason's house as well as his own. But so bad a change led to the

great event in the lives of both, the meeting of these men face to

face, and the way of it was this:

One day, the winter being then fully come, the mornings dark, and

some new fallen snow lying deep over the warm ground of the stockade,

Michael Sunlocks had been set to clearing away from the front of the

log house on the south before Jason and his housemates had come out

of it. His bodily strength had failed him greatly by this time, his

face was pale, his large eyes were swollen and bloodshot, and under

the heavy labor of that day his tall, slight figure stooped. But a

warder stood over him leaning on a musket and urging him on with

words that were harder to him than his hard work. His bell rang as he

stooped, and rang again as he rose, and at every thrust of the spade

it rang, so that when Jason and his gang came out of the sickening

house, he heard it. And hearing the bell, he remembered that he

himself had worn it, and, wondering who had succeeded him in the vile

office whereof he had been relieved, he turned to look upon the man

who was clearing the snow.

There are moments when the sense of our destiny is strong upon us,

and this was such a moment to Red Jason. He saw Michael Sunlocks for

the first time, but without knowing him, and yet at that sight every

pulse beat and every nerve quivered. A great sorrow and a great pity

took hold of him. The face he looked upon moved him, the voice he

heard thrilled him, and by an impulse that he could not resist he

stopped and turned to the warder leaning on the musket and said:

"Let me do this man's work. It would be nothing to me. He is ill.

Send him up to the hospital."

"March!" shouted his own warders, and they hustled him along, and at

the next minute he was gone. Then the bell stopped for an instant,

for Michael Sunlocks had raised his head to look upon the man who had

spoken. He did not see Jason's face, but his own face softened at the

words he had heard and his bloodshot eyes grew dim.

"Go on!" cried the warder with the musket, and the bell began again.

All that day the face of Michael Sunlocks haunted the memory of Red

Jason.

"Who was that man?" he asked of the prisoner who worked by his side.

"How should I know?" the other fellow answered sulkily.

In a space of rest Jason leaned on his shovel, wiped his brow, and

said to his warder, "What was that man's name?"

"A 25," the warder answered moodily.

"I asked for his name," said Jason.

"What's that to you?" replied the warder.

A week went by, and the face of Sunlocks still haunted Jason's

memory. It was with him early and late, the last thing that stood up

before his inward eye when he lay down to sleep, the first thing that

came to him when he awoke; sometimes it moved him to strange laughter

when the sun was shining, and sometimes it touched him to tears when

he thought of it in the night. Why was this? He did not know, he

could not think, he did not try to find out. But there it was, a

living face burnt into his memory--a face so strangely new to him,

yet so strangely familiar, so unlike to anything he had ever yet

seen, and yet so like to everything that was near and dear to

himself, that he could have fancied there had never been a time when

he had not had it by his side. When he put the matter to himself so

he laughed and thought "How foolish." But no self-mockery banished

the mystery of the power upon him of the man's face that he saw for a

moment one morning in the snow.

He threw off his former listlessness and began to look keenly about

him. But one week, two weeks, three weeks passed, and he could

nowhere see the same face again. He asked questions but learned

nothing. His fellow-prisoners began to jeer at him. Upon their souls,

the big red fellow had tumbled into love with the young chap with the

long flaxen hair, and maybe he thought it was a woman in disguise.

Jason knocked their chattering heads together and so stopped their

ribald banter, but his warders began to watch him with suspicion, and

he fell back on silence.

A month passed, and then the chain that was slowly drawing the two

men together suddenly tightened. One morning the order came down from

the office of the Captain that the prisoners' straw beds were to be

taken out into the stockyard and burnt. The beds were not old, but

dirty and damp and full of foul odors. The officers of the settlement

said this was due to the filthy habits of the prisoners. The

prisoners on their part said it came of the pestilential hovels they

were compelled to live in, where the ground was a bog, the walls and

roof were a rotten coffin, and the air was heavy and lifeless. Since

the change of warders, there had been a gradual decline in the

humanity with which they had been treated, and to burn up their old

beds without giving them new ones was to deprive them of the last

comfort that separated the condition of human beings from that of

beasts of the field.

