Egholm and his God

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you wouldn’t see it, of course, but there’s a hundred odd things. That boiler there, for instance – can he get up a sufficient head of steam with that? I don’t believe it. A turbine wants any amount of steam to drive. If he got it fairly going, the thing’d simply burst. Hark! how it’s thumping away already. But there’s no danger as long as he’s only got that dolls’ house grate to heat it with. And as for the boat” – Rothe looked round to make sure that Lange was out of hearing; the others were limping back shiveringly to land – “the freckle-nosed birch-and-ruler merchant’s right enough; it’s simply falling to pieces as it is. Egholm, poor devil, he got some odd bits of tin from my place and patched up the worst parts, but the nails wouldn’t hold even then. – Coming off, Doctor? Here, get up again. – And the stuff he’s burning’s no better than hay. He’s been stoking away for a couple of hours now, and hasn’t got up steam yet.”

“What d’you reckon it would cost to make the experiment properly?” asked the Doctor, with his expressionless face, as they reached dry land again.

“Oh, any amount of money. Thousands of kroner. It’s hopeless for a poor devil like him to try. But, of course, once he could get the thing to go once round and reverse, why, he’d be a millionaire!”

Rothe shouted out the last words to the whole assembly; then he hopped across to Henrik Vang’s bush. He pricked up his ears at the murmur that arose from his words.

Madam Hermansen had only just discovered Vang. Suddenly she stood at the foot of the slope and gave an amorous laugh.

Vang took the bottle from his lips in the middle of a draught, and the beer frothed over down his vest.

“Get out!” he cried, with horror in his face. “Get out!” And he threw the bottle at her.

Vang was a big man among his fellows; but under Madam Hermansen’s glance he felt himself naked and ashamed.

Madam Hermansen sidled away in her polished clogs, still smiling.

Egholm came back at a trot, pushing an old perambulator full of coals. He breathed in relief to find that the crowd was still there; it had, indeed, increased. The workmen from the factory had come down to the beach on their way home, and stood there now talking in bass voices, their eyes turning ridiculously in their black faces. The apprentice lads had come, too – unable to resist. They felt a kind of primitive, brutally affectionate attraction towards the boat, which for some unexplained reason they had christened The Long Dragon. It was just the right distance for a stone-throwing target, and gave a delightful metallic sound when hit. They had used it as a bathing-station while the weather was still warm, undressing in it, diving in from it, and rocking it in the water till the waves washed up on the sand. They heaved up the anchoring stones, and sailed out with it, shouting and singing, into deep water, where they swam round it in flocks, like grampus about a whale. They turned the screw and made bonfires under the boiler. But they did more: they laid an oar across from gunwale to gunwale, and danced on it to see if it would break. And found it did. They threw the manometer into the water to see if it would float. And found it didn’t. A pale youngster, the son of Worms, the brewer, who was not a factory apprentice at all, but a fine gentleman in the uniform of the Academy, found a pot of paint under one of the seats, and promptly painted his name, Cornelius, in red on the side of the boat.

This was not done merely in jest, but by way of revenge for a nasty jagged cut he had sustained when making his first investigations.

Egholm waged a continual hopeless war against those boys. It was rarely that he encountered them himself, but he found their traces frequently. When he did happen to catch one, it always turned out to be an innocent, who did not even know the others of the band.

This evening, however, in the presence of so many respectable citizens, the boys stood with hunched-up shoulders and hands in their pockets, silent, or speaking only in whispers. Now and again they nudged one another, like owls on a beam in the church tower.

The fire was being fed properly now, with coal, sending out a cloud of smoke like a waving velvet banner. There was a rasp of filing and sharp strokes of a hammer; the sound of iron against iron. Then down came a compositor boy with the editor’s compliments, and…

“You can tell him I guarantee the machine will work all right. I guarantee it – you understand. And…”

“Then it hasn’t gone yet?”

