Impossible for me to hold Karsten any longer. I had to let go. He was off like an arrow, his hair standing up straight and his feet pounding the ground like a young elephant's.
O pshaw! Running like that he would soon catch Olaug. It was frightfully exciting, like a horse-race or a hunt after wild animals.
Well, that isn't a very good comparison, for nothing could be less like a wild animal than Olaug; but it was awfully exciting to see whether she would keep ahead and get the Chili stamp from Nils Peter.
So that I might see better how the race ended I sprang up to our chicken-yard, or rather beyond it, on our own hill. You could see the whole path up over Kranheia better from there than from any other place. But just where I must be to see best was that awfully high board fence, too high for me to see over, that went from the chicken-yard quite a long way beyond on the hill.
Pooh! What of it? I just wiggled a board that was already loose, pulled it away and stuck my head in the opening. It was a little narrow but I got my head through. Oh—oh! Karsten had caught up to Olaug and run past her like an ostrich at full speed—I've always heard that an ostrich runs faster than anything else in the world—yes, there he was swinging in towards Nils Peter's house.
O pshaw! Now that Chili stamp was lost for ever and ever.
Olaug had plumped herself right down; she had to sit still and get her breath, poor thing!
Now that there was nothing more for me to watch, I started to draw my head back out of the narrow opening between the thick boards. But, O horrors! It stuck fast! I couldn't possibly get it back. I turned and twisted my head this way and that, and up and down; I tried to pull and squeeze it back, but no, that was utterly impossible. How in the world I had ever got my head through the opening in the first place I can't understand to this day, but that I had got it through was only too sure.
New struggles to get loose—I thought I should tear my ears off—Goodness gracious, what should I do!
At first I wasn't a speck afraid. I just wriggled and pulled as hard as I could. But when I realized that I simply could not free myself, a sort of terror came over me.