But the Captain of the Mines was in no humor to bandy parts with his

prisoners, and in ordering that the beds should be burnt to prevent

an outbreak of disease, he appointed that the prisoner B 25, should

be told off to do the work. Now B 25 was the prison name of Red

Jason, and he was selected by reason of his great bodily strength,

not so much because the beds required it, as from fear of the

rebellion of the poor souls who were to lose them.

So at the point of a musket Red Jason was driven on to his bad work,

and sullenly he went through it, muttering deep oaths from between

his grinding teeth, until he came to the log hut where Michael

Sunlocks slept, and there he saw again the face that had haunted his

memory.

"This bed is dry and sound," said Michael Sunlocks, "and you shall

not take it."

"Away with it," shouted the warder to Jason, who had seemed to

hesitate.

"It is good and wholesome, let him keep it," said Jason.

"Go on with your work," cried the warder, and the lock of his musket

clicked.

"Civilized men give straw to their dogs to lie on," said Michael

Sunlocks.

"It depends what dogs they are," sneered the warder.

"If you take our beds, this place will be worse than an empty

kennel," said Michael Sunlocks.

"Better that than the mange," said the warder. "Get along, I tell

you," he cried again, handling his musket and turning to Jason.

Then, with a glance of loathing, Jason picked up the bed in his

fingers, that itched to pick up the warder by the throat, and swept

out of the place.

"Slave!" cried Michael Sunlocks after him. "Pitiful, miserable,

little-hearted slave!"

Jason heard the hot words that pursued him, and his face grew as red

as his hair, and his head dropped into his breast. He finished his

task in less than half an hour more, working like a demented man at

piling up the dirty mattresses, into a vast heap, and setting light

to the damp straw. And while the huge bonfire burned, and he poked

long poles into it to give it air to blaze by, he made excuse of the

great heat to strip of the long rough overcoat that had been given

him to wear through the hard months of the winter. By this time the

warder had fallen back from the scorching flames, and Jason, watching

his chance, stole away under cover of deep whorls of smoke, and got

back into the log cabin unobserved.

He found the place empty; the man known to him as A 25 was not

anywhere to be seen. But finding his sleeping bunk--a bare slab

resembling a butcher's board--he stretched his coat over it where the

bed had been, and then fled away like a guilty thing.

When the great fire had burned low the warder returned, and said,

"Quick there; put on your coat and let's be off."

At that Jason pretended to look about him in dismay.

"It's gone," he said, in a tone of astonishment.

"Gone? What? Have you burnt it up with the beds?" cried the warder.

"Maybe so," said Jason, meekly.

"Fool," cried the warder; "but it's your loss. Now you'll have to go

in your sheepskin jacket, snow or shine."

With a cold smile about the corners of his mouth, Jason bent his head

and went on ahead of his warder.

If the Captain of the Mines had been left to himself he might have

been a just and even a merciful man, but he was badgered by inhuman

orders from Jorgen Jorgensen at Reykjavik, and one by one the common

privileges of his prisoners were withdrawn. As a result of his

treatment, the prisoners besieged him with petitions as often as he

crossed their path. The loudest to complain and the most rebellious

against petty tyranny was Michael Sunlocks; the humblest, the

meekest, the most silent under cruel persecution was Red Jason. The

one seemed aflame with indignation; the other appeared destitute of

all manly spirit.

"That man might be dangerous to the Government yet," thought the

Captain, after one of his stormy scenes with Michael Sunlocks. "That

man's heart is dead within him," he thought again, as he watched Red

Jason working as he always worked, slowly, listlessly, and as if

tired out and longing for the night.

