was as rough for the
guards behind him, and he could hear that the horses had been drawn
up from their gallop to a slow-paced walk. At each step he scoured
the bleak plain for shelter, and at length he saw among piles of
vitreous snags a hummock of great slabs clashed together, with one
side rent open. It was like nothing else on earth but a tomb in an
old burial ground, where the vaults have fallen in and wrecked the
monuments above them. Through the cankered lips of this hummock into
its gaping throat, Jason pushed the unconscious body of Sunlocks, and
crept in after it. And lying there in the gloom he waited for the
guards to come on, and as they came he strained his ear to catch the
sound of the words that passed between them.

"No, no, we're on the right course," said one voice. How hollow and
far away it sounded! "You saw his footmarks on the moss that we've
just crossed over, and you'll see them again on the clay we're coming
to."

"You're wrong," said another voice, "we saw one man's footsteps only,
and we are following two."

"Don't I tell you the red man is carrying the other."

"All these miles? Impossible! Anyhow _that's_ their course, not
_this_."

"Why so?"

"Because they're bound for Hafnafiord."

"Why Hafnafiord?"

"To take ship and clear away."

"Tut, man, they've got bigger game than that. They're going to
Reykjavik."

"What! To run into the lion's mouth?"

"Yes, and to draw his teeth, too. What has the Captain always said?
Why, that the red man has all along been spy for the fair one, and we
know who _he_ is. Let him once set foot in Reykjavik and he'll do
over again what he did before."

Crouching over Sunlocks in the darkness of that grim vault, Jason
heard these words as the guards rode past him in the glare of the hot
sun, and not until they were gone did he draw his breath. But just as
he lay back with a sigh of relief, thinking all danger over, suddenly
he heard a sound that startled him. It was the sniffing of a dog
outside his hiding place, and at the next instant two glittering eyes
looked in upon him from the gap whereby he had entered.

The dog growled, and Jason tried to pacify it. It barked, and then
Jason laid hold of it, and gripped it about the throat to silence it.
It fumed and fought, but Jason held it like a vice, until there came
a whistle and a call, and then it struggled afresh.

"Erik!" shouted a voice without. "Erik, Erik!" and then whistle
followed whistle