Right at our yard the hill begins to be steeper; first comes a little walled-in garden, then terraces and cliffs, big rocks and little rocks, then down a steep precipice, and then up a few steps again where you have to use hands and feet both, and grab hold of the heather and juniper if you want to go farther up.
About half-way up the hill there is a great big rock jutting out, which you can only climb on one side, and that with the greatest difficulty. This is our fort. Here we have both batteries and bastions, a room for bullets and cannon-balls, a room for powder, and a dungeon. From up there we have the most splendid view down over the town with its low gaily painted wooden houses, and the small leafy linden-trees that creep up through the streets. From our fort people down there look just like darning-needles; from the very top of the hill they look like a swarming mass of little pins.
I remember distinctly that particular Seventeenth of May; the spring had come so early that we already had fine young birch leaves and clear mild air. For several days we had been talking about a feast that we wanted to have in the dungeon, for there we should be wholly out of sight. There was to be a salute, speeches and songs. Peter and Karsten were always the gunners. With much trouble we had carried big stones up to the fort; these we threw with all our might down again over the precipice. This was our way of giving a salute; it made no little racket, you may be sure! The boys were to provide something to drink, and we the cake and glasses. We were never allowed to take any glasses up on the hill, except old goblets with the feet broken off. I thought then it was terribly stingy of Mother not to let us have proper glasses.
Ezekiel made the speech in honor of the day. I can still see his thin white fingers round the broken glass while he spouted and speechified about "our young freedom crowns this day of liberty with flowers." I had lately read the whole speech in an old children's paper, and of course had to confide this fact to Mina; the others wanted to know what we were laughing about, and at last all the listeners were laughing and whispering to each other; but Ezekiel stuck to it. After the speech four stones were thrown down. Karsten was beaming. "Oh, oh, what a crash!" he kept saying.
After that Ezekiel made a speech in honor of Sweden; at the end of the speech he suggested that we should sing:
"See yonder by the Baltic's salt waves,"
but as none of us knew the tune, and Ezekiel himself hadn't a speck of music in him, the song wouldn't go. For it didn't help us at all for him to insist that he heard the tune plainly in his head. Then Nils Trap made a speech in honor of the ladies; I remember how I admired the few telling words: "A cheer and four shots for the ladies!" Not a bit more! I thought that sounded so awfully manlike.
Peter rushed off to the top of the fort to fire off the shots, Karsten after him, his hair standing on end. The stones went crashing over—the next moment we heard a doleful shriek from below. Peter came rushing down to the dungeon, ashy-gray under his freckles, crying:
"Oh, Mother—Mother——"
We all dashed up instantly. Down below the fort, just at the foot of the precipice, stood the dean's little crooked wife, with a purple kerchief over her head and one slender hand held up in the air. The stone, which had been fired off in honor of the ladies, lay less than two feet from her!