Part 62 (2/2)

”My father has a great farm--it's worth quite as much as a rotten barge,” said Pelle angrily.

”Father's s.h.i.+p isn't rotten!” rejoined Manna, affronted. ”It's the best in the harbor here, and it has three masts!”

”All the same, you're nothing but a mean hussy!” Pelle spat over the hedge.

”Yes, and you're a Swede!” Manna blinked her eyes triumphantly, while Dolores and Aina stood behind her and put out their tongues.

Pelle felt strongly inclined to jump over the garden wall and beat them; but just then Jeppe's old woman began scolding from the kitchen, and he went on with his work.

Now, after Christmas, there was nothing at all to do. People were wearing out their old boots, or they went about in wooden shoes. Little Nikas was seldom in the workshop; he came in at meal-times and went away again, and he was always wearing his best clothes. ”He earns his daily bread easily,” said Jeppe. Over on the mainland they didn't feed their people through the winter; the moment there was no more work, they kicked them out.

In the daytime Pelle was often sent on a round through the harbor in order to visit the s.h.i.+pping. He would find the masters standing about there in their leather ap.r.o.ns, talking about nautical affairs; or they would gather before their doors, to gossip, and each, from sheer habit, would carry some tool or other in his hand.

And the wolf was at the door. The ”Saints” held daily meetings, and the people had time enough to attend them. Winter proved how insecurely the town was established, how feeble were its roots; it was not here as it was up in the country, where a man could enjoy himself in the knowledge that the earth was working for him. Here people made themselves as small and ate as little as possible, in order to win through the slack season.

In the workshops the apprentices sat working at cheap boots and shoes for stock; every spring the shoemakers would charter a s.h.i.+p in common and send a cargo to Iceland. This helped them on a little. ”Fire away!”

the master would repeat, over and over again; ”make haste--we don't get much for it!”

The slack season gave rise to many serious questions. Many of the workers were near to dest.i.tution, and it was said that the organized charities would find it very difficult to give a.s.sistance to all who applied for it. They were busy everywhere, to their full capacity. ”And I've heard it's nothing here to what it is on the mainland,” said Baker Jorgen. ”There the unemployed are numbered in tens of thousands.”

”How can they live, all those thousands of poor people, if the unemployment is so great?” asked Bjerregrav. ”The need is bad enough here in town, where every employer provides his people with their daily bread.”

”Here no one starves unless he wants to,” said Jeppe. ”We have a well-organized system of relief.”

”You're certainly becoming a Social Democrat, Jeppe,” said Baker Jorgen; ”you want to put everything on to the organized charities!”

Wooden-leg La.r.s.en laughed; that was a new interpretation.

”Well, what do they really want? For they are not freemasons. They say they are raising their heads again over on the mainland.”

”Well, that, of course, is a thing that comes and goes with unemployment,” said Jeppe. ”The people must do something. Last winter a son of the sailmaker's came home--well, he was one of them in secret.

But the old folks would never admit it, and he himself was so clever that he got out of it somehow.”

”If he'd been a son of mine he would have got the stick,” said Jorgen.

”Aren't they the sort of people who are making ready for the millennium?

We've got a few of their sort here,” said Bjerregrav diffidently.

”D'you mean the poor devils who believe in the watchmaker and his 'new time'? Yes, that may well be,” said Jeppe contemptuously. ”I have heard they are quite wicked enough for that. I'm inclined to think they are the Antichrist the Bible foretells.”

”Ah, but what do they really want?” asked Baker Jorgen. ”What is their madness really driving at?”

”What do they want?” Wooden-leg La.r.s.en pulled himself together.

”I've knocked up against a lot of people, I have, and as far as I can understand it they want to get justice; they want to take the right of coining money away from the Crown and give it to everybody. And they want to overthrow everything, that is quite certain.”

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