The others were frightened at first, but Peer, who was sitting washing his wounded arm, took a dipper full of water and flung it in the unconscious one’s face. The next instant Klaus had started up sitting, caught wildly at the gunwale, and shrieked out:
“Cut the line, and row for your lives!”
A roar of laughter went up from the rest; they dropped their oars and sat doubled up and gasping. But on the beach, before going home, they agreed to say nothing about Klaus’s fainting fit. And for weeks afterwards the four scamps’ exploit was the talk of the village, so that they felt there was not much fear of their getting the thrashing they deserved when the men came home.
Chapter II
When Peer, as quite a little fellow, had been sent to live with the old couple at Troen, he had already passed several times from one adopted home to another, though this he did not remember. He was one of the madcaps of the village now, but it was not long since he had been a solitary child, moping apart from the rest. Why did people always say “Poor child!” whenever they were speaking about his real mother? Why did they do it? Why, even Peter Ronningen, when he was angry, would stammer out: “You ba-ba-bastard!” But Peer called the pock-marked good-wife at Troen “mother” and her bandy-legged husband “father,” and lent the old man a hand wherever he was wanted—in the smithy or in the boats at the fishing.
His childhood was passed among folk who counted it sinful to smile, and whose minds were gloomy as the grey sea-fog with poverty, psalm-singing, and the fear of hell.
One day, coming home from his work at the peat bog, he found the elders snuffling and sighing over their afternoon meal. Peer wiped the sweat from his forehead, and asked what was the matter.
The eldest son shoved a spoonful of porridge into his mouth, wiped his eyes, swallowed, and said: “Poor Peer!”
“Aye, poor little chap,” sighed the old man, thrusting his horn spoon into a crack in the wall that served as a rack.