CHAPTER XI The Pardon––––––––
When the men whom Michael Sunlocks sent into the interior after Adam Fairbrother and his shipwrecked company returned to him empty-handed, he perceived that they had gone astray by crossing a great fiord lying far east of Hekla when they should have followed the course of it down to the sea. So, counting the time that had been wasted, he concluded to take ship to a point of the southern coast in the latitude of the Westmann Islands, thinking to meet old Adam somewhere by the fiord's mouth. The storm delayed him, and he reached the fiord too late; but he came upon some good news of Adam there: that, all well, though sore beset by the hard weather, and enfeebled by the misfortunes that had befallen them, the little band of ship-broken men had, three days before
