PELLE THE CONQUEROR
Contents:
I. - BOYHOOD. Translated by Jessie Muir.
II. - APPRENTICESHIP. Translated by Bernard Miall.
III. - THE GREAT STRUGGLE. Translated by Bernard Miall.
IV. - DAYBREAK. Translated by Jessie Muir.
PELLE THE CONQUEROR, Complete
BY MARTIN ANDERSON NEXO
TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH
BY JESSE MUIR AND BERNARD MIALL
NOTE
When the first part of "Pelle Erobreren" (Pelle the Conqueror)
appeared in 1906, its author, Martin Andersen Nexo, was practically
unknown even in his native country, save to a few literary people
who knew that he had written some volumes of stories and a book full
of sunshiny reminiscences from Spain. And even now, after his great
success with "Pelle," very little is known about the writer. He was
born in 1869 in one of the poorest quarters of Copenhagen, but spent
his boyhood in his beloved island Bornholm, in the Baltic, in or
near the town, Nexo, from which his final name is derived. There,
too, he was a shoemaker's apprentice, like Pelle in the second part
of the book, which resembles many great novels in being largely
autobiographical. Later, he gained his livelihood as a bricklayer,
until he somehow managed to get to one of the most renowned of our
"people's high-schools," where he studied so effectually that he was
enabled to become a teacher, first at a provincial school, and later
in Copenhagen.
"Pelle" consists of four parts, each, except perhaps the last, a
complete story in itself. First we have the open-air life of the boy
in country surroundings in Bornholm; then the lad's apprenticeship
in a small provincial town not yet invaded by modern industrialism
and still innocent of socialism; next the youth's struggles in
Copenhagen against employers and authorities; and last the man's
final victory in laying the foundation of a garden-city for the
benefit of his fellow-workers. The background everywhere is the
rapid growth of the labor movement; but social problems are never
obtruded, except, again, in the last part, and the purely human
interest is always kept well before the reader's eye through variety
of situation and vividness of characterization. The great charm of
the book seems to me to lie in the fact that the writer knows the
poor from within; he has not studied them as an outsider may, but
has lived with them and felt with them, at once a participant and
a keen-eyed spectator. He is no sentimentalist, and so rich is his
imagination that he passes on rapidly from one scene to the next,
sketching often in a few pages what another novelist would be
content to work out into long chapters or whole volumes. His
sympathy is of the widest, and he makes us see tragedies behind the
little comedies, and comedies behind the little tragedies, of the
seemingly sordid lives of the working people whom he loves. "Pelle"
has conquered the hearts of the reading public of Denmark; there is
that in the book which should conquer also the hearts of a wider
public than that of the little country in which its author was born.
OTTO JESPERSEN,
Professor of English in the University of Copenhagen.
GENTOFTE, COPENHAGEN.
April, 1913.
Pelle the Conqueror
I. BOYHOOD
I
It was dawn on the first of May, 1877. From the sea the mist came
sweeping in, in a gray trail that lay heavily on the water. Here
and there there was a movement in it; it seemed about to lift, but
closed in again, leaving only a strip of shore with two old boats
lying keel uppermost upon it. The prow of a third boat and a bit
of breakwater showed dimly in the mist a few paces off. At definite
intervals a smooth, gray wave came gliding out of the mist up over
the rustling shingle, and then withdrew again; it was as if some
great animal lay hidden out there in the fog, and lapped at the
land.
A couple of hungry crows were busy with a black, inflated object
down there, probably the carcass of a dog. Each time a wave glided
in, they rose and hovered a few feet up in the air with their legs
extended straight down toward their booty, as if held by some
invisible attachment. When the water retreated, they dropped down
and buried their heads in the carrion, but kept their wings spread,
ready to rise before the next advancing wave. This was repeated with
the regularity of clock-work.
A shout came vibrating in from the harbor, and a little while after
the heavy sound of oars working over the edge of a boat. The sound
grew more distant and at last ceased; but then a bell began to
ring - it must have been at the end of the mole - and out of the
distance, into which the beat of the oars had disappeared, came the
answering sound of a horn. They continued to answer one another for
a couple of minutes.