“But you can see for yourself,” cried Egholm in despair; “the pressure’s there all right now.” And, to prove it, he sprang up and pulled at the little steam whistle. It gave a shriek as if to call for help – then died away.

“Hark at the cock-crow!” shouted Sivert, beside himself. “The world-famous cock crowing.”

“What’s that he’s shouting about?”

No one had understood the words. But they saw the boy dancing on the crest of a hill with his white curls whirling about his head, and the enthusiasm laid hold on them, too. They leaped up from their mounds of seaweed, and in the dusk it seemed to them as if the boat moved. There was a tickling in their throats. Vang was weeping copiously already.

“Give him a cheer,” said the doctor, moving from group to group. The doctor with his glasses was not to be contradicted.

They filled their lungs with air ready for a shout; then up came Petrea Bisserup, dragging her father along, and that air was expended in laughter.

Bisserup was a blind brushmaker, who lived in a little white house on the outskirts of the town. He was a little grey man, with a felt hat several sizes too large, and his face so covered with a fungus-growth of beard that only his nose showed through. His daughter, who led him, had a crooked neck, which bent over so far as to leave her head lying archly on one shoulder; she was a woman grown, but wore short skirts and cloth shoes. They were a remarkable pair, and in face of this counter-attraction, Egholm’s wonder-boat might have sailed away to Jutland without being noticed by the crowd.

“Ei, ei… Anything hereabout for a blind man to see?”

The boys from the factory could contain themselves no longer; one of them barged another over against the old man, while the rest chuckled and cackled and quacked like a yard full of mixed poultry.

“Petrea – here, Petrea, what are you looking at?”

“Little devils!” said Trane, gloating over them all the same. Lund, the scientific draper, laughed too, but schoolmaster Lange, recollecting his lessons at the drawing school, shrank back a little.

Petrea strode untroubled through the crowd, her mouth hanging open, and the old man trailing behind at her skirts like some uncouth goblin child. His moleskin breeches were of enormous capacity; the seat hung down behind to his calves. When he stood still, the superfluous folds fluttered in the wind like a rag-and-patch tent at a fair.

“Is’t that way there, Petrea?” He pointed with his stick, and leant over, listening.

It was growing dusk. Folk were beginning to shiver a little in the evening air. And there was nothing amusing after all in the sight of these two poor vagrants. What was the time?

When Egholm opened the furnace door, the column of smoke shone like gold, and his face glowed fantastically big and red. Still a few more degrees were needed on the manometer – just a few. He stoked away, till the sparks flew like shooting stars across the sky. A fever seized him; he threw on coal with his bare hands, and found himself grasping with all ten fingers at a single lump.

Every second he glanced over at the shore, though it was impossible to distinguish anything clearly now.

Trembling, he heard a burst of laughter, that rolled like a wave along the line.

“Look straight ahead, Petrea, pretty Petrea, do!”

Heaven be thanked – they were not laughing at him, after all. If only the coals had been a little better. But it was dust and refuse, every handful.

“Is Dr. Hoff here?” someone cried.

“Who’s asking for me?”

“There’s a cart from the country.”

The doctor cast a final glance at the water, where the glow from the fire played like a shoal of red fish; then he walked away with little hurried steps.

“I’m off,” said Lange. “I don’t see what there is to stand about here for.”

What was there to stand about there for? No one could find any satisfactory answer.

It was dark and cold, and wife and supper were waiting at home.

The crowd broke up in little groups by common instinct. Lund and Trane went. The workmen from the factory went. All of them together.

Over between the two bushes Rothe was giving orders in a low voice. It was Henrik Vang being lifted on to a wheelbarrow. Sivert and his bosom friend, Ditlev Pløk, the cobbler’s boy, were hauling each at one leg. When they came up to the level road, Sivert left the work to Ditlev, and clambered up himself beside Vang. The boy was wild with delight, and bubbling over with laughter and snatches of song. Madam Hermansen hurried up after them.

