“Like this!” said Sivert, without a moment’s hesitation, shaking his woolly head from side to side like a rattle.
“The devil he does!”
“But it was me that invented the big brass tap in the cellar, though. But then it was a very little one, really. I don’t think it was bigger than there to there,” said Sivert modestly, indicating a length of Vang’s leg from the ankle to the middle of the thigh. “Look how it’s puffing now!”
The smoke was pouring out violently from the funnel of the boat, drifting in towards the onlookers as a foretaste of what was to come. Egholm was working away feverishly. Now he was seen clambering barefooted, with his trousers rolled up to the knee, out past the engine to the bow; a moment later, he was back in the stern, leaning over with his sleeves in the water up to the elbows, turning at the screw, or baling out water as frantically as if in peril of shipwreck.
Folk whispered to one another; now he was doing so-and-so....
But—what was this? Here was Egholm’s girl Hedvig coming down, with the youngest child by the hand—what did she want? And wearing the famous button boots, too—the ones with ventilators in. Emanuel had one stocking hanging in rings about his ankle.
“What do you want?” Egholm’s nose was smeared with soot and oil, and his brow was puckered angrily.
“There’s a lady come to be taken.”
“Tell her to come again to-morrow.”