The Bondman: A New Saga

"That man might be dangerous to the Government yet," thought the Captain, after one of his stormy scenes with Michael Sunlocks. "That man's heart is dead within him," he thought again, as he watched Red Jason working as he always worked, slowly, listlessly, and as if tired out and longing for the night.

The Captain's humanity at length prevailed over his Governor's rigor, and he developed a form of penal servitude among the prisoners which he called the Free Command. This was a plan whereby the men whose behavior had been good were allowed the partial liberty of living outside the stockade in huts which they built for themselves. Ten hours a day they wrought at the mines, the rest of the day and night was under their own control; and in return for their labor they were supplied with rations from the settlement.

Now Red Jason, as a docile prisoner, was almost the first to get promotion to the Free Command. He did not ask for it, he did not wish for it, and when it came he looked askance at it.

"Send somebody else," he said to his warders, but they laughed and turned him adrift.

He began to build his house of the lava stones on the mountain side, not far from the hospital, and near to a house being built by an elderly man much disfigured about the cheeks, who had been a priest, imprisoned long ago by Jorgen Jorgensen out of spite and yet baser motives. And as he worked at raising the walls of his hut, he remembered with a pang the mill he built in Port-y-Vullin, and what a whirlwind of outraged passion brought every stone of it to the ground again. With this occupation, and occasional gossip with his neighbor, he passed the evenings of his Free Command. And looking towards the hospital as often as he saw the little groups of men go up to it that told of another prisoner injured in the perilous labor of the sulphur mines, he sometimes saw a woman come out at the door to receive them.

"Who is she?" he asked of the priest.

"The foreign nurse," said the priest. "And a right good woman, too, as I have reason to say, for she nursed me back to life after that spurt of hot water had scalded these holes into my face."

That made Jason think of other scenes, and of tender passages in his broken life that were gone from him forever. He had no wish to recall them; their pleasure was too painful, their sweets too bitter; they were lost, and God grant that they could be forgotten. Yet every night as he worked at his walls he looked longingly across the shoulder of the hill in the direction of the hospital, half fancying he knew the sweet grace of the figure he sometimes saw there, and pretending with himself that he remembered the light rhythm of its movement. After a while he missed what he looked for, and then he asked his neighbor if the nurse were ill that he had not seen her lately.

"Ill? Well, yes," said the old priest. "She has been turned away from the hospital."

"What!" cried Jason; "you thought her a good nurse."

"She was too good, my lad," said the priest, "and a blackguard warder who had tried to corrupt her, and could not, announced that somebody else had done so."

"It's a lie," cried Jason.

"It was plain enough," said the priest, "that she was about to give birth to a child, and as she would make no explanation she was turned adrift."

"Where is she now?" asked Jason.

"Lying in at the farmhouse on the edge of the snow yonder," said the priest. "I saw her last night. She trusted me with her story, and it was straight and simple. Her husband had been sent out to the mines by the old scoundrel at Reykjavik. She had followed him, only to be near him and breathe the air he breathed. Perhaps with some wild hope of helping his escape she had hidden her true name and character and taken the place of a menial, being a lady born."

"Then her husband is still at the mines?" said Jason.

"Yes," said the priest.

"Does he know of her disgrace?"

"No."

"What's his name?"

"The poor soul would give me no name, but she knew her husband's number. It was A 25."

"I know him," said Jason.

Next day, his hut being built and roofed after some fashion, Jason went down to the office of the Captain of the Mines and said, "I don't like the Free Command, sir. May I give it up in favor of another man?"

"And what man, pray?" asked the Captain.

"A 25," said Jason.

"No," said the Captain.

"I've built my house, sir," said Jason, "and if you won't give it to A 25, let the poor woman from the hospital live in it, and take me back among the men."

"That won't do, my lad. Go along to your work," said the Captain.

And when Jason was gone the Captain thought within himself, "What does this mean? Is the lad planning the man's escape? And who is this English woman that she should be the next thought in his head?"

