During the ten years in which he had been as a dead man all channels of communication had been closed to him, and except for information casually gathered, he had little or no knowledge of what had occurred in Iceland. And now, finding himself for the first time face to face with men who had been in constant touch with his people, he had a hundred questions which he yearned to ask: "Is my mother alive? Is she well? And my little daughter--has God been good to me and let her live, or is all my labor wasted?"
But he was afraid to learn the truth too suddenly, so he waited and watched and listened for answers to the questions he dared not ask. Meantime he tried to amuse himself with the curiosity of the captain and his fellow-passengers, who were clearly at a loss to know who he was, where he was born, and what family of the Christianssons he came from. It was a perilous pleasure, a dizzy joy, to listen to the names of his family and to hear himself discussed; and sometimes, in mortal shame of the subterfuges to which his disguise condemned him, he could hardly resist an impulse to blurt out the truth of his identity, and sometimes he had to leap up from his place in the smoking-room and fly.
"You've not been home very lately, Mr. Christiansson?" said the captain, who was smoking his long pipe after mid-day dinner while the ship swung along in open sea.
"Not very lately, Captain," said Christiansson.
"You'll see changes, then," said the merchant.
"No doubt, no doubt!"
"The new Constitution has worked wonders for Iceland, sir."
"Worked wonders, has it?"
"The barter trade has gone, the cash business is established everywhere, and as for the fishing, it's another industry, sir."
"Another industry, is it?"