irresistible impulse of dread, now brave, cautious, and confident,
Thoralf descended the cliff, which no human foot had ever trod
before. He held in his hand the pole with the horse-hair noose,
and over his shoulder hung a foxskin hunting-bag. With alert,
wide-open eyes he spied about him, exploring every cranny of the
rock, and thrusting his pole into the holes where he suspected
the birds might have taken refuge. Sometimes a gust of wind would
have flung him violently against the jagged wall if he had not,
by means of his pole, warded off the collision. At last he caught
sight of a bare ledge, where he might gain a secure foothold; for
the rope cut him terribly about the waist, and made him anxious
to relieve the strain, if only for a moment. He gave the signal
to his father, and by the aid of the pole swung himself over to
the projecting ledge. It was uncomfortably narrow, and, what was
worse, the remnants of a dozen auks’ nests had made the place
extremely slippery. Nevertheless, he seated himself, allowing his
feet to dangle, and gazed out upon the vast ocean, which looked
in its icy grandeur like a forest of shining towers and minarets.
It struck him for the first time in his life that perhaps his
father was right in his belief that Iceland was the fairest land
the sun doth shine upon; but he could not help reflecting that it
was a very unprofitable kind of beauty. The storm whistled and
howled overhead, but under the lee of the sheltering rock it blew
only in fitful gusts with intermissions of comparative calm. He
knew that in fair weather this was the haunt of innumerable sea
birds, and he concluded that even now they could not be far away.
He pulled up his legs, and crept carefully on hands and feet
along the slippery ledge, peering intently into every nook and
crevice. His eyes, which had been half-blinded by the glare of the
snow, gradually recovered their power of vision. There! What was
that? Something seemed to move on the ledge below. Yes, there sat
a long row of auks, some erect as soldiers, as if determined to
face it out; others huddled together in clusters, and comically
woe-begone. Quite a number lay dead at the base of the rock,
whether from starvation or as the victims of fierce fights for the
possession of the sheltered ledges could scarcely be determined.
Thoralf, delighted at the sight of anything eatable (even though
it was poor eating), gently lowered the end of his pole, slipped
the noose about the neck of a large, military-looking fellow, and,
with a quick pull, swung him out over the ice-field. The auk gave
a few ineffectual flaps with his useless wings,[4] and expired.
His picking off apparently occasioned no comment whatever in his
family, for his comrades never uttered a sound nor stirred an inch,
except to take possession of the place he had vacated. Number two
met his fate with the same listless resignation; and numbers three,
four, and five were likewise removed in the same noiseless manner,
without impressing their neighbors with the fact that their turn
might come next. The birds were half-benumbed with hunger, and
their usually alert senses were drowsy and stupefied. Nevertheless,
number six, when it felt the noose about its neck, raised a hubbub
that suddenly aroused the whole colony, and, with a chorus of wild
screams, the birds flung themselves down the cliffs or, in their
bewilderment, dashed headlong down upon the ice, where they lay
half stunned or helplessly sprawling. So, through all the caves
and hiding-places of the promontory the commotion spread, and
the noise of screams and confused chatter mingled with the storm
and filled the vault of the sky. In an instant a great flock of
gulls was on the wing, and circled with resentful shrieks about
the head of the daring intruder who had disturbed their wintry
peace. The wind whirled them about, but they still held their own,
and almost brushed with their wings against his face, while he
struck out at them with his pole. He had no intention of catching
them; but, by chance, a huge burgomaster gull[5] got its foot into
the noose. It made an ineffectual attempt to disentangle itself,
then, with piercing screams, flapped its great wings, beating
the air desperately. Thoralf, having packed three birds into his
hunting-bag, tied the three others together by the legs, and flung
them across his shoulders. Then, gradually trusting his weight to
the rope, he slid off the rock, and was about to give his father
the signal to hoist him up. But, greatly to his astonishment,
his living captive, by the power of its mighty wings, pulling at
the end of the pole, swung him considerably farther into space
than he had calculated. He would have liked to let go both the
gull and the pole, but he perceived instantly that if he did,
he would, by the mere force of his weight, be flung back against
the rocky wall. He did not dare take that risk, as the blow might
be hard enough to stun him. A strange, tingling sensation shot
through his nerves, and the blood throbbed with a surging sound
in his ears. There he hung suspended in mid-air, over a terrible
precipice--and a hundred feet below was the jagged ice-field with
its sharp, fiercely-shining steeples! With a powerful effort of
will, he collected his senses, clinched his teeth, and strove to
think clearly. The gull whirled wildly eastward and westward, and
he swayed with its every motion like a living pendulum between sea
and sky. He began to grow dizzy, but again his powerful will came
to his rescue, and he gazed resolutely up against the brow of the
precipice and down upon the projecting ledges below, in order to
accustom his eye and his mind to the sight. By a strong effort
he succeeded in giving a pull at the rope, and expected to feel
himself raised upward by his father’s strong arms. But, to his
amazement, there came no response to his signal. He repeated it
once, twice, thrice; there was a slight tugging at the rope, but no
upward movement. Then the brave lad’s heart stood still, and his
courage wellnigh failed him.
