Pelle the Conqueror, Martin Andersen Nexø [best fantasy books to read .TXT] 📗

see quite plainly how it hurt him to strike them. It was certainly the devil riding him⁠—against his own will.

But where was it going to end? They had had enough of it now! For now the great harbor bell was striking midday, and there was something derisive in the sound, as though it was jeering at respectable people who only wanted to resume their work. They didn’t want to waste the whole day; neither did they want to risk life and limb against the fool’s tricks of a lunatic. Even the mighty Bergendal had left his contempt of death at home today, and was content to grumble like the rest.

“We must knock a hole in the dam,” he said, “then the brute may perish in the waves!”

They immediately picked up their tools, in order to set to work. The engineer threatened them with the law and the authorities; it would cost thousands of kroner to empty the harbor again. They would not listen to him; what use was he if he couldn’t contrive for them to do their work in peace?

They strolled toward the dam, with picks and iron crowbars, in order to make the breach; the engineer and the police were thrust aside. Now it was no longer a matter of work; it was a matter of showing that two hundred men were not going to allow one crazy devil to make fools of them. Beelzebub had got to be smoked out. Either the “Great Power” would come up from the floor of the basin, or he would drown.

“You shall have a full day’s wages!” cried the engineer, to hold them back. They did not listen; but when they reached the place of the intended breach, the “Great Power” was standing at the foot of the dam, swinging his pick so that the walls of the basin resounded. He beamed with helpfulness at every blow; he had posted himself at the spot where the water trickled in, and they saw with horror what an effect his blows had. It was sheer madness to do what he was doing there.

“He’ll fill the harbor with water, the devil!” they cried, and they hurled stones at his head. “And such a work as it was to empty it!”

The “Great Power” took cover behind a pile and worked away.

Then there was nothing for it but to shoot him down before he had attained his object. A charge of shot in the legs, if nothing more, and he would at least be rendered harmless. The district judge was at his wits’ end; but Wooden-leg Larsen was already on the way home to fetch his gun. Soon he came stumping back, surrounded by a swarm of boys.

“I’ve loaded it with coarse salt!” he cried, so that the judge might hear.

“Now you’ll be shot dead!” they called down to him. In reply, the “Great Power” struck his pick into the foot of the dam, so that the trampled clay sighed and the moisture rose underfoot. A long crackling sound told them that the first plank was shattered.

The final resolve had been formed quite of itself; everybody was speaking of shooting him down as though the man had been long ago sentenced, and now everybody was longing for the execution. They hated the man below there with a secret hatred which needed no explanation; his defiance and unruliness affected them like a slap in the face; they would gladly have trampled him underfoot if they could.

They shouted down insults; they reminded him how in his presumption he had ruined his family, and driven his daughter to suicide; and they cast in his face his brutal attack on the rich shipowner Monsen, the benefactor of the town. For a time they roused themselves from their apathy in order to take a hand in striking him down. And now it must be done thoroughly; they must have peace from this fellow, who couldn’t wear his chains quietly, but must make them grate like the voice of hatred that lay behind poverty and oppression.

The judge leaned out over the quay, in order to read his sentence over the “Great Power”⁠—three times must it be read, so the man might have opportunity to repent. He was deathly pale, and at the second announcement he started convulsively; but the “Great Power” threw no dynamite cartridges at him; he merely lifted his hand to his head, as though in greeting, and made a few thrusting motions in the air with two of his fingers, which stood out from his forehead like a pair of horns. From where the apothecary stood in a circle of fine ladies a stifled laugh was heard. All faces were turned to where the burgomaster’s wife stood tall and stately on a block of stone. But she gazed down unflinchingly at the “Great Power” as though she had never seen him before.

On the burgomaster the gesture had an effect like that of an explosion. “Shoot him down!” he roared, with purple face, stumbling excitedly along the breakwater. “Shoot him down, Larsen!”

But no one heeded his command. All were streaming toward the wagon-slip, where an old, faded little woman was in the act of groping her way along the track toward the floor of the basin. “It’s the ‘Great Power’s’ mother!” The word passed from mouth to mouth. “No! How little and old she is! One can hardly believe she could have brought such a giant into the world!”

Excitedly they followed her, while she tottered over the broken stone of the floor of the basin, which was littered with the debris of explosions until it resembled an ice-floe under pressure. She made her way but slowly, and it looked continually as though she must break her legs. But the old lady persevered, bent and withered though she was, with her shortsighted eyes fixed on the rocks before her feet.

Then she perceived her son, who stood with his iron bar poised in his hand. “Throw the stick away, Peter!” she cried