“All these features of the great central desert of Iceland lay hard and clean before his eyes”
Jon had intended to return to his flock on the morrow, but now the temptation to press onward for another day became very great. His limbs, however, young and strong as they were, needed some rest; and he speedily decided what to do next. A lighter streak in the rocky floor of the plain led his eye toward a low, broken peak—in reality, the crater of a small extinct volcano—some five miles off, and lying to the right of what he imagined to be the true course. On the left there were other peaks, but immediately in front nothing which would serve as a landmark. The crater, therefore, besides offering him some shelter in its crevices, was decidedly the best starting-point, either for going on or returning. The lighter color of the rock came from some different mixture in the lava of an old eruption, and could easily be traced throughout the whole intervening distance. He followed it rapidly, now that the bearings were laid down, and reached the ruins of the volcano a little after sunset.
There was no better bed to be found than the bottom of a narrow cleft, where the winds, after blowing for many centuries, had deposited a thin layer of sand. Before he lay down, Jon arranged a line of stones, pointing toward the light streak across the plain, and another line giving the direction of the valleys to the northward. To the latter he added two short, slanting lines at the end, forming a figure like an arrow-head, and then, highly satisfied with his ingenuity, lay down in the crevice to sleep. But his brain was so excited that for a long time he could do nothing else than go over, in memory, the day’s journey. The wind seemed to be rising, for it whistled like a tremendous fife through the rocky crevice; father and mother and Gudrid seemed to be far, far away, in a different land; he wondered at last whether he was the same Jon Sigurdson who drove the flock of sheep up the valley of the Thiörvǎ—and then, all at once, he stopped wondering and thinking, for he was too soundly asleep to dream even of a roasted potato.
How much time passed in the sleep he could never exactly learn; probably six to seven hours. He was aroused by what seemed to be icy-cold rats’ feet scampering over his face, and as he started and brushed them away with his hand, his ears became alive to a terrible, roaring sound. He started up, alarmed, at first bewildered, then suddenly wide awake. The cold feet upon his face were little threads of water trickling from above; the fearful roaring came from a storm—a hurricane of mixed rain, wind, cloud, and snow. It was day, yet still darker than the Arctic summer night, so dense and black was the tempest. When Jon crept out of the crevice, he was nearly thrown down by the force of the wind. The first thing he did was to seek the two lines of stones he had arranged for his guidance. They had not been blown away as he feared; and the sight of the arrow-head made his heart leap with gratitude to the Providence which had led him, for without that sign he would have been bewildered at the very start. Returning to the cleft, which gave a partial shelter, he ate the greater part of his remaining store of food, fastening his thick coat tightly around his breast and throat, and set out on the desperate homeward journey, carefully following the lighter streak of rock across the plain.