Heavens, if it wasn’t the editor himself! Egholm dropped a nut that slipped away between the bottom boards. Perhaps, after all, Anna had not been altogether lying when she said the editor had called him a genius. But he would not do discredit to the name—no, he would take care of that!
Trembling with emotion, Egholm watched the mighty personage striding through the groups. He always walked as if battling his way forward in the teeth of a gale. Even to-day, when the water was smooth as a mirror, his flowing cloak, his greyish-yellow military beard, even his bushy eyebrows, seemed to stand away from him as if borne on the wings of some private particular wind; possibly one he had brought home with him from the battlefields of ’64.
The onlookers leaped aside, like recruits, to make way for him. His presence brought sudden encouragement to the rest—something would surely come of it, after all. A good thing they had not stayed at home.
The editor stopped at the water’s edge, and hailed across, with a voice rent by the storm:
“Egholm! Can you get done by six, so that I can have a line in the paper?”
Egholm tried to rise, but slipped down again. He was rather cramped for room.
“I think so, yes, I think so!” He drew out his watch and looked at it. A quarter to nine it showed now—as it had done for heaven knows how long past. “I’ll do my best.”
The editor muttered something, balanced against a sudden gust, and marched off.
But there were plenty remaining. The slopes of the beach were alive and noisy as bird-cliffs in the nesting season.
How had all these people ever managed to find their way to the spot? Egholm had not drummed about any announcement as to time and place of his experiment. He had, indeed, grown rather more reticent of late. And old Krogh would hardly say more than he need. How could it have come about?