CHAPTER III.
The Valley of the Shadow of Death
Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, now lashed together, were driven back to their work like beasts of the field. They knew well what their punishment meant to them – that in every hour of life henceforward, in every act, through every thought, each man should drag a human carcase by his side. The barbarity of their doom was hideous; but strangely different were the ways they accepted it. Michael Sunlocks was aflame with indignation; Jason was crushed with shame. The upturned face of Sunlocks was pale, his flaxen hair was dishevelled, his bloodshot eyes were afire. But Jason's eyes, full of confusion, were bent on the ground, his tanned face trembled visibly, and his red hair, grown long as of old, fell over his drooping shoulders like a mantle of blood.
And as they trudged along, side by side, in the first hours of their unnatural partnership, Sunlocks struggled hard to keep his eyes from the man with whom he was condemned to live and die, lest the gorge of his very soul should rise at the sight of him. So he never once looked at Jason through many hours of that day. And Jason, on his part, laboring with the thought that it was he who by his rash act had brought both of them to this sore pass, never once lifted his eyes to the face of Sunlocks.
Yet each man knew the other's thought before ever a word had passed between them. Jason felt that Sunlocks already abhorred him, and Sunlocks knew that Jason was ashamed. This brought them after a time into sympathy of some sort, and Jason tried to speak and Sunlocks to listen.
"I did not mean to bring you to this," said Jason, humbly. And Sunlocks, with head aside, answered as well as he could for the disgust that choked him, "You did it for the best."
"But you will hate me for it," said Jason.
And once again, with what composure he could command, Sunlocks answered, "How could I hate you for saving me from such brutal treatment."
"Then you don't regret it?" said Jason, pleadingly.
"It is for you, not me, to regret it," said Sunlocks.
"Me?" said Jason.
Through all the shameful hours the sense of his own loss had never yet come to him. From first to last he had thought only of Sunlocks.
"My liberty was gone already," said Sunlocks. "But you were free – free as anyone can be in this hell on earth. Now you are bound – you are here like this – and I am the cause of it."
Then Jason's rugged face was suddenly lit up with a surprising joy. "That's nothing," he said.
"Nothing?" said Sunlocks.
"I mean that I care nothing, if you don't," said Jason.
It was the turn of Sunlocks to feel surprise. He half turned towards Jason. "Then you don't regret it?" he asked.
"No," said Jason firmly. "And you?"
Sunlocks felt that tears, not disgust, were choking him now.
"No," he answered, shamefacedly, turning his head away.
"March!" shouted the warders, who had been drinking their smuggled sneps while their prisoners had been talking.
That day, Jorgen Jorgensen went back to Reykjavik, for the time of Althing was near, and he had to prepare for his fourteen days at Thingvellir. And the Governor being gone, the Captain of the Mines made bold so far to relax the inhumanity of his sentence as to order that the two men who were bound together during the hours of work should be separated for the hours of sleep. But never forgetting his own suspicion that Red Jason was an ally of Michael Sunlocks, planning his escape, he ordered also that no speech should be allowed to pass between them. To prevent all communion of this kind he directed that the men should work and sleep apart from the other prisoners, and that their two warders should attend them night and day.
But though the rigor of discipline kept them back from free intercourse, no watchfulness could check the stolen words of comfort that helped the weary men to bear their degrading lot.
That night, the first of their life together, Michael Sunlocks looked into Jason's face and said, "I have seen you before somewhere. Where was it?"
But Jason remembered the hot words that had pursued him on the day of the burning of the beds, and so he made no answer.
After awhile, Michael Sunlocks looked closely into Jason's face again, and said, "What is your name?"
"Don't ask it," said Jason.
"Why not," said Sunlocks.
"You might remember it."
"Even so, what then?"
"Then you might also remember what I did, or tried to do, and you would hate me for it," said Jason.
"Was your crime so inhuman?" said Sunlocks.
"It would seem so," said Jason.
"Who sent you here?"
"The Republic."
"You won't tell me your name?"
"I've got none, so to speak, having had no father to give me one. I'm alone in the world."
Michael Sunlocks did not sleep much that night, for the wound in his hand was very painful, and next morning, while Jason dressed it, he looked into his face once more and said, "You say you are alone in the world."
