Late the same day they came for the first time in full view of the southeast coast of Iceland. The fog had lifted before a strong breeze from the west, where the red sun was dipping into the sea. They were then by the needles of Portland, side on to the vast arch which the heavy blow of the tides of ten thousand years has beaten out of the rock. At the sea's edge were a hundred jagged prongs of burnt crag, flecked with the white wings and echoing with the wild cry of countless sea birds; behind that was a plain of lava dust for seabeach; farther back the dome of a volcano, lying asleep under its coverlet of snow; still farther a gray glacier, glistening with silver spikes; and beyond all a black jokull, Wilderness-jokull, torn by many earthquakes, seamed and streaked with the unmelted ice of centuries and towering over a stony sea of desert, untrodden yet by the foot of man.
Desolate as the scene was, Jason melted at the sight of it; for this island, born of fire and frost, stood to him as the only place, in God's wide world that he could call his home, and little as it had done for him, less than nothing as he owed to it, yet it was his native land, and in coming back to its bleak and terrible shores he looked upon it with a thrill of the heart and saw it through his tears.
But he had little time and less desire to give way to tender feelings, and very soon he had small need to steel himself to the work before him, for everything served to spur him on to it. This was Iceland. This was the new home of Michael Sunlocks. This was where his mother had starved.
This was where she had fled to, who had wronged him sorely.
Early the next day they rounded the Smoky Point, leaving the Old Man crag under its shocks of foam to the right, and the rock called the Mealsack, under its white cloud of sea gulls, to the left, and began to beat down the fiord towards Reykjavik. It was not yet six o'clock—the Icelandic mid-evening—when they cast anchor inside the little island of Engy; but the year was far worn towards winter, and the night of the northern land had closed down.
And the time having come to leave the whaler, Jason remembered that he had been but a moody companion for his shipmates, though they had passed some perilous days and nights together. So he bade them good-bye with what cheer he could summon up at last, and the rough fellows kissed him after the manner of their people, showing no rancor at all, but only pity, and saying among themselves that it was plain to see he had known trouble and, though given to strange [outbursts] when alone, was as simple and as gentle as a child, and would never hurt a fly.
He had hailed a passing boat to run him ashore, and it was one of the light skiffs with the double prow that the boys of Iceland use when they hunt among the rocks for the eggs and down of the eider duck. Such, indeed though so late in the season, had that day been the work of the two lads whose boat he had chanced upon, and having dropped down to their side from the whaler with his few belongings—his long coat of Manx homespun over his arm, his seaman's boots across his shoulders, his English fowling piece in his hand and his pistol in his belt—he began to talk with them of their calling as one who knew it.
"Where have you been working, my lads?" said Jason.
"Out on Engy," said the elder of the boys.
"Found much?"