The town was invisible, but now and then the silence there was
broken by the iron tramp of a quarryman upon the stone paving. For
a long time the regular beat of his footsteps could be heard, until
it suddenly ceased as he turned some corner or other. Then a door
was opened, followed by the sound of a loud morning yawn; and
someone began to sweep the pavement. Windows were opened here and
there, out of which floated various sounds to greet the gray day.
A woman's sharp voice was heard scolding, then short, smart slaps
and the crying of a child. A shoemaker began beating leather, and
as he worked fell to singing a hymn -
"But One is worthy of our hymn, O brothers:
The Lamb on Whom the sins of all men lay."
The tune was one of Mendelssohn's "Songs without Words."
Upon the bench under the church wall sat a boat's crew with their
gaze turned seaward. They were leaning forward and smoking, with
hands clasped between their knees. All three wore ear-rings as a
preventive of colds and other evils, and all sat in exactly the
same position, as if the one were afraid of making himself in the
very least different from the others.
A traveller came sauntering down from the hotel, and approached
the fishermen. He had his coat-collar turned up, and shivered in
the chill morning air. "Is anything the matter?" he asked civilly,
raising his cap. His voice sounded gruff.
One of the fishermen moved his hand slightly in the direction of
his head-gear. He was the head man of the boat's crew. The others
gazed straight before them without moving a muscle.
"I mean, as the bell's ringing and the pilot-boat's out blowing her
horn," the traveller went on. "Are they expecting a ship?"
"May be. You never can tell!" answered the head man unapproachably.
The stranger looked as if he were deeply insulted, but restrained
himself. It was only their usual secretiveness, their inveterate
distrust of every one who did not speak their dialect and look
exactly like themselves. They sat there inwardly uneasy in spite
of their wooden exterior, stealing glances at him when he was not
looking, and wishing him at Jericho. He felt tempted to tease them
a little.
"Dear me! Perhaps it's a secret?" he said, laughing.
"Not that I know of," answered the fisherman cautiously.
"Well, of course I don't expect anything for nothing! And besides
it wears out your talking-apparatus to be continually opening and
shutting it. How much do you generally get?" He took out his purse;
it was his intention to insult them now.
The other fishermen threw stolen glances at their leader. If only
he did not run them aground!
The head man took his pipe out of his mouth and turned to his
companions: "No, as I was saying, there are some folks that have
nothing to do but go about and be clever." He warned them with his
eyes, the expression of his face was wooden. His companions nodded.
They enjoyed the situation, as the commercial traveller could see
from their doltish looks.
He was enraged. Here he was, being treated as if he were air and
made fun of! "Confound you fellows! Haven't you even learnt as much
as to give a civil answer to a civil question?" he said angrily.
The fishermen looked backward and forward at one another, taking
mute counsel.
"No, but I tell you what it is! She must come some time," said
the head man at last.
"What 'she'?"
"The steamer, of course. And she generally comes about this time.
Now you've got it!"
"Naturally - of course! But isn't it a little unwise to speak so loud
about it?" jeered the traveller.
The fishermen had turned their backs on him, and were scraping out
their pipes.
"We're not quite so free with our speech here as some people, and
yet we make our living," said the head man to the others. They
growled their approval.
As the stranger wandered on down the harbor hill, the fishermen
looked after him with a feeling of relief. "What a talker!" said
one. "He wanted to show off a bit, but you gave him what he won't
forget in a hurry."
"Yes, I think it touched him on the raw, all right," answered the
man, with pride. "It's these fine gentlemen you need to be most
careful of."
Half-way down the harbor hill, an inn-keeper stood at his door
yawning. The morning stroller repeated his question to him, and
received an immediate answer, the man being a Copenhagener.
"Well, you see we're expecting the steamer from Ystad today, with
a big cargo of slaves - cheap Swedish laborers, that's to say, who
live on black bread and salt herrings, and do the work of three.
They ought to be flogged with red-hot icicles, that sort, and the
brutes of farmers, too! You won't take a little early morning glass
of something, I suppose?"
"No, thank you, I think not - so early."
"Very well, please yourself."
Down at the harbor a number of farmers' carts were already standing,
and fresh ones arrived at full gallop every minute. The newcomers
guided their teams as far to the front as possible, examined their
neighbors' horses with a critical eye, and settled themselves into
a half-doze, with their fur collars turned up about their ears.
