CHAPTER LI.
THE ENGLISH SPORTS IN TROUBLE.
Our ride back to Thingvalla was over the same trail which we had traveled on the preceding day, with the exception of a short cut to the right of the Tintron rock. We made very good speed, and reached the Parsonage early in the afternoon.
During our absence a young Englishman had arrived from the North, where he had been living for a year. I found him in the travelers’ room, surrounded by a confused medley of boxes, bags, books, and Icelandic curiosities, which he was endeavoring to reduce to some kind of order. Had I not been told he was an Englishman I should never have suspected it, either from his appearance or manner. When I entered the room he stood up and looked at me, and I must say, without intending him the slightest disrespect, that he was the most extraordinary looking man I ever saw in all my life, not excepting a tattooed African chief that I once met at Zanzibar. Whether he was young or old it was impossible to say—he might be twenty-five or just as likely fifty. Dirty and discolored with travel, his face was generally dark, though it was somewhat relieved by spots of yellow. His features were regular, and of almost feminine softness; his eyes were dark brown; and his hair, which was nearly black, hung down over his shoulders in lank straight locks, sunburnt or frostbitten at the ends. On his head he wore a tall, conical green wool hat, with a broad brim, and a brown band tied in a true lover’s knot at one side. The remainder of his costume consisted of a black cloth roundabout, threadbare and dirty; a pair of black casimere pantaloons, very tight about the legs and burst open in several places; and a pair of moccasins on his feet, adorned with beads and patches of red flannel. If he wore a shirt it was not conspicuous for whiteness, for I failed to discover it. When he saw that a stranger stood before him, he looked quite overwhelmed with astonishment, and gasped out some inarticulate words, consisting principally of Icelandic interjections.
“How do you do, sir?” said I, in the usual California style. “I’m glad to meet an Englishman in this wild country!”
“Ye’ow-w-w!” (a prolonged exclamation.)
“Just arrived, sir?”
“Nay-y-y!” (a prolonged negative.)
“You speak English, I believe, sir?”
“Oh-h-h! Ya-a-a-s. Are—you—an—Englishman?”