CHAPTER XIII.
The Fall of Michael Sunlocks
When the Fairbrothers, in the first days after their coming to Iceland, started inquiries touching the position and influence of Michael Sunlocks, thinking thereby to make sure of their birds in the bush before parting with their bird in the hand, they frequented a little drinking-shop in the Cheapstead where sailors of many nations congregated, Danes, Icelanders, Norwegians, English, and Irish. Hearing there what satisfied their expectations, their pride began to swell, and as often as Michael Sunlocks was named with honor they blew up their breasts like bantams and said he was their brother, so to speak, and had been brought up in the same house with them since he was a slip of a brat of two or three. And if any who heard them glanced them over with doubtful eyes they straightway broke into facetious stories concerning the boyhood of Sunlocks, showing all their wondrous kindness to him as big brothers towards a little one.
Now these trifling events were of grave consequence to the fortunes of the Fairbrothers, and the fate of Michael Sunlocks, at two great moments. The first of the two was when Thurstan broke into open rebellion against Jacob. Then, with a sense of his wise brother's pitiable blunderheadedness, the astute Thurstan went off to the same drinking-shop to console himself with drink, and there he was addressed, when he was well and comfortably drunk, by a plausible person who spoke an unknown tongue. The end of that conference was nevertheless an idea firmly settled in Thurstan's mind that if he could not get money out of Michael Sunlocks he could at least get satisfaction.
This was the matter that Thurstan darkly hinted at when Jacob, being utterly discomfited, had to leave all further schemes to his brethren. So that day he returned to his rendezvous, met the plausible person again, and later in the evening sought out his brothers and said, "Didn't I tell ye to leave to me?"
"What's going doing?" said four voices at once.
"Plucking him down, the upstart, that's what's going doing," said Thurstan.
Then to five pairs of eager ears it slowly leaked out that a Danish ship lay in the harbor with a mysterious cargo of great casks, supposed to contain tallow; that after discharging their contents these casks were to be filled with shark's oil; that waiting the time to fill them they were to be stored (as all other warehouses were full of bonder's stock) in the little cell of detention under the senate-house; and, finally and most opportunely, that a meeting of Althing had been summoned on special business for the next night following, and that Michael Sunlocks was to be present.
The Fairbrothers heard all this with eyes that showed how well they understood it and keenly gloated over it. And late the same night the cargo of great casks was unshipped at the jetty, wheeled up to the senate-house and lodged there, carefully, silently, one by one. Thurstan helping, a few stragglers looking on, the stammering doorkeeper, long Jon, not anywhere visible, and no one else in the little sleepy town a whit the wiser. This being done, Thurstan went back to his lodging with the content of a soul at ease, saying to himself, "As I say, if we don't get anything else, we'll get satisfaction; and if we get what's promised I've a safe place to put it until the trouble's over and we can clear away, and that's the little crib under the turret of the cathedral church."
Then the worthy man lay down to sleep.
Before Thurstan was awake next morning Reykjavik was all astir. It had become known that a special sitting of Althing had been summoned for that night, and because nothing was known much was said concerning the business afoot. People gathered in groups where the snow of the heavy drifts had been banked up at the street corners, and gossiped and guessed. Such little work as the great winter left to any man was done in haste or not at all, that men might meet in the stores, the drinking-shops, and on the Cheapstead and ask, "Why?" "Wherefore?" and "What does it mean?" That some event of great moment was pending seemed to be the common opinion everywhere, though what ground it rested on no one knew, for no one knew anything. Only on one point was the feeling more general, or nearer right; that the President himself was at the root and centre of whatever was coming.
Before nightfall this vague sentiment, which ever hovers, like a dark cloud over a nation when a storm is near to breaking upon it, had filled every house in the capital, so that when the hour was come for the gathering of Althing the streets were thronged. Tow-headed children in goatskin caps ran here and there, women stood at the doors of houses, young girls leaned out of windows in spite of the cold, sailors and fishermen with pipes between their lips and their hands deep in their pockets lounged in grave silence outside the taverns, and old men stood under the open lamps by the street corners and chewed and snuffed to keep themselves warm.