Custom-house men in uniform, and pilots, looking like monster
penguins, wandered restlessly about, peering out to sea and
listening. Every moment the bell at the end of the mole rang, and
was answered by the pilot-boat's horn somewhere out in the fog over
the sea, with a long, dreary hoot, like the howl of some suffering
animal.
"What was that noise?" asked a farmer who had just come, catching up
the reins in fear. His fear communicated itself to his horses, and
they stood trembling with heads raised listening in the direction
of the sea, with questioning terror in their eyes.
"It was only the sea-serpent," answered a custom-house officer. "He
always suffers from wind in this foggy weather. He's a wind-sucker,
you see." And the custom-house men put their heads together and
grinned.
Merry sailors dressed in blue with white handkerchiefs round their
necks went about patting the horses, or pricking their nostrils with
a straw to make them rear. When the farmers woke up and scolded,
they laughed with delight, and sang -
"A sailor he must go through
A deal more bad than good, good, good!"
A big pilot, in an Iceland vest and woollen gloves, was rushing
anxiously about with a megaphone in his hand, growling like an
uneasy bear. Now and then he climbed up on the molehead, put
the megaphone to his mouth, and roared out over the water:
"Do - you - hear - any - thing?" The roar went on for a long time out
upon the long swells, up and down, leaving behind it an oppressive
silence, until it suddenly returned from the town above, in the
shape of a confused babble that made people laugh.
"N-o-o!" was heard a little while after in a thin and long-drawn-out
cry from the sea; and again the horn was heard, a long, hoarse sound
that came rocking in on the waves, and burst gurgling in the splash
under the wharf and on the slips.
The farmers were out of it all. They dozed a little or sat flicking
their whips to pass the time. But every one else was in a state of
suspense. A number of people had gradually gathered about the harbor
- fishermen, sailors waiting to be hired, and master-artisans who
were too restless to stay in their workshop. They came down in their
leather aprons, and began at once to discuss the situation; they
used nautical expressions, most of them having been at sea in their
youth. The coming of the steamer was always an event that brought
people to the harbor; but to-day she had a great many people on
board, and she was already an hour behind time. The dangerous fog
kept the suspense at high pressure; but as the time passed, the
excitement gave place to a feeling of dull oppression. Fog is the
seaman's worst enemy, and there were many unpleasant possibilities.
On the best supposition the ship had gone inshore too far north
or south, and now lay somewhere out at sea hooting and heaving
the lead, without daring to move. One could imagine the captain
storming and the sailors hurrying here and there, lithe and agile
as cats. Stop! - Half-speed ahead! Stop! - Half-speed astern! The
first engineer would be at the engine himself, gray with nervous
excitement. Down in the engine-room, where they knew nothing at all,
they would strain their ears painfully for any sound, and all to
no purpose. But up on deck every man would be on the alert for his
life; the helmsman wet with the sweat of his anxiety to watch every
movement of the captain's directing hand, and the look-out on the
forecastle peering and listening into the fog until he could hear
his own heart beat, while the suspense held every man on deck on
tenterhooks, and the fog-horn hooted its warning. But perhaps the
ship had already gone to the bottom!
Every one knew it all; every man had in some way or other been
through this overcharged suspense - as cabin-boy, stoker, captain,
cook - and felt something of it again now. Only the farmers were
unaffected by it; they dozed, woke up with a jerk, and yawned
audibly.
The seafarers and the peasants always had a difficulty in keeping
on peaceable terms with one another; they were as different as land
and sea. But to-day the indifferent attitude of the peasants made
the sea-folk eye them with suppressed rage. The fat pilot had
already had several altercations with them for being in his way;
and when one of them laid himself open to criticism, he was down
upon him in an instant. It was an elderly farmer, who woke from his
nap with a start, as his head fell forward, and impatiently took out
his watch and looked at it.
"It's getting rather late," he said. "The captain can't find his
stall to-day."
"More likely he's dropped into an inn on the way!" said the pilot,
his eyes gleaming with malice.
