Part 2

The day after my arrival I went with the Consul to visit the Pasha, who lived in a large mud palace on the bank of the Blue Nile. He received us very pleasantly, and invited us to take seats in the shady courtyard. Here there was a huge panther tied to one of the pillars, while a little lion, about eight months old, ran about perfectly loose. The Pasha called the latter, which came springing and frisking towards him. “Now,” said he, “we will have some fun.” He then made the lion lie down behind one of the pillars, and called to one of the black boys to go across the courtyard on some errand. The lion lay quite still until the boy came opposite to the pillar, when he sprang out and after him. The boy ran, terribly frightened; but the lion reached him in five or six leaps, sprang upon his back and threw him down, and then went back to the pillar as if quite satisfied with his exploit. Although the boy was not hurt in the least, it seemed to me like a cruel piece of fun. The Pasha, nevertheless, laughed very heartily, and told us that he had himself trained the lion to frighten the boys.

Presently the little lion went away, and when we came to look for him, we found him lying on one of the tables in the kitchen of the palace, apparently very much interested in watching the cook. The latter told us that the animal sometimes took small pieces of meat, but seemed to know that it was not permitted, for he would run away afterwards in great haste. What I saw of lions during my residence in Khartoum satisfied me that they are not very difficult to tame,—only, as they belong to the cat family, no dependence can be placed on their continued good behavior.

Among the Egyptian officers in the city was a Pasha named Rufah, who had been banished from Egypt by the Viceroy. He was a man of considerable education and intelligence, and was very unhappy at being sent away from his home and family. The climate of Khartoum is very unhealthy, and this unfortunate Pasha had suffered greatly from fever. He was uncertain how long his exile would continue; he had been there already two years, and as all the letters directed to him passed through the hands of the officers of government, he was quite at a loss how to get any help from his friends. What he had done to cause his banishment, I could not ascertain; probably he did not know himself. There are no elections in those Eastern countries; the people have nothing to do with the choice of their own rulers. The latter are appointed by the Viceroy at his pleasure, and hold office only so long as he allows them. The envy or jealousy of one Pasha may lead to the ruin of another, without any fault on the part of the latter. Probably somebody else wanted Rufah Pasha’s place, and slandered him to the Viceroy for the sake of getting him removed and exiled.

The unhappy man inspired my profound sympathy. Sometimes he would spend the evening with the Consul and myself, because he felt safe in our presence, to complain of the tyranny under which he suffered. When we met him at the houses of the other Egyptian officers, he was very careful not to talk on the subject, lest they should report the fact to the government.

Being a foreigner and a stranger, I never imagined that I could be of any service to Rufah Pasha. I did not speak the language well, I knew very little of the laws and regulations of the country, and moreover, I intended simply to pass through Egypt on my return. Nevertheless, one night, when we happened to be walking the streets together, he whispered that he had something special to say to me. Although it was bright moonlight, we had a native servant with us, to carry a lantern. The Pasha ordered the servant to walk on in advance; and a turn of the narrow, crooked streets soon hid him from our sight. Everything was quiet, except the rustling of the wind in the palm-trees which rose above the garden-walls.

“Now,” said the Pasha, taking my hand, “now we can talk for a few minutes, without being overheard. I want you to do me a favor.”

“Willingly,” I answered, “if it is in my power.”

“It will not give you much trouble,” he said, “and may be of great service to me. I want you to take two letters to Egypt,—one to my son, who lives in the town of Tahtah, and one to Mr. Murray, the English Consul-General, whom you know. I cannot trust the Egyptian merchants, because, if these letters were opened and read, I might be kept here many years longer. If you deliver them safely, my friends will know how to assist me, and perhaps I may soon be allowed to return home.”

I promised to deliver both letters with my own hands, and the Pasha parted from me in more cheerful spirits at the door of the Consul’s house. After a few days I was ready to set out on the return journey; but, according to custom, I was first obliged to make farewell visits to all the officers of the government. It was very easy to apprise Rufah Pasha beforehand of my intention, and he had no difficulty in slipping the letters into my hand without the action being observed by any one. I put them into my portfolio, with my own letters and papers, where they were entirely safe, and said nothing about the matter to any one in Khartoum.

Although I was glad to leave that wild town, with its burning climate, and retrace the long way back to Egypt, across the Desert and down the Nile, I felt very sorry at being obliged to take leave forever of all my pets. The little gazelles said, “_Wow! Wow!_” in answer to my “Good-bye”; the hyenas howled and tried to bite, just as much as ever; but the dear old lioness I know would have been sorry if she could have understood that I was going. She frisked around me, licked my hand, and I took her great tawny head into my arms, and gave her a kiss. Since then I have never had a lion for a pet, and may never have one again. I must confess, I am sorry for it; for I still retain my love for lions (four-footed ones, I mean) to this day.