“Father!” he cried, with a hoarse voice of despair; “why don’t you
pull me up?”
His cry was lost in the roar of the wind, and there came no answer.
Taking hold once more of the rope with one hand, he considered the
possibility of climbing; but the miserable gull, seeming every
moment to redouble its efforts at escape, deprived him of the use
of his hands unless he chose to dash out his brains by collision
with the rock. Something like a husky, choked scream seemed to
float down from above, and staring again upward, he saw his
father’s head projecting over the brink of the precipice.
“The rope will break,” screamed Sigurd. “I have tied it to the
rock.”
Thoralf instantly took in the situation. By the swinging motion,
occasioned both by the wind and his fight with the gull, the
rope had become frayed against the sharp edge of the cliff, and
his chances of life, he coolly concluded, were now not worth a
sixpence. Curiously enough, his agitation suddenly left him, and
a great calm came over him. He seemed to stand face to face with
eternity; and as nothing else that he could do was of any avail,
he could at least steel his heart to meet death like a man and an
Icelander.
“I am trying to get hold of the rope below the place where it is
frayed,” he heard his father shout during a momentary lull in the
storm.
“Don’t try,” answered the boy; “you can’t do it alone. Rather, let
me down on the lower ledge, and let me sit there until you can go
and get someone to help you.”
His father, accustomed to take his son’s advice, reluctantly
lowered him ten or twenty feet until he was on a level with the
shelving ledge below, which was broader than the one upon which he
had first gained foothold. But--oh, the misery of it!--the ledge
did not project far enough! He could not reach it with his feet!
The rope, of which only a few strands remained, might break at
any moment and--he dared not think what would be the result! He
had scarcely had time to consider, when a brilliant device shot
through his brain. With a sudden thrust he flung away the pole, and
the impetus of his weight sent him inward with such force that he
landed securely upon the broad shelf of rock.
The gull, surprised by the sudden weight of the pole, made a
somersault, strove to rise again, and tumbled, with the pole still
depending from its leg, down upon the ice-field.
It was well that Thoralf was warmly clad, or he could never have
endured the terrible hours while he sat through the long afternoon,
hearing the moaning and shrieking of the wind and seeing the
darkness close about him. The storm was chilling him with its
fierce breath. One of the birds he tied about his throat as a sort
of scarf, using the feet and neck for making the knot, and the
dense, downy feathers sent a glow of comfort through him, in spite
of his consciousness that every hour might be his last. If he could
only keep awake through the night, the chances were that he would
survive to greet the morning. He hit upon an ingenious plan for
accomplishing this purpose. He opened the bill of the auk which
warmed his neck, cut off the lower mandible, and placed the upper
one (which was as sharp as a knife) so that it would inevitably
cut his chin in case he should nod. He leaned against the rock and
thought of his mother and the warm, comfortable chimney-corner
at home. The wind probably resented this thought, for it suddenly
sent a biting gust right into his face, and he buried his nose
in the downy breast of the auk until the pain had subsided. The
darkness had now settled upon sea and land; only here and there
white steeples loomed out of the gloom. Thoralf, simply to occupy
his thought, began to count them. But all of a sudden one of the
steeples seemed to move, then another--and another.
The boy feared that the long strain of excitement was depriving
him of his reason. The wind, too, after a few wild arctic howls,
acquired a warmer breath and a gentler sound. It could not be
possible that he was dreaming, for in that case he would soon be
dead. Perhaps he was dead already, and was drifting through this
strange icy vista to a better world. All these imaginings flitted
through his mind, and were again dismissed as improbable. He
scratched his face with the foot of an auk in order to convince
himself that he was really awake. Yes, there could be no doubt of
it; he was wide awake. Accordingly he once more fixed his eyes upon
the ghostly steeples and towers, and--it sent cold shudders down
his back--they were still moving. Then there came a fusillade as
of heavy artillery, followed by a salvo of lighter musketry; then
came a fierce grinding, and cracking, and creaking sound, as if
the whole ocean were of glass and were breaking to pieces. “What,”
thought Thoralf, “is the ice breaking up!” In an instant the
explanation of the whole spectral panorama was clear as the day.
