Sir Hall Caine

“ My lad, my good lad, you have made me ashamed. If you dare risk your life, I dare risk my place, and I'll do it; I'll do it."
"God bless you!" said Jason.
"And now let us go to him," said the priest. "He is in yonder room, poor soul. When the order came from Reykjavik that I was to keep close guard and watch on him, nothing would satisfy him but that I should turn the key on him. That was out of fear for me. He is as brave as a lion, and as gentle as a lamb. Come, the sooner he hears his wife's message the better for all of us. It will be a sad blow to him, badly as she treated him. But come!" ”

“ I will leave you."
"That you never shall," said Michael Sunlocks. "We are man and wife now, and as man and wife we shall live together."
"I tell you I will not stay," she cried.
"And I tell you," he replied, "that I am your husband, and you shall give me a wife's obedience."
"Michael, dear Michael," she said, "it is for your own good that I want to leave you, so that the great promise of your life may not be wasted. It is I who am breaking in upon it. And I am nothing. Let me go."
"It is too late, Greeba. As poor man and poor woman we must pass the rest of our life together." ”

“ He went back to Sunlocks, and found him yet more sad than before.
"Only to think," said Sunlocks, "that you, whom I thought my worst enemy, you that once followed me to slay me, should be the man of all men to risk your life for me."
"Yes, life is a fine lottery, isn't it?" said Jason, and he laughed.
"How the Almighty God tears our little passions to tatters," said Sunlocks, "and works His own ends in spite of them."
When all was ready, Jason blew out the candle, and led Sunlocks to the porch. Greeba was there, with little Michael breathing softly from the sling at her breast. ”

“ So, dearest love, my darling, dry your beautiful eyes, and let me ease my conscience the only way I may, for I have no fear, and my wife must have none."
"Sunlocks," said Greeba, "you have made me ashamed. I am no fit wife for a man like you. I am too little-hearted. Oh, why did I ever come? Why? Why?" And she wept as if her heart would break. He comforted her with tender protests, enfolding her in his arms and caressing her lovely head.
"Tell me," he whispered, "nay, there, hide your face in my breast. There, there, tell me now—tell me all." ”

“ Jason slept on the form over against the narrow wooden bed of Michael Sunlocks. He lay down at midnight, and awoke four hours later. Then he stepped to the door and looked out. The night was calm and beautiful; the moon was shining, and the little world of Grimsey slept white and quiet under its coverlet of snow. Snow on the roof, snow in the valley, snow on the mountains so clear against the sky and the stars; no wind, no breeze, no sound on earth and in air save the steady chime of the sea below. ”

“ But Adam's wife, recalling it now, said warmly:
"Maybe you think it wise to bring up your daughter with the merry-begot of any ragabash that comes prowling along from goodness knows where."
"Ruth," said Adam, as quietly as before, "we are going to keep the little one," and at that his wife rose and walked out of the room.
The look of bewilderment had not yet been driven from Stephen Orry's face by the expression of joy that had followed it, and now he stood glancing from Adam to the door and from the door to Adam, as much as to say that if his coming had brought strife he was ready to go. ”

“ He was at her feet; he was her child, her boy, her darling; and when he slumbered she saw him wax and grow, and when he awoke she saw her fetters break. Thus on the bridge of hope's own rainbow she spanned her little world of shame and pain.
The years went by, and Jason grew to be a strong-limbed, straight, stalwart lad, red-haired and passionate-hearted, reckless and improvident as far as improvidence was possible amid the conditions of his bringing up. He was a human waterfowl, and all his days were spent on the sea. Such work as was also play he was eager to do. ”

“ Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, now lashed together, were driven back to their work like beasts of the field. They knew well what their punishment meant to them—that in every hour of life henceforward, in every act, through every thought, each man should drag a human carcase by his side. The barbarity of their doom was hideous; but strangely different were the ways they accepted it. Michael Sunlocks was aflame with indignation; Jason was crushed with shame. The upturned face of Sunlocks was pale, his flaxen hair was dishevelled, his bloodshot eyes were afire. ”

“ For mercy's sake don't torture a dying man," cried Stephen Orry.
"That's not what I meant to do," said Jason, giving way; "and, if you wish it, I will keep the money."
"Thank God," said Stephen Orry.
Some moments thereafter he lay quiet, breathing fast and loud, while Greeba hovered about him. Then in a feebler voice he said, "Do you think, my lad, you'll ever meet my son?"
"Maybe so," said Jason. "I'll go back when I've done what I came to do."
"What is that?" Greeba whispered, but he went on without answering her.
"Though our country is big, our people are few. Where will he be?" ”