Well, it was a long journey, and I should have to write many days in order to describe it. I should have to tell of fierce sand-storms in the Desert; of resting in palm-groves near the old capital of Ethiopia; of plodding day after day, through desolate landscapes, on the back of a camel, crossing stony ranges of mountains, to reach the Nile again, and then floating down with the current in an open boat. It was nearly two months before I could deliver the first of the Pasha’s letters,—that which he had written to his son. The town of Tahtah is in Upper Egypt, near Siout; you will hardly find it on the maps. It stands on a little mound, several miles from the Nile, and is surrounded by the rich and beautiful plain which is every year overflowed by the river.

There was a head wind, and my boat could not proceed very fast; so I took my faithful servant, Achmet, and set out on foot, taking a path which led over the plain between beautiful wheat-fields and orchards of lemon-trees. In an hour or two we reached Tahtah,—a queer, dark old town, with high houses and narrow streets. The doors and balconies were of carved wood, and the windows were covered with lattices, so that no one could look in, although those inside could easily look out. There were a few sleepy merchants in the bazaar, smoking their pipes and enjoying the odors of cinnamon and dried roses which floated in the air.

After some little inquiry, I found Rufah Pasha’s house, but was not admitted, because the Egyptian women are not allowed to receive the visits of strangers. There was a shaded entrance-hall, open to the street, where I was requested to sit, while the black serving-woman went to the school to bring the Pasha’s son. She first borrowed a pipe from one of the merchants in the bazaar, and brought it to me. Achmet and I sat there, while the people of the town, who had heard that we came from Khartoum and knew the Pasha, gathered around to ask questions.

They were all very polite and friendly, and seemed as glad to hear about the Pasha as if they belonged to his family. In a quarter of an hour the woman came back, followed by the Pasha’s son and the schoolmaster, who had dismissed his school in order to hear the news. The boy was about eleven years old, but tall for his age. He had a fair face, and large dark eyes, and smiled pleasantly when he saw me. If I had not known something of the customs of the people, I should have given him my hand, perhaps drawn him between my knees, put an arm around his waist and talked familiarly; but I thought it best to wait and see how he would behave towards me.

He first made me a graceful salutation, just as a man would have done, then took my hand and gently touched it to his heart, lips, and forehead, after which he took his seat on the high divan, or bench, by my side. Here he again made a salutation, clapped his hands thrice, to summon the woman, and ordered coffee to be brought.

“Is your Excellency in good health?” he asked.

“Very well, praised be Allah!” I answered.

“Has your Excellency any commands for me? You have but to speak; you shall be obeyed.”

“You are very kind,” said I; “but I have need of nothing. I bring you greetings from the Pasha, your father, and this letter, which I promised him to deliver into your own hands.”

Thereupon I handed him the letter, which he laid to his heart and lips before opening. As he found it a little difficult to read, he summoned the schoolmaster, and they read it together in a whisper.

In the meantime coffee was served in little cups, and a very handsome pipe was brought by somebody for my use. After he had read the letter, the boy turned to me with his face a little flushed, and his eyes sparkling, and said, “Will your Excellency permit me to ask whether you have another letter?”

“Yes,” I answered; “but it is not to be delivered here.”

“That is right,” said he. “When will you reach Cairo?”

“It depends on the wind; but I hope in seven days from now.”

The boy again whispered to the schoolmaster, but presently they both nodded, as if satisfied, and nothing more was said on the subject.

Some sherbet (which is nothing but lemonade flavored with rose-water) and pomegranates were then brought to me, and the boy asked whether I would not honor him by remaining during the rest of the day. If I had not seen his face, I should have supposed I was visiting a man,—so dignified and self-possessed and graceful was the little fellow. The people looked on as if they were quite accustomed to such mature manners in children. I was obliged to use as much ceremony with the child as if he had been the governor of the town. But he interested me, nevertheless, and I felt curious to know the subject of his consultation with the schoolmaster. I was sure they were forming some plan to have the Pasha recalled from exile.

After two or three hours I left, in order to overtake my boat, which was slowly working its way down the Nile. The boy arose, and walked by my side to the end of the town, the other people following us. When we came out upon the plain, he took leave of me with the same salutations, and the words, “May God grant your Excellency a prosperous journey!”

“May God grant it!” I responded; and all the people repeated, “May God grant it!”

The whole interview seemed to me like a scene out of the _Arabian Nights_. To me it was a pretty, picturesque experience, which cannot be forgotten; to the people, no doubt, it was an every day matter.

When I reached Cairo, I delivered the other letter, and in a fortnight afterwards left Egypt; so that I could not ascertain, at the time, whether anything had been done to forward the Pasha’s hopes. Some months afterwards, however, I read in a European newspaper, quite accidentally, that Rufah Pasha had returned to Egypt from Khartoum. I was delighted with the news; and I shall always believe, and insist upon it, that the Pasha’s wise and dignified little son had a hand in bringing about the fortunate result.

