Pelle the Conqueror — Complete

by Martin Andersen Nexø

“Catch the rope and fasten it well to the window-frame, and I’ll come up and help you!” he said, and he swung the end of the rope up toward the fourth story. But at the same moment a wild shriek rang out. A dark mass flew past his head and struck the flagstones with a dull thud. The flames darted hissing from the window, as though to reach after her, and then drew back.

For a moment he hung stupefied over the window-sill. This was too horrible. Was it not her gentle voice that he now heard singing with him? And then the timbers fell with a long cracking sound, and a cloud of hot ashes rose in the air and filled the lungs as with fire. “Come down!” cried his comrades, “the ladder is burning!”

A deafening, long-drawn ringing told him that the fire-brigade was near at hand.

But in the midst of all the uproar Pelle’s ears had heard a faint, intermittent sound. With one leap he was in Madam Johnsen’s room; he stood there listening; the crying of a child reached him from the other side of the wall, where the rooms opened on to the inner corridor. It was horrible to hear it and to stand there and be able to do nothing. A wall lay between, and there was no thoroughfare on the other side. In the court below they were shouting his name. Devil take them, he would come when he was ready. There he stood, obstinate and apathetic, held there by that complaining, childish voice. A blind fury arose in him; sullenly he set his shoulder against that accