VI

Pelle was going through a peculiar change at this time. He had seen

enough need and poverty in his life; and the capital was simply a

battlefield on which army upon army had rushed forward and had

miserably been defeated. Round about him lay the fallen. The town was

built over them as over a cemetery; one had to tread upon them in order

to win forward and harden one’s heart. Such was life in these days; one

shut one’s eyes—like the sheep when they see their comrades about to be

slaughtered—and waited until one’s own turn came. There was nothing

else to do.

But now he was awake and suffering; it hurt him with a stabbing pain

whenever he saw others suffer; and he railed against misfortune,

unreasonable though it might be.

There came a day when he sat working at home. At the other end of the

gangway a factory girl with her child had moved in a short while

before. Every morning she locked the door and went to work—and she did

not return until the evening. When Pelle came home he could hear the

sound of crying within the room.

He sat at his work, wrestling with his confused ideas. And all the time

a curious stifled sound was in his ears—a grievous sound, as though

something were incessantly complaining. Perhaps it was only the dirge

of poverty itself, some strophe of which was always vibrating upon the

air.

Little Marie came hurrying in. “Oh, Pelle, it’s crying again!” she

said, and she wrung her hands anxiously upon her hollow chest. “It has

cried all day, ever since she came here—it is horrible!”

“We’ll go and see what’s wrong,” said Pelle, and he threw down his

hammer.

The door was locked; they tried to look through the keyhole, but could

see nothing. The child within stopped its crying for a moment, as

though it heard them, but it began again at once; the sound was low and

monotonous, as though the child was prepared to hold out indefinitely.

They looked at one another; it was unendurable.

“The keys on this gangway do for all the doors,” said Marie, under her

breath. With one leap Pelle had rushed indoors, obtained his key, and

opened the door.

Close by the door sat a little four-year-old boy; he stared up at them,

holding a rusty tin vessel in his hand. He was tied fast to the stove;

near him, on an old wooden stool, was a tin plate containing a few

half- nibbled crusts of bread. The child was dressed in filthy rags and

presented a shocking appearance. He sat in his own filth; his little

hands were covered with it. His tearful, swollen face was smeared all

over with it. He held up his hands to them beseechingly.

Pelle burst into tears at the horrible sight and wanted to pick the

child up. “Let me do that!” cried Marie, horrified. “You’ll make

yourself filthy!”

“What then?” said Pelle stupidly. He helped to untie the child; his

hands were trembling.

To some extent they got the child to rights and gave him food. Then

they let him loose in the long gangway. For a time he stood stupidly

gaping by the doorpost; then he discovered that he was not tied up, and

began to rush up and down. He still held in his hand the old

tea-strainer which he had been grasping when they rescued him; he had

held on to it convulsively all the time. Marie had to dip his hand in

the water in order to clean the strainer.

From time to time he stood in front of Pelle’s open door, and peeped

inside. Pelle nodded to him, when he went storming up and down again—he

was like a wild thing. But suddenly he came right in, laid the tea-

strainer in Pelle’s lap and looked at him. “Am I to have that?” asked

Pelle. “Look, Marie, he is giving me the only thing he’s got!”

“Oh, poor little thing!” cried Marie pityingly. “He wants to thank

you!”

In the evening the factory girl came rushing in; she was in a rage, and

began to abuse them for breaking into her room. Pelle wondered at

himself, that he was able to answer her so quietly instead of railing

back at her. But he understood very well that she was ashamed of her

poverty and did not want any one else to see it. “It is unkind to the

child,” was all he said. “And yet you are fond of it!”

Then she began to cry. “I have to tie him up, or he climbs out over the

window-sill and runs into the street—he got to the corner once before.

And I’ve no clothes, to take him to the crêche!”

“Then leave the door open on the gangway! We will look after him, Marie

and I.”

After this the child tumbled about the gangway and ran to and fro.

Marie looked after him, and was like a mother to him. Pelle bought some

old clothes, and they altered them to fit him. The child looked very

droll in them; he was a little goblin who took everything in good part.

In his loneliness he had not learned to speak, but now speech came

quickly to him.