What had they been thinking of?

Away, away! homeward; see, the lights were lit already in the town.

The factory boys whistled like rockets, and marched in procession two and two about Petrea and her father.

The respectable citizens stepped out briskly to get warm, and laughed modestly one to another, like peasants emerging from a conjurer’s tent.

But never again!

The sound of footsteps died away on the path, and the last of the figures disappeared into the gloom, leaving a solitary figure still waiting on the beach – a little woman, shivering under a white knitted kerchief. It was Fru Egholm. No one had seen her come; she sat as if under a spell, watching the myriad sparks that rose in curves against the evening sky, to fall and expire in the sand.

XXI

A few weeks have passed. It is just after dawn.

Up on the beach, Egholm and Sivert are toiling away till their feet are buried in the sand, hauling away at a rope that runs through a square-cut block to the boat. They bend forward and tug till their faces are fiery red. Then at last the Long Dragon yields and scrapes slowly up over the stones on to the sand. There it lies, like a newly caught fish, with a growth of shell and weed under its belly.

“Now – up with her! Put your shoulder to it, slave! That’s it! Now up and bale her out.”

Sivert had discovered that the water drained out of the boat from one of the tin patches, and found therefore no need to hurry, but followed with greater interest his father’s operations. Egholm clambered up the slope, vanished between two bushes, and came down again laden with a sack bigger than himself. It was evidently light in proportion to its bulk, since it could be carried by one hand. In the other he held a bottle.

Up to now, Sivert had seen only his father’s usual harsh look, but as he came down to the boat this time his expression changed to a great smile.

“Now for a grand burnt-offering, boy! The biggest that ever was since the days of Abraham and Isaac. No; stay where you are. I’m not going to sacrifice you; that wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice, anyway. It’s the boat – the turbine. Bale away; we must have it thoroughly dry.”

Sivert splashed about with the dipper, and his father, still smiling, opened the sack. It was full of shavings.

“A sacrifice and a burnt-offering to the Lord.”

“Wouldn’t it work, then – the brass tap?”

“The turbine, you mean? Work and work, why…” Egholm shrugged his shoulders. “Oh yes, it worked all right. My calculations were right enough. Couldn’t be wrong. But the Lord wouldn’t have it. Didn’t suit Him to let my little invention come out just now, and so” – again a mighty shrug of the shoulders – “so, of course, I gave it up. I think she’ll do now.”

He began tearing out handfuls of shavings and spreading them over the boat fore and aft; they filled up beautifully now they were loose.

“No,” he went on; “God wouldn’t have it. I felt it while I was stoking the fire that day. The pressure wouldn’t come as it should, though I’d brought down a whole perambulator full of coal. Then at last, when He sent away the crowd that had come to see, I understood – I understood that He was jealous of my triumph and wouldn’t have it. Well, He can have it now.”

Sivert kept carefully to the opposite side of the boat, away from his father. It was safer, he felt, in case… For, despite the smile, it was evident that his father was in a highly excited state. He did not scruple to walk round from one side to the other through the water, with his boots and socks on, though the waves splashed up over his knees. Sivert felt it would have been better to go round the other end of the boat, on dry land. At any rate, he preferred that way himself.

Now for the bottle. Egholm waved it generously, sprinkling the paraffin over the shavings and woodwork. Sivert, too, began to find it amusing. Paraffin and shavings – that was the thing!

“Got a match?”

Had he not! Sivert’s fingers had been itching for minutes past to get at the box.

“Right – then fire away!”

Sivert struck a light, but the wind blew it out at once. He took a whole bundle in his fingers, leaned in over the edge of the boat, and struck. They went off like tiny shells, sputtering out on every side, but the shavings remained as dead as the sand of the beach. Once more he tried the same way, and this time it seemed with better success. There was a glow deep down among the mass. But nothing came of it save a smouldering redness that sent a thin white smoke out over the side. The lowest layer of shavings must have been wetted by the water in the bottom.