"Yes," said Jason.
"What of your mother?"
"She's dead, poor soul."
"Have you no sister?"
"No."
"Nor brother?"
"No – that's to say – no, no."
"No one belonging to you?"
"No."
"Are you quite alone?"
"Ay, quite," said Jason. "No one to think twice what becomes of me. Nobody to trouble whether I am here or in a better place. Nobody to care whether I live or die."
He tried to laugh as he said this, but in spite of his brave show of unconcern his deep voice broke and his strong face quivered.
"But what's your own name?" he said abruptly.
"Call me – brother," said Michael Sunlocks.
"To your work," cried the warders, and they were hustled out.
Their work for the day was delving sulphur from the banks of the solfataras and loading it on the backs of the ponies. And while their warders dozed in the heat of the noonday sun, they wiped their brows and rested.
At that moment Jason's eyes turned towards the hospital on the opposite side of the hill, and he remembered what he had heard of the good woman who had been nurse there. This much at least he knew of her, that she was the wife of his yoke-fellow, and he was about to speak of her trouble and dishonor when Michael Sunlocks said,
"After all, you are luckiest to be alone in the world. To have ties of affection is only to be the more unhappy."
"That's true," said Jason.
"Say you love somebody, and all your heart is full of her? You lose her, and then where are you?"
"But that's not your own case," said Jason. "Your wife is alive, is she not?"
"Yes."
"Then you have not lost her?"
"There is a worse loss than that of death," said Sunlocks.
Jason glanced quickly into his face, and said tenderly, "I know – I understand. There was another man?"
"Yes."
"And he robbed you of her love?" said Jason, eagerly.
"Yes."
"And you killed him?" cried Jason, with panting breath.
"No. But God keep that man out of my hands."
"Where is he now?"
"Heaven knows. He was here, but he is gone; for when the Republic fell I was imprisoned, and two days before that he was liberated."
"Silence!" shouted the warders, awakening suddenly and hearing voices.
Jason's eyes had begun to fill, and down his rugged cheeks the big drops were rolling one by one. After that he checked the impulse to speak of the nurse. The wife of his yoke-fellow must be an evil woman. The prisoner-priest must have been taken in by her. For once the warders must have been right.
And late that night, while Jason was dressing the wounded hand of Michael Sunlocks with wool torn from his own sheepskin jerkin, he said, with his eyes down,
"I scarce thought there was anything in common between us two. You're a gentleman, and I'm only a rough fellow. You have been brought up tenderly, and I have been kicked about the world since I was a lad in my poor mother's home, God rest her! But my life has been like yours in one thing."
"What's that?" said Michael Sunlocks.
"That another man has wrecked it," said Jason. "I never had but one glint of sunshine in my life, and that man wiped it out forever. It was a woman, and she was all the world to me. But she was proud and I was poor. And he was rich, and he came between us. He had everything, and the world was at his feet. I had nothing but that woman's love, and he took it from me. It was too cruel, and I could not bear it – God knows I could not."
"Wait," cried Michael Sunlocks. "Is that why you are here! Did you – you did not – no – "
"No, I know what you mean; but I did not kill him. No, no, I have never seen him. I could never meet with him, try how I would."
"Where is he now?"
"With her – in happiness and freedom and content, while I am here in misery and bondage and these ropes. But there will be a reckoning between us yet. I know there will. I swear there will. As sure as there is a God in Heaven, that man and I will one day stand together face to face."
Then Michael Sunlocks took both Jason's hands.
"My brother," he cried fervently. "Brother now more than ever; brother in suffering, brother in weakness, brother in strength."
"Silence there!" shouted the warders, and the two men were separated for the night.
The wound in the hand of Michael Sunlocks grew yet more painful, and he slept even less than before. Next day the power of life was low in him, and seeing this, Jason said, when the warders stepped up to lash them together, "He is ill, and not fit to go out. Let me work alone to-day. I'll do enough for both of us."