“ It was Michael Sunlocks riding between two of the Danish warders as their prisoner, silent, fettered and bound.
Then Adam felt as if he had somewhere fallen into a long sleep, and was now awakening to a new life in a new world, where the people were the same as in the old one but everything about them was strange and terrible. But he recovered from his terror as Michael Sunlocks came on, and he called to him, and Sunlocks heard him, and turned towards him with a look of joy and pain in one quick glance of a moment.
"My son! my boy!" cried Adam.
"Father! Father!" cried Michael Sunlocks. ”

“ Like mother like son," said Ross.
"She had better have married the other one," said Asher, "and I always said so."
"It's self, self, self, with a man like yonder," said Stean.
"Curse him for a selfish brute," said John.
"Aw, an unfeeling monster," said Ross.
And with such heat of anger these generous souls relieved themselves on the name of Michael Sunlocks.
"Boys," said Thurstan, "maybe he has no feeling for the girl, but I'll go bail he has some for himself, and I wouldn't trust but he'd be feeling it mortal keen if he was after getting pulled down from his berth." ”

“ He looked across the headland to where the sloop of war lay outside, and he saw her lights, and their two white waterways, like pillars of silver, over the sea. All was quiet about her.
Still he stood and listened until the last faint sound of the oars had gone. By this time a woolly light had begun to creep over the mountain tops, and a light breeze came down from them.
"It is the dawn," thought Jason. "They are safe."
He went back into the house, pulled down the sheepskin from the window, and lit the candle again. ”

“ It was the winter season in that stern land of the north, when night and day so closely commingle that the darkness seems never to lift. And in the silence of that long night Rachel lay in her little hut, sinking rapidly and much alone. Jason came to her from time to time, in his great sea stockings and big gloves and with the odor of the brine in his long red hair. By her bedside he would stand half-an-hour in silence, with eyes full of wonderment; for life like that of an untamed colt was in his own warm limbs, and death was very strange to him. ”

“ Thus, in the agony of his tortured heart, the hot hard words came from him in a torrent, but before the flood of them was spent, Greeba stepped up to him with flashing eyes, and all the wrath in her heart that comes of outraged love, and cried,
"It is false. It is false, I say. Send for him and he himself will deny it. I can trust him, for he is of a noble soul. Yes, he is a man indeed. I challenge you to send for him. Let him come here. Bring him before me, and he shall judge between us."
"No," said Michael Sunlocks, "I will not send for him. For what you have done he shall suffer." ”

“ The buildings of the town, from the Cathedral to the hovels of the fishing quarter, looked like snow mounds in the desert; the black waste of lava was gone; the black beach was gone; the black jokulls were gone; the black headland was gone that had stretched like a giant hand of many fingers into the black fiord; but height above height, and length beyond length, as far as from sea to sky, and from sea to sea, the world lay lifeless and silent and white around her.
Then, the town being once more awake, Greeba had news of Jason. ”

“ Very full they all were of the doings of the day, and Adam, who never asked that son or servant of his should abridge the flow of talk for his presence, sat with his face to the fire and smoked, dozed, dreamt or thought, and left his people to gossip on. What chance had brought the poor man to his door that night? An Icelander, dumb for all uses of speech, who had lain in the chains of some tyrant captain—a lone man, a seaman without wife or child in his own country, and a fugitive, a runaway, a hunted dog in this one! ”

“ Now what is true of murder must be true of intent to murder, and though I am loth to believe it possible in this instance, honoring and loving as we all do that good man whom you are charged with lying in wait to kill, yet in my duty must I ask you the question—Has Michael Sunlocks spilled blood of your blood, and is it as a redeemer of blood that you go about to slay him?"
There was a dead hush in the little crowded courthouse as Jason lifted his heavy, bloodshot eyes to the Bishop's face and answered, in a weary voice, "I have nothing to say." ”

“ As Parson Gell at the reading-desk mumbled these words through his toothless gums, it seemed to Jason as though he were awakening from a long sleep—a sleep of four years, a sleep full of dreams, both sweet and sad—and that everything was coming back upon him in a dizzy whirl. He remembered his mother, her cruel life, her death, and his own vow, and so vivid did these recollections grow in a moment that he trembled with excitement.
A woman in a black crape bonnet, who sat next to him in the pew, saw his emotions, and put a Bible into his hands. ”

“ He was going towards Kirk Maughold.
He passed two or three little houses by the wayside, but most of them were dark. He came by a tavern, but the door was shut, and no one answered when he knocked. At length, by the turn of a byroad, he saw a light through the trees, and making towards it he found a long shambling house under a clump of elms. He was at Lague.
The light he saw was from one window only, and he stepped up to it. A man was sitting alone by the hearth, with the glow of a gentle fire on his face—a beautiful face, soft and sweet and tender. It was Adam Fairbrother. ”