The Captain's humanity at length prevailed over his Governor's rigor,

and he developed a form of penal servitude among the prisoners which

he called the Free Command. This was a plan whereby the men whose

behavior had been good were allowed the partial liberty of living

outside the stockade in huts which they built for themselves. Ten

hours a day they wrought at the mines, the rest of the day and night

was under their own control; and in return for their labor they were

supplied with rations from the settlement.

Now Red Jason, as a docile prisoner, was almost the first to get

promotion to the Free Command. He did not ask for it, he did not

wish for it, and when it came he looked askance at it.

"Send somebody else," he said to his warders, but they laughed and

turned him adrift.

He began to build his house of the lava stones on the mountain side,

not far from the hospital, and near to a house being built by an

elderly man much disfigured about the cheeks, who had been a priest,

imprisoned long ago by Jorgen Jorgensen out of spite and yet baser

motives. And as he worked at raising the walls of his hut, he

remembered with a pang the mill he built in Port-y-Vullin, and what a

whirlwind of outraged passion brought every stone of it to the ground

again. With this occupation, and occasional gossip with his neighbor,

he passed the evenings of his Free Command. And looking towards the

hospital as often as he saw the little groups of men go up to it that

told of another prisoner injured in the perilous labor of the sulphur

mines, he sometimes saw a woman come out at the door to receive them.

"Who is she?" he asked of the priest.

"The foreign nurse," said the priest. "And a right good woman, too,

as I have reason to say, for she nursed me back to life after that

spurt of hot water had scalded these holes into my face."

That made Jason think of other scenes, and of tender passages in his

broken life that were gone from him forever. He had no wish to recall

them; their pleasure was too painful, their sweets too bitter; they

were lost, and God grant that they could be forgotten. Yet every

night as he worked at his walls he looked longingly across the

shoulder of the hill in the direction of the hospital, half fancying

he knew the sweet grace of the figure he sometimes saw there, and

pretending with himself that he remembered the light rhythm of its

movement. After a while he missed what he looked for, and then he

asked his neighbor if the nurse were ill that he had not seen her

lately.

"Ill? Well, yes," said the old priest. "She has been turned away from

the hospital."

"What!" cried Jason; "you thought her a good nurse."

"She was too good, my lad," said the priest, "and a blackguard warder

who had tried to corrupt her, and could not, announced that somebody

else had done so."

"It's a lie," cried Jason.

"It was plain enough," said the priest, "that she was about to give

birth to a child, and as she would make no explanation she was turned

adrift."

"Where is she now?" asked Jason.

"Lying in at the farmhouse on the edge of the snow yonder," said the

priest. "I saw her last night. She trusted me with her story, and it

was straight and simple. Her husband had been sent out to the mines

by the old scoundrel at Reykjavik. She had followed him, only to be

near him and breathe the air he breathed. Perhaps with some wild hope

of helping his escape she had hidden her true name and character and

taken the place of a menial, being a lady born."

"Then her husband is still at the mines?" said Jason.

"Yes," said the priest.

"Does he know of her disgrace?"

"No."

"What's his name?"

"The poor soul would give me no name, but she knew her husband's

number. It was A 25."

"I know him," said Jason.

Next day, his hut being built and roofed after some fashion, Jason

went down to the office of the Captain of the Mines and said, "I

don't like the Free Command, sir. May I give it up in favor of

another man?"

"And what man, pray?" asked the Captain.

"A 25," said Jason.

"No," said the Captain.

"I've built my house, sir," said Jason, "and if you won't give it to

A 25, let the poor woman from the hospital live in it, and take me

back among the men."

"That won't do, my lad. Go along to your work," said the Captain.

And when Jason was gone the Captain thought within himself, "What

does this mean? Is the lad planning the man's escape? And who is this

English woman that she should be the next thought in his head?"

So the only result of Jason's appeal was that Michael Sunlocks was

watched the closer, worked the harder, persecuted the more by petty

tyrannies, and that an order was sent up to the farmhouse where

Greeba lay in the dear dishonor of her early motherhood, requiring

her to leave the neighborhood of Krisuvik as speedily as her

condition allowed.

This was when the long dark days of winter were beginning to fall

back before the sweet light of spring. And when the snow died off

the mountains, and the cold garment of the jokulls was sucked full of

holes like the honeycomb, and the world that had been white grew

black, and the flowers began to show in the corries, and the sweet

summer was coming, coming, coming, then Jason went down to the

Captain of the Mines again.

"I've come, sir," he said, "to ask you to lock me up."

"Why?" said the Captain, "what have you been doing?"

"Nothing," said Jason, "but if you don't prevent me, I'll run away.

This Free Command was bad enough to fear when the snow cut us off

from all the world. But now that it is gone and the world is free,

and the cuckoo is calling, he seems to be calling me, and I must go

after him."

"Go," said the Captain, "and after you've tramped the deserts and

swam the rivers, and slept on the ground, and starved on roots, we'll

fetch you back, for you can never escape us, and lash you as we have

lashed the others who have done likewise."

"If I go," said Jason, defiantly, "you shall never fetch me back, and

if you catch me you shall never punish me."

"What? Do you threaten me?" cried the Captain.

Something in the prisoner's face terrified him, though he would have

scorned to acknowledge his fear, and he straightway directed that

Jason should be degraded, for insolence and insubordination, from the

Free Command to the gangs.

Now this was exactly what Jason wanted, for his heart had grown sick

with longing for another sight of that face which stood up before his

inward eye in the darkness of the night. But remembering Jason's

appeal on behalf of Michael Sunlocks, and his old suspicion regarding

both, the Captain ordered that the two men should be kept apart.

So with Jason in the house by the sea, and Sunlocks in the house by

the lake, the weeks went by; and the summer that was coming came, and

like a bird of passage the darkness of night fled quite away, and the

sun shone that shines at midnight.

And nothing did Jason see of the face that followed him in visions,

and nothing did he hear of the man known to him as A 25, except

reports of brutal treatment and fierce rebellion. But on a day--a

month after he had returned to the stockade--he was going in his

tired and listless way between warders from one solfatara at the foot

of the hill to another on the breast of it, when he came upon a

horror that made his blood run cold.

It was a man nailed by his right hand to a great socket of iron in a

log of driftwood, with food and drink within sight but out of reach

of him, and a huge knife lying close by his side. The man was A 25.

Jason saw everything and the meaning of everything in an instant,

that to get at the food for which he starved that man must cut off

his own right hand. And there, like a devil, at his left lay the

weapon that was to tempt him.

Nothing so inhuman, so barbarous, so fiendish, so hellish, had Jason

yet seen, and with a cry like the growl of an untamed beast, he broke

from his warders, took the nail in his fingers like a vice, tore it

up out of the bleeding hand, and set Michael Sunlocks free.

At the next instant his wrath was gone, and he had fallen back to his

listless mood. Then the warders hurried up, laid hold of both men,

and hustled them away with a brave show of strength and courage to

the office of the Captain.

Jorgen Jorgensen himself was there, and it was he who had ordered the

ruthless punishment. The warders told their tale, and he listened to

them with a grin on his cruel face.

"Strap them up together," he cried, "leg to leg and arm to arm."

And when this was done he said, bitterly--

"So you two men are fond of one another's company! Well, you shall

have enough of it and to spare. Day after day, week after week, month

after month, like as you are now, you shall live together, until you

abhor and detest and loathe the sight of each other. Now go!"

CHAPTER III.

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, now lashed together, were driven back

to their work like beasts of the field. They knew well what their

punishment meant to them--that in every hour of life henceforward, in

every act, through every thought, each man should drag a human

carcase by his side. The barbarity of their doom was hideous; but

strangely different were the ways they accepted it. Michael Sunlocks

was aflame with indignation; Jason was crushed with shame. The

upturned face of Sunlocks was pale, his flaxen hair was dishevelled,

his bloodshot eyes were afire. But Jason's eyes, full of confusion,

were bent on the ground, his tanned face trembled visibly, and his

red hair, grown long as of old, fell over his drooping shoulders like

a mantle of blood.