In Pelle this incident awakened something quite novel. Poverty he had

known before, but now he saw the injustice that lay beneath it, and

cried to heaven. His hands would suddenly clench with anger as he sat

so quietly in his room. Here was something one must hasten forward,

without intermission, day and night, as long as one drew breath—Morten

was right about that! This child’s father was a factory hand, and the

girl dared not summon him before the magistrates in order to make him

pay for its support for fear of being dismissed from her place. The

whole business seemed so hopeless—society seemed so unassailable—yet he

felt that he must strike a blow. His own hands alone signified so

little; but if they could only strike the blow all together—then

perhaps it would have some effect.

In the evenings he and Morten went to meetings where the situation was

passionately discussed. Those who attended these meetings were mostly

young people like himself. They met in some inn by the North Bridge.

But Pelle longed to see some result, and applied himself eagerly to the

organization of his own craft.

He inspired the weary president with his own zeal, and they prepared

together a list of all the members of their trade—as the basis of a

more vigorous agitation. When the “comrades” were invited to a meeting

through the press, they turned lazy and failed to appear. More

effectual means were needed; and Pelle started a house-to-house

agitation. This helped immediately; they were in a dilemma when one got

them face to face, and the Union was considerably increased, in spite

of the persecution of the big masters.

Morten began to treat him with respect; and wanted him to read about

the movement. But Pelle had no time for that. Together with Peter and

Karl, who were extremely zealous, he took in _The Working Man_, and

that was enough for him. “I know more about poverty than they write

there,” he said.

There was no lack of fuel to keep this fire burning. He had

participated in the march of poverty, from the country to the town and

thence to the capital, and there they stood and could go no farther for

all their longing, but perished on a desert shore. The many lives of

the “Ark” lay always before his eyes as a great common possession,

where no one need conceal himself, and where the need of the one was

another’s grief.

His nature was at this time undergoing a great change. There was an end

of his old careless acceptance of things. He laughed less and performed

apparently trivial actions with an earnestness which had its comical

side. And he began to display an appearance of self-respect which

seemed ill-justified by his position and his poverty.

One evening, when work was over, as he came homeward from Beck’s

workshop, he heard the children singing Hanne’s song down in the

courtyard. He stood still in the tunnel-like entry; Hanne herself stood

in the midst of a circle, and the children were dancing round her and

singing:

“I looked from the lofty mountain

Down over vale and lea,

And I saw a ship come sailing,

Sailing, sailing,

I saw a ship come sailing,

And on it were lordlings three.”

On Hanne’s countenance lay a blind, fixed smile; her eyes were tightly

closed. She turned slowly about as the children sang, and she sang

softly with them:

“The youngest of all the lordlings

Who on the ship did stand…”

But suddenly she saw Pelle and broke out of the circle. She went up the

stairs with him. The children, disappointed, stood calling after her.

“Aren’t you coming to us this evening?” she asked. “It is so long since

we have seen you.”

“I’ve no time. I’ve got an appointment,” replied Pelle briefly.

“But you must come! I beg you to, Pelle.” She looked at him pleadingly,

her eyes burning.

Pelle’s heart began to thump as he met her gaze. “What do you want with

me?” he asked sharply.

Hanne stood still, gazing irresolutely into the distance.

“You must help me, Pelle,” she said, in a toneless voice, without

meeting his eye.

“Yesterday I met…. Yesterday evening, as I was coming out of the

factory … he stood down below here … he knows where I live. I went

across to the other side and behaved as though I did not see him; but

he came up to me and said I was to go to the New Market this evening!”

“And what did you say to that?” answered Pelle sulkily.

“I didn’t say anything—I ran as hard as I could!”

“Is that all you want me for?” cried Pelle harshly. “You can keep away

from him, if you don’t want him!”

A cold shudder ran through her. “But if he comes here to look for me?…

And you are so…. I don’t care for anybody in the world but you and

mother!” She spoke passionately.

“Well, well, I’ll come over to you,” answered Pelle cheerfully.

He dressed himself quickly and went across. The old woman was delighted

to see him. Hanne was quite frolicsome; she rallied him continually,

and it was not long before he had abandoned his firm attitude and

allowed himself to be drawn into the most delightful romancing. They

sat out on the gallery under the green foliage, Hanne’s face glowing to

rival the climbing pelargonium; she kept on swinging her foot, and

continually touched Pelle’s leg with the tip of her shoe.