The wind had veered round to the southeast, and the whole enormous
ice-floe was being driven out to sea. For several hours--he could
not tell how many--he sat watching this superb spectacle by the
pale light of the aurora borealis, which toward midnight began to
flicker across the sky and illuminated the northern horizon. He
found the sight so interesting that for a while he forgot to be
sleepy. But toward morning, when the aurora began to fade and the
clouds to cover the east, a terrible weariness was irresistibly
stealing over him. He could see glimpses of the black water beneath
him; and the shining spires of ice were vanishing in the dusk,
drifting rapidly away upon the arctic currents with death and
disaster to ships and crews that might happen to cross their paths.
It was terrible at what a snail’s pace the hours crept along!
It seemed to Thoralf as if a week had passed since his father
left him. He pinched himself in order to keep awake, but it was
of no use; his eyelids would slowly droop and his head would
incline--horrors! what was that? Oh, he had forgotten; it was the
sharp mandible of the auk that cut his chin. He put his hand up
to it, and felt something warm and clammy on his fingers. He was
bleeding. It took Thoralf several minutes to stay the blood--the
wound was deeper than he had bargained for; but it occupied him and
kept him awake, which was of vital importance.
At last, after a long and desperate struggle with drowsiness,
he saw the dawn break faintly in the east. It was a mere feeble
promise of light, a remote suggestion that there was such a thing
as day. But to the boy, worn out by the terrible strain of death
and danger staring him in the face, it was a glorious assurance
that rescue was at hand. The tears came into his eyes--not tears
of weakness, but tears of gratitude that the terrible trial had
been endured. Gradually the light spread like a pale, grayish veil
over the eastern sky, and the ocean caught faint reflections of
the presence of the unseen sun. The wind was mild, and thousands
of birds that had been imprisoned by the ice in the crevices of
the rocks whirled triumphantly into the air and plunged with wild
screams into the tide below. It was hard to imagine where they all
had been, for the air seemed alive with them, the cliffs teemed
with them; and they fought, and shrieked, and chattered, like a
howling mob in times of famine. It was owing to this unearthly
tumult that Thoralf did not hear the voice which called to him
from the top of the cliff. His senses were half-dazed by the noise
and by the sudden relief from the excitement of the night. Then
there came two voices floating down to him--then quite a chorus.
He tried to look up, but the beetling brow of the rock prevented
him from seeing anything but a stout rope, which was dangling in
mid-air and slowly approaching him. With all the power of his
lungs he responded to the call; and there came a wild cheer from
above--a cheer full of triumph and joy. He recognized the voices of
Hunding’s sons, who lived on the other side of the promontory; and
he knew that even without their father they were strong enough to
pull up a man three times his weight. The difficulty now was only
to get hold of the rope, which hung too far out for his hands to
reach it.
“Shake the rope hard,” he called up; and immediately the rope was
shaken into serpentine undulations; and after a few vain efforts,
he succeeded in catching hold of the knot. To secure the rope
about his waist and to give the signal for the ascent was but a
moment’s work. They hauled vigorously, those sons of Hunding--for
he rose, up, along the black walls--up--up--up--with no uncertain
motion. At last, when he was at the very brink of the precipice,
he saw his father’s pale and anxious face leaning out over the
abyss. But there was another face too! Whose could it be? It was
a woman’s face. It was his mother’s. Somebody swung him out into
space; a strange, delicious dizziness came over him; his eyes were
blinded with tears; he did not know where he was. He only knew that
he was inexpressibly happy. There came a tremendous cheer from
somewhere--for Icelanders know how to cheer--but it penetrated but
faintly through his bewildered senses. Something cold touched his
forehead; it seemed to be snow; then warm drops fell, which were
tears. He opened his eyes; he was in his mother’s arms. Little Jens
was crying over him and kissing him. His father and Hunding’s sons
were standing, with folded arms, gazing joyously at him.
MIKKEL.
I.
HOW MIKKEL WAS FOUND.
You may find it hard to believe what I am going to tell you, but
it is, nevertheless, strictly true. I knew the boy who is the hero
of this story. His name was Thor Larsson, and a very clever boy
he was. Still I don’t think he would have amounted to much in the
world, if it had not been for his friend Michael, or, as they write
it in Norwegian, Mikkel. Mikkel, strange to say, was not a boy,
but a fox. Thor caught him, when he was a very small lad, in a den
under the roots of a huge tree. It happened in this way. Thor and
his elder brother, Lars, and still another boy, named Ole Thomlemo,
were up in the woods gathering faggots, which they tied together
in large bundles to carry home on their backs; for their parents
were poor people, and had no money to buy wood with. The boys
rather liked to be sent on errands of this kind, because delicious
raspberries and blueberries grew in great abundance in the woods,
and gathering faggots was, after all, a much manlier occupation
than staying at home minding the baby.
