The Book of Red Jason.
CHAPTER I.
What Befell Old Adam.
Now it would be a long task to follow closely all that befell the dear old Adam Fairbrother, from the time when the ship wherein he sailed for Iceland weighed anchor in Ramsey bay. Yet not to know what strange risks he ran, and how in the end he overcame all dangers, by God's grace and his own extreme labor, is not to know this story of how two good men with a good woman between them pursued each other over the earth with vows of vengeance, and came together at length in heaven's good time and way. So not to weary the spirit with much speaking, yet to leave nothing unsaid that shall carry us onward to that great hour when Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks stood face to face, let us begin where Adam's peril began, and hasten forward to where it ended.
Fourteen days out of Ramsey, in latitude of 64 degrees, distant about five leagues north of the Faroes, and in the course of west northwest, hoping to make the western shores of Iceland, Adam with his shipmates was overtaken by foul weather, with high seas and strong wind opposing them stoutly from the northwest. Thus they were driven well into the latitude of sixty-six off the eastern coast of Iceland, and there, though the seas still ran as high as to the poop, they were much beset by extraordinary pieces of ice which appeared to come down from Greenland. Then the wind abated, and an unsearchable and noisome fog followed; so dense that not an acre of sea could be seen from the top-mast head, and so foul that the compasses would not work in it. After that, though they wrought night and day with poles and spikes, they were beaten among the ice as scarce any ship ever was before, and so terrible were the blows they suffered that many a time they thought the planks must be wrenched from the vessel's sides. Nevertheless they let fall sail, thinking to force their way through the ice before they were stowed to pieces, and, though the wind was low, yet the ship felt the canvas and cleared the shoals that encompassed her. The wind then fell to a calm, but still the fog hung heavily over the sea, which was black and smelt horribly. And when they thought to try their soundings, knowing that somewhere thereabouts the land must surely be, they heard a noise that seemed at first like the tract of the shore. It was worse than that, for it was the rut of a great bank of ice, two hundred miles deep, breaking away from the far shores of Greenland, and coming with its steady sweep, such as no human power could resist, towards the coasts of Iceland. Between that vast ice floe and the land they lay, with its hollow and terrible voice in their ears, and with no power to fly from it, for their sail hung loose and idle in the dead stillness of the air.
Oh! it is an awful thing to know that death is swooping down on you hour by hour; to hear it coming with its hideous thunder, like the groans of damned souls, and yet to see nothing of your danger for the day darkness that blinds you. But the shipmaster was a stout-hearted fellow, and while the fog continued and he was without the help of wind or compass, he let go a raven that he had aboard to see if it could discover land. The raven flew to the northeast, and did not return to the ship, and by that token the master knew that the land of Iceland lay somewhere near on their starboard bow. So he was for lowering the long boat, to stand in with the coast and learn what part of Iceland it was, when suddenly the wind larged again, and before long it blew with violence.
At this their peril was much increased, for the night before had been bitterly cold, and the sails had been frozen where they hung outspread, and some of the cables were as stiff as icicles and half as thick as a man's body. Thus under wind that in a short space rose to a great storm, with canvas that could not be reefed, an ocean of ice coming down behind, and seas beneath of an untouchable depth, they were driven on and on towards an unknown shore.
From the like danger may God save all Christian men, even as he saved old Adam and his fellowship, for they had begun to prepare themselves to make a good end of their hopeless lives, when in the lift of the fog the master saw an opening in the coast, and got into it, and his ship rode safely on a quick tide down the fiord called Seydis fiord.