She was nervously full of life, and kept on asking the time. When her

mother went into the kitchen to make coffee, she took Pelle’s hand and

smilingly stroked it.

“Come with me,” she said. “I should so like to see if he is really so

silly as to think I’d come. We can stand in a corner somewhere and look

out.”

Pelle did not answer.

“Mother,” said Hanne, when Madam Johnsen returned with the coffee, “I’m

going out to buy some stuff for my bodice. Pelle’s coming with me.”

The excuse was easy to see through. But the old woman betrayed no

emotion. She had already seen that Hanne was well disposed toward Pelle

to-day; something was going on in the girl’s mind, and if Pelle only

wanted to, he could now bridle her properly. She had no objection to

make if both the young people kicked over the traces a little. Perhaps

then they would find peace together.

“You ought to take your shawl with you,” she told Hanne. “The evening

air may turn cold.”

Hanne walked so quickly that Pelle could hardly follow her. “It’ll be a

lark to see his disappointment when we don’t turn up,” she said,

laughing. Pelle laughed also. She stationed herself behind one of the

pillars of the Town Hall, where she could peep out across the market.

She was quite out of breath, she had hurried so.

Gradually, as the time went by and the stranger did not appear, her

animation vanished; she was silent, and her expression was one of

disappointment.

“No one’s going to come!” she said suddenly, and she laughed shortly.

“I only made up the whole thing to tell you, to see what you’d say.”

“Then let’s go!” said Pelle quietly, and he took her hand.

As they went down the steps, Hanne started; and her hand fell limply

from his. The stranger came quickly up to her. He held out his hand to

Hanne, quietly and as a matter of course, as though he had known her

for years. Pelle, apparently, he did not see.

“Will you come somewhere with me—where we can hear music, for example?”

he asked, and he continued to hold her hand. She looked irresolutely at

Pelle.

For a moment Pelle felt an inordinate longing to throw himself upon

this man and strike him to the ground, but then he met Hanne’s eyes,

which wore an expression as though she was longing for some means of

shaking him off. “Well, it looks as if one was in the way here!” he

thought. “And what does it all matter to me?” He turned away from her

and sauntered off down a side street.

Pelle strolled along to the quays by the gasworks, and he stood there,

sunk in thought, gazing at the ships and the oily water. He did not

suffer; it was only so terribly stupid that a strange hand should

appear out of the unknown, and that the bird which he with all his

striving could not entice, should have hopped right away on to that

hand.

Below the quay-wall the water plashed with a drowsy sound; fragments of

wood and other rubbish floated on it; it was all so home-like! Out by

the coal-quay lay a three-master. It was after working hours; the crew

were making an uproar below decks, or standing about on deck and

washing themselves in a bucket. One well-grown young seaman in blue

clothes and a white neckerchief came out of the cabin and stared up at

the rigging as though out of habit, and yawned. Then he strolled

ashore. His cap was on the back of his head, and between his teeth was

a new pipe. His face was full of freakish merriment, and he walked with

a swing of the hips. As he came up to Pelle he swayed to and fro a few

times and then bumped into him. “Oh, excuse me!” he said, touching his

cap. “I thought it was a scratching-post, the gentleman stood so stiff.

Well, you mustn’t take it amiss!” And he began to go round and round

Pelle, bending far forward as though he were looking for something on

him, and finally he pawed his own ears, like a friendly bear, and shook

with laughter. He was overflowing with high spirits and good humor.

Pelle had not shaken off his feeling of resentment; he did not know

whether to be angry or to laugh at the whole thing.

He turned about cautiously, so as to keep his eye on the sailor, lest

the latter should pull his feet from under him. He knew the grip, and

also how it should be parried; and he held his hands in readiness.

Suddenly something in the stooping position struck him as familiar.

This was Per Kofod—Howling Peter, from the village school at home, in

his own person! He who used to roar and blubber at the slightest word!

Yes, this was he!

“Good evening, Per!” he cried, delighted, and he gave him a thump in

the back.

The seaman stood up, astonished. “What the devil! Good evening! Well,

that I should meet you here, Pelle; that’s the most comical thing I’ve

ever known! You must excuse my puppy-tricks! Really!” He shook Pelle

heartily by the hand.

