g into the sea. They were
then by the needles of Portland, side on to the vast arch which the
heavy blow of the tides of ten thousand years has beaten out of the
rock. At the sea's edge were a hundred jagged prongs of burnt crag,
flecked with the white wings and echoing with the wild cry of
countless sea birds; behind that was a plain of lava dust for
seabeach; farther back the dome of a volcano, lying asleep under its
coverlet of snow; still farther a gray glacier, glistening with
silver spikes; and beyond all a black jokull, Wilderness-jokull, torn
by many earthquakes, seamed and streaked with the unmelted ice of
centuries and towering over a stony sea of desert, untrodden yet by
the foot of man.

Desolate as the scene was, Jason melted at the sight of it; for this
island, born of fire and frost, stood to him as the only place, in
God's wide world that he could call his home, and little as it had
done for him, less than nothing as he owed to it, yet it was his
native land, and in coming back to its bleak and terrible shores he
looked upon it with a thrill of the heart and saw it through his
tears.

But he had little time and less desire to give way to tender
feelings, and very soon he had small need to steel himself to the
work before him, for everything served to spur him on to it. This was
Iceland. This was the new home of Michael Sunlocks. This was where
his mother had starved.

This was where _she_ had fled to, who had wronged him sorely.

Early the next day they rounded the Smoky Point, leaving the Old Man
crag under its shocks of foam to the right, and the rock called the
Mealsack, under its white cloud of sea gulls, to the left, and began
to beat down the fiord towards Reykjavik. It was not yet six
o'clock--the Icelandic mid-evening--when they cast anchor inside the
little island of Engy; but the year was far worn towards winter, and
the night of the northern land had closed down.

And the time having come to leave the whaler, Jason remembered that
he had been but a moody companion for his shipmates, though they had
passed some perilous days and nights together. So he bade them
good-bye with what cheer he could summon up at last, and the rough
fellows kissed him after the manner of their people, showing no
rancor at all, but only pity, and saying among themselves that it was
plain to see he had known trouble and, though given to strange
outbursts when alone, was as simple and as gentle as a child, and
w