"Very likely," answered the farmer, without for the moment realizing
the nature of the paths of the sea. His auditors laughed exultingly,
and passed the mistake on to their neighbors, and people crowded
round the unfortunate man, while some one cried: "How many inns
are there between this and Sweden?"
"Yes, it's too easy to get hold of liquids out there, that's the
worst of it," the pilot went on. "But for that any booby could
manage a ship. He's only got to keep well to the right of Mads
Hansen's farm, and he's got a straight road before him. And the
deuce of a fine road! Telegraph-wires and ditches and a row of
poplars on each side - just improved by the local board. You've just
got to wipe the porridge off your mustache, kiss the old woman, and
climb up on to the bridge, and there you are! Has the engine been
oiled, Hans? Right away, then, off we go; hand me my best whip!" He
imitated the peasants' manner of speech. "Be careful about the inns,
Dad!" he added in a shrill falsetto. There were peals of laughter,
that had an evil sound in the prevailing depression.
The farmer sat quite still under the deluge, only lowering his head
a little. When the laughter had almost died away, he pointed at the
pilot with his whip, and remarked to the bystanders -
"That's a wonderful clever kid for his age! Whose father art thou,
my boy?" he went on, turning to the pilot.
This raised a laugh, and the thick-necked pilot swelled with rage.
He seized hold of the body of the cart and shook it so that the
farmer had a difficulty in keeping his seat. "You miserable old
clodhopper, you pig-breeder, you dung-carter!" he roared. "What do
you mean by coming here and saying 'thou' to grown-up people and
calling them 'boy'? And giving your opinions on navigation into the
bargain! Eh! you lousy old money-grubber! No, if you ever take off
your greasy night-cap to anybody but your parish clerk, then take
it off to the captain who can find his harbor in a fog like this.
You can give him my kind regards and say I said so." And he let go
of the cart so suddenly that it swung over to the other side.
"I may as well take it off to you, as the other doesn't seem able
to find us to-day," said the farmer with a grin, and took off his
fur cap, disclosing a large bald head.
"Cover up that great bald pumpkin, or upon my word I'll give it
something!" cried the pilot, blind with rage, and beginning to
clamber up into the cart.
At that moment, like the thin metallic voice of a telephone, there
came faintly from the sea the words: "We - hear - a - steam - whistle!"
The pilot ran off on to the breakwater, hitting out as he passed at
the farmer's horse, and making it rear. Men cleared a space round
the mooring-posts, and dragged up the gangways with frantic speed.
Carts that had hay in them, as if they were come to fetch cattle,
began to move without having anywhere to drive to. Everything was in
motion. Labor-hirers with red noses and cunning eyes, came hurrying
down from the sailors' tavern where they had been keeping themselves
warm.
Then as if a huge hand had been laid upon the movement, everything
suddenly stood still again, in strained effort to hear. A far-off,
tiny echo of a steam whistle whined somewhere a long way off. Men
stole together into groups and stood motionless, listening and
sending angry glances at the restless carts. Was it real, or was
it a creation of the heart-felt wishes of so many?
Perhaps a warning to every one that at that moment the ship had gone
to the bottom? The sea always sends word of its evil doings; when
the bread-winner is taken his family hear a shutter creak, or three
taps on the windows that look on to the sea - there are so many ways.
But now it sounded again, and this time the sound come in little
waves over the water, the same vibrating, subdued whistle that
long-tailed ducks make when they rise; it seemed alive. The fog-horn
answered it out in the fairway, and the bell in at the mole-head;
then the horn once more, and the steam-whistle in the distance. So
it went on, a guiding line of sound being spun between the land and
the indefinite gray out there, backward and forward. Here on terra
firma one could distinctly feel how out there they were groping
their way by the sound. The hoarse whistle slowly increased in
volume, sounding now a little to the south, now to the north, but
growing steadily louder. Then other sounds made themselves heard,
the heavy scraping of iron against iron, the noise of the screw
when it was reversed or went on again.
The pilot-boat glided slowly out of the fog, keeping to the middle
of the fairway, and moving slowly inward hooting incessantly. It
towed by the sound an invisible world behind it, in which hundreds
of voices murmured thickly amidst shouting and clanging, and
tramping of feet - a world that floated blindly in space close by.