In the neighborhood of the wooden senate-house on the High Street the throng was densest, and such of the members as came afoot had to crush their ways to the door. All the space within that had been allotted to the public was filled as soon as stammering Jon opened the side door. When no more room was left the side door was closed again and locked, and it was afterwards remembered, when people had time to put their heads together, that long Jon was there and then seen to pass the key of this side door to one of the six English strangers who had lately come to the town. That stranger was Thurstan Fairbrother.
The time of waiting before the proceedings commenced was passed by those within the Senate House in snuff-taking and sneezing and coughing, and a low buzz of conversation, full of solemn conjecture.
The members came in twos and threes, and every fresh comer was quizzed for a hint of the secret of the night. But grave and silent, when taken together, with the gravity and solemnity of so many oxen, and some of the oxen's sullen stupidity, were the faces both of members and spectators. Yet among both were faces that told of amused unbelief; calculating spirits that seemed to say that all this excitement was a bubble and would presently burst like one; sapient souls who, when the world is dead, will believe in no judgment until they hear the last trump.
There were two parties in the Senate – the Church party, that wanted religion to be the basis of the reformed government; and the Levellers, who wished the distinctions of clergy and laity to be abolished so far as secular power could go. The Church party was led by the Bishop, who was a member of the higher chamber, the Council, by virtue of his office; the Levellers were led by the little man with piercing eyes and the square brush of iron-gray hair who had acted as spokesman to the Court at the trial of Red Jason. As each of these arrived there was a faint commotion through the house.
Presently the Speaker came shuffling in, wiping his brow with his red handkerchief, and at the same moment the thud of a horse's hoofs on the hard snow outside, followed by a deep buzz as of many voices – not cheering nor yet groaning – told of the coming of the President.
Then, amid suppressed excitement, Michael Sunlocks entered the house, looking weary, pale, much older, and stooping slightly under his flaxen hair, as if conscious of the gaze of many eyes fixed steadfastly upon him.
After the Speaker had taken his chair, Michael Sunlocks rose in his place amid dead stillness.
"Sir, and gentlemen," he said in a tense voice, speaking slowly, calmly and well, "you are met here at my instance to receive a message of some gravity. It is scarcely more than half a year since it was declared and enacted by this present Council of Althing that the people of Iceland were and should be constituted, established and confirmed to be a Republic or Free State, governed by the Supreme Authority of the Nation, the people's representatives. You were then pleased to do me the honor of electing me to be your first President, and though I well knew that no man had less cause to put himself forward in the cause of his country than I, being the youngest among you, the least experienced, and, by birth, an Englishman, yet I undertook the place I am now in because I had taken a chief hand in pulling down the old order, and ought, therefore, to lend the best help I could towards putting up the new. Other reasons influenced me, such as the desire to keep the nation from falling amid many internal dissensions into extreme disorder and becoming open to the common enemy. I will not say that I had no personal motives, no private aims, no selfish ambitions in stepping in where your confidence opened the way, but you will bear me witness that in the employment to which the nation called me, though there may have been passion and mistakes, I have endeavored to discharge the duty of an honest man."
There was a low murmur of assent, then a pause, then a hush, and then Michael Sunlocks continued:
"But, gentlemen, I have come to see that I am not able for such a trust as the burden of this government, and I now beg to be dismissed of my charge."
Then the silence was broken by many exclamations of surprise. They fell on the ear of Michael Sunlocks like the ground-swell of a distant sea. His white face quivered, but his eye was bright, and he did not flinch.
"It is no doubt your concernment to know what events and what convictions have so suddenly influenced me, and I can only claim your indulgence in withholding that part of both that touches the interests of others. For myself, I can but say that I have made mistakes and lost self-confidence; that being unable to manage my own affairs I am unwilling to undertake the affairs of the nation; that I am convinced I am unfit for the great place I hold; that any name were fitter than mine for my post, any person fitter than I am for its work; and I say this from my heart, God knows."
He was listened to in silence but amid a tumult of unheard emotion, and as he went on his voice, though still low, was so charged with suppressed feeling that it seemed in that dead stillness to rise to a cry.