They loafed about the harbor, chatting of old times. There was so much

to recall from their schooldays. Old Fris with his cane, and the games

on the beach! Per Kofod spoke as though he had taken part in all of

them; he had quite forgotten that he used always to stand still

gripping on to something and bellowing, if the others came bawling

round him. “And Nilen, too, I met him lately in New Orleans. He is

second mate on a big American full-rigged ship, and is earning big

money. A smart fellow he is. But hang it all, he’s a tough case! Always

with his revolver in his hand. But that’s how it has to be over

there—among the niggers. Still, one fine day they’ll slit his belly up,

by God they will! Now then, what’s the matter there?”

From some stacks of timber near by came a bellowing as of some one in

torment, and the sound of blows. Pelle wanted, to turn aside, but Per

Kofod seized his arm and dragged him forward.

In among the timber-stacks three “coalies” were engaged in beating a

fourth. He did not cry out, but gave vent to a muffled roar every time

he received a blow. The blood was flowing down his face.

“Come on!” shouted Per Kofod, hitching up his trousers. And then, with

a roar, he hurled himself into their midst, and began to lay about him

in all directions. It was like an explosion with its following hail of

rocks. Howling Peter had learned to use his strength; only a sailor

could lay about him in that fashion. It was impossible to say where his

blows were going to fall; but they all went home. Pelle stood by for a

moment, mouth and eyes open in the fury of the fray; then he, too,

tumbled into the midst of it, and the three dock-laborers were soon

biting the dust.

“Damn it all, why did you interfere!” said Pelle crossly, when it was

over, as he stood pulling his collar straight.

“I don’t know,” said Howling Peter. “But it does one no harm to bestir

one’s self a bit for once!”

After the heat of the battle they had all but forgotten the man

originally attacked; he lay huddled up at the foot of a timber-stack

and made no sound. They got him on his legs again, but had to hold him

upright; he stood as limp as though asleep, and his eyes were staring

stupidly. He was making a heavy snoring sound, and at every breath the

blood made two red bubbles at his nostrils. From time to time he ground

his teeth, and then his eyes turned upward and the whites gleamed

strangely in his coal-blackened face.

The sailor scolded him, and that helped him so far that he was able to

stand on his feet. They drew a red rag from his bulging jacket-pocket,

and wiped the worst of the blood away. “What sort of a fellow are you,

damn it all, that you can’t stand a drubbing?” said Per Kofod.

“I didn’t call for help,” said the man thickly. His lips were swollen

to a snout.

“But you didn’t hit back again! Yet you look as if you’d strength

enough. Either a fellow manages to look after himself or he sings out

so that others can come to help him. D’ye see, mate?”

“I didn’t want to bring the police into it; and I’d earned a thrashing.

Only they hit so damned hard, and when I fell they used their clogs.”

He lived in the Saksogade, and they took each an arm. “If only I don’t

get ill now!” he groaned from time to time. “I’m all a jelly inside.”

And they had to stop while he vomited.

There was a certain firm for which he and his mates had decided no

longer to unload, as they had cut down the wages offered. There were

only four of them who stuck to their refusal; and what use was it when

others immediately took their place? The four of them could only hang

about and play the gentleman at large; nothing more came of it. But of

course he had given his word—that was why he had not hit back. The

other three had found work elsewhere, so he went back to the firm and

ate humble pie. Why should he hang about idle and killing time when

there was nothing to eat at home? He was damned if he understood these

new ways; all the same, he had betrayed the others, for he had given

his word. But they had struck him so cursedly hard, and had kicked him

in the belly with their clogs.

He continued rambling thus, like a man in delirium, as they led him

along. In the Saksogade they were stopped by a policeman, but Per Kofod

quickly told him a story to the effect that the man had been struck on

the head by a falling crane. He lived right up in the attics. When they

opened the door a woman who lay there in child-bed raised herself up on

the iron bedstead and gazed at them in alarm. She was thin and anemic.

When she perceived the condition of her husband she burst into a

heartrending fit of crying.

“He’s sober,” said Pelle, in order to console her; “he has only got a

bit damaged.”

They took him into the kitchen and bathed his head over the sink with

cold water. But Per Kofod’s assistance was not of much use; every time

the woman’s crying reached his ears he stopped helplessly and turned

his head toward the door; and suddenly he gave up and tumbled

head-foremost down the back stairs.