So the only result of Jason's appeal was that Michael Sunlocks was watched the closer, worked the harder, persecuted the more by petty tyrannies, and that an order was sent up to the farmhouse where Greeba lay in the dear dishonor of her early motherhood, requiring her to leave the neighborhood of Krisuvik as speedily as her condition allowed.

This was when the long dark days of winter were beginning to fall back before the sweet light of spring. And when the snow died off the mountains, and the cold garment of the jokulls was sucked full of holes like the honeycomb, and the world that had been white grew black, and the flowers began to show in the corries, and the sweet summer was coming, coming, coming, then Jason went down to the Captain of the Mines again.

"I've come, sir," he said, "to ask you to lock me up."

"Why?" said the Captain, "what have you been doing?"

"Nothing," said Jason, "but if you don't prevent me, I'll run away. This Free Command was bad enough to fear when the snow cut us off from all the world. But now that it is gone and the world is free, and the cuckoo is calling, he seems to be calling me, and I must go after him."

"Go," said the Captain, "and after you've tramped the deserts and swam the rivers, and slept on the ground, and starved on roots, we'll fetch you back, for you can never escape us, and lash you as we have lashed the others who have done likewise."

"If I go," said Jason, defiantly, "you shall never fetch me back, and if you catch me you shall never punish me."

"What? Do you threaten me?" cried the Captain.

Something in the prisoner's face terrified him, though he would have scorned to acknowledge his fear, and he straightway directed that Jason should be degraded, for insolence and insubordination, from the Free Command to the gangs.

Now this was exactly what Jason wanted, for his heart had grown sick with longing for another sight of that face which stood up before his inward eye in the darkness of the night. But remembering Jason's appeal on behalf of Michael Sunlocks, and his old suspicion regarding both, the Captain ordered that the two men should be kept apart.

So with Jason in the house by the sea, and Sunlocks in the house by the lake, the weeks went by; and the summer that was coming came, and like a bird of passage the darkness of night fled quite away, and the sun shone that shines at midnight.

And nothing did Jason see of the face that followed him in visions, and nothing did he hear of the man known to him as A 25, except reports of brutal treatment and fierce rebellion. But on a day – a month after he had returned to the stockade – he was going in his tired and listless way between warders from one solfatara at the foot of the hill to another on the breast of it, when he came upon a horror that made his blood run cold.

It was a man nailed by his right hand to a great socket of iron in a log of driftwood, with food and drink within sight but out of reach of him, and a huge knife lying close by his side. The man was A 25.

Jason saw everything and the meaning of everything in an instant, that to get at the food for which he starved that man must cut off his own right hand. And there, like a devil, at his left lay the weapon that was to tempt him.

Nothing so inhuman, so barbarous, so fiendish, so hellish, had Jason yet seen, and with a cry like the growl of an untamed beast, he broke from his warders, took the nail in his fingers like a vice, tore it up out of the bleeding hand, and set Michael Sunlocks free.

At the next instant his wrath was gone, and he had fallen back to his listless mood. Then the warders hurried up, laid hold of both men, and hustled them away with a brave show of strength and courage to the office of the Captain.

Jorgen Jorgensen himself was there, and it was he who had ordered the ruthless punishment. The warders told their tale, and he listened to them with a grin on his cruel face.

"Strap them up together," he cried, "leg to leg and arm to arm."

And when this was done he said, bitterly —

"So you two men are fond of one another's company! Well, you shall have enough of it and to spare. Day after day, week after week, month after month, like as you are now, you shall live together, until you abhor and detest and loathe the sight of each other. Now go!"

CHAPTER III.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, now lashed together, were driven back to their work like beasts of the field. They knew well what their punishment meant to them – that in every hour of life henceforward, in every act, through every thought, each man should drag a human carcase by his side. The barbarity of their doom was hideous; but strangely different were the ways they accepted it. Michael Sunlocks was aflame with indignation; Jason was crushed with shame. The upturned face of Sunlocks was pale, his flaxen hair was dishevelled, his bloodshot eyes were afire. But Jason's eyes, full of confusion, were bent on the ground, his tanned face trembled visibly, and his red hair, grown long as of old, fell over his drooping shoulders like a mantle of blood.

