The Bondman: A New Saga

by Sir Hall Caine

He was crushed, but he was strong of heart and would not despair. So he pushed on over this green plain, through a hundred thousand mossy mounds that looked like the graves of a world of dead men.

But when he came out of it his case seemed yet more forlorn, for leaving the soft valley behind he had come upon a lava stream, a sea of stones, not dust or cinders, but a bleached cake of lava rock, with never a soft place for the foot, and never a green spot for the eye. Not a leaf to rustle in the breeze, not a blade of grass to whisper to it, not a bird's sweet voice, or the song of running water. Nothing lived there but dead silence on earth and in air. Nothing but that, or in other hours the roar of wind, the rattle of rain, and the crash of thunder.

All this time Jason had walked on under the sweltering sun, never resting, never pausing, buoyed up with the hope of water—water for the fainting man that he might not die. But in the desolation of that moment he dropped Sunlocks from his shoulder, and threw himself down beside him.

And sitting there, with the head of his unconscious comrade upon his knees, he put it himself to say what had been the good of all that he had done, and if it would not have been better for both of them if he had submitted to base tyranny and remained at the Mines. Had he not brought this man out to his death? What else was before him in this waste wilderness, where there was no drop of water to cool his hot forehead or moisten his parched tongue? And thinking that his yoke-fellow might die, and die at his hands, and that he would then be alone, with the only man's face gone from him that had ever brightened life for him, his heart began to waver and to say, "Rise up, Jason, rise up and go back."

But just then he was conscious of the click-clack of horses' hoofs on the echoing face of the stony sea about him, and he shaded his eyes and looked around, and saw in the distance a line of men on ponies coming on in his direction. And though he thought of the guards that had been signalled to pursue him, he made no effort to escape. He did not stir or try to hide himself, but sat as before with the head of his comrade on his knees.

The men on the ponies came up and passed him closely by without seeing him. But he saw them clearly and heard their talk. They were not the guard from the settlement, but Thing-men bound for Thingvellir and the meeting of Althing there. And while they were going on before him in their laughter and high spirits, Jason could scarce resist the impulse to cry out on them to stop and take him along with them as their prisoner, for that he was an outlaw who had broken his outlawry, and carried away with him this fainting man at his knees.

But before the words would form themselves, and while his blistering lips were shaping to speak them, a great thought came to him, and struck him back to silence.

Why had he torn away from the Sulphur Mines? Only from a gloomy love of life, life for his comrade, and life for himself. And what life was there in this trackless waste, this mouldering dumb wilderness? None, none. Nothing but death lay here; death in these gaunt solitudes; death in these dry deserts; death amid these ghastly, haggard wrecks of inhuman things. What chance could there be of escape from Iceland? None, none, none.

But there was one hope yet. Who were these men that had passed him? They were Thing-men; they were the lawmakers. Where were they going? They were going to the Mount of Laws. Why were they going there? To hold their meeting of Althing. What was Althing? The highest power of the State; the supreme Court of legislature and law.

What did all this mean? It meant that Jason as an Icelander knew the laws of his country, and that one great law above all other laws he remembered at that instant. It concerned outlaws. And what were they but outlaws, both of them? It ordered that the condemned could appeal at Althing against the injustice of his sentence. If the ranks of the judges opened for his escape, then he was saved.