Egholm fired up in sudden anger.

“Get out of it, you Cain! Spoiling my burnt-offering!” He grasped an oar and struck out at the boy.

Sivert slipped aside unscathed, and clambered up to the top of the slope.

With a couple of furious blows, Egholm struck the oar through the rotten planks. The wind rushed in through the opening, and next moment a burst of flame rose several feet into the air.

A ship laden with flames!

Egholm stood as if petrified; then he began hurriedly throwing on more combustibles. He had a tar barrel and another huge sack of shavings, besides a whole pile of dry driftwood.

The funnel stays burned through, and the funnel blew off as a hat is torn from a man’s head.

The tar barrel lay on a thwart, spewing green flame from its mouth. The sides had caught already. Egholm took up an armful of crackling dry weed and threw it in. As he did so, he happened to catch sight of the little manometer, and he sprang back in dismay. The indicator had worked round as far as it could, and stood firmly pressed against the stopping-pin.

God in Heaven! He had forgotten the water in the boiler! Another second and it would burst!

True, that mattered little, since the boat and all its contents were to be sacrificed. Nevertheless, Egholm picked up the oar and thrust it here and there among the flames, trying to open some valve or other. He had not reckoned on a bursting boiler, which would be out of place, to say the least, in a burnt-offering. He flung his coat about his face to shield him from the flames, and stabbed blindly with his oar.

Suddenly the burning boat seemed to shiver. Egholm dropped his oar and sprang back, expecting to see the whole thing explode…

When he turned round, he saw a strange sight. The screw was revolving at a furious rate, just touching the surface, and flinging up a hail of salt water against the wind.

He stooped forward, bending low down, his mouth agape with overwhelming astonishment. This was more of a marvel than anything he had seen. He had lied when he said the thing had worked all right the first time. At any rate, he knew nothing of how it had worked himself. He had simply had some parts made according to his own idea, and screwed them together. Now, he could hear the turbine whirring round, saying dut-dut, just as he had dreamed.

It only remained to see if it would reverse. Could he reverse the steering-gear in all that flame and smoke? It would have to be done swiftly – swiftly – for in a moment the boiler would be empty.

He worked and wriggled away with the oar, unheeding the fire that singed his beard and eyebrows. When this proved fruitless, he wrapped wet seaweed thickly round his arm and thrust it into the flames.

He had found it now, though in agonising pain. Then – the screw stood still a moment, and whirled round the opposite way. Egholm could feel the water spurting up towards him now. It soothed his burns. He stood still, close up to the boat, and wept.

Sivert sat up on the slope, watching it all. His father called to him to come down.

“D’you see that?” he cried. Despite the grime and the red burns, his face wore a look of supreme exaltation. “D’you see that?”

“She’s puffing away finely,” Sivert admitted.

Just then something snapped inside, and the engine stopped. Egholm ran for more weed to wrap round his arm, but, before he was ready, the explosion came. The sound was scarcely heard in the gale, only a slight pouf, but it split the boat lengthways like a ripe pea-pod.

Egholm looked on, delighted.

“D’you know what I think?” he said, cooling his martyred hand. “I think, my boy, we’ve done a great thing to-day. We’ve made a great burnt-offering unto the Lord. But more than that. We’ve – yes, in a way, we’ve heaped coals of fire on His head!”

1

“Madam,” the title used for elderly – strictly speaking, married – women of the working class, as distinct from “Fru” (Mrs.), which is – or was – reserved for ladies of higher social standing.

2

“Here’s luck.” The word is widely used when drinking, as a salutation; the precise equivalent in English would vary with the company and the occasion.

3

“Thanks for the meal” – a formality addressed to housewife or hostess on rising from table, used more especially among working people.

4

Slices of bread and butter, with meat, cheese, etc., laid over.