When the Fairbrothers, in the first days after their coming to Iceland, started inquiries touching the position and influence of Michael Sunlocks, thinking thereby to make sure of their birds in the bush before parting with their bird in the hand, they frequented a little drinking-shop in the Cheapstead where sailors of many nations congregated, Danes, Icelanders, Norwegians, English, and Irish. Hearing there what satisfied their expectations, their pride began to swell, and as often as Michael Sunlocks was named with honor they blew up their breasts like bantams and said he was their brother, so to speak, and had been brought up in the same house with them since he was a slip of a brat of two or three. And if any who heard them glanced them over with doubtful eyes they straightway broke into facetious stories concerning the boyhood of Sunlocks, showing all their wondrous kindness to him as big brothers towards a little one.
Now these trifling events were of grave consequence to the fortunes of the Fairbrothers, and the fate of Michael Sunlocks, at two great moments. The first of the two was when Thurstan broke into open rebellion against Jacob. Then, with a sense of his wise brother's [pitiable] blunderheadedness, the astute Thurstan went off to the same drinking-shop to console himself with drink, and there he was addressed, when he was well and comfortably drunk, by a plausible person who spoke an unknown tongue. The end of that conference was nevertheless an idea firmly settled in Thurstan's mind that if he could not get money out of Michael Sunlocks he could at least get satisfaction.
This was the matter that Thurstan darkly hinted at when Jacob, being utterly discomfited, had to leave all further schemes to his brethren. So that day he returned to his rendezvous, met the plausible person again, and later in the evening sought out his brothers and said, "Didn't I tell ye to leave to me?"
"What's going doing?" said four voices at once.
"Plucking him down, the upstart, that's what's going doing," said Thurstan.
Then to five pairs of eager ears it slowly leaked out that a Danish ship lay in the harbor with a mysterious cargo of great casks, supposed to contain tallow; that after discharging their contents these casks were to be filled with shark's oil; that waiting the time to fill them they were to be stored (as all other warehouses were full of bonder's stock) in the little cell of detention under the senate-house; and, finally and most opportunely, that a meeting of Althing had been summoned on special business for the next night following, and that Michael Sunlocks was to be present.
The Fairbrothers heard all this with eyes that showed how well they understood it and keenly gloated over it. And late the same night the cargo of great casks was unshipped at the jetty, wheeled up to the senate-house and lodged there, carefully, silently, one by one. Thurstan helping, a few stragglers looking on, the stammering doorkeeper, long Jon, not anywhere visible, and no one else in the little sleepy town a whit the wiser. This being done, Thurstan went back to his lodging with the content of a soul at ease, saying to himself, "As I say, if we don't get anything else, we'll get satisfaction; and if we get what's promised I've a safe place to put it until the trouble's over and we can clear away, and that's the little crib under the turret of the cathedral church."
Then the worthy man lay down to sleep.
Before Thurstan was awake next morning Reykjavik was all astir. It had become known that a special sitting of Althing had been summoned for that night, and because nothing was known much was said concerning the business afoot. People gathered in groups where the snow of the heavy drifts had been banked up at the street corners, and gossiped and guessed. Such little work as the great winter left to any man was done in haste or not at all, that men might meet in the stores, the drinking-shops, and on the Cheapstead and ask, "Why?" "Wherefore?" and "What does it mean?" That some event of great moment was pending seemed to be the common opinion everywhere, though what ground it rested on no one knew, for no one knew anything. Only on one point was the feeling more general, or nearer right; that the President himself was at the root and centre of whatever was coming.