"Gentlemen," he said, "though this may come on you with surprise do not think it has been lightly resolved upon, or that it is to me a little thing to renounce the honor with the burden of government; I will deal plainly and faithfully with you and say that all my heart was in the work you gave me, and though I held my life in my hand, I was willing to adventure it in that high place where the judgment of Althing placed me. So if I beg of you to release me I sacrifice more by my resignation than you by your dismissal. If I had pride, heaven has humbled it, and that is a righteous judgment of God. Young and once hopeful, I am withdrawing from all sight of hope. I am giving up my cherished ambitions and the chances of success. When I leave this place you will see me no more. I am to be as nothing henceforward, for the pole-star of my life is gone out. So not without feeling, not without pain, I ask you to dismiss me and let me go my ways."
He sat down upon these words amid the stunned stupefaction of those who heard him, and when he had ceased to speak it seemed as if he were still speaking. Presently the people recovered their breath and there was the harsh grating of feet, and a murmur like a low sough of wind.
Then rose the little man with the brush hair, the leader of the Levellers, and the chief opponent of Michael Sunlocks in the Presidency. His name was Grimmsson. Clearing his throat, raspily, he began to speak in short, jerky sentences. This was indeed a surprise that moved the house to great astonishment. There was a suspicion of mock heroics about it that he, for his part, could not shake off, for they all knew the President for a dreamer of dreams. The President had said that it was within the concernment of Althing to know how it stood that he had so suddenly and surprisingly become convinced of his unfitness. Truly he was right there. Also the President had said that he had undertaken his post not so much out of hope of doing any good as out of a desire to prevent mischief and evil. Yet what was he now doing? Running them headlong into confusion and disorder.
The leader of the Levellers sat down, and a dark-browed fellow from among his followers rose in his place. What did this hubbub mean? If the President had been crazy in his health they might have understood it; but the Lord was pleased to preserve him. Perhaps they had to look deeper. Whispers were abroad among some who had been near to the President's person that the time had come to settle the order and prosperity of Iceland on a new basis. He made no doubt such whispers implied a Protectorate, perhaps even a Monarchy. Did the President think to hasten the crisis that would lead to that change? Did he hope to alter the name of President for Protector, or for something yet higher? Was he throwing his sprat to catch a mackerel? Let them look to it.
The dark-browed man sat down, with a grin of triumph, and his place was taken by a pert little beardless person, with a smirk on his face. They had all read the parable of how a certain man made a feast, and did his friends the honor to invite them; but first one friend for one halting reason, and then another for a reason yet more lame, excused himself from sitting at the good man's table. Well, one of these excuses was from a man who had married a wife, and therefore could not come. Now the President had married a wife —
The little man got no further, for Michael Sunlocks, whose features had flushed up, leaped to his feet again, against all order and precedent in that rude chamber so reverent of law.
"I knew," he said, amid the silence of the wide-eyed people, "when I came to this house to-day, that the censure of Iceland might follow me when I left it, but its shame shall not pursue me. I also knew that there were persons not well content with the present order of things who might show their discontent as they had opportunity; but before the insinuations of base motives that have just been made I take you to witness that all that go with them are malicious figments. My capacity any man may impeach, but my honest name none shall question without challenge, for the sole pride I shall carry away with me when I leave this place shall be the pride of an upright life."
With that he put on his hat where he stood, and the people, thrilled to their hearts by his ringing voice, and his eyes full of splendid courage, broke into a great clamor of cheers.
"Peace, peace," cried a deep voice over the tumult. The old Bishop had risen to speak.
