Pelle the Conqueror | Page 8

just like cows!
At the wooden shed in the middle of the harbor square, Lasse put down
the sack, and giving the boy a piece of bread and telling him to stay and
mind the sack, he went farther up and disappeared. Pelle was very
hungry, and holding the bread with both hands he munched at it
greedily.
When he had picked the last crumbs off his jacket, he set himself to
examine his surroundings. That black stuff in that big pot was tar. He
knew it quite well, but had never seen so much at once. My word! If
you fell into that while it was boiling, it would be worse even than the
brimstone pit in hell. And there lay some enormous fish-hooks, just like
those that were hanging on thick iron chains from the ships' nostrils. He
wondered whether there still lived giants who could fish with such
hooks. Strong John couldn't manage them!
He satisfied himself with his own eyes that the stacks of boards were
really hollow, and that he could easily get down to the bottom of them,

if only he had not had the sack to drag about. His father had said he was
to mind the sack, and he never let it out of his hands for a moment; as it
was too heavy to carry, he had to drag it after him from place to place.
He discovered a little ship, only just big enough for a man to lie down
in, and full of holes bored in the bottom and sides. He investigated the
ship-builders' big grind-stone, which was nearly as tall as a man. There
were bent planks lying there, with nails in them as big as the parish
constable's new tether-peg at home. And the thing that ship was
tethered to--wasn't it a real cannon that they had planted?
Pelle saw everything, and examined every single object in the
appropriate manner, now only spitting appraisingly upon it, now
kicking it or scratching it with his penknife. If he came across some
strange wonder or other, that he could not get into his little brain in any
other way, he set himself astride on it.
This was a new world altogether, and Pelle was engaged in making it
his own. Not a shred of it would he leave. If he had had his playfellows
from Tommelilla here, he would have explained it all to them. My
word, how they would stare! But when he went home to Sweden again,
he would tell them about it, and then he hoped they would call him a
liar.
He was sitting astride an enormous mast that lay along the timber- yard
upon some oak trestles. He kicked his feet together under the mast, as
he had heard of knights doing in olden days under their horses, and
imagined himself seizing hold of a ring and lifting himself, horse and
all. He sat on horseback in the midst of his newly discovered world,
glowing with the pride of conquest, struck the horse's loins with the flat
of his hand, and dug his heels into its sides, while he shouted a song at
the top of his voice. He had been obliged to let go the sack to get up.
"Far away in Smaaland the little imps were dancing With ready-loaded
pistol and rifle-barrelled gun; All the little devils they played upon the
fiddle, But for the grand piano Old Harry was the one."
In the middle of his noisy joy, he looked up, and immediately burst into

a roar of terror and dropped down on to the wood-shavings. On the top
of the shed at the place where his father had left him stood a black man
and two black, open-mouthed hell-hounds; the man leaned half out
over the ridge of the roof in a menacing attitude. It was an old
figure-head, but Pelle thought it was Old Harry himself, come to punish
him for his bold song, and he set off at a run up the hill. A little way up
he remembered the sack and stopped. He didn't care about the sack; and
he wouldn't get a thrashing if he did leave it behind, for Father Lasse
never beat him. And that horrid devil would eat him up at the very least,
if he ventured down there again; he could distinctly see how red the
nostrils shone, both the devil's and the dogs'.
But Pelle still hesitated. His father was so careful of that sack, that he
would be sure to be sorry if he lost it--he might even cry as he did when
he lost Mother Bengta. For perhaps the first time, the boy was being
subjected to one of life's serious tests, and stood--as so many had stood
before him--with the