And as they trudged along, side by side, in the first hours of their

unnatural partnership, Sunlocks struggled hard to keep his eyes from

the man with whom he was condemned to live and die, lest the gorge of

his very soul should rise at the sight of him. So he never once

looked at Jason through many hours of that day. And Jason, on his

part, laboring with the thought that it was he who by his rash act

had brought both of them to this sore pass, never once lifted his

eyes to the face of Sunlocks.

Yet each man knew the other's thought before ever a word had passed

between them. Jason felt that Sunlocks already abhorred him, and

Sunlocks knew that Jason was ashamed. This brought them after a time

into sympathy of some sort, and Jason tried to speak and Sunlocks to

listen.

"I did not mean to bring you to this," said Jason, humbly. And

Sunlocks, with head aside, answered as well as he could for the

disgust that choked him, "You did it for the best."

"But you will hate me for it," said Jason.

And once again, with what composure he could command, Sunlocks

answered, "How could I hate you for saving me from such brutal

treatment."

"Then you don't regret it?" said Jason, pleadingly.

"It is for you, not me, to regret it," said Sunlocks.

"Me?" said Jason.

Through all the shameful hours the sense of his own loss had never

yet come to him. From first to last he had thought only of Sunlocks.

"My liberty was gone already," said Sunlocks. "But you were

free--free as anyone can be in this hell on earth. Now you are

bound--you are here like this--and I am the cause of it."

Then Jason's rugged face was suddenly lit up with a surprising joy.

"That's nothing," he said.

"Nothing?" said Sunlocks.

"I mean that I care nothing, if you don't," said Jason.

It was the turn of Sunlocks to feel surprise. He half turned towards

Jason. "Then you don't regret it?" he asked.

"No," said Jason firmly. "And you?"

Sunlocks felt that tears, not disgust, were choking him now.

"No," he answered, shamefacedly, turning his head away.

"March!" shouted the warders, who had been drinking their smuggled

sneps while their prisoners had been talking.

That day, Jorgen Jorgensen went back to Reykjavik, for the time of

Althing was near, and he had to prepare for his fourteen days at

Thingvellir. And the Governor being gone, the Captain of the Mines

made bold so far to relax the inhumanity of his sentence as to order

that the two men who were bound together during the hours of work

should be separated for the hours of sleep. But never forgetting his

own suspicion that Red Jason was an ally of Michael Sunlocks,

planning his escape, he ordered also that no speech should be allowed

to pass between them. To prevent all communion of this kind he

directed that the men should work and sleep apart from the other

prisoners, and that their two warders should attend them night and

day.

But though the rigor of discipline kept them back from free

intercourse, no watchfulness could check the stolen words of comfort

that helped the weary men to bear their degrading lot.

That night, the first of their life together, Michael Sunlocks looked

into Jason's face and said, "I have seen you before somewhere. Where

was it?"

But Jason remembered the hot words that had pursued him on the day of

the burning of the beds, and so he made no answer.

After awhile, Michael Sunlocks looked closely into Jason's face

again, and said, "What is your name?"

"Don't ask it," said Jason.

"Why not," said Sunlocks.

"You might remember it."

"Even so, what then?"

"Then you might also remember what I did, or tried to do, and you

would hate me for it," said Jason.

"Was your crime so inhuman?" said Sunlocks.

"It would seem so," said Jason.

"Who sent you here?"

"The Republic."

"You won't tell me your name?"

"I've got none, so to speak, having had no father to give me one. I'm

alone in the world."

Michael Sunlocks did not sleep much that night, for the wound in his

hand was very painful, and next morning, while Jason dressed it, he

looked into his face once more and said, "You say you are alone in

the world."

"Yes," said Jason.

"What of your mother?"

