When the air had cleared, Jason stood uninjured, but Michael Sunlocks hung by his side inert and quiet, and blinded by a jet of steam.
What happened to Jason thereafter no tongue of man could tell. All the fire of his spirit, and all the strength of all his days seemed to flow back upon him in that great moment. He parted the ropes that bound him as if they had been green withes that he snapped asunder. He took Sunlocks in his arms and lifted him up to his shoulder, and hung him across it, as if he had been a child that he placed there. He stepped out of the deadly pit, and strode along over the lava mountain as if he were the sole creature of the everlasting hills. His glance was terrific, his voice was the voice of a wounded beast. The warders dropped their muskets and fled before him like affrighted sheep.
CHAPTER IV.
Through the Chasm of All Men.
It was still early morning; a soft gray mist lay over the moorlands, but the sun that had never set in that northern land was rising through clouds of pink and white over the bald crown of a mountain to the northeast. And towards the rising sun Jason made his way, striding on with the red glow on his own tanned and blackened face, and its ghastly mockery of the hues of life on the pallid cheeks and whitened lips of Sunlocks. From his right ankle and right wrist hung the rings of his broken fetters, and from the left ankle and left wrist of Sunlocks trailed the ropes that had bound them both. Never a moment did he pause to breathe or think or question himself. On and on he went, over lava blocks and lava dust, basaltic rock and heavy clay, and hot blue earth and scorched and withered moss. And still Sunlocks lay over his right side and shoulder, motionless and unconscious, hardly breathing, but alive, with his waist encircled by Jason's great right arm, and his waist-belt grasped tight as with the grip of a talon by Jason's hard right hand.
Before long, Sunlocks recovered some partial consciousness and cried in a faint voice for water. Jason glanced around on the arid plain as if his eyes would pierce the ground for a spring, but no water could he see on any side of him, and so without a word of answer he strode along.
"Water, water," cried Sunlocks again, and just then Jason caught the side-long glint of a river that ran like a pearl chain down the black breast of a mountain.
"Water," cried Sunlocks again and yet again, in a voice of pain and deep pleading, not rightly knowing yet where he was or what bad chance had befallen him.
"Yes, yes, one moment more, only a moment, there—there—there!" whispered Jason.
And muttering such words of comfort and cheer, he quickened his pace towards the river. But when he got near to it he stopped short with a cry of dismay. The river bubbled and smoked.