But no heed was paid to Jason's warning, and Michael Sunlocks was driven out by his side. All that day, the third of their life together, they worked with difficulty, for the wound in the hand of Sunlocks was not only a trouble to himself but an impediment to Jason also. Yet Jason gave no hint of that, but kept the good spade going constantly, with a smile on his face through the sweat that stood on it, and little stolen words of comfort and cheer. And when the heat was strongest, and Sunlocks would have stumbled and fallen, Jason contrived a means to use both their spades together, only requiring that Sunlocks should stoop when he stooped, that the warders might think he was still working. But their artifice was discovered, and all that came of it was that they were watched the closer and driven the harder during the hours that remained of that day.
Next day, the fourth of their direful punishment, Sunlocks rose weak and trembling, and scarce able to stand erect. And with what spirit he could summon up he called upon the warders to look upon him and see how feeble he was, and say if it was fair to his yoke-fellow that they should compel him to do the work of two men and drag a human body after him. But the warders only laughed at his protest, and once again he was driven out by Jason's side.
Long and heavy were the hours that followed, but Sunlocks, being once started on his way, bore up under it very bravely, murmuring as little as he might, out of thought for Jason. And Jason helped along his stumbling footsteps as well as he could for the arm that was bound to him. And seeing how well they worked by this double power of human kindness, the warders laughed again, and made a mock at Sunlocks for his former cry of weakness. And so, amid tender words between themselves, and jeers cast in upon them by the warders, they made shift to cheat time of another weary day.
The fifth day went by like the fourth, with heavy toil and pain to make it hard, and cruel taunts to make it bitter. And many a time, as they delved the yellow sulphur bank, a dark chill crossed the hearts of both, and they thought in their misery how cheerfully they would dig for death itself, if only it lay in the hot clay beneath them.
That night when they had returned to the hut wherein they slept, or tried to sleep, they found that some well-meaning stranger had been there in their absence and nailed up on the grimy walls above their beds, a card bearing the text, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And so ghastly seemed the irony of those words in that place that Jason muttered an oath between his teeth as he read them, and Sunlocks threw himself down, being unbound for the night, with a peal of noisy laughter, and a soul full of strange bitterness.
The next day after that, the sixth of their life together, rose darker than any day that had gone before it, for the wounded hand of Michael Sunlocks was then purple and black, and swollen to the size of two hands, and his bodily strength was so low that, try as bravely as he might to stand erect, whenever he struggled to his feet he fell to the ground again. Thinking nothing of this, the warders were for strapping him up to Jason as before, but while they were in the act of doing so he fainted in their hands. Then Jason swept them from him, and vowed that the first man that touched Sunlocks again should lie dead at his feet.
"Send for the Captain," he cried, "and if the man has any bowels of compassion let him come and see what you have done."
The warders took Jason at his word, and sent a message to the office saying that one of their prisoners was mutinous, and the other pretending to be ill. After a time the Captain despatched two other warders to the help of the first two and these words along with them for his answer: "If one rebels, punish both."
Nothing loth for such exercise, the four warders set themselves to decide what the punishment should be, and while they laid their heads together, Jason was bending over Sunlocks, who was now recovered to consciousness, asking his pardon in advance for the cruel penalty that his rash act was to bring on both of them.
"Forgive me," he said. "I couldn't help it. I didn't know what I was doing."
"There is nothing to forgive, brother," whispered Michael Sunlocks.
And thus with stammering tongues they comforted one another, and with hands clasped together they waited for the punishment that had to come.
At length the warders concluded that for refusing to work, for obstinate disobedience, and for threatening, nothing would serve but that their prisoners should straightway do the most perilous work to be found that day at the sulphur mines.
Now this was the beginning of the end for Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, and if the evil chance had not befallen them, God alone can say how long they might have lived together at Krisuvik, or how soon or how late they would have become known to one another by their true names and characters. But heaven itself had its purposes, even in the barbarity of base-hearted men, as a means towards the great end that was near at hand. And this was the way of its coming.
A strange change that no one could rightly understand had lately come upon the natural condition of the sulphur mines. The steam that rose from the solfataras had grown less and less week by week and day by day, until in some places it had altogether subsided. This was a grave sign, for in the steam lay the essence of the sulphur, and if it ceased to rise from the pits the sulphur would cease to grow.
Other changes came with this, such as that deep subterranean noises arose from parts of the plain where no fissures had yet been seen, and that footsteps on the earth around these places produced a hollow sound.
