In The Blue Pike

In The Blue Pike

The Project Gutenberg EBook In The Blue Pike, by Georg Ebers,
Complete #148 in our series by Georg Ebers
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Title: In The Blue Pike, Complete
Author: Georg Ebers
Release Date: April, 2004 [EBook #5587] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on August 17, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE
BLUE PIKE, BY EBERS, ALL ***

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an entire meal of them. D.W.]

IN THE BLUE PIKE, Complete
By Georg Ebers
Volume 1.
Translated from the German by Mary T. Safford

CHAPTER I.
"May a thunderbolt strike you!" The imprecation suited the rough
fellow who uttered it. He had pointed out of doors as he spoke, and
scarcely lowered the strange tones of his voice, yet of all the rabble
who surrounded him only two persons understood his meaning--a
fading, sickly girl, and the red-haired woman, only a few years her
senior, who led the swearing man by a chain, like a tame bear.
The Nuremberg magistrates had had Cyriax's tongue cropped for gross
blasphemy, and listeners could scarcely comprehend the words he
mangled in his gasping speech.
The red-haired woman dropped the knife with which she was slicing
bread and onions into a pot, and looked at her companion with an
anxious, questioning glance.
"Nuremberg Honourables," he stammered as fast as he could, snatched
his wife's shawl from her shoulders, and drew it over his unkempt head.

The woman beckoned to their travelling companions--a lame fellow of
middle age who, propped on crutches, leaned against the wall, an older
pock-marked man with a bloated face, and the sickly girl--calling to
them in the harsh, metallic voice peculiar to hawkers and elderly
singers at fairs.
"Help Cyriax hide. You first, Jungel! They needn't recognise him as
soon as they get in. Nuremberg magistrates are coming. Aristocratic
blood-suckers of the Council. Who knows what may still be on the tally
for us?"
Kuni, the pale-faced girl, wrapped her bright-coloured garment tighter
around her mutilated left leg, and obeyed. Lame Jungel, too, prepared
to fulfil red-haired Gitta's wish.
But Raban had glanced out, and hastily drew the cloth jerkin, patched
with green and blue linen, closer through his belt, ejaculating
anxiously:
"Young Groland of the Council. I know him."
This exclamation induced the other vagabonds to glide along the wall
to the nearest door, intending to slip out.
"A Groland?" asked Gitta, Cyriax's wife, cowering as if threatened with
a blow from an invisible hand. "It was he--"
"He?" laughed the chain-bearer, while he crouched beside her, drawing
himself into the smallest space possible. "No, Redhead! The devil
dragged the man who did that down to the lower regions long ago, on
account of my tongue. It's his son. The younger, the sharper. This
stripling made Casper Rubling,--[Dice, in gambler's slang]--poor
wretch, pay for his loaded dice with his eyesight."
He thrust his hand hurriedly into his jerkin as he spoke, and gave Gitta
something which he had concealed there. It was a set of dice, but, with
ready presence of mind, she pressed them so hard into the crumb of the
loaf of bread which she had just cut that it entirely concealed them.

All this had passed wholly unnoticed in the corner of the long, wide
room, for all the numerous travellers whom it sheltered were entirely
occupied with their own affairs. Nothing was understood except what
was said between neighbour and neighbour, for a loud uproar pervaded
the tavern of The Blue Pike.
It was one of the most crowded inns, being situated on the main ferry at
Miltenberg, where those journeying from Nuremberg,