III Jon of Iceland

I

The boys of Iceland must be content with very few acquaintances and playmates. The valleys which produce grass enough for the farmer’s ponies, cattle, and sheep are generally scattered widely apart, divided by ridges of lava so hard and cold that only a few wild flowers succeed in growing in their cracks and hollows. Then, since the farms must be all the larger, because the grass is short and grows slowly in such a severe northern climate, the dwellings are rarely nearer than four or five miles apart; and were it not for their swift and nimble ponies, the people would see very little of each other except on Sundays, when they ride long distances to attend worship in their little wooden churches.

But of all boys in the island, not one was so lonely in his situation as Jon Sigurdson. His father lived many miles beyond that broad, grassy plain which stretches from the Geysers to the sea, on the banks of the swift river Thiörvǎ. On each side there were mountains so black and bare that they looked like gigantic piles of coal; but the valley opened to the southward as if to let the sun in, and far away, when the weather was clear, the snowy top of Mount Hecla shone against the sky. The farmer Sigurd, Jon’s father, was a poor man, or he would not have settled so far away from any neighbors; for he was of a cheerful and social nature, and there were few at Kyrkedal who could vie with him in knowledge of the ancient history and literature of Iceland.

The house was built on a knoll, under a cliff which sheltered it from the violent west and northwest winds. The walls, of lava stones and turf, were low and broad; and the roofs over dwelling, storehouses, and stables were covered deep with earth, upon which grew such excellent grass that the ponies were fond of climbing up the sloping corners of the wall in order to get at it. Sometimes they might be seen, cunningly balanced on the steep sides of the roof, grazing along the very ridge-poles, or looking over the end of the gable when some member of the family came out of the door, as much as to say, “Get me down if you can!” Around the buildings there was a square wall of enclosure, giving the place the appearance of a little fortress.

On one side of the knoll a hot spring bubbled up. In the morning or evening, when the air was cool, quite a little column of steam arose from it, whirling and broadening as it melted away; but the water was pure and wholesome as soon as it became cold enough for use. In front of the house, where the sun shone warmest, Sigurd had laid out a small garden. It was a great labor for him to remove the huge stones and roll them into a protecting wall, to carry good soil from the places where the mountain rills had gradually washed it down from above, and to arrange it so that frosts and cold rains should do the least harm; and the whole family thought themselves suddenly rich, one summer, when they pulled their first radishes, saw the little bed of potatoes coming into blossom, and the cabbages rolling up their leaves in order to make, at least, baby-heads before the winter came.

Within the house, all was low and dark and dismal. The air was very close and bad, for the stables were only separated from the dwelling-room by a narrow passage, and bunches of dry salt fish hung on the walls. Besides, it was usually full of smoke from the fire of peat, and, after a rain, of steam from Sigurd’s and Jon’s heavy woollen coats. But to the boy it was a delightful, a comfortable home, for within it he found shelter, warmth, food, and instruction. The room for visitors seemed to him the most splendid place in the world, because it had a wooden floor, a window with six panes of glass, a colored print of the King of Denmark, and a geranium in a pot. This was so precious a plant that Jon and his sister Gudrid hardly dared to touch its leaves. They were almost afraid to smell it, for fear of sniffing away some of its life; and Gudrid, after seeing a leaf of it laid on her dead sister’s bosom, insisted that some angel, many hundred years ago, had brought the seed straight down from heaven.

These were Sigurd’s only children. There had been several more, but they had died in infancy, from the want of light and pure air, and the great distance from help when sickness came. Gudrid was still pale and slender, except in summer, when her mild, friendly face took color from the sun; but Jon, who was now fourteen, was a sturdy, broad-breasted boy, who promised to be as strong as his father in a few years more. He had thick yellow hair, curling a little around his forehead; large bright blue eyes; and a mouth rather too broad for beauty, if the lips had not been so rosy and the teeth so white and firm. He had a serious look, but it was only because he smiled with his eyes oftener than with his mouth. He was naturally true and good, for he hardly knew what evil was. Except his parents and his sister he saw no one for weeks at a time; and when he met other boys after church at Kyrkedal, so much time was always lost in shyly looking at each other and shrinking from the talk which each wanted to begin, that no very intimate acquaintance followed.