“What was really the matter with you?” asked Pelle crossly, when he,

too, could get away. Per was waiting at the door for him.

“Perhaps you didn’t hear her hymn-singing, you blockhead! But, anyhow,

you saw her sitting up in bed and looking like wax? It’s beastly, I

tell you; it’s infamous! He’d no need to go making her cry like that! I

had the greatest longing to thrash him again, weak as a baby though he

was. The devil—what did he want to break his word for?”

“Because they were starving, Per!” said Pelle earnestly. “That does

happen at times in this accursed city.”

Kofod stared at him and whistled. “Oh, Satan! Wife and child, and the

whole lot without food—what? And she in childbed. They were married,

right enough, you can see that. Oh, the devil! What a honeymoon! What

misery!”

He stood there plunging deep into his trouser pockets; he fetched out a

handful of things: chewing-tobacco, bits of flock, broken matches, and

in the midst of all a crumpled ten-kroner note. “So I thought!” he

said, fishing out the note. “I was afraid the girls had quite cleaned

me out last night! Now Pelle, you go up and spin them some sort of a

yarn; I can’t do it properly myself; for, look you, if I know that

woman she won’t stop crying day and night for another twenty-four

hours! That’s the last of my pay. But—oh, well, blast it … we go to sea

to-morrow!”

“She stopped crying when I took her the money,” said Pelle, when he

came down again.

“That’s good. We sailors are dirty beasts; you know; we do our business

into china and eat our butter out of the tarbucket; all the same, we—I

tell you, I should have left the thing alone and used the money to have

made a jolly night of it to-night….” He was suddenly silent; he chewed

at his quid as though inwardly considering his difficult philosophy.

“Damn it all, to-morrow we put to sea!” he cried suddenly.

They went out to Alleenberg and sat in the gardens. Pelle ordered beer.

“I can very well stand a few pints when I meet a good pal,” he said,

“but at other times I save like the devil. I’ve got to see about

getting my old father over here; he’s living on charity at home.”

“So your father’s still living? I can see him still so plainly—he had a

love-affair with Madam Olsen for some time, but then bo’sun Olsen came

home unexpectedly; they thought he’d remain abroad.”

Pelle laughed. Much water had run into the sea since those days. Now he

was no longer ashamed of Father Lasse’s foolish prank.

Light was gleaming from the booths in the garden. Young couples

wandered about and had their fortunes told; they ventured themselves on

the Wheel of Happiness, or had their portraits cut out by the

silhouette artist. By the roundabout was a mingled whirl of cries and

music and brightly colored petticoats. Now and again a tremendous

outcry arose, curiously dreadful, over all other sounds, and from the

concert-pavilion one heard the cracked, straining voices of one-time

“stars.” Wretched little worldlings came breathlessly hurrying thither,

pushing through the crowd, and disappeared into the pavilion, nodding

familiarly to the man in the ticket-office window.

“It’s really quite jolly here,” said Per Kofod. “You have a damn good

time of it on land!”

On the wide pathway under the trees apprentices, workmen, soldiers, and

now and again a student, loitered up and down, to and fro, looking

sideways at the servant-girls, who had stationed themselves on either

side of the walk, standing there arm-in-arm, or forming little groups.

Their eyes sent many a message before ever one of them stopped and

ventured to speak. Perhaps the maiden turned away; if so, that was an

end of the matter, and the youngster began the business all over again.

Or perhaps she ran off with him to one of the closed arbors, where they

drank coffee, or else to the roundabouts. Several of the young people

were from Pelle’s home; and every time he heard the confident voices of

the Bornholm girls Pelle’s heart stirred like a bird about to fly away.

Suddenly his troubles returned to his mind. “I really felt inclined,

this evening, to have done with the whole thing…. Just look at those

two, Per!” Two girls were standing arm-in-arm under a tree, quite close

to their table. They were rocking to and fro together, and now and

again they glanced at the two young men.

“Nothing there for me—that’s only for you land-lubbers,” said Per

Kofod. “For look you now, they’re like so many little lambs whose ears

you’ve got to tickle. And then it all comes back to you in the nights

when you take the dog-watch alone; you’ve told her lies, or you

promised to come back again when she undid her bodice…. And in the end

there she is, planted, and goin’ to have a kid! It don’t do. A sailor

ought to keep to the naughty girls.”