And as they trudged along, side by side, in the first hours of their unnatural partnership, Sunlocks struggled hard to keep his eyes from the man with whom he was condemned to live and die, lest the gorge of his very soul should rise at the sight of him. So he never once looked at Jason through many hours of that day. And Jason, on his part, laboring with the thought that it was he who by his rash act had brought both of them to this sore pass, never once lifted his eyes to the face of Sunlocks.

Yet each man knew the other's thought before ever a word had passed between them. Jason felt that Sunlocks already abhorred him, and Sunlocks knew that Jason was ashamed. This brought them after a time into sympathy of some sort, and Jason tried to speak and Sunlocks to listen.

"I did not mean to bring you to this," said Jason, humbly. And Sunlocks, with head aside, answered as well as he could for the disgust that choked him, "You did it for the best."

"But you will hate me for it," said Jason.

And once again, with what composure he could command, Sunlocks answered, "How could I hate you for saving me from such brutal treatment."

"Then you don't regret it?" said Jason, pleadingly.

"It is for you, not me, to regret it," said Sunlocks.

"Me?" said Jason.

Through all the shameful hours the sense of his own loss had never yet come to him. From first to last he had thought only of Sunlocks.

"My liberty was gone already," said Sunlocks. "But you were free – free as anyone can be in this hell on earth. Now you are bound – you are here like this – and I am the cause of it."

Then Jason's rugged face was suddenly lit up with a surprising joy. "That's nothing," he said.

"Nothing?" said Sunlocks.

"I mean that I care nothing, if you don't," said Jason.

It was the turn of Sunlocks to feel surprise. He half turned towards Jason. "Then you don't regret it?" he asked.

"No," said Jason firmly. "And you?"

Sunlocks felt that tears, not disgust, were choking him now.

"No," he answered, shamefacedly, turning his head away.

"March!" shouted the warders, who had been drinking their smuggled sneps while their prisoners had been talking.

That day, Jorgen Jorgensen went back to Reykjavik, for the time of Althing was near, and he had to prepare for his fourteen days at Thingvellir. And the Governor being gone, the Captain of the Mines made bold so far to relax the inhumanity of his sentence as to order that the two men who were bound together during the hours of work should be separated for the hours of sleep. But never forgetting his own suspicion that Red Jason was an ally of Michael Sunlocks, planning his escape, he ordered also that no speech should be allowed to pass between them. To prevent all communion of this kind he directed that the men should work and sleep apart from the other prisoners, and that their two warders should attend them night and day.

But though the rigor of discipline kept them back from free intercourse, no watchfulness could check the stolen words of comfort that helped the weary men to bear their degrading lot.

That night, the first of their life together, Michael Sunlocks looked into Jason's face and said, "I have seen you before somewhere. Where was it?"

But Jason remembered the hot words that had pursued him on the day of the burning of the beds, and so he made no answer.

After awhile, Michael Sunlocks looked closely into Jason's face again, and said, "What is your name?"

"Don't ask it," said Jason.

"Why not," said Sunlocks.

"You might remember it."

"Even so, what then?"

"Then you might also remember what I did, or tried to do, and you would hate me for it," said Jason.

"Was your crime so inhuman?" said Sunlocks.

"It would seem so," said Jason.

"Who sent you here?"

"The Republic."

"You won't tell me your name?"

"I've got none, so to speak, having had no father to give me one. I'm alone in the world."

Michael Sunlocks did not sleep much that night, for the wound in his hand was very painful, and next morning, while Jason dressed it, he looked into his face once more and said, "You say you are alone in the world."

"Yes," said Jason.

"What of your mother?"

"She's dead, poor soul."

"Have you no sister?"

"No."

"Nor brother?"

"No – that's to say – no, no."

"No one belonging to you?"

"No."

"Are you quite alone?"

"Ay, quite," said Jason. "No one to think twice what becomes of me. Nobody to trouble whether I am here or in a better place. Nobody to care whether I live or die."