"She's dead, poor soul."

"Have you no sister?"

"No."

"Nor brother?"

"No--that's to say--no, no."

"No one belonging to you?"

"No."

"Are you quite alone?"

"Ay, quite," said Jason. "No one to think twice what becomes of me.

Nobody to trouble whether I am here or in a better place. Nobody to

care whether I live or die."

He tried to laugh as he said this, but in spite of his brave show of

unconcern his deep voice broke and his strong face quivered.

"But what's your own name?" he said abruptly.

"Call me--brother," said Michael Sunlocks.

"To your work," cried the warders, and they were hustled out.

Their work for the day was delving sulphur from the banks of the

solfataras and loading it on the backs of the ponies. And while their

warders dozed in the heat of the noonday sun, they wiped their brows

and rested.

At that moment Jason's eyes turned towards the hospital on the

opposite side of the hill, and he remembered what he had heard of the

good woman who had been nurse there. This much at least he knew of

her, that she was the wife of his yoke-fellow, and he was about to

speak of her trouble and dishonor when Michael Sunlocks said,

"After all, you are luckiest to be alone in the world. To have ties

of affection is only to be the more unhappy."

"That's true," said Jason.

"Say you love somebody, and all your heart is full of her? You lose

her, and then where are you?"

"But that's not your own case," said Jason. "Your wife is alive, is

she not?"

"Yes."

"Then you have not lost her?"

"There is a worse loss than that of death," said Sunlocks.

Jason glanced quickly into his face, and said tenderly, "I know--I

understand. There was another man?"

"Yes."

"And he robbed you of her love?" said Jason, eagerly.

"Yes."

"And you killed him?" cried Jason, with panting breath.

"No. But God keep that man out of my hands."

"Where is he now?"

"Heaven knows. He was here, but he is gone; for when the Republic

fell I was imprisoned, and two days before that he was liberated."

"Silence!" shouted the warders, awakening suddenly and hearing

voices.

Jason's eyes had begun to fill, and down his rugged cheeks the big

drops were rolling one by one. After that he checked the impulse to

speak of the nurse. The wife of his yoke-fellow must be an evil

woman. The prisoner-priest must have been taken in by her. For once

the warders must have been right.

And late that night, while Jason was dressing the wounded hand of

Michael Sunlocks with wool torn from his own sheepskin jerkin, he

said, with his eyes down,

"I scarce thought there was anything in common between us two. You're

a gentleman, and I'm only a rough fellow. You have been brought up

tenderly, and I have been kicked about the world since I was a lad in

my poor mother's home, God rest her! But my life has been like yours

in one thing."

"What's that?" said Michael Sunlocks.

"That another man has wrecked it," said Jason. "I never had but one

glint of sunshine in my life, and that man wiped it out forever. It

was a woman, and she was all the world to me. But she was proud and I

was poor. And he was rich, and he came between us. He had everything,

and the world was at his feet. I had nothing but that woman's love,

and he took it from me. It was too cruel, and I could not bear

it--God knows I could not."

"Wait," cried Michael Sunlocks. "Is that why you are here! Did

you----you did not----no----"

"No, I know what you mean; but I did not kill him. No, no, I have

never seen him. I could never meet with him, try how I would."

"Where is he now?"

"With her--in happiness and freedom and content, while I am here in

misery and bondage and these ropes. But there will be a reckoning

between us yet. I know there will. I swear there will. As sure as

there is a God in Heaven, that man and I will one day stand together

face to face."

Then Michael Sunlocks took both Jason's hands.

"My brother," he cried fervently. "Brother now more than ever;

brother in suffering, brother in weakness, brother in strength."

"Silence there!" shouted the warders, and the two men were separated

for the night.

The wound in the hand of Michael Sunlocks grew yet more painful, and

he slept even less than before. Next day the power of life was low in

him, and seeing this, Jason said, when the warders stepped up to lash

them together, "He is ill, and not fit to go out. Let me work alone

to-day. I'll do enough for both of us."

