out of revenge for
their paltry fines they had resolved to drive two living men to their
death.

"Now, listen again," said Jason, "and mark my words. We will do as
you command us, and work in this pit of hell. I will not die in
it--that I know. But this man beside me is weak and ill, heaven curse
your inhumanity; and if anything happens to him, and I am alive to
see it, as sure as there is strength left in my arms, and blood in my
body, I will tear you limb from limb."

So saying, he plunged his spade into the ground beneath him, with an
oath to drive it, and at the next instant there was a flash of blue
flame, an avalanche of smoke, a hurricane of unearthly noises, a cry
like that of a dying man, and then an awful silence.

When the air had cleared, Jason stood uninjured, but Michael Sunlocks
hung by his side inert and quiet, and blinded by a jet of steam.

What happened to Jason thereafter no tongue of man could tell. All
the fire of his spirit, and all the strength of all his days seemed
to flow back upon him in that great moment. He parted the ropes that
bound him as if they had been green withes that he snapped asunder.
He took Sunlocks in his arms and lifted him up to his shoulder, and
hung him across it, as if he had been a child that he placed there.
He stepped out of the deadly pit, and strode along over the lava
mountain as if he were the sole creature of the everlasting hills.
His glance was terrific, his voice was the voice of a wounded beast.
The warders dropped their muskets and fled before him like affrighted
sheep.

CHAPTER IV.

THROUGH THE CHASM OF ALL MEN.

It was still early morning; a soft gray mist lay over the moorlands,
but the sun that had never set in that northern land was rising
through clouds of pink and white over the bald crown of a mountain to
the northeast. And towards the rising sun Jason made his way,
striding on with the red glow on his own tanned and blackened face,
and its ghastly mockery of the hues of life on the pallid cheeks and
whitened lips of Sunlocks. From his right ankle and right wrist hung
the rings of his broken fetters, and from the left ankle and left
wrist of Sunlocks trailed the ropes that had bound them both. Never a
moment did he pause to breathe or think or question himself. On and
on he went, over lava blocks and lava dust, basaltic rock and heavy
clay, and hot blue earth and scorched and withered moss. And still
Sunlocks lay over his right side