From these signs, taken together, the Captain had concluded that the life of the mines, the great infernal fire that raged beneath the surface, was changing ground, leaving the valley, where it had lived for ages, for the mountain heights, where the low grumblings were now heard to come from beneath the earth's crust of lava and basaltic rock.
So, taking counsel of his people, he decided to bore the ground in these new places in the hope of lighting on living solfataras that would stand to him against the loss of the dead ones. And it chanced that he was in the midst of many busy preparations for this work when the report of the warders reached him, and the boring was still uppermost in his mind when he sent back his answer as he came upon the flogging and stopped it.
Thus it happened that the first thought that came to the warders was to send their prisoners to one of the spots that had been marked on the hillside for the test of bore and spade.
So, in less than half-an-hour more, Jason and Sunlocks, lashed together, arm to arm and leg to leg, were being driven up the mountain to the place assigned to them. They found it a hideous and awesome spot. Within a circle of two yards across, the ground was white and yellow and scaly, like a scab on evil flesh. It was hot, so that the hand could not rest upon it, and hollow, so that the foot made it shake, and from unseen depths beneath it a dull thud came up at intervals like nothing else but the knocking of a man buried alive at the sealed door of his tomb.
Beneath this spot the heart of the solfatara was expected to lie, and Jason and Sunlocks were commanded to open it. Obeying gloomily, they took the bore first and pierced the scaly surface, and instantly a sizzling and bubbling sound came up from below. Then they followed with the spades, but scarcely had they lifted the top crust when twenty great fissures seemed to open under their feet, and they could see lurid flames rushing in wild confusion, like rivers of fire in the bowels of the earth.
It was a sight at which the stoutest heart might have quailed, and Jason leapt back to the bank and dragged Sunlocks after him.
"This is not safe," he said.
"In with you," shouted the warders from their own safe footing of four yards away. With a growl from between his clenched teeth, Jason stepped back into the hole, and Sunlocks followed him. But hardly had they got down to the fearsome spot again, when a layer of clay fell in from it, leaving a deep wide gully, and then scarcely a yard of secure footing remained.
"Let us stop while we are safe," Jason cried.
"Dig away," shouted the warders.
"If we do, we shall be digging our own graves," said Jason.
"Begin," shouted the warders.
"Listen to me," said Jason. "If we are to open this pit of fire and brimstone, at least let us be free of these ropes. That's but fair, that each man may have a chance of his life."
"Go on," shouted the warders.
"If we go on like this we shall be burnt and boiled alive," said Jason.
"Get along," shouted the warders with one voice, and then an awful light flashed in Jason's eyes, for he saw that out of revenge for their paltry fines they had resolved to drive two living men to their death.
"Now, listen again," said Jason, "and mark my words. We will do as you command us, and work in this pit of hell. I will not die in it – that I know. But this man beside me is weak and ill, heaven curse your inhumanity; and if anything happens to him, and I am alive to see it, as sure as there is strength left in my arms, and blood in my body, I will tear you limb from limb."
So saying, he plunged his spade into the ground beneath him, with an oath to drive it, and at the next instant there was a flash of blue flame, an avalanche of smoke, a hurricane of unearthly noises, a cry like that of a dying man, and then an awful silence.
When the air had cleared, Jason stood uninjured, but Michael Sunlocks hung by his side inert and quiet, and blinded by a jet of steam.
What happened to Jason thereafter no tongue of man could tell. All the fire of his spirit, and all the strength of all his days seemed to flow back upon him in that great moment. He parted the ropes that bound him as if they had been green withes that he snapped asunder. He took Sunlocks in his arms and lifted him up to his shoulder, and hung him across it, as if he had been a child that he placed there. He stepped out of the deadly pit, and strode along over the lava mountain as if he were the sole creature of the everlasting hills. His glance was terrific, his voice was the voice of a wounded beast. The warders dropped their muskets and fled before him like affrighted sheep.
CHAPTER IV.