But no heed was paid to Jason's warning, and Michael Sunlocks was

driven out by his side. All that day, the third of their life

together, they worked with difficulty, for the wound in the hand of

Sunlocks was not only a trouble to himself but an impediment to Jason

also. Yet Jason gave no hint of that, but kept the good spade going

constantly, with a smile on his face through the sweat that stood on

it, and little stolen words of comfort and cheer. And when the heat

was strongest, and Sunlocks would have stumbled and fallen, Jason

contrived a means to use both their spades together, only requiring

that Sunlocks should stoop when he stooped, that the warders might

think he was still working. But their artifice was discovered, and

all that came of it was that they were watched the closer and driven

the harder during the hours that remained of that day.

Next day, the fourth of their direful punishment, Sunlocks rose weak

and trembling, and scarce able to stand erect. And with what spirit

he could summon up he called upon the warders to look upon him and

see how feeble he was, and say if it was fair to his yoke-fellow that

they should compel him to do the work of two men and drag a human

body after him. But the warders only laughed at his protest, and once

again he was driven out by Jason's side.

Long and heavy were the hours that followed, but Sunlocks, being once

started on his way, bore up under it very bravely, murmuring as

little as he might, out of thought for Jason. And Jason helped along

his stumbling footsteps as well as he could for the arm that was

bound to him. And seeing how well they worked by this double power of

human kindness, the warders laughed again, and made a mock at

Sunlocks for his former cry of weakness. And so, amid tender words

between themselves, and jeers cast in upon them by the warders, they

made shift to cheat time of another weary day.

The fifth day went by like the fourth, with heavy toil and pain to

make it hard, and cruel taunts to make it bitter. And many a time, as

they delved the yellow sulphur bank, a dark chill crossed the hearts

of both, and they thought in their misery how cheerfully they would

dig for death itself, if only it lay in the hot clay beneath them.

That night when they had returned to the hut wherein they slept, or

tried to sleep, they found that some well-meaning stranger had been

there in their absence and nailed up on the grimy walls above their

beds, a card bearing the text, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and

are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And so ghastly seemed the

irony of those words in that place that Jason muttered an oath

between his teeth as he read them, and Sunlocks threw himself down,

being unbound for the night, with a peal of noisy laughter, and a

soul full of strange bitterness.

The next day after that, the sixth of their life together, rose

darker than any day that had gone before it, for the wounded hand of

Michael Sunlocks was then purple and black, and swollen to the size

of two hands, and his bodily strength was so low that, try as bravely

as he might to stand erect, whenever he struggled to his feet he fell

to the ground again. Thinking nothing of this, the warders were for

strapping him up to Jason as before, but while they were in the act

of doing so he fainted in their hands. Then Jason swept them from

him, and vowed that the first man that touched Sunlocks again should

lie dead at his feet.

"Send for the Captain," he cried, "and if the man has any bowels of

compassion let him come and see what you have done."

The warders took Jason at his word, and sent a message to the office

saying that one of their prisoners was mutinous, and the other

pretending to be ill. After a time the Captain despatched two other

warders to the help of the first two and these words along with them

for his answer: "If one rebels, punish both."

Nothing loth for such exercise, the four warders set themselves to

decide what the punishment should be, and while they laid their heads

together, Jason was bending over Sunlocks, who was now recovered to

consciousness, asking his pardon in advance for the cruel penalty

that his rash act was to bring on both of them.

"Forgive me," he said. "I couldn't help it. I didn't know what I was

doing."

"There is nothing to forgive, brother," whispered Michael Sunlocks.

And thus with stammering tongues they comforted one another, and with

hands clasped together they waited for the punishment that had to

come.

At length the warders concluded that for refusing to work, for

obstinate disobedience, and for threatening, nothing would serve but

that their prisoners should straightway do the most perilous work to

be found that day at the sulphur mines.