Then a shadow began to form in the fog where no one had expected it,
and the little steamer made its appearance - looking enormous in the
first moment of surprise - in the middle of the harbor entrance.
At this the last remnants of suspense burst and scattered, and
every one had to do something or other to work off the oppression.
They seized the heads of the farmers' horses and pushed them back,
clapped their hands, attempted jokes, or only laughed noisily while
they stamped on the stone paving.
"Good voyage?" asked a score of voices at once.
"All well!" answered the captain cheerfully.
And now he, too, has got rid of his incubus, and rolls forth words
of command; the propeller churns up the water behind, hawsers fly
through the air, and the steam winch starts with a ringing metallic
clang, while the vessel works herself broadside in to the wharf.
Between the forecastle and the bridge, in under the upper deck and
the after, there is a swarm of people, a curiously stupid swarm,
like sheep that get up on to one another's backs and look foolish.
"What a cargo of cattle!" cries the fat pilot up to the captain,
tramping delightedly on the breakwater with his wooden-soled boots.
There are sheepskin caps, old military caps, disreputable old rusty
hats, and the women's tidy black handkerchiefs. The faces are as
different as old, wrinkled pigskin and young, ripening fruit; but
want, and expectancy, and a certain animal greed are visible in all
of them. The unfamiliarity of the moment brings a touch of stupidity
into them, as they press forward, or climb up to get a view over
their neighbors' heads and stare open-mouthed at the land where the
wages are said to be so high, and the brandy so uncommonly strong.
They see the fat, fur-clad farmers and the men come down to engage
laborers.
They do not know what to do with themselves, and are always getting
in the way; and the sailors chase them with oaths from side to side
of the vessel, or throw hatches and packages without warning at
their feet. "Look out, you Swedish devil!" cries a sailor who has
to open the iron doors. The Swede backs in bewilderment, but his
hand involuntarily flies to his pocket and fingers nervously his
big pocket-knife.
The gangway is down, and the two hundred and fifty passengers stream
down it - stone-masons, navvies, maid-servants, male and female
day-laborers, stablemen, herdsmen, here and there a solitary little
cowherd, and tailors in smart clothes, who keep far away from the
rest. There are young men straighter and better built than any that
the island produces, and poor old men more worn with toil and want
than they ever become here. There are also faces among them that
bear an expression of malice, others sparkling with energy, and
others disfigured with great scars.
Most of them are in working-clothes and only possess what they stand
in. Here and there is a man with some tool upon his shoulder - a
shovel or a crowbar. Those that have any luggage, get it turned
inside out by the custom-house officers: woven goods are so cheap in
Sweden. Now and then some girl with an inclination to plumpness has
to put up with the officers' coarse witticisms. There, for instance,
is Handsome Sara from Cimrishamn, whom everybody knows. Every autumn
she goes home, and comes again every spring with a figure that at
once makes her the butt of their wit; but Sara, who generally has
a quick temper and a ready tongue, to-day drops her eyes in modest
confusion: she has fourteen yards of cloth wrapped round her under
her dress.
The farmers are wide awake now. Those who dare, leave their horses
and go among the crowd; the others choose their laborers with their
eyes, and call them up. Each one takes his man's measure - width
of chest, modest manner, wretchedness; but they are afraid of the
scarred and malicious faces, and leave them to the bailiffs on the
large farms. Offers are made and conditions fixed, and every minute
one or two Swedes climb up into the hay in the back of some cart,
and are driven off.
A little on one side stood an elderly, bent little man with a sack
upon his back, holding a boy of eight or nine by the hand; beside
them lay a green chest. They eagerly watched the proceedings, and
each time a cart drove off with some of their countrymen, the boy
pulled impatiently at the hand of the old man, who answered by a
reassuring word. The old man examined the farmers one by one with
an anxious air, moving his lips as he did so: he was thinking. His
red, lashless eyes kept watering with the prolonged staring, and
he wiped them with the mouth of the coarse dirty sack.
"Do you see that one there?" he suddenly asked the boy, pointing
to a fat little farmer with apple-cheeks. "I should think he'd be
kind to children. Shall we try him, laddie?"
The boy nodded gravely, and they made straight for the farmer. But
when he had heard that they were to go together, he would not take
them; the boy was far too little to earn his keep. And it was the
same thing every time.
