your Lagmann and let him answer you. Is it as I say or is it
not? Ask him."

The people looked from face to face of the men on the Mount, from
Jorgen Jorgensen to the Judge and from the Judge to the Bishop.

"Is this true?" shouted a voice from the crowd.

But the Judge made no answer, and the Bishop said, "Why all this
wrangling over the body of a dying man?"

"Dying indeed!" said Jorgen Jorgensen, and he laughed. "Look at him."
Michael Sunlocks, again lying in the arms of Greeba, was showing
signs of life. "He will recover fast enough when all is over."

"Is it true?" shouted the same voice from the crowd.

"Yes," said the Judge.

Then the look of bewilderment in the faces of the people deepened to
consternation. At that moment Michael Sunlocks was raised to his
feet. And Jorgen Jorgensen, standing like an old snuffy tiger on the
watch, laughed again, and turning to Jason he pointed at Sunlocks and
said, "What did I say? A pretty farce truly, this pretence at
unconsciousness. Small good it has done him. And he has little to
thank you for. You have brought him here to his death."

What answer Jason would have made him, no man may say, for at that
moment the same terrestrial thunder that had been heard before was
heard again, and the earth became violently agitated as with a deep
pulsation. The people looked into each other's faces with dismay, and
scarcely had they realized the horror that waited to pour itself out
on the world, when a man came galloping from the south and crying,
"The mountains are coming down at Skaptar. Fly! fly!"

They stopped the man and questioned him, and he answered, with terror
in his eyes, that the ice-mountain itself was sweeping down into the
plain. Then he put his heels to his horse and broke away.

Hardly had the people heard this dread word when another man came
galloping from the southwest, and crying, "The sea is throwing up new
islands at Reykianess, and all the rivers are dry."

They stopped this man also, and questioned him, and he answered that
the sky at the coast was raining red-hot stones, so that the sea
hissed with them, and all the land was afire. Then he, too, put his
heels to his horse and broke away.

Scarcely had he gone, when a third man came galloping from the
southeast, and crying, "The land around Hekla is washed away, and not
a green place is left on the face of the earth."

This man also they stopped and questioned, and he answered that a
torrent of