"This is a quarrelsome age," he said, "an age when there seems to be a strange itching in the spirits of men, when near every man seems to seek his brother's disquiet all he may, when wretched jealousies and the spirit of calumny turn everything to gall and wormwood. But can we not take the President's message for what it claims to be, asking him for no reasons that concern us not? When has he betrayed us? His life since his coming here has been marked by strict integrity. When has pride been his bane? His humility has ever been his praise. He has been modest with the highest power and shown how little he valued those distances he was bound to keep up. When has mammon been his god? If he leaves us now he leaves us a poor man, as Althing may well assure itself. But let us pray that this may not come to pass. When he was elected to the employment he holds, being so young a man, many trembled – and I among them – for the nation that had intrusted its goods and its lives to his management, but now we know that only in his merit and virtue can it find its safety and repose. Let me not be prodigal of praise before his face, but honor and honesty require this, that we say that so true a man is not to be found this day in Iceland."
The Bishop's words had quickened the pulse of the people, and cheer followed cheer again. "It is written," continued the Bishop, "that whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. Our young President has this day sat down in the lowest room; and if he must needs leave us, having his own reasons that are none of ours, may the Lord cause His face to shine upon him, and comfort him in all his adversities."
Then there was but one voice in that assembly, the voice of a loud Amen. And Michael Sunlocks had risen again with a white face and dim eyes, to return his thanks, and say his last word before the vote for his release should be taken, when there was a sudden commotion, a sound of hurrying feet, a rush, a startled cry, and at the next moment a company of soldiers had entered the house from the cell below, and stood with drawn swords on the floor.
Before anyone had recovered from his surprise one of the soldiers had spoken. "Gentlemen," he said, "the door is locked – you are prisoners of the King of Denmark."
"Betrayed!" shouted fifty voices at once, and then there was wild confusion.
"So this mysterious mummery is over at last," said the leader of the Levellers, rising up with rigid limbs, and a scared and whitened face. "Now we know why we have all been brought here to-night. Betrayed indeed, – and there stands the betrayer."
So saying he pointed scornfully at Michael Sunlocks, who stood where he had risen, with the look of deep emotion hardly yet banished from his face by the look of bewilderment that followed it.
"False," Michael Sunlocks cried. "It is false as hell."
But in that quick instant the people looked at him with changed eyes, and received his words with a groan of rage that silenced him.
That night Jorgen Jorgensen sailed up the fiord, and, landing at Reykjavik, took possession of it, and the second Republic of Iceland was at an end.
That night, too, when the Fairbrothers, headed by Thurstan, trudged through the streets on their way to Government House, looking to receive the reward that had been promised them, they were elbowed by a drunken company of the Danes who frequented the drinking-shops on the Cheapstead.
"Why, here are his brothers," shouted one of the roysterers, pointing at the Fairbrothers.
"His brothers! His brothers!" shouted twenty more.
Thurstan tried to protest and Jacob to fraternize, but all was useless. The brethren were attacked for the relation they had claimed with the traitor who had fallen, and thus the six worthy and unselfish souls who had come to Iceland for gain and lost everything, and waited for revenge and only won suspicion, were driven off in peril of their necks, with a drunken mob at full cry behind them.
They took refuge in a coasting schooner, setting sail for the eastern fiords. Six days afterwards the schooner was caught in the ice at the mouth of Seydis fiord, imprisoned there four months, out of reach of help from land or sea, and every soul aboard died miserably.
Short as had been the shrift of Red Jason, the shrift of Michael Sunlocks was yet shorter. On the order of Jorgen Jorgensen, the "late usurper of the Government of Iceland" was sent for the term of his natural life to the Sulphur Mines that he had himself established as a penal settlement.
And such was the fall of Michael Sunlocks.
The Book of Red Jason
CHAPTER I.
What Befell Old Adam
Now it would be a long task to follow closely all that befell the dear old Adam Fairbrother, from the time when the ship wherein he sailed for Iceland weighed anchor in Ramsey bay. Yet not to know what strange risks he ran, and how in the end he overcame all dangers, by God's grace and his own extreme labor, is not to know this story of how two good men with a good woman between them pursued each other over the earth with vows of vengeance, and came together at length in heaven's good time and way. So not to weary the spirit with much speaking, yet to leave nothing unsaid that shall carry us onward to that great hour when Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks stood face to face, let us begin where Adam's peril began, and hasten forward to where it ended.
