Pelle the Conqueror | Page 5

or upon my word I'll give it
something!" cried the pilot, blind with rage, and beginning to clamber
up into the cart.
At that moment, like the thin metallic voice of a telephone, there came
faintly from the sea the words: "We--hear--a--steam--whistle!"
The pilot ran off on to the breakwater, hitting out as he passed at the
farmer's horse, and making it rear. Men cleared a space round the
mooring-posts, and dragged up the gangways with frantic speed. Carts
that had hay in them, as if they were come to fetch cattle, began to
move without having anywhere to drive to. Everything was in motion.
Labor-hirers with red noses and cunning eyes, came hurrying down
from the sailors' tavern where they had been keeping themselves warm.
Then as if a huge hand had been laid upon the movement, everything
suddenly stood still again, in strained effort to hear. A far-off, tiny echo
of a steam whistle whined somewhere a long way off. Men stole
together into groups and stood motionless, listening and sending angry
glances at the restless carts. Was it real, or was it a creation of the

heart-felt wishes of so many?
Perhaps a warning to every one that at that moment the ship had gone
to the bottom? The sea always sends word of its evil doings; when the
bread-winner is taken his family hear a shutter creak, or three taps on
the windows that look on to the sea--there are so many ways.
But now it sounded again, and this time the sound come in little waves
over the water, the same vibrating, subdued whistle that long-tailed
ducks make when they rise; it seemed alive. The fog-horn answered it
out in the fairway, and the bell in at the mole-head; then the horn once
more, and the steam-whistle in the distance. So it went on, a guiding
line of sound being spun between the land and the indefinite gray out
there, backward and forward. Here on terra firma one could distinctly
feel how out there they were groping their way by the sound. The
hoarse whistle slowly increased in volume, sounding now a little to the
south, now to the north, but growing steadily louder. Then other sounds
made themselves heard, the heavy scraping of iron against iron, the
noise of the screw when it was reversed or went on again.
The pilot-boat glided slowly out of the fog, keeping to the middle of the
fairway, and moving slowly inward hooting incessantly. It towed by the
sound an invisible world behind it, in which hundreds of voices
murmured thickly amidst shouting and clanging, and tramping of
feet--a world that floated blindly in space close by. Then a shadow
began to form in the fog where no one had expected it, and the little
steamer made its appearance--looking enormous in the first moment of
surprise--in the middle of the harbor entrance.
At this the last remnants of suspense burst and scattered, and every one
had to do something or other to work off the oppression. They seized
the heads of the farmers' horses and pushed them back, clapped their
hands, attempted jokes, or only laughed noisily while they stamped on
the stone paving.
"Good voyage?" asked a score of voices at once.
"All well!" answered the captain cheerfully.

And now he, too, has got rid of his incubus, and rolls forth words of
command; the propeller churns up the water behind, hawsers fly
through the air, and the steam winch starts with a ringing metallic clang,
while the vessel works herself broadside in to the wharf.
Between the forecastle and the bridge, in under the upper deck and the
after, there is a swarm of people, a curiously stupid swarm, like sheep
that get up on to one another's backs and look foolish. "What a cargo of
cattle!" cries the fat pilot up to the captain, tramping delightedly on the
breakwater with his wooden-soled boots. There are sheepskin caps, old
military caps, disreputable old rusty hats, and the women's tidy black
handkerchiefs. The faces are as different as old, wrinkled pigskin and
young, ripening fruit; but want, and expectancy, and a certain animal
greed are visible in all of them. The unfamiliarity of the moment brings
a touch of stupidity into them, as they press forward, or climb up to get
a view over their neighbors' heads and stare open-mouthed at the land
where the wages are said to be so high, and the brandy so uncommonly
strong. They see the fat, fur-clad farmers and the men come down to
engage laborers.
They do not know what to do with themselves, and are always getting
in the way; and the sailors chase them with oaths from side to side of
the vessel, or throw hatches and packages without warning