It was Lasse Karlsson from Tommelilla in the Ystad district, and
his son Pelle.
It was not altogether strange to Lasse, for he had been on the
island once before, about ten years ago; but he had been younger
then, in full vigor it might be said, and had no little boy by the
hand, from whom he would not be separated for all the world; that
was the difference. It was the year that the cow had been drowned in
the marl-pit, and Bengta was preparing for her confinement. Things
looked bad, but Lasse staked his all on one cast, and used the
couple of krones he got for the hide of the cow to go to Bornholm.
When he came back in the autumn, there were three mouths to fill;
but then he had a hundred krones to meet the winter with.
At that time Lasse had been equal to the situation, and he would
still straighten his bowed shoulders whenever he thought of that
exploit. Afterward, whenever there were short commons, he would talk
of selling the whole affair and going to Bornholm for good. But
Bengta's health failed after her late child-bearing, and nothing
came of it, until she died after eight years of suffering, this very
spring. Then Lasse sold their bit of furniture, and made nearly a
hundred krones on it; it went in paying the expenses of the long
illness, and the house and land belonged to the landlord. A green
chest, that had been part of Bengta's wedding outfit, was the only
thing he kept. In it he packed their belongings and a few little
things of Bengta's, and sent it on in advance to the port with a
horse-dealer who was driving there. Some of the rubbish for which
no one would bid he stuffed into a sack, and with it on his back and
the boy's hand clasped in his, he set out to walk to Ystad, where
the steamer for Ronne lay. The few coins he had would just pay their
passage.
He had been so sure of himself on the way, and had talked
in loud tones to Pelle about the country where the wages were
so incomprehensibly high, and where in some places you got meat
or cheese to eat with your bread, and always beer, so that the
water-cart in the autumn did not come round for the laborers, but
only for the cattle. And - why, if you liked you could drink gin
like water, it was so cheap; but it was so strong that it knocked
you down at the third pull. They made it from real grain, and not
from diseased potatoes; and they drank it at every meal. And laddie
would never feel cold there, for they wore wool next their skin,
and not this poor linen that the wind blew right through; and a
laborer who kept himself could easily make his two krones a day.
That was something different from their master's miserable eighty
ores and finding themselves in everything.
Pelle had heard the same thing often before - from his father, from
Ole and Anders, from Karna and a hundred others who had been there.
In the winter, when the air was thick with frost and snow and the
needs of the poor, there was nothing else talked about in the little
villages at home; and in the minds of those who had not been on
the island themselves, but had only heard the tales about it, the
ideas produced were as fantastic as the frost-tracery upon the
window-panes. Pelle was perfectly well aware that even the poorest
boys there always wore their best clothes, and ate bread-and-dripping
with sugar on it as often as they liked. There money lay like dirt
by the roadside, and the Bornholmers did not even take the trouble
to stoop and pick it up; but Pelle meant to pick it up, so that
Father Lasse would have to empty the odds and ends out of the sack
and clear out the locked compartment in the green chest to make room
for it; and even that would be hardly enough. If only they could
begin! He shook his father's hand impatiently.
"Yes, yes," said Lasse, almost in tears. "You mustn't be impatient."
He looked about him irresolutely. Here he was in the midst of
all this splendor, and could not even find a humble situation for
himself and the boy. He could not understand it. Had the whole world
changed since his time? He trembled to his very finger-tips when the
last cart drove off. For a few minutes he stood staring helplessly
after it, and then he and the boy together carried the green chest
up to a wall, and trudged hand in hand up toward the town.
Lasse's lips moved as he walked; he was thinking. In an ordinary way
he thought best when he talked out loud to himself, but to-day all
his faculties were alert, and it was enough only to move his lips.
As he trudged along, his mental excuses became audible. "Confound
it!" he exclaimed, as he jerked the sack higher up his back. "It
doesn't do to take the first thing that comes. Lasse's responsible
for two, and he knows what he wants - so there! It isn't the first
time he's been abroad! And the best always comes last, you know,
laddie."
Pelle was not paying much attention. He was already consoled, and
his father's words about the best being in store for them, were
to him only a feeble expression for a great truth, namely, that
the whole world would become theirs, with all that it contained in
the way of wonders. He was already engaged in taking possession of
it, open-mouthed.
