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

death. Even if they managed to get down to the wreck, what then? Why, they would be dashed against the side of the vessel!

Old Ole Köller, Niels’s father, came down over the sandbanks. “Who’s that out there throwing themselves away?” he asked. The question sounded harsh as it broke in upon the silence and suspense. No one looked at him⁠—Ole was rather garrulous. He glanced round the flock, as though he were looking for some particular person. “Niels⁠—have any of you seen Niels?” he asked quietly. One man nodded toward the sea, and he was silent and overcome.

The waves must have broken their oars or carried them away, for they dropped the bit of sail, the boat burrowed aimlessly with its prow, and settled down lazily with its broadside to the wind. Then a great wave took them and carried them in one long sweep toward the wreck, and they disappeared in the breaking billow.

When the water sank to rest, the boat lay bottom upward, rolling in the lee of the vessel.

A man was working his way from the deck up into the rigging. “Isn’t that Niels?” said Ole, gazing until his eyes watered. “I wonder if that isn’t Niels?”

“No; it’s my brother Karl,” said Nilen.

“Then Niels is gone,” said Ole plaintively. “Then Niels is gone.”

The others had nothing to answer; it was a matter of course that Niels would be lost.

Ole stood for a little while shrinkingly, as if expecting that someone would say it was Niels. He dried his eyes, and tried to make it out for himself, but they only filled again. “Your eyes are young,” he said to Pelle, his head trembling. “Can’t you see that it’s Niels?”

“No, it’s Karl,” said Pelle softly.

And Ole went with bowed head through the crowd, without looking at anyone or turning aside for anything. He moved as though he were alone in the world, and walked slowly out along the south shore. He was going to meet the dead body.

There was no time to think. The line began to be alive, glided out into the sea, and drew the rope after it. Yard after yard it unrolled itself and glided slowly into the sea like an awakened sea-animal, and the thick hawser began to move.

Karl fastened it high up on the mast, and it took all the men⁠—and boys, too⁠—to haul it taut. Even then it hung in a heavy curve from its own weight, and the cradle dragged through the crests of the waves when it went out empty. It was more under than above the water as they pulled it back again with the first of the crew, a funny little dark man, dressed in mangy gray fur. He was almost choked in the crossing, but when once they had emptied the water out of him he quite recovered and chattered incessantly in a curious language that no one understood. Five little fur-clad beings, one by one, were brought over by the cradle, and last of all came Karl with a little squealing pig in his arms.

“They were a poor lot of seamen!” said Karl, in the intervals of disgorging water. “Upon my word, they understood nothing. They’d made the rocket-line fast to the shrouds, and tied the loose end round the captain’s waist! And you should just have seen the muddle on board!” He talked loudly, but his glance seemed to veil something.

The men now went home to the village with the shipwrecked sailors; the vessel looked as if it would still keep out the water for some time.

Just as the schoolchildren were starting to go home, Ole came staggering along with his son’s dead body on his back. He walked with loose knees bending low and moaning under his burden. Fris stopped him and helped him to lay the dead body in the schoolroom. There was a deep wound in the forehead. When Pelle saw the dead body with its gaping wound, he began to jump up and down, jumping quickly up, and letting himself drop like a dead bird. The girls drew away from him, screaming, and Fris bent over him and looked sorrowfully at him.

“It isn’t from naughtiness,” said the other boys. “He can’t help it; he’s taken that way sometimes. He got it once when he saw a man almost killed.” And they carried him off to the pump to bring him to himself again.

Fris and Ole busied themselves over the dead body, placed something under the head, and washed away the sand that had got rubbed into the skin of the face. “He was my best boy,” said Fris, stroking the dead man’s head with a trembling hand. “Look well at him, children, and never forget him again; he was my best boy.”

He stood silent, looking straight before him, with dimmed spectacles and hands hanging loosely. Ole was crying; he had suddenly grown pitiably old and decrepit. “I suppose I ought to get him home?” he said plaintively, trying to raise his son’s shoulders; but he had not the strength.

“Just let him lie!” said Fris. “He’s had a hard day, and he’s resting now.”

“Yes, he’s had a hard day,” said Ole, raising his son’s hand to his mouth to breathe upon it. “And look how he’s used the oar! The blood’s burst out at his fingertips!” Ole laughed through his tears. “He was a good lad. He was food to me, and light and heat too. There never came an unkind word out of his mouth to me that was a burden on him. And now I’ve got no son, Fris! I’m childless now! And I’m not able to do anything!”

“You shall have enough to live upon, Ole,” said Fris.

“Without coming on the parish? I shouldn’t like to come upon the parish.”

“Yes, without coming on the parish, Ole.”

“If only he can get peace now! He had so little peace in this world these last few years. There’s been a song made about his misfortune, Fris, and every time he heard it he