Through the Chasm of All Men
It was still early morning; a soft gray mist lay over the moorlands, but the sun that had never set in that northern land was rising through clouds of pink and white over the bald crown of a mountain to the northeast. And towards the rising sun Jason made his way, striding on with the red glow on his own tanned and blackened face, and its ghastly mockery of the hues of life on the pallid cheeks and whitened lips of Sunlocks. From his right ankle and right wrist hung the rings of his broken fetters, and from the left ankle and left wrist of Sunlocks trailed the ropes that had bound them both. Never a moment did he pause to breathe or think or question himself. On and on he went, over lava blocks and lava dust, basaltic rock and heavy clay, and hot blue earth and scorched and withered moss. And still Sunlocks lay over his right side and shoulder, motionless and unconscious, hardly breathing, but alive, with his waist encircled by Jason's great right arm, and his waist-belt grasped tight as with the grip of a talon by Jason's hard right hand.
Before long, Sunlocks recovered some partial consciousness and cried in a faint voice for water. Jason glanced around on the arid plain as if his eyes would pierce the ground for a spring, but no water could he see on any side of him, and so without a word of answer he strode along.
"Water, water," cried Sunlocks again, and just then Jason caught the side-long glint of a river that ran like a pearl chain down the black breast of a mountain.
"Water," cried Sunlocks again and yet again, in a voice of pain and deep pleading, not rightly knowing yet where he was or what bad chance had befallen him.
"Yes, yes, one moment more, only a moment, there – there – there!" whispered Jason.
And muttering such words of comfort and cheer, he quickened his pace towards the river. But when he got near to it he stopped short with a cry of dismay. The river bubbled and smoked.
"Hot! It is hot," cried Jason. "And the land is accursed."
At that word, Sunlocks uttered a low groan, and his head, which had been partly lifted, fell heavily backwards, and his hair hung over Jason's shoulder. He was again unconscious.
Then more than ever like a wild beast ranging the hills with its prey, Jason strode along. And presently he saw a lake of blue water far away. He knew it for cold water, blessed, ice-cold water, water to bathe the hot forehead with, water to drink. With a cry of joy, which there was no human ear to hear, he turned and made towards it; but just as he did so, softening as he went, and muttering from his own parched throat words of hope and comfort to the unconscious man he carried, a gunshot echoed through the mountains above his head.
He knew what the shot was; it was the signal of his escape. And looking down to the valley, he saw that the guards of the settlement were gathering on their ponies in the very line of the plain that he must traverse to reach the water for which Sunlocks thirsted.
Then "Water, water," came again in the same faint voice as before, and whether with his actual ear he heard that cry, or in the torment of his distraught sense it only rang out in his empty heart, no man shall say. But all the same he answered it from his choking throat, "Patience, patience."
And then, with another look downward, the look of a human stag, at the cool water which he might not reach and live, he turned himself back to the mountains.
What happened to him then, and for many weary hours thereafter, it would weary the spirit to tell: what plains he crossed, what hills he climbed, and in what desolate wilderness he walked alone, with no one for company save the unconscious man across his shoulder, and no eye to look upon him save the eye of God.
And first he crossed a wide sea of lava dust, black as the ravens that flew in the air above it, and bounded by hills as dark as the earth that were themselves vast sand drifts blown up into strange and terrible shapes by mighty tempests. Then he came upon a plain strewn over with cinders, having a grim crag frowning upon it, like the bank of a smelting-house, with its screes of refuse rolling down. By this time the sun had risen high and grown hot, and the black ground under his feet began to send up the reflection of the sun's rays into his face to scorch it.
And still the cry of "water, water," rang in his ears, and his eyes ranged the desolate land to find it, but never a sign of it could he see, and his strong heart sank. Once, when he had mounted with great toil to the top of a hill, where all behind him had been black and burnt and blistered, he saw a wide valley stretching in front of him that was as green as the grass of spring. And he thought that where there was grass there would surely be water, streams of water, rivers of water, pools of water, sunny stretches of sweet water lying clear and quiet over amber pebbles and between soft brown banks of turf.
So at this sight his heart was lifted up, and bounding down the hillside, over the lava blocks, as fast as he could go for his burden, he began to sing from his cracked throat in his hoarse and quavery voice. But when he reached the valley his song stopped, and his heart sank afresh, for it was not grass, but moss that grew there, and it lay only on big blocks of lava, with never a drop of moisture or a handful of earth between them.
He was crushed, but he was strong of heart and would not despair. So he pushed on over this green plain, through a hundred thousand mossy mounds that looked like the graves of a world of dead men.