He tried to laugh as he said this, but in spite of his brave show of unconcern his deep voice broke and his strong face quivered.

"But what's your own name?" he said abruptly.

"Call me – brother," said Michael Sunlocks.

"To your work," cried the warders, and they were hustled out.

Their work for the day was delving sulphur from the banks of the solfataras and loading it on the backs of the ponies. And while their warders dozed in the heat of the noonday sun, they wiped their brows and rested.

At that moment Jason's eyes turned towards the hospital on the opposite side of the hill, and he remembered what he had heard of the good woman who had been nurse there. This much at least he knew of her, that she was the wife of his yoke-fellow, and he was about to speak of her trouble and dishonor when Michael Sunlocks said,

"After all, you are luckiest to be alone in the world. To have ties of affection is only to be the more unhappy."

"That's true," said Jason.

"Say you love somebody, and all your heart is full of her? You lose her, and then where are you?"

"But that's not your own case," said Jason. "Your wife is alive, is she not?"

"Yes."

"Then you have not lost her?"

"There is a worse loss than that of death," said Sunlocks.

Jason glanced quickly into his face, and said tenderly, "I know – I understand. There was another man?"

"Yes."

"And he robbed you of her love?" said Jason, eagerly.

"Yes."

"And you killed him?" cried Jason, with panting breath.

"No. But God keep that man out of my hands."

"Where is he now?"

"Heaven knows. He was here, but he is gone; for when the Republic fell I was imprisoned, and two days before that he was liberated."

"Silence!" shouted the warders, awakening suddenly and hearing voices.

Jason's eyes had begun to fill, and down his rugged cheeks the big drops were rolling one by one. After that he checked the impulse to speak of the nurse. The wife of his yoke-fellow must be an evil woman. The prisoner-priest must have been taken in by her. For once the warders must have been right.

And late that night, while Jason was dressing the wounded hand of Michael Sunlocks with wool torn from his own sheepskin jerkin, he said, with his eyes down,

"I scarce thought there was anything in common between us two. You're a gentleman, and I'm only a rough fellow. You have been brought up tenderly, and I have been kicked about the world since I was a lad in my poor mother's home, God rest her! But my life has been like yours in one thing."

"What's that?" said Michael Sunlocks.

"That another man has wrecked it," said Jason. "I never had but one glint of sunshine in my life, and that man wiped it out forever. It was a woman, and she was all the world to me. But she was proud and I was poor. And he was rich, and he came between us. He had everything, and the world was at his feet. I had nothing but that woman's love, and he took it from me. It was too cruel, and I could not bear it – God knows I could not."

"Wait," cried Michael Sunlocks. "Is that why you are here! Did you – you did not – no – "

"No, I know what you mean; but I did not kill him. No, no, I have never seen him. I could never meet with him, try how I would."

"Where is he now?"

"With her – in happiness and freedom and content, while I am here in misery and bondage and these ropes. But there will be a reckoning between us yet. I know there will. I swear there will. As sure as there is a God in Heaven, that man and I will one day stand together face to face."

Then Michael Sunlocks took both Jason's hands.

"My brother," he cried fervently. "Brother now more than ever; brother in suffering, brother in weakness, brother in strength."

"Silence there!" shouted the warders, and the two men were separated for the night.

The wound in the hand of Michael Sunlocks grew yet more painful, and he slept even less than before. Next day the power of life was low in him, and seeing this, Jason said, when the warders stepped up to lash them together, "He is ill, and not fit to go out. Let me work alone to-day. I'll do enough for both of us."

But no heed was paid to Jason's warning, and Michael Sunlocks was driven out by his side. All that day, the third of their life together, they worked with difficulty, for the wound in the hand of Sunlocks was not only a trouble to himself but an impediment to Jason also. Yet Jason gave no hint of that, but kept the good spade going constantly, with a smile on his face through the sweat that stood on it, and little stolen words of comfort and cheer. And when the heat was strongest, and Sunlocks would have stumbled and fallen, Jason contrived a means to use both their spades together, only requiring that Sunlocks should stoop when he stooped, that the warders might think he was still working. But their artifice was discovered, and all that came of it was that they were watched the closer and driven the harder during the hours that remained of that day.

