Thus the most touching and at the same time the most terrible part of the story is reached. Touching because of the great love that grows up in Jason’s heart for Sunlocks, his bondfellow; terrible, because of the fiendish inhumanities of Michael’s lot. This is the description of the place of torment.
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 in 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 vapour 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 line 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.
Spurred by the cruel treatment of Sunlocks, Jason breaks away, carrying on his shoulders the half-insensible body of his now blind and maimed companion. They manage to reach the valley of Thingvellir, where the biennial of Althing is taking place, and there, as the custom allows, Jason demands justice and freedom. It is granted to him as a criminal of Iceland, but denied to Sunlocks as a Danish prisoner; and Sunlocks is therefore sent in his helpless, blind condition to the custody of a priest on an outstanding island. There Greeba, who has followed him in his wanderings, takes domestic service with the priest, that she may tend Michael and win back his love, and there Jason comes, to lay down his life for his friend after effecting his escape.
Thus ends one of the most powerful novels ever written, great by reason of its strength of thought and directness of utterance. And yet, here and there in its pages, are passages of wonderful softness, tender pictures of the consolation of childhood—little Sunlocks, little Greeba, and the little child Michael. This is what we grow to look for in Hall Caine, the tenderness and the tragedy of humanity. They form the strength of his novels, and it is they that will make them live through the ages, based as they are on truths and passions that are old as the world is old.
The publication of The Bondman established, once and for all, Hall Caine’s claims to genius; it confirmed the impression created by The Deemster, and there was hardly one dissentient voice in the verdict of the critics who proclaimed it as one of the masterpieces of the century. The late T. E. Brown wrote the following letter to Mr Caine immediately after reading The Bondman.
“Clifton, February 1890.
“My Dear Sir,—I have sent a review of The Bondman to the Scots Observer by same post; and I hope that it will appear in next Saturday’s issue.
“A thousand thanks for the work sent to me by Heinemann. How splendidly he has done it! I am reading it again with fresh interest and admiration. Nor is it otherwise than pleasant to me to find in your story some trail of what I must suppose is old inveterate Manxness. How curious that you should have preserved echoes, however faint, of your father’s talk! But why curious? Still you will agree with me that they ought to be ruthlessly (!) extirpated. They turn up in your English, not in your Anglo-Manx. I give an instance—after the verb threaten an inversion as with interrogations, e.g., ‘He threatened what would he do to them.’ Let me give that in your ear with full Manx flavour, and you will feel yourself standing very close to the Lob-y-Valley. But even without the flavouring, you perceive that it is Manx, though it may be a rusticity common to many parts of the country.
“Trailing behind her these insignificant appendages, your book floats forth to certain success, a magnificent craft, fit for deep waters and the large horizon. Good luck to her! Kindest regards to Mrs Caine and Ralphie, in which my daughters cordially unite.—Ever yours,
“T. E. Brown.”