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, whowas 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 yourconcernmentto know what events and what convictions have so suddenly influenced me, and I can only claim your indulgence inwithholdingthat 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 deadstillnessto 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 beexalted. 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,—andtherestands 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 allwas 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.
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 iceas 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 icebergfrozen 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, witha 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 tolaugh 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 theyfound 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 fireand 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 hadsuddenly 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 companionsbusied 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 Iwill 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 nurseiswanted," 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 thecontingent 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.
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 Icelandicguards 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 oflabor in summer being from fivea. m.to eightp. 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 butshecould 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 onherback.
"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, andunder 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 lastthing 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 bedsshould 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 askfor 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."