Part 31 (1/2)

In the mean time already at the end of March the order to begin on the new dike had arrived from the dikemaster general. Hauke first called the dike overseers together, and in the inn up by the church they had all appeared one day and listened while he read to them the main points from the doc.u.ments that had been drawn up so far: points from his pet.i.tion from the report of the dikemaster general, and lastly the final order in which, above all, the outline which he had proposed was accepted, so that the new dike should not be steep like the old ones, but slant gradually toward the sea. But they did not listen with cheerful or even satisfied faces.

”Well, yes,” said an old dike overseer, ”here we have the whole business now, and protests won't do any good, because the dikemaster general patronises our dikemaster.”

”You're right, Detlev Wiens,” added a second; ”our spring work is waiting, and now a dike miles long is to be made? then everything will have to be left undone.”

”You can finish all that this year,” said Hauke; ”things don't move as fast as that.”

Few wanted to admit that. ”But your profile,” said a third, bringing up something new; ”the dike will be as broad on the outside toward the water as other things are long. Where shall we get the material? When shall the work be done?”

”If not this year, then next year; that will depend chiefly on ourselves,” said Hauke.

Angry laughter pa.s.sed along the whole company. ”But what is all that useless labor for? The dike isn't supposed to be any bigger than the old one;” cried a new voice; ”and I'm sure that's stood for over thirty years.”

”You are right,” said Hauke, ”thirty years ago the old dike broke; then backwards thirty-five years ago, and again forty-five years ago; but since then, although it is still standing steep and senseless, the highest floods have spared us. But the new dike is to stand in spite of such floods for hundreds of years; for it will not be broken through; because the gentle slope toward the sea gives the waves no point of attack, and so you will gain safe land for yourselves and your children, and that is why the government and the dikemaster general support me--and, besides, that is what you ought to be aware of for your own profit.”

When the a.s.sembled were not ready on the spot to answer these words, an old white-haired man rose with difficulty from his chair. It was Elke's G.o.dfather, Jewe Manners, who, in response to Hauke's beseeching, had kept his office as dike overseer.

”Dikemaster Hauke Haien,” he said, ”you give us much commotion and expense, and I wish you had waited with all this until the Lord had called me to rest; but--you are right, and only unreason can deny that.

We ought to thank G.o.d every day that He has kept us our precious piece of foreland against storms and the force of the tide, in spite of our idleness; now, I believe, is the eleventh hour, in which we must lend a hand and try to save it for ourselves to the best of our knowledge and powers, and not defy G.o.d's patience any longer. I, my friends, am an old man; I have seen dikes built and broken; but the dike that Hauke Haien has proposed according to his G.o.d-given insight and has carried through with the government--that dike none of you living men will see broken. And if you don't want to thank him yourselves, your grandchildren some day will not deny him his laurel wreath.”

Jewe Manners sat down again; he took his blue handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a few drops from his forehead. The old man was still known as a man of efficiency and irreproachable integrity, and as the a.s.sembly was not inclined to agree with him, it remained silent. But Hauke Haien took the floor, though all saw that he had grown pale.

”I thank you, Jewe Manners,” he said, ”for staying here and for what you have said. You other gentlemen, have the goodness at least to consider the building of the new dike, which indeed will be my burden, as something that cannot be helped any more, and let us decide accordingly what needs to be done.”

”Speak!” said one of the overseers. And Hauke spread the map of the new dike out on the table.

”A while ago someone has asked,” he began, ”from where we shall get the soil? You see, as far as the foreland stretches out into the flooded district, a strip of land is left free outside of the dike line; from this we can take our soil and from the foreland which runs north and south along the dike from the new enclosed land. If we have a good layer of clay at the water side, at the inside and the middle we can take sand. Now first we have to get a surveyor to mark off the line of the new dike on the foreland. The one who helped me work out my plan will be best suited for the work. Furthermore we have to order some one-horse tipcarts at a cartwright's for the purpose of getting our clay and other material. For damming the channel and also for the inside, where we may have to use sand, we shall need--I cannot tell now how many cartloads of straw for the dike, perhaps more than can be spared in the marshes. Let us discuss then now how all this is to be acquired and arranged. The new lock here, too, on the west side toward the water will have to be given over to an efficient carpenter later for repairs.”

The a.s.sembly gathered round the table, looked at the map with half attention and gradually began to talk; but it seemed as if they did it merely so that there might be some talking. When it came to the choice of a surveyor, one of the younger ones remarked: ”You have thought it out, dikemaster; you must know best yourself who is fit for it.”

But Hauke replied: ”As you are sworn men, you have to speak your own opinion, Jacob Meyen; and if you think of something better, I'll let my proposal fall.”

”Oh, I guess it'll be all right,” said Jacob Meyen.

But one of the older ones did not think that it would be so perfectly all right. He had a nephew, a surveyor, the like of whom had never been in the marshes, who was said to surpa.s.s the dikemaster's father, the late Tede Haien.

So there was a discussion about the two surveyors and it was finally decided to let both do the work together. There was similar disputing over the carts, the furnis.h.i.+ng of the straw and everything else, and Hauke came home late and almost exhausted on his brown horse which he was still riding at that time. But when he sat in the old armchair, handed down from his self-important but more easy-going predecessor, his wife was quickly at his side: ”You look tired, Hauke, she said, and with her slender hand pushed his hair out of his forehead.

”A little, I suppose,” he replied.

”And is it getting on?”

”It'll get on;” he said with a bitter smile; ”but I myself have to push the wheels and have to be glad if they aren't kept back.”

”But not by all?”

”No, Elke; your G.o.dfather, Jewe Manners, is a good man; I wish he were thirty years younger.”

When after a few weeks the dike line had been marked off and most of the carts had been furnished, the dikemaster had gathered together in the inn by the church all the shareholders of the land to be diked in and also the owners of the land behind the old dike. He wanted to present to them a plan for the distribution of the work and the cost and to hear their possible objections; for the owners of the old land had to bear their part of the labor and the cost because the new dike and the new sluices would lessen the running expenses of the older ones. This plan had been a hard piece of work for Hauke and if he had not been given a dike messenger and a dike clerk through the mediation of the dikemaster general, he could not have accomplished it so soon, although again he was working well into the night. When he went to bed, tired to death, his wife no longer waited for him with feigned sleep; she, too, had such a full share of daily work that she lay, as if at the bottom of a deep well, in a sleep that could not be disturbed.

Now Hauke read his plan and again spread his papers out on the table--papers which, to be sure, had already lain for three days in the inn for inspection. Some serious men were present, who regarded this conscientious diligence with awe, and who, after quiet consideration, submitted to the low charge of the dikemaster. But others, whose shares in the new land had been sold either by themselves or their fathers or someone else who had bought them, complained because they had to pay part of the expenses of the new diked-in land which no longer concerned them, not thinking that through the new work the old lands would be less costly to keep up. Again there were others who were blessed with shares for the new land who clamoured that one should buy these of them for very little, because they wanted to be rid of shares that burdened them with such unreasonable labor. Ole Peters who was leaning against the doorpost with a grim face, shouted into the midst: ”Think first and then trust in our dikemaster! He knows how to calculate; he already had most of the shares, then he was clever enough to get mine at a bargain, and when he had them, he decided to dike in the new land.”