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

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 moneygrubber! No, if you ever take off your greasy nightcap 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 today,” 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 heartfelt wishes of so many?

Perhaps a warning to everyone that at that moment the ship had gone to the bottom? The sea always sends word of its evil doings; when the breadwinner 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 foghorn 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 everyone 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