But in spite of his lonely life, Jon was far from being ignorant. There were the long winter months, when the ponies—and sometimes the sheep—pawed holes in the snow in order to reach the grass on the bottoms beside the river; when the cows were warmly stabled and content with their meals of boiled hay; when the needful work of the day could be done in an hour or two, and then Sigurd sat down to teach his children, while their mother spun or knit beside them, and from time to time took part in the instruction. Jon could already read and write so well that the pastor at Kyrkedal lent him many an old Icelandic legend to copy; he knew the history of the island, as well as that of Norway and Denmark, and could answer (with a good deal of blushing) when he was addressed in Latin. He also knew something of the world, and its different countries and climates; but this knowledge seemed to him like a strange dream, or like something that happened long ago and never could happen again. He was accustomed to hear a little birch-bush, four or five feet high, called “a tree,” and he could not imagine how any tree could be a hundred feet high, or bear flowers and fruit. Once, a trader from Rejkiavik—the chief seaport of Iceland—brought a few oranges to Kyrkedal, and Sigurd purchased one for Jon and Gudrid. The children kept it day after day, never tired of enjoying the splendid color and strange, delightful perfume; so when they decided to cut the rind at last the pulp was dried up and tasteless. A city was something of which Jon could form no conception, for he had never even seen Rejkiavik; he imagined that palaces and cathedrals were like large Icelandic farm-houses, with very few windows and turf growing on the roofs.

II

Sigurd’s wealth, if it could be called so, was in a small flock of sheep, the pasture for which was scattered in patches for miles up and down the river. The care of these sheep had been intrusted chiefly to Jon, ever since he was eight years old, and he had learned their natures and ways—their simple animal virtues and silly animal vices—so thoroughly that they acquired a great respect for him, and very rarely tried to be disobedient. Even Thor, the ram, although he sometimes snorted and tossed his horns in protest, or stamped impatiently with his forefeet, heeded his master’s voice. In fact, the sheep became Jon’s companions, in the absence of human ones; he talked to them so much during the lonely days that it finally seemed as if they understood a great deal of his speech.

There was a rough bridle-path leading up the valley of the Thiörvǎ; but it was rarely travelled, for it struck northward into the cold, windy, stony desert which fills all the central part of Iceland. For a hundred and fifty miles there was no dwelling, no shelter from the fierce and sudden storms, and so little grass that the travellers who sometimes crossed the region ran the risk of losing their ponies from starvation. There were lofty plains of black rock, as hard as iron; groups of bare, snowy-headed mountains; and often, at night, you could see a pillar of fire in the distance, showing that one of the many volcanoes was in action. Beyond this terrible wilderness the grassy valleys began again, and there were houses and herds, increasing as you came down to the bright bays along the northern shore of the island.

More than once, a trader or government messenger, after crossing the desert, had rested for a night under Sigurd’s roof; and many were the tales of their adventures which Jon had treasured up in his memory. Sometimes they spoke of the _trolls_ or mischievous fairies who came over with the first settlers from Norway, and were still supposed by many persons to lurk among the dark glens of Iceland. Both Sigurd and the pastor at Kyrkedal had declared that there were no such creatures, and Jon believed them faithfully; yet he could not help wondering as he sat upon some rocky knoll overlooking his sheep, whether a strange little figure _might_ not come out of the chasm opposite, and speak to him. The more he heard of the terrors and dangers of the desert to the northward, the more he longed to see them with his own eyes and know them through his own experience. He was not the least afraid; but he knew that his father would never allow him to go alone, and to disobey a father was something of which he had never heard, and could not have believed to be possible.

When he was in his fifteenth year, however (it was summer, and he was fourteen in April), there came several weeks when no rain fell in the valley. It was a lovely season for the garden; even the geranium in the window put forth twice as many scarlet blossoms as ever before. Only the sheep began to hunger; for the best patch of grass in front of the house was carefully kept for hay, and the next best, further down the river, for the ponies. So Jon was obliged to lead his flock to a narrow little dell, which came down to the Thiörvǎ, three or four miles to the northward. Here, for a week they nibbled diligently wherever anything green showed itself at the foot of the black rocks; and when the pasture grew scanty again, they began to stare at Jon in a way which many persons might have thought stupid. _He_ understood them; they meant to say: “We’ve nearly finished this; find us something more!”

That evening, as he was leading his flock into the little enclosure beside the dwelling, he heard his father and mother talking. He thought it no harm to listen, for they had never said anything that was not kind and friendly. It seemed, however, that they were speaking of him, and the very first words he heard made his heart beat more rapidly.

“Two days’ journey away,” said Sigurd, “are excellent pastures that belong to nobody. There is no sign of rain yet, and if we could send Jon with the sheep——”

“Are you sure of it?” his wife asked.

“Eyvindur stopped to talk with me,” he answered; “and he saw the place this morning. He says there were rains in the desert, and, indeed, I’ve thought so myself, because the river has not fallen; and he never knew as pleasant a season to cross the country.”

“Jon might have to stay out a week or two; but, as you say, Sigurd, we should save our flock. The boy may be trusted, I’m sure; only, if anything should happen to him?”

“I don’t think he’s fearsome,” said Sigurd; “and what should happen to him there that might not happen near home?”