The Bondman: A New Saga

by Sir Hall Caine

That night when they had returned to the hut wherein they slept, or tried to sleep, they found that some well-meaning stranger had been there in their absence and nailed up on the grimy walls above their beds, a card bearing the text, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And so ghastly seemed the irony of those words in that place that Jason muttered an oath between his teeth as he read them, and Sunlocks threw himself down, being unbound for the night, with a peal of noisy laughter, and a soul full of strange bitterness.

The next day after that, the sixth of their life together, rose darker than any day that had gone before it, for the wounded hand of Michael Sunlocks was then purple and black, and swollen to the size of two hands, and his bodily strength was so low that, try as bravely as he might to stand erect, whenever he struggled to his feet he fell to the ground again. Thinking nothing of this, the warders were for strapping him up to Jason as before, but while they were in the act of doing so he fainted in their hands. Then Jason swept them from him, and vowed that the first man that touched Sunlocks again should lie dead at his feet.

"Send for the Captain," he cried, "and if the man has any bowels of compassion let him come and see what you have done."

The warders took Jason at his word, and sent a message to the office saying that one of their prisoners was mutinous, and the other pretending to be ill. After a time the Captain despatched two other warders to the help of the first two and these words along with them for his answer: "If one rebels, punish both."

Nothing loth for such exercise, the four warders set themselves to decide what the punishment should be, and while they laid their heads together, Jason was bending over Sunlocks, who was now recovered to consciousness, asking his pardon in advance for the cruel penalty that his rash act was to bring on both of them.

"Forgive me," he said. "I couldn't help it. I didn't know what I was doing."

"There is nothing to forgive, brother," whispered Michael Sunlocks.

And thus with stammering tongues they comforted one another, and with hands clasped together they waited for the punishment that had to come.

At length the warders concluded that for refusing to work, for obstinate disobedience, and for threatening, nothing would serve but that their prisoners should straightway do the most perilous work to be found that day at the sulphur mines.

Now this was the beginning of the end for Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, and if the evil chance had not befallen them, God alone can say how long they might have lived together at Krisuvik, or how soon or how late they would have become known to one another by their true names and characters. But heaven itself had its purposes, even in the barbarity of base-hearted men, as a means towards the great end that was near at hand. And this was the way of its coming.