Now this was the beginning of the end for Red Jason and Michael

Sunlocks, and if the evil chance had not befallen them, God alone can

say how long they might have lived together at Krisuvik, or how soon

or how late they would have become known to one another by their true

names and characters. But heaven itself had its purposes, even in the

barbarity of base-hearted men, as a means towards the great end that

was near at hand. And this was the way of its coming.

A strange change that no one could rightly understand had lately come

upon the natural condition of the sulphur mines. The steam that rose

from the solfataras had grown less and less week by week and day by

day, until in some places it had altogether subsided. This was a

grave sign, for in the steam lay the essence of the sulphur, and if

it ceased to rise from the pits the sulphur would cease to grow.

Other changes came with this, such as that deep subterranean noises

arose from parts of the plain where no fissures had yet been seen,

and that footsteps on the earth around these places produced a hollow

sound.

From these signs, taken together, the Captain had concluded that the

life of the mines, the great infernal fire that raged beneath the

surface, was changing ground, leaving the valley, where it had lived

for ages, for the mountain heights, where the low grumblings were now

heard to come from beneath the earth's crust of lava and basaltic

rock.

So, taking counsel of his people, he decided to bore the ground in

these new places in the hope of lighting on living solfataras that

would stand to him against the loss of the dead ones. And it chanced

that he was in the midst of many busy preparations for this work when

the report of the warders reached him, and the boring was still

uppermost in his mind when he sent back his answer as he came upon

the flogging and stopped it.

Thus it happened that the first thought that came to the warders was

to send their prisoners to one of the spots that had been marked on

the hillside for the test of bore and spade.

So, in less than half-an-hour more, Jason and Sunlocks, lashed

together, arm to arm and leg to leg, were being driven up the

mountain to the place assigned to them. They found it a hideous and

awesome spot. Within a circle of two yards across, the ground was

white and yellow and scaly, like a scab on evil flesh. It was hot, so

that the hand could not rest upon it, and hollow, so that the foot

made it shake, and from unseen depths beneath it a dull thud came up

at intervals like nothing else but the knocking of a man buried alive

at the sealed door of his tomb.

Beneath this spot the heart of the solfatara was expected to lie, and

Jason and Sunlocks were commanded to open it. Obeying gloomily, they

took the bore first and pierced the scaly surface, and instantly a

sizzling and bubbling sound came up from below. Then they followed

with the spades, but scarcely had they lifted the top crust when

twenty great fissures seemed to open under their feet, and they could

see lurid flames rushing in wild confusion, like rivers of fire in

the bowels of the earth.

It was a sight at which the stoutest heart might have quailed, and

Jason leapt back to the bank and dragged Sunlocks after him.

"This is not safe," he said.

"In with you," shouted the warders from their own safe footing of

four yards away. With a growl from between his clenched teeth, Jason

stepped back into the hole, and Sunlocks followed him. But hardly

had they got down to the fearsome spot again, when a layer of clay

fell in from it, leaving a deep wide gully, and then scarcely a yard

of secure footing remained.

"Let us stop while we are safe," Jason cried.

"Dig away," shouted the warders.

"If we do, we shall be digging our own graves," said Jason.

"Begin," shouted the warders.

"Listen to me," said Jason. "If we are to open this pit of fire and

brimstone, at least let us be free of these ropes. That's but fair,

that each man may have a chance of his life."

"Go on," shouted the warders.

"If we go on like this we shall be burnt and boiled alive," said

Jason.

"Get along," shouted the warders with one voice, and then an awful

light flashed in Jason's eyes, for he saw that out of revenge for

their paltry fines they had resolved to drive two living men to their

death.

"Now, listen again," said Jason, "and mark my words. We will do as

you command us, and work in this pit of hell. I will not die in

it--that I know. But this man beside me is weak and ill, heaven curse

your inhumanity; and if anything happens to him, and I am alive to

see it, as sure as there is strength left in my arms, and blood in my

body, I will tear you limb from limb."