Thor’s brother Lars and Ole Thomlemo were great friends, and
they had a disagreeable way of always plotting and having secrets
together and leaving Thor out of their councils. One of their
favorite tricks, when they wished to get rid of him, was to pretend
to play hide-and-seek; and when he had hidden himself, they would
run away from him and make no effort to find him. It was this trick
of theirs which led to the capture of Mikkel, and to many things
besides.
It was on a glorious day in the early autumn that the three boys
started out together, as frisky and gay as a company of squirrels.
They had no luncheon-baskets with them, although they expected to
be gone for the whole day; but they had hooks and lines in their
pockets, and meant to have a famous dinner of brook-trout up in
some mountain glen, where they could sit like pirates around a
fire, conversing in mysterious language, while the fish was being
fried upon a flat stone. Their _tolle_ knives[6] were hanging,
sheathed, from their girdles, and the two older ones carried,
besides, little hatchets wherewith to cut off the dry twigs and
branches. Lars and Ole Thomlemo, as usual, kept ahead and left Thor
to pick his way over the steep and stony road as best he might; and
when he caught up with them, they started to run, while he sat down
panting on a stone. Thus several hours passed, until they came to
a glen in which the blueberries grew so thickly that you couldn’t
step without crushing a handful. The boys gave a shout of delight
and flung themselves down, heedless of their clothes, and began to
eat with boyish greed. As far as their eyes could reach between the
mossy pine trunks, the ground was blue with berries, except where
bunches of ferns or clusters of wild flowers intercepted the view.
When they had dulled the edge of their hunger, they began to cut
the branches from the trees which the lumbermen had felled, and
Ole Thomlemo, who was clever with his hands, twisted withes, which
they used instead of ropes for tying their bundles together. They
had one bundle well secured and another under way, when Ole, with a
mischievous expression, ran over to Lars and whispered something in
his ear.
“Let us play hide-and-seek,” said Lars aloud, glancing over toward
his little brother, who was working like a Trojan, breaking the
faggots so as to make them all the same length.
Thor, who in spite of many exasperating experiences had not yet
learned to be suspicious, threw down an armful of dry boughs and
answered: “Yes, let us, boys. I am in for anything.”
“I’ll blind first,” cried Ole Thomlemo; “now, be quick and get
yourselves hidden.”
And off the two brothers ran, while Ole turned his face against a
big tree and covered his eyes with his hands. But the very moment
Thor was out of sight, Lars stole back again to his friend, and
together they slipped away under cover of the bushes, until they
reached the lower end of the glen. There, they pulled out their
fish-lines, cut rods with their hatchets, and went down to the
tarn, or brook, which was only a short distance off; the fishing
was excellent, and when the large speckled trout began to leap
out of the water to catch their flies, the two boys soon ceased
to trouble themselves about little Thor, who, they supposed, was
hiding under some bush and waiting to be discovered.
In this supposition they were partly right and partly wrong.
No sooner had Ole Thomlemo given the signal for hiding, than Thor
ran up the hill-side, stumbling over the moss-grown stones, pushing
the underbrush aside with his hands, and looking eagerly for a
place where he would be least likely to be found. He was full of
the spirit of the game, and anticipated with joyous excitement the
wonder of the boys when they should have to give up the search
and call to him to reveal himself. While these thoughts were
filling his brain, he caught sight of a huge old fir-tree, which
was leaning down the mountain-side as if ready to fall. The wind
had evidently given it a pull in the top, strong enough to loosen
its hold on the ground, and yet not strong enough to overthrow
it. On the upper side, for a dozen yards or more, the thick,
twisted roots, with the soil and turf still clinging to them, had
been lifted, so as to form a little den about two feet wide at
the entrance. Here, thought Thor, was a wonderful hiding-place.
Chuckling to himself at the discomfiture of his comrades, he threw
himself down on his knees and thrust his head into the opening.