Next day, the fourth of their direful punishment, Sunlocks rose weak and trembling, and scarce able to stand erect. And with what spirit he could summon up he called upon the warders to look upon him and see how feeble he was, and say if it was fair to his yoke-fellow that they should compel him to do the work of two men and drag a human body after him. But the warders only laughed at his protest, and once again he was driven out by Jason's side.

Long and heavy were the hours that followed, but Sunlocks, being once started on his way, bore up under it very bravely, murmuring as little as he might, out of thought for Jason. And Jason helped along his stumbling footsteps as well as he could for the arm that was bound to him. And seeing how well they worked by this double power of human kindness, the warders laughed again, and made a mock at Sunlocks for his former cry of weakness. And so, amid tender words between themselves, and jeers cast in upon them by the warders, they made shift to cheat time of another weary day.

The fifth day went by like the fourth, with heavy toil and pain to make it hard, and cruel taunts to make it bitter. And many a time, as they delved the yellow sulphur bank, a dark chill crossed the hearts of both, and they thought in their misery how cheerfully they would dig for death itself, if only it lay in the hot clay beneath them.

That night when they had returned to the hut wherein they slept, or tried to sleep, they found that some well-meaning stranger had been there in their absence and nailed up on the grimy walls above their beds, a card bearing the text, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And so ghastly seemed the irony of those words in that place that Jason muttered an oath between his teeth as he read them, and Sunlocks threw himself down, being unbound for the night, with a peal of noisy laughter, and a soul full of strange bitterness.

The next day after that, the sixth of their life together, rose darker than any day that had gone before it, for the wounded hand of Michael Sunlocks was then purple and black, and swollen to the size of two hands, and his bodily strength was so low that, try as bravely as he might to stand erect, whenever he struggled to his feet he fell to the ground again. Thinking nothing of this, the warders were for strapping him up to Jason as before, but while they were in the act of doing so he fainted in their hands. Then Jason swept them from him, and vowed that the first man that touched Sunlocks again should lie dead at his feet.

"Send for the Captain," he cried, "and if the man has any bowels of compassion let him come and see what you have done."

The warders took Jason at his word, and sent a message to the office saying that one of their prisoners was mutinous, and the other pretending to be ill. After a time the Captain despatched two other warders to the help of the first two and these words along with them for his answer: "If one rebels, punish both."

Nothing loth for such exercise, the four warders set themselves to decide what the punishment should be, and while they laid their heads together, Jason was bending over Sunlocks, who was now recovered to consciousness, asking his pardon in advance for the cruel penalty that his rash act was to bring on both of them.

"Forgive me," he said. "I couldn't help it. I didn't know what I was doing."

"There is nothing to forgive, brother," whispered Michael Sunlocks.

And thus with stammering tongues they comforted one another, and with hands clasped together they waited for the punishment that had to come.

At length the warders concluded that for refusing to work, for obstinate disobedience, and for threatening, nothing would serve but that their prisoners should straightway do the most perilous work to be found that day at the sulphur mines.

Now this was the beginning of the end for Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, and if the evil chance had not befallen them, God alone can say how long they might have lived together at Krisuvik, or how soon or how late they would have become known to one another by their true names and characters. But heaven itself had its purposes, even in the barbarity of base-hearted men, as a means towards the great end that was near at hand. And this was the way of its coming.

A strange change that no one could rightly understand had lately come upon the natural condition of the sulphur mines. The steam that rose from the solfataras had grown less and less week by week and day by day, until in some places it had altogether subsided. This was a grave sign, for in the steam lay the essence of the sulphur, and if it ceased to rise from the pits the sulphur would cease to grow.

Other changes came with this, such as that deep subterranean noises arose from parts of the plain where no fissures had yet been seen, and that footsteps on the earth around these places produced a hollow sound.