August had often hung about the little station, watching the
trains come and go and dive into the heart of the hills and
vanish. No one said anything to him for idling about; people are
kind-hearted and easy of temper in this pleasant land, and
children and dogs are both happy there. He heard the Bavarians
arguing and vociferating a great deal, and learned that they
meant to go too and wanted to go with the great stove itself. But
this they could not do, for neither could the stove go by a
passenger-train nor they themselves go in a goods-train. So at
length they insured their precious burden for a large sum, and
consented to send it by a luggage-train which was to pass through
Hall in half an hour. The swift trains seldom deign to notice the
existence of Hall at all.
August heard, and a desperate resolve made itself up in his
little mind. Where Hirschvogel went would he go. He gave one
terrible thought to Dorothea--poor, gentle Dorothea!--sitting in
the cold at home, then set to work to execute his project. How he
managed it he never knew very clearly himself, but certain it is
that when the goods-train from the north, that had come all the
way from Linz on the Danube, moved out of Hall, August was hidden
behind the stove in the great covered truck, and wedged, unseen
and undreamt of by any human creature, amidst the cases of
wood-carving, of clocks and clock-work, of Vienna toys, of
Turkish carpets, of Russian skins, of Hungarian wines, which
shared the same abode as did his swathed and bound Hirschvogel.
No doubt he was very naughty, but it never occurred to him that
he was so: his whole mind and soul were absorbed in the one
entrancing idea, to follow his beloved friend and fire-king.
It was very dark in the closed truck, which had only a little
window above the door; and it was crowded, and had a strong smell
in it from the Russian hides and the hams that were in it. But
August was not frightened; he was close to Hirschvogel, and
presently he meant to be closer still; for he meant to do nothing
less than get inside Hirschvogel itself. Being a shrewd little
boy, and having had by great luck two silver groschen in his
breeches-pocket, which he had earned the day before by chopping
wood, he had bought some bread and sausage at the station of a
woman there who knew him, and who thought he was going out to his
uncle Joachim's chalet above Jenbach. This he had with him, and
this he ate in the darkness and the lumbering, pounding,
thundering noise which made him giddy, as never had he been in a
train of any kind before. Still he ate, having had no breakfast,
and being a child, and half a German, and not knowing at all how
or when he ever would eat again.
When he had eaten, not as much as he wanted, but as much as he
thought was prudent (for who could say when he would be able to
buy anything more?), he set to work like a little mouse to make a
hole in the withes of straw and hay which enveloped the stove. If
it had been put in a packing-case he would have been defeated at
the onset. As it was, he gnawed, and nibbled, and pulled, and
pushed, just as a mouse would have done, making his hole where he
guessed that the opening of the stove was,--the opening through
which he had so often thrust the big oak logs to feed it. No one
disturbed him; the heavy train went lumbering on and on, and he
saw nothing at all of the beautiful mountains, and shining
waters, and great forests through which he was being carried. He
was hard at work getting through the straw and hay and twisted
ropes; and get through them at last he did, and found the door of
the stove, which he knew so well, and which was quite large
enough for a child of his age to slip through, and it was this
which he had counted upon doing. Slip through he did, as he had
often done at home for fun, and curled himself up there to see if
he could anyhow remain during many hours. He found that he could;
air came in through the brass fret-work of the stove; and with
admirable caution in such a little fellow he leaned out, drew the
hay and straw together, and rearranged the ropes, so that no one
could ever have dreamed a little mouse had been at them. Then he
curled himself up again, this time more like a dormouse than
anything else; and, being safe inside his dear Hirschvogel and
intensely cold, he went fast asleep as if he were in his own bed
at home with Albrecht and Christof on either side of him. The
train lumbered on, stopping often and long, as the habit of
goods-trains is, sweeping the snow away with its cow-switcher,
and rumbling through the deep heart of the mountains, with its
lamps aglow like the eyes of a dog in a night of frost.
The train rolled on in its heavy, slow fashion, and the child
slept soundly for a long while. When he did awake, it was quite
dark outside in the land; he could not see, and of course he was
in absolute darkness; and for a while he was sorely frightened,
and trembled terribly, and sobbed in a quiet heart-broken
fashion, thinking of them all at home. Poor Dorothea! how anxious
she would be! How she would run over the town and walk up to
grandfather's at Dorf Ampas, and perhaps even send over to
Jenbach, thinking he had taken refuge with Uncle Joachim! His
conscience smote him for the sorrow he must be even then causing
to his gentle sister; but it never occurred to him to try and go
back. If he once were to lose sight of Hirschvogel how could he
ever hope to find it again? how could he ever know whither it had
gone,--north, south, east, or west? The old neighbor had said
that the world was small; but August knew at least that it must
have a great many places in it: that he had seen himself on the
maps on his schoolhouse walls. Almost any other little boy would,
I think, have been frightened out of his wits at the position in
which he found himself; but August was brave, and he had a firm
belief that God and Hirschvogel would take care of him. The
master-potter of Nürnberg was always present to his mind, a
kindly, benign, and gracious spirit, dwelling manifestly in that
porcelain tower whereof he had been the maker.
A droll fancy, you say? But every child with a soul in him has
quite as quaint fancies as this one was of August's.
So he got over his terror and his sobbing both, though he was so
utterly in the dark. He did not feel cramped at all, because the
stove was so large, and air he had in plenty, as it came through
the fret-work running round the top. He was hungry again, and
again nibbled with prudence at his loaf and his sausage. He could
not at all tell the hour. Every time the train stopped and he
heard the banging, stamping, shouting, and jangling of chains
that went on, his heart seemed to jump up into his mouth. If they
should find him out! Sometimes porters came and took away this
case and the other, a sack here, a bale there, now a big bag, now
a dead chamois. Every time the men trampled near him, and swore
at each other, and banged this and that to and fro, he was so
frightened that his very breath seemed to stop. When they came to
lift the stove out, would they find him? and if they did find
him, would they kill him? That was what he kept thinking of all
the way, all through the dark hours, which seemed without end.
The goods-trains are usually very slow, and are many days doing
what a quick train does in a few hours. This one was quicker than
most, because it was bearing goods to the King of Bavaria;
still, it took all the short winter's day and the long winter's
night and half another day to go over ground that the mail-trains
cover in a forenoon. It passed great armored Kuffstein standing
across the beautiful and solemn gorge, denying the right of way
to all the foes of Austria. It passed twelve hours later, after
lying by in out-of-the-way stations, pretty Rosenheim, that marks
the border of Bavaria. And here the Nürnberg stove, with August
inside it, was lifted out heedfully and set under a covered way.
When it was lifted out, the boy had hard work to keep in his
screams; he was tossed to and fro as the men lifted the huge
thing, and the earthenware walls of his beloved fire-king were
not cushions of down. However, though they swore and grumbled at
the weight of it, they never suspected that a living child was
inside it, and they carried it out on to the platform and set it
down under the roof of the goods-shed. There it passed the rest
of the night and all the next morning, and August was all the
while within it.