To his surprise the bottom felt soft to his hands, as if it had
been purposely covered with moss and a layer of feathers and
eider-down. He did not take heed of the peculiar wild smell which
greeted his nostrils, but fearlessly pressed on, until nearly
his whole figure, with the exception of the heels of his boots,
was hidden. Then a sharp little bark startled him, and raising
his head he saw eight luminous eyes staring at him from a dark
recess, a few feet beyond his nose. It is not to be denied that
he was a little frightened; for it instantly occurred to him that
he had unwittingly entered the den of some wild beast, and that,
in case the old ones were at home, there was small chance of his
escaping with a whole skin. It could hardly be a bear’s den, for
the entrance was not half big enough for a gentleman of Bruin’s
size. It might possibly be a wolf’s premises he was trespassing
upon, and the idea made his blood run cold. For Mr. Gray-legs,
as the Norwegians call the wolf, is not to be trifled with; and
a small boy armed only with a knife was hardly a match for such
an antagonist. Thor concluded, without much reflection, that his
safest plan would be to beat a hasty retreat. Digging his hands
into the mossy ground, he tried to push himself backward, but, to
his unutterable dismay, he could not budge an inch. The feathers,
interspersed with the smooth pine-needles, slipped away under his
fingers, and the roots caught in his clothes and held him as in
a vice. He tried to force his way, but the more he wriggled the
more he realized how small was his chance of escape. To turn was
impossible, and to pull off his coat and trousers was a scarcely
less difficult task. It was fortunate that the four inhabitants
of the den, to whom the glaring eyes belonged, seemed no less
frightened than himself; for they remained huddled together in
their corner, and showed no disposition to fight. They only
stared wildly at the intruder, and seemed anxious to know what he
intended to do next. And Thor stared at them in return, although
the darkness was so dense that he could discern nothing except the
eight luminous eyes, which were fixed upon him with an uncanny and
highly uncomfortable expression. Unpleasant as the situation was,
he began to grow accustomed to it, and he collected his scattered
thoughts sufficiently to draw certain conclusions. The size of the
den, as well as the feathers which everywhere met his fumbling
hands, convinced him that his hosts were young foxes, and that
probably their respected parents, for the moment, were on a raid in
search of rabbits or stray poultry. That reflection comforted him,
for he had never known a fox to use any other weapon of defence
than its legs, unless it was caught in a trap and had to fight for
bare life. He was just dismissing from his mind all thought of
danger from that source, when a sudden sharp pain in his heel put
an end to his reasoning. He gave a scream, at which the eight eyes
leaped apart in pairs and distributed themselves in a row along the
curving wall of the den. Another bite in his ankle convinced him
that he was being attacked from behind, and he knew no other way
of defence than to kick with all his might, screaming at the same
time so as to attract the attention of the boys, who, he supposed,
could hardly be far off. But his voice sounded choked and feeble
in the close den, and he feared that no one would be able to hear
it ten yards away. The strong odor, too, began to stifle him, and
a strange dizziness wrapped his senses, as it were, in a gray,
translucent veil. He made three or four spasmodic efforts to rouse
himself, screamed feebly, and kicked; but probably he struck his
wounded ankle against a root or a stone, for the pain shot up his
leg and made him clinch his teeth to keep the tears from starting.
He thought of his poor mother, whom he feared he should never see
again, and how she would watch for his return through the long
night and cry for him, as it said in the Bible that Jacob cried
over Joseph when he supposed that a wild beast had torn him to
pieces and killed him. Curious lights, like shooting stars, began
to move before his eyes; his tongue felt dry and parched, and his
throat seemed burning hot. It occurred to him that certainly God
saw his peril and might yet help him, if he only prayed for help;
but the only prayer which he could remember was the one which the
minister repeated every Sunday for “our most gracious sovereign,
Oscar II., and the army and navy of the United Kingdoms.” Next he
stumbled upon “the clergy, and the congregations committed to their
charge;” and he was about to finish with “sailors in distress at
sea,” when his words, like his thoughts, grew more and more hazy,
and he drifted away into unconsciousness.
Lars and Ole Thomlemo in the meanwhile had enjoyed themselves to
the top of their bent, and when they had caught a dozen trout,
among which was one three-pounder, they reeled up their lines,
threaded the fish on withes, and began to trudge leisurely up the
glen. When they came to the place where they had left their bundles
of faggots, they stopped to shout for Thor, and when they received
no reply, they imagined that, being tired of waiting, he had gone
home alone, or fallen in with some one who was on his way down
to the valley. The only thing that troubled them was that Thor’s
bundle had not been touched since they left him, and they knew that
the boy was not lazy, and that, moreover, he would be afraid to go
home without the faggots. They therefore concluded to search the
copse and the surrounding underbrush, as it was just possible that
he might have fallen asleep in his hiding-place while waiting to be
discovered.