“But married women can be frisky sometimes,” said Pelle.

“That so, really? Once I wouldn’t have believed that any one could have

kicked a good woman; but after all they strangle little children…. And

they come and eat out of your hand if you give ’em a kind word—that’s

the mischief of it…. D’you remember Howling Peter?”

“Yes, as you ask me, I remember him very well.”

“Well, his father was a sailor, too, and that’s just what he did…. And

she was just such a girl, one who couldn’t say no, and believed

everything a man told her. He was going to come back again—of course.

‘When you hear the trap-door of the loft rattle, that’ll be me,’ he

told her. But the trap-door rattled several times, and he didn’t come.

Then she hanged herself from the trap-door with a rope. Howling Peter

came on to the parish. And you know how they all scorned him. Even the

wenches thought they had the right to spit at him. He could do nothing

but bellow. His mother had cried such a lot before he was born, d’ye

see? Yes, and then he hanged himself too—twice he tried to do it. He’d

inherited that! After that he had a worse time than ever; everybody

thought it honorable to ill-use him and ask after the marks on his

throat. No, not you; you were the only one who didn’t raise a hand to

him. That’s why I’ve so often thought about you. ‘What has become of

him?’ I used to ask myself. ‘God only knows where he’s got to!’” And he

gazed at Pelle with a pair of eyes full of trust.

“No, that was due to Father Lasse,” said Pelle, and his tone was quite

childlike. “He always said I must be good to you because you were in

God’s keeping.”

“In God’s keeping, did he say?” repeated Per Kofod thoughtfully. “That

was a curious thing to say. That’s a feeling I’ve never had. There was

nothing in the whole world at that time that could have helped me to

stand up for myself. I can scarcely understand how it is that I’m

sitting here talking to you—I mean, that they didn’t torment the life

out of my body.”

“Yes, you’ve altered very much. How does it really come about that

you’re such a smart fellow now?”

“Why, such as I am now, that’s really my real nature. It has just waked

up, that’s what I think. But I don’t understand really what was the

matter with me then. I knew well enough I could knock you down if I had

only wanted to. But I didn’t dare strike out, just out of sheer

wretchedness. I saw so much that you others couldn’t see. Damn it all,

I can’t make head nor tail of it! It must have been my mother’s

dreadful misery that was still in my bones. A horror used to come over

me—quite causeless—so that I had to bellow aloud; and then the farmers

used to beat me. And every time I tried to get out of it all by hanging

myself, they beat me worse than ever. The parish council decided I was

to be beaten. Well, that’s why I don’t do it, Pelle—a sailor ought to

keep to women that get paid for it, if they have anything to do with

him—that is, if he can’t get married. There, you have my opinion.”

“You’ve had a very bad time,” said Pelle, and he took his hand. “But

it’s a tremendous change that’s come over you!”

“Change! You may well say so! One moment Howling Peter—and the next,

the strongest man on board! There you have the whole story! For look

here now, at sea, of course, it was just the same; even the ship’s boy

felt obliged to give me a kick on the shins in passing. Everybody who

got a blow on a rowing passed it on to me. And when I went to sea in an

American bark, there was a nigger on board, and all of them used to

hound him down; he crawled before them, but you may take your oath he

hated them out of the whites of his devil’s eyes. But me, who treated

him with humanity, he played all manner of tricks on—it was nothing to

him that I was white. Yet even with him I didn’t dare to fetch him one—

there was always like a flabby lump in my midriff. But once the thing

went too far—or else the still-born something inside me was exhausted.

I just aimed at him a bit with one arm, so that he fell down. That

really was a rummy business. It was, let’s say, like a fairy tale where

the toad suddenly turns into a man. I set to then and there and

thrashed him till he was half dead. And while I was about it, and in

the vein, it seemed best to get the whole thing over, so I went right

ahead and thrashed the whole crew from beginning to end. It was a

tremendous moment, there was such a heap of rage inside me that had got

to come out!”

Pelle laughed. “A lucky thing that I knew you a little while ago, or

you would have made mincemeat of me, after all!”

