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

it came up slantingly, and stood bobbing up and down on the water like a buoy, with its neck up. The mouse made the funniest leaps up toward the cork to get out; and the boys jumped up and down on the grass with delight.

“It knows the way it got in quite well!” They imitated its unsuccessful leaps, lay down again and rolled about in exuberant mirth. At last, however, the joke became stale.

“Let’s take out the cork!” suggested Rud.

“Yes⁠—oh, yes!” Pelle waded quickly in, and was going to set the mouse at liberty.

“Wait a minute, you donkey!” Rud snatched the bottle from him, and holding his hand over the mouth, put it back, into the water. “Now we’ll see some fun!” he cried, hastening up the bank.

It was a little while before the mouse discovered that the way was open, but then it leaped. The leap was unsuccessful, and made the bottle rock, so that the second leap was slanting and rebounded sideways. But then followed with lightning rapidity a number of leaps⁠—a perfect bombardment; and suddenly the mouse flew right out of the bottle, head foremost into the water.

“That was a leap and a half!” cried Pelle, jumping straight up and down in the grass, with his arms at his sides. “It could just squeeze its body through, just exactly!” And he jumped again, squeezing himself together.

The mouse swam to land, but Rud was there, and pushed it out again with his foot. “It swam well,” he said, laughing. It made for the opposite bank. “Look out for the fellow!” Rud roared, and Pelle sprang forward and turned it away from the shore with a good kick. It swam helplessly backward and forward in the middle of the pool, seeing one of the two dancing figures every time it approached a bank, and turning and turning endlessly. It sank deeper and deeper, its fur becoming wet and dragging it down, until at last it swam right under water. Suddenly it stretched out its body convulsively, and sank to the bottom, with all four legs outspread like a wide embrace.

Pelle had all at once comprehended the perplexity and helplessness⁠—perhaps was familiar with it. At the animal’s final struggle, he burst into tears with a little scream, and ran, crying loudly, up the meadow toward the fir-plantation. In a little while he came back again. “I really thought Cupid had run away,” he said repeatedly, and carefully avoided looking Rud in the face. Quietly he waded into the water, and fished up the dead mouse with his foot.

They laid it upon a stone in the sun, so that it might come to life again. When that failed, Pelle remembered a story about some people who were drowned in a lake at home, and who came to themselves again when cannons were fired over them. They clapped their hollowed hands over the mouse, and when that too brought about no result, they decided to bury it.

Rud happened to remember that his grandmother in Sweden was being buried just now, and this made them go about the matter with a certain amount of solemnity. They made a coffin out of a matchbox, and ornamented it with moss; and then they lay on their faces and lowered the coffin into the grave with twine, taking every possible care that it should not land upon its head. A rope might give way; such things did sometimes happen, and the illusion did not permit of their correcting the position of the coffin afterward with their hands. When this was done, Pelle looked down into his cap, while Rud prayed over the deceased and cast earth upon the coffin; and then they made up the grave.

“I only hope it’s not in a trance and going to wake up again!” exclaimed Pelle suddenly. They had both heard many unpleasant stories of such cases, and went over all the possibilities⁠—how they woke up and couldn’t get any air, and knocked upon the lid, and began to eat their own hands⁠—until Pelle could distinctly hear a knocking on the lid below. They had the coffin up in a trice, and examined the mouse. It had not eaten its forepaws, at any rate, but it had most decidedly turned over on its side. They buried it again, putting a dead beetle beside it in the coffin for safety’s sake, and sticking a straw down into the grave to supply it with air. Then they ornamented the mound, and set up a memorial stone.

“It’s dead now!” said Pelle, gravely and with conviction.

“Yes, I should just think so⁠—dead as a herring.” Rud had put his ear to the straw and listened.

“And now it must be up with God in all His glory⁠—right high, high up.”

Rud sniffed contemptuously. “Oh, you silly! Do you think it can crawl up there?”

“Well, can’t mice crawl, I should like to know?” Pelle was cross.

“Yes; but not through the air. Only birds can do that.”

Pelle felt himself beaten off the field and wanted to be revenged.

“Then your grandmother isn’t in heaven, either!” he declared emphatically. There was still a little rancor in his heart from the young mouse episode.

But this was more than Rud could stand. It had touched his family pride, and he gave Pelle a dig in the side with his elbow. The next moment they were rolling in the grass, holding one another by the hair, and making awkward attempts to hit one another on the nose with their clenched fists. They turned over and over like one lump, now one uppermost, now the other; they hissed hoarsely, groaned and made tremendous exertions. “I’ll make you sneeze red,” said Pelle angrily, as he rose above his adversary; but the next moment he was down again, with Rud hanging over him and uttering the most fearful threats about black eyes and seeing stars. Their voices were thick with passion.

And suddenly they were sitting opposite one another on the grass wondering whether they should set up a