Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/255



it would be a long task to follow closely all that befell dear old Adam Fairbrother, from the time when the ship wherein he sailed for Iceland weighed anchor in Ramsey Bay. Yet not to know what strange risks he ran, and how in the end he overcame all dangers, by God's grace and his own extreme labour, is not to know this story of how two good men with a good woman between them pursued each other over the earth with vows of vengeance, and came together at length in Heaven's good time and way. So not to weary the spirit with much speaking, yet to leave nothing unsaid that shall carry us onward to that great hour when Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks stood face to face, let us begin where Adam's peril began, and hasten forward to where it ended.

Fourteen days out of Ramsey, in latitude of sixty-four degrees, distant about five leagues north of the Faroes, hoping to make the western shores of Iceland, Adam with his shipmates was overtaken by foul weather, with high seas and strong wind opposing them stoutly from the north-west. Thus they were driven well into the latitude of sixty-six off the western coast of Iceland, and there, though the seas still ran as high as to the poop, they were much beset by extraordinary pieces of ice which appeared to come down from Greenland. Then the wind abated, and an unsearchable and noisome fog followed; so dense that not an acre of sea could be seen from the topmast, and so foul that the compasses would not work in it. After that, though they wrought night and day with poles and spikes, they were beaten among the ice as scarce any ship ever was before, and so