He looked as if he would like to swallow the harbor with all its
ships and boats, and the great stacks of timber, where it looked as
if there would be holes. This would be a fine place to play in, but
there were no boys! He wondered whether the boys were like those at
home; he had seen none yet. Perhaps they had quite a different way
of fighting, but he would manage all right if only they would come
one at a time. There was a big ship right up on land, and they were
skinning it. So ships have ribs, just like cows!
At the wooden shed in the middle of the harbor square, Lasse put
down the sack, and giving the boy a piece of bread and telling him
to stay and mind the sack, he went farther up and disappeared. Pelle
was very hungry, and holding the bread with both hands he munched
at it greedily.
When he had picked the last crumbs off his jacket, he set himself
to examine his surroundings. That black stuff in that big pot was
tar. He knew it quite well, but had never seen so much at once. My
word! If you fell into that while it was boiling, it would be worse
even than the brimstone pit in hell. And there lay some enormous
fish-hooks, just like those that were hanging on thick iron chains
from the ships' nostrils. He wondered whether there still lived
giants who could fish with such hooks. Strong John couldn't manage
them!
He satisfied himself with his own eyes that the stacks of boards
were really hollow, and that he could easily get down to the bottom
of them, if only he had not had the sack to drag about. His father
had said he was to mind the sack, and he never let it out of his
hands for a moment; as it was too heavy to carry, he had to drag
it after him from place to place.
He discovered a little ship, only just big enough for a man to
lie down in, and full of holes bored in the bottom and sides. He
investigated the ship-builders' big grind-stone, which was nearly
as tall as a man. There were bent planks lying there, with nails
in them as big as the parish constable's new tether-peg at home.
And the thing that ship was tethered to - wasn't it a real cannon
that they had planted?
Pelle saw everything, and examined every single object in the
appropriate manner, now only spitting appraisingly upon it, now
kicking it or scratching it with his penknife. If he came across
some strange wonder or other, that he could not get into his little
brain in any other way, he set himself astride on it.
This was a new world altogether, and Pelle was engaged in making
it his own. Not a shred of it would he leave. If he had had his
playfellows from Tommelilla here, he would have explained it all
to them. My word, how they would stare! But when he went home to
Sweden again, he would tell them about it, and then he hoped they
would call him a liar.
He was sitting astride an enormous mast that lay along the timber-
yard upon some oak trestles. He kicked his feet together under the
mast, as he had heard of knights doing in olden days under their
horses, and imagined himself seizing hold of a ring and lifting
himself, horse and all. He sat on horseback in the midst of his
newly discovered world, glowing with the pride of conquest, struck
the horse's loins with the flat of his hand, and dug his heels into
its sides, while he shouted a song at the top of his voice. He had
been obliged to let go the sack to get up.
"Far away in Smaaland the little imps were dancing
With ready-loaded pistol and rifle-barrelled gun;
All the little devils they played upon the fiddle,
But for the grand piano Old Harry was the one."
In the middle of his noisy joy, he looked up, and immediately burst
into a roar of terror and dropped down on to the wood-shavings. On
the top of the shed at the place where his father had left him stood
a black man and two black, open-mouthed hell-hounds; the man leaned
half out over the ridge of the roof in a menacing attitude. It was
an old figure-head, but Pelle thought it was Old Harry himself, come
to punish him for his bold song, and he set off at a run up the
hill. A little way up he remembered the sack and stopped. He didn't
care about the sack; and he wouldn't get a thrashing if he did leave
it behind, for Father Lasse never beat him. And that horrid devil
would eat him up at the very least, if he ventured down there again;
he could distinctly see how red the nostrils shone, both the devil's
and the dogs'.
But Pelle still hesitated. His father was so careful of that sack,
that he would be sure to be sorry if he lost it - he might even cry
as he did when he lost Mother Bengta. For perhaps the first time,
the boy was being subjected to one of life's serious tests, and
stood - as so many had stood before him - with the choice between
sacrificing himself and sacrificing others. His love for his father,
boyish pride, the sense of duty that is the social dower of the
poor - the one thing with the other - determined his choice. He stood
the test, but not bravely; he howled loudly the whole time, while,
with his eyes fixed immovably upon the Evil One and his hell-hounds,
he crept back for the sack and then dragged it after him at a quick
run up the street.
