Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/19



was Governor-General of Iceland. He was a Dane, born in Copenhagen, apprenticed to the sea on board an English trader, afterwards employed as a petty officer in the British navy, and some time in command of a Danish privateer during an alliance of Denmark and France against England. A rover, a schemer, a shrewd man of affairs, who was honest by way of interest, just by policy, generous by strategy, and who never suffered his conscience, which was not a good one, to get the better of him.

In one of his adventures he had sailed a Welsh brig from Liverpool to Reykjavík. This had been his introduction to the Icelandic capital, then a little, hungry, creeping settlement, with its face towards America and its wooden feet in the sea. It had also been his introduction to the household of the Welsh merchant, who had a wharf by the old Canning basin at Liverpool, a counting-house behind his residence in Wolstenholme Square, and a daughter of five and twenty. Jorgen, by his own proposal, was to barter English produce for Icelandic tallow. On his first voyage he took out a hundred tons of salt, and brought back a heavy cargo of lava ballast. On his second voyage he took out the Welshman's daughter as his wife, and did not again trouble to send home an empty ship.

He had learned that mischief was once more brewing between England and Denmark, had violated his English letters of marque and run into Copenhagen, induced the authorities 4em