“Not me, mate, that was only a little joke. A fellow is in such high

spirits when he comes ashore again. But out at sea it’s—thrash the

others, or they’ll thrash you! Well, that’s all right, but one ought to

be good to the women. That’s what I’ve told the old man on board; he’s

a fellow-countryman, but a swine in his dealings with women. There

isn’t a single port where he hasn’t a love-affair. In the South, and on

the American coast. It’s madman’s work often, and I have to go along

with him and look out that he doesn’t get a knife between his ribs.

‘Per,’ he says, ‘this evening we’ll go on the bust together.’ ‘All

right, cap’n,’ I say. ‘But it’s a pity about all the women.’ ‘Shut your

mouth, Per,’ he says; ‘they’re most of them married safe enough.’ He’s

one of us from home, too—from a little cottage up on the heath.”

“What’s his name, then?” said Pelle, interested.

“Albert Karlsen.”

“Why, then he’s Uncle Kalle’s eldest, and in a way my cousin—Kalle,

that is to say, isn’t really his father. His wife had him before she

was married—he’s the son of the owner of Stone Farm.”

“So he’s a Kongstrup, then!” cried Per Kofod, and he laughed loudly.

“Well, that’s as it should be!”

Pelle paid, and they got up to go. The two girls were still standing by

the tree. Per Kofod went up to one of them as though she had been a

bird that might escape him. Suddenly he seized her round the waist; she

withdrew herself slowly from his grip and laughed in his big fair face.

He embraced her once again, and now she stood still; it was still in

her mind to escape, for she laughingly half-turned away. He looked deep

into her eyes, then released her and followed Pelle.

“What’s the use, Pelle—why, I can hear her complaining already! A

fellow ought to be well warned,” he said, with a despairing accent.

“But, damn it all, why should a man have so much compassion when he

himself has been so cruelly treated? And the others; they’ve no

compassion. Did you see how gentle her eyes were? If I’d money I’d

marry her right away.”

“Perhaps she wouldn’t have you,” replied Pelle. “It doesn’t do to take

the girls for granted.”

In the avenue a few men were going to and fro and calling; they were

looking for their young women, who had given them the slip. One of them

came up to Per and Pelle—he was wearing a student’s cap. “Have the

gentlemen seen anything of our ladies?” he asked. “We’ve been sitting

with them and treating them all the evening, and then they said they’d

just got to go to a certain place, and they’ve gone off.”

They went down to the harbor. “Can’t you come on board with me and say

how d’ye-do to the old man?” said Per. “But of course, he’s ashore to-

night. I saw him go over the side about the time we knocked off—rigged

out for chasing the girls.”

“I don’t know him at all,” said Pelle; “he was at sea already when I

was still a youngster. Anyhow, I’ve got to go home to bed now—I get to

work early in the mornings.”

They stood on the quay, taking leave of one another. Per Kofod promised

to look Pelle up next time he was in port. While they were talking the

door of the after-cabin rattled. Howling Peter drew Pelle behind a

stack of coal. A powerful, bearded man came out, leading a young girl

by the hand. She went slowly, and appeared to resist. He set her

ceremoniously ashore, turned back to the cabin, and locked the door

behind him. The girl stood still for a moment. A low ’plaint escaped

her lips. She stretched her arms pleadingly toward the cabin. Then she

turned and went mournfully along the quay.

“That was the old man,” whispered Per Kofod. “That’s how he treats them

all—and yet they don’t want to give him up.”

Pelle could not utter a word; he stood there cowering, oppressed as by

some terrible burden. Suddenly he pulled himself together, pressed his

comrade’s hand, and set off quickly between the coal-stacks.

After a time he turned aside and followed the young girl at a little

distance. Like a sleep-walker, she staggered along the quay and went

over the long bridge. He feared she would throw herself in the water,

so strangely did she behave.

On the bridge she stood gazing across at the ship, with a frozen look

on her face. Pelle stood still; turned to ice by the thought that she

might see him. He could not have borne to speak to her just then—much

less look into her eyes.

But then she moved on. Her bearing was broken; from behind she looked

like one of those elderly, shipwrecked females from the “Ark,” who

shuffled along by the house-walls in trodden-down men’s shoes, and

always boasted a dubious past. “Good God!” thought Pelle, “is her dream

over already? Good God!”

He followed her at a short distance down the narrow street, and as soon

as he knew that she must have reached her dwelling he entered the

tunnel.