Andreas took it apart and carried it all up to “Sahara” as if it were a feather!
My, but that would make a grand bonfire!
First the bedstead, then a big butter-firkin filled with heather on top of it, and in the firkin we fixed a tall pole with an enormous bunch of heather soaked in kerosene tied on its top.
Now people needn’t plume themselves on their grand bonfires out on the island, for our bonfire would be seen as far away as Jomfruland, that was certain.
The weather wasn’t very good that St. John’s Night. It had been dingy and gray all day, getting ready to rain; and that was good surely, for we hadn’t had rain for four weeks and the grass was stiff and yellow and the heather as dry as tinder over the whole hill.
But since the rain had waited so long, it might as well wait until St. John’s Night was over. That is what I thought then, at any rate.
The whole afternoon we stayed up there on the hill, arranging and improving our pile of fuel, so that everything should be perfect for the evening. From that height we could see over the whole town, into the streets and courtyards. Men looked about as big as pins, and children looked like pinheads; yet we knew every pin and pinhead we saw down there. We saw the boys rowing out to the islands; and far beyond the islands we could see Skagerak, gray and billowy, with tiny white-capped waves, and with heavy gray air lying above its waters.
O dear, O dear! How the time dragged before it grew dark that evening! At last we could wait no longer but lighted our bonfire before any others were lighted.
The bunch of heather at the top of the pole blazed up like a great bouquet of fire. It looked perfectly magnificent, really.
There! Now Mrs. Petersen’s bedstead had caught. Hurrah! What fun! Greatest fun in the world!