But when he came out of it his case seemed yet more forlorn, for leaving the soft valley behind he had come upon a lava stream, a sea of stones, not dust or cinders, but a bleached cake of lava rock, with never a soft place for the foot, and never a green spot for the eye. Not a leaf to rustle in the breeze, not a blade of grass to whisper to it, not a bird's sweet voice, or the song of running water. Nothing lived there but dead silence on earth and in air. Nothing but that, or in other hours the roar of wind, the rattle of rain, and the crash of thunder.
All this time Jason had walked on under the sweltering sun, never resting, never pausing, buoyed up with the hope of water – water for the fainting man that he might not die. But in the desolation of that moment he dropped Sunlocks from his shoulder, and threw himself down beside him.
And sitting there, with the head of his unconscious comrade upon his knees, he put it himself to say what had been the good of all that he had done, and if it would not have been better for both of them if he had submitted to base tyranny and remained at the Mines. Had he not brought this man out to his death? What else was before him in this waste wilderness, where there was no drop of water to cool his hot forehead or moisten his parched tongue? And thinking that his yoke-fellow might die, and die at his hands, and that he would then be alone, with the only man's face gone from him that had ever brightened life for him, his heart began to waver and to say, "Rise up, Jason, rise up and go back."
But just then he was conscious of the click-clack of horses' hoofs on the echoing face of the stony sea about him, and he shaded his eyes and looked around, and saw in the distance a line of men on ponies coming on in his direction. And though he thought of the guards that had been signalled to pursue him, he made no effort to escape. He did not stir or try to hide himself, but sat as before with the head of his comrade on his knees.
The men on the ponies came up and passed him closely by without seeing him. But he saw them clearly and heard their talk. They were not the guard from the settlement, but Thing-men bound for Thingvellir and the meeting of Althing there. And while they were going on before him in their laughter and high spirits, Jason could scarce resist the impulse to cry out on them to stop and take him along with them as their prisoner, for that he was an outlaw who had broken his outlawry, and carried away with him this fainting man at his knees.
But before the words would form themselves, and while his blistering lips were shaping to speak them, a great thought came to him, and struck him back to silence.
Why had he torn away from the Sulphur Mines? Only from a gloomy love of life, life for his comrade, and life for himself. And what life was there in this trackless waste, this mouldering dumb wilderness? None, none. Nothing but death lay here; death in these gaunt solitudes; death in these dry deserts; death amid these ghastly, haggard wrecks of inhuman things. What chance could there be of escape from Iceland? None, none, none.
But there was one hope yet. Who were these men that had passed him? They were Thing-men; they were the lawmakers. Where were they going? They were going to the Mount of Laws. Why were they going there? To hold their meeting of Althing. What was Althing? The highest power of the State; the supreme Court of legislature and law.
What did all this mean? It meant that Jason as an Icelander knew the laws of his country, and that one great law above all other laws he remembered at that instant. It concerned outlaws. And what were they but outlaws, both of them? It ordered that the condemned could appeal at Althing against the injustice of his sentence. If the ranks of the judges opened for his escape, then he was saved.
Jason leaped to his feet at the thought of it. That was what he would do for his comrade and for himself. He would push on to Thingvellir. It was five and thirty heavy miles away; but no matter for that. The angel of hope would walk with him. He would reach the Mount of Laws, carrying his comrade all the way. And when he got there, he would plead the cause of both of them. Then the judges would rise, and part, and make way for them, and they would be free men thereafter.
Life, life, life! There was life left for both of them, and very sweet it seemed after the shadow of death that had so nearly encompassed them. Only to live! Only to live! They were young yet and loved one another as brothers.
And while thinking so, in the whirl of his senses as he strode to and fro over the lava blocks, Jason heard what his ear had hitherto been too heavy to catch, the thin music of falling water near at hand. And, looking up, he saw a tiny rivulet like a lock of silken hair dropping over a round face of rock, and thanking God for it, he ran to it, and filled both hands with it, and brought it to Sunlocks and bathed his forehead with it, and his poor blinded eyes, and moistened his withered lips, whispering meantime words of hope and simple tender nothings, such as any woman might croon over her sick boy.