No one is perhaps a hero until the danger is over. But even then
Pelle had no opportunity of shuddering at his own courage; for no
sooner was he out of the reach of the black man, than his terror
took a new form. What had become of his father? He had said he would
be back again directly! Supposing he never came back at all! Perhaps
he had gone away so as to get rid of his little boy, who was only
a trouble and made it difficult for him to get a situation.
Pelle felt despairingly convinced that it must be so, as, crying,
he went off with the sack. The same thing had happened to other
children with whom he was well acquainted; but they came to the
pancake cottage and were quite happy, and Pelle himself would be
sure to - perhaps find the king and be taken in there and have the
little princes for his playmates, and his own little palace to live
in. But Father Lasse shouldn't have a thing, for now Pelle was angry
and vindictive, although he was crying just as unrestrainedly. He
would let him stand and knock at the door and beg to come in for
three days, and only when he began to cry - no, he would have to
let him in at once, for to see Father Lasse cry hurt him more than
anything else in the world. But he shouldn't have a single one of
the nails Pelle had filled his pockets with down in the timber-yard;
and when the king's wife brought them coffee in the morning before
they were up - -
But here both his tears and his happy imaginings ceased, for out of
a tavern at the top of the street came Father Lasse's own living
self. He looked in excellent spirits and held a bottle in his hand.
"Danish brandy, laddie!" he cried, waving the bottle. "Hats off
to the Danish brandy! But what have you been crying for? Oh, you
were afraid? And why were you afraid? Isn't your father's name
Lasse - Lasse Karlsson from Kungstorp? And he's not one to quarrel
with; he hits hard, he does, when he's provoked. To come and
frighten good little boys! They'd better look out! Even if the
whole wide world were full of naming devils, Lasse's here and you
needn't be afraid!"
During all this fierce talk he was tenderly wiping the boy's tear-
stained cheeks and nose with his rough hand, and taking the sack
upon his back again. There was something touchingly feeble about
his stooping figure, as, boasting and comforting, he trudged down
again to the harbor holding the boy by the hand. He tottered along
in his big waterproof boots, the tabs of which stuck out at the side
and bore an astonishing resemblance to Pelle's ears; out of the
gaping pockets of his old winter coat protruded on one side his red
pocket-handkerchief, on the other the bottle. He had become a little
looser in his knee-joints now, and the sack threatened momentarily
to get the upper hand of him, pushing him forward and forcing him
to go at a trot down the hill. He looked decrepit, and perhaps his
boastful words helped to produce this effect; but his eyes beamed
confidently, and he smiled down at the boy, who ran along beside
him.
They drew near to the shed, and Pelle turned cold with fear, for
the black man was still standing there. He went round to the other
side of his father, and tried to pull him out in a wide curve over
the harbor square. "There he is again," he whimpered.
"So that's what was after you, is it?" said Lasse, laughing
heartily; "and he's made of wood, too! Well, you really are the
bravest laddie I ever knew! I should almost think you might be
sent out to fight a trussed chicken, if you had a stick in your
hand!" Lasse went on laughing, and shook the boy goodnaturedly.
But Pelle was ready to sink into the ground with shame.
Down by the custom-house they met a bailiff who had come too late
for the steamer and had engaged no laborers. He stopped his cart
and asked Lasse if he was looking for a place.
"Yes, we both want one," answered Lasse, briskly. "We want to be
at the same farm - as the fox said to the goose."
The bailiff was a big, strong man, and Pelle shuddered in admiration
of his father who could dare to speak to him so boldly.
But the great man laughed good-humoredly. "Then I suppose he's to be
foreman?" he said, flicking at Pelle with his whip.
"Yes, he certainly will be some day," said Lasse, with conviction.
"He'll probably eat a few bushels of salt first. Well, I'm in
want of a herdsman, and will give you a hundred krones for a
year - although it'll be confounded hard for you to earn them from
what I can see. There'll always be a crust of bread for the boy,
but of course he'll have to do what little he can. You're his
grandfather, I suppose?"