Fourteen days out of Ramsey, in latitude of 64 degrees, distant about five leagues north of the Faroes, and in the course of west northwest, hoping to make the western shores of Iceland, Adam with his shipmates was overtaken by foul weather, with high seas and strong wind opposing them stoutly from the northwest. Thus they were driven well into the latitude of sixty-six off the eastern coast of Iceland, and there, though the seas still ran as high as to the poop, they were much beset by extraordinary pieces of ice which appeared to come down from Greenland. Then the wind abated, and an unsearchable and noisome fog followed; so dense that not an acre of sea could be seen from the top-mast head, and so foul that the compasses would not work in it. After that, though they wrought night and day with poles and spikes, they were beaten among the ice as scarce any ship ever was before, and so terrible were the blows they suffered that many a time they thought the planks must be wrenched from the vessel's sides. Nevertheless they let fall sail, thinking to force their way through the ice before they were stowed to pieces, and, though the wind was low, yet the ship felt the canvas and cleared the shoals that encompassed her. The wind then fell to a calm, but still the fog hung heavily over the sea, which was black and smelt horribly. And when they thought to try their soundings, knowing that somewhere thereabouts the land must surely be, they heard a noise that seemed at first like the tract of the shore. It was worse than that, for it was the rut of a great bank of ice, two hundred miles deep, breaking away from the far shores of Greenland, and coming with its steady sweep, such as no human power could resist, towards the coasts of Iceland. Between that vast ice floe and the land they lay, with its hollow and terrible voice in their ears, and with no power to fly from it, for their sail hung loose and idle in the dead stillness of the air.
Oh! it is an awful thing to know that death is swooping down on you hour by hour; to hear it coming with its hideous thunder, like the groans of damned souls, and yet to see nothing of your danger for the day darkness that blinds you. But the shipmaster was a stout-hearted fellow, and while the fog continued and he was without the help of wind or compass, he let go a raven that he had aboard to see if it could discover land. The raven flew to the northeast, and did not return to the ship, and by that token the master knew that the land of Iceland lay somewhere near on their starboard bow. So he was for lowering the long boat, to stand in with the coast and learn what part of Iceland it was, when suddenly the wind larged again, and before long it blew with violence.
At this their peril was much increased, for the night before had been bitterly cold, and the sails had been frozen where they hung outspread, and some of the cables were as stiff as icicles and half as thick as a man's body. Thus under wind that in a short space rose to a great storm, with canvas that could not be reefed, an ocean of ice coming down behind, and seas beneath of an untouchable depth, they were driven on and on towards an unknown shore.
From the like danger may God save all Christian men, even as he saved old Adam and his fellowship, for they had begun to prepare themselves to make a good end of their hopeless lives, when in the lift of the fog the master saw an opening in the coast, and got into it, and his ship rode safely on a quick tide down the fiord called Seydis fiord.
There the same night they dropped anchor in a good sound, and went instantly to prayer, to praise God for His delivery of them, and Adam called the haven where they moored, "The Harbor of Good Providence." So with cheerful spirits, thinking themselves indifferently safe, they sought their births, and so ended the first part of their peril in God's mercy and salvation.
But the storm that had driven them into their place of refuge drove their dread enemy after them, and in the night, while they lay in the first sleep of four days, the ice encompassed them and crushed them against the rocks. The blow struck Adam out of a tranquil rest, and he thought nothing better than that he was awakening for another world. All hands were called to the pumps, for the master still thought the ship was staunch and might be pushed along the coast by the shoulders with crows of iron, and thus ride out to sea. But though they worked until the pumps sucked, it was clear that the poor vessel was stuck fast in the ice, and that she must soon get her death-wound. So, at break of day, the master and crew, with Adam Fairbrother, took what they could carry of provisions and clothes, and clambered ashore, leaving the ship to her fate.
It was a bleak and desolate coast they had landed upon, with never a house in sight, never a cave that they might shelter in, or a stone that would cover them against the wind; with nothing around save the bare face of a broad fell, black and lifeless, strewn over with small light stones sucked full of holes like the honeycomb, but without trees, or bush, or grass, or green moss. And there they suffered more privations than it is needful to tell, waiting for the ice to break, looking on at its many colors of blue, and purple, and emerald green, and yellow, and its many strange and wonderful shapes, resembling churches, and castles, and spires, and turrets, and cities, all ablaze in the noonday sun.
They built themselves a rude hut of the stones like pumice, and, expecting the dissolution of the ice, they kept watch on their ship, which itself looked like an iceberg frozen into a ship's shape. And meantime some of their company suffered very sorely. Though the year was not yet far advanced towards winter, some of the men swooned of the cold that came up from the ice of the fiord; the teeth of others became loose and the flesh of their gums fell away, and on the soles of the feet of a few the frost of the nights raised blisters as big as walnuts.
Partly from these privations and partly from loss of heart when at last one evil day he saw his good ship crushed to splinters against the rocks, the master fell sick, and was brought so low that in less than a week he lay expecting his good hour. And feeling his extremity he appointed Adam to succeed him as director of the company, to guide them to safety over the land, since Providence forbade that they should sail on the seas. Then, all being done, so far as his help could avail, he stretched himself out for his end, only praying in his last hours that he might be allowed to drink as much ale as he liked from the ship's stores that had been saved. This Adam ordered that he should, and as long as he lived the ale was brought to him in the hut where he lay, and he drank it until, between draught and draught, it froze in the jug at his side. After that he died – an honest, a worthy, and strong-hearted man.
And Adam, being now by choice of the late master and consent of his crew the leader of the company, began to make a review of all men and clothes and victuals, and found that there were eleven of them in all, with little more than they stood up in, and provisions to last them, with sparing, three weeks at utmost. And seeing that they were cut off from all hope of a passage by sea, he set himself to count the chances of a journey by land, and by help of the ship's charts and much beating of the wings of memory to recover what he had learned of Iceland in the days when his dear lad Sunlocks had left him for these shores, he reckoned that by following the sea line under the feet of the great Vatna-Jokull, they might hope, if they could hold out so long, to reach Reykjavik at last. Long and weary the journey must be, with no town and scarce a village to break it, and no prospect of shelter by the way, save what a few farms might give them. So Adam ordered the carpenter to recover what he could of the ship's sails to make a tent, and of its broken timbers to make a cart to carry victuals, and when this was done they set off along the fell side on the first stage of their journey.
The same day, towards nightfall, they came upon a little group of grass-covered houses at the top of the fiord, and saw the people of Iceland for the first time. They were a little colony cut off by impassable mountains from their fellows within the island, and having no ships in which they dare venture to their kind on the seas without; tall and strong-limbed in their persons, commonly of yellow hair, but sometimes of red, of which neither sex was ashamed; living on bread that was scarce eatable, being made of fish that had been dried and powdered; lazy and unclean; squalid and mean-spirited, and with the appearance of being depressed and kept under. It was a cheerless life they lived at the feet of the great ice-bound jokull and the margin of the frozen sea, so that looking around on the desolate place and the dumb wilderness of things before and behind, Adam asked himself why and how any living souls had ever ventured there.
But for all that the little colony were poor and wretched, the hearts of the shipwrecked company leapt up at sight of them, and in the joyful gabble of unintelligible speech between them old Adam found that he could understand some of the words. And when the islanders saw that in some sort Adam understood them they singled him out from the rest of his company, falling on his neck and kissing him after the way of their nation, and concluding among themselves that he was one of their own people who had gone away in his youth and never been heard of after. And Adam, though he looked shy at their musty kisses, was nothing loth to allow that they might be Manxmen strayed and lost.
For Adam and his followers two things came of this encounter, and the one was to forward and the other to retard their journey. The first was that the islanders sold them twelve ponies, of the small breed that abound in that latitude, and gave them a guide to lead them the nearest way to the capital. The ponies cost them forty kroner, or more than two pounds apiece, and the guide was to stand to them in two kroner, or two shillings, a day. This took half of all they had in money, and many were the heavy groans of the men at parting with it; but Adam argued that their money was of no other value there than as a help out of their extremity, and that all the gold in the banks, if he had it, would be less to him then than the little beast he was bestriding.