The Bondman: A New Saga

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.