Pelle the Conqueror, vol 3 | Page 4

And one day Pelle would catch the bird; when and how
he left confidingly to chance.
In one of the side streets which ran out of the Market Street there was a
crowd; a swarm of people filled the whole street in front of the iron-
foundry, shouting eagerly to the blackened iron-workers, who stood
grouped together by the gateway, looking at one another irresolutely.
"What's up here?" asked Pelle.
"This is up--that they can't earn enough to live on," said an old man.
"And the manufacturers won't increase their pay. So they've taken to
some new-fangled fool's trick which they say has been brought here
from abroad, where they seem to have done well with it. That's to say,
they all suddenly chuck up their work and rush bareheaded into the
street and make a noise, and then back to work again, just like school
children in play-time. They've already been in and out two or three
times, and now half of them's outside and the others are at work, and

the gate is locked. Nonsense! A lot that's going to help their wages! No;
in my time we used to ask for them prettily, and we always got
something, too. But, anyhow, we're only working-folks, and where's it
going to come from? And now, what's more, they've lost their whole
week's wages!"
The workmen were at a loss as to what they should do; they stood there
gazing mechanically up at the windows of the counting-house, from
which all decisions were commonly issued. Now and again an
impatient shudder ran through the crowd, as it made threats toward the
windows and demanded what was owing it. "He won't give us the
wages that we've honestly earned, the tyrant!" they cried. "A nice thing,
truly, when one's got a wife and kids at home, and on a Saturday
afternoon, too! What a shark, to take the bread out of their mouths!
Won't the gracious gentleman give us an answer--just his greeting, so
that we can take it home with us?--just his kind regards, or else they'll
have to go hungry to bed!" And they laughed, a low, snarling laugh,
spat on the pavement, and once more turned their masterless faces up to
the counting-house windows.
Proposals were showered upon them, proposals of every kind; and they
were as wise as they were before. "What the devil are we to do if
there's no one who can lead us?" they said dejectedly, and they stood
staring again. That was the only thing they knew how to do.
"Choose a few of your comrades and send them in to negotiate with the
manufacturer," said a gentleman standing by.
"Hear, hear! Forward with Eriksen! He understands the deaf-and-dumb
alphabet!" they shouted. The stranger shrugged his shoulders and
departed.
A tall, powerful workman approached the group. "Have you got your
killer with you, Eriksen?" cried one, and Eriksen turned on the staircase
and exhibited his clenched fist.
"Look out!" they shouted at the windows. "Look out we don't set fire to
the place!" Then all was suddenly silent, and the heavy house-door was
barred.
Pelle listened with open mouth. He did not know what they wanted,
and they hardly knew, themselves; none the less, there was a new note
in all this! These people didn't beg for what they wanted; they preferred
to use their fists in order to get it, and they didn't get drunk first, like

the strong man Eriksen and the rest at home. "This is the capital!" he
thought, and again he congratulated himself for having come thither.
A squad of policemen came marching up. "Room there!" they cried,
and began to hustle the crowd in order to disperse it. The workmen
would not be driven away. "Not before we've got our wages!" they said,
and they pressed back to the gates again. "This is where we work, and
we're going to have our rights, that we are!" Then the police began to
drive the onlookers away; at each onset they fell back a few steps,
hesitating, and then stood still, laughing. Pelle received a blow in the
back; he turned quickly round, stared for a moment into the red face of
a policeman, and went his way, muttering and feeling his back.
"Did he hit you?" asked an old woman. "Devil take him, the filthy lout!
He's the son of the mangling-woman what lives in the house here, and
now he takes up the cudgels against his own people! Devil take him!"
"Move on!" ordered the policeman, winking, as he pushed her aside
with his body. She retired to her cellar, and stood there using her
tongue to such purpose that the saliva flew from her toothless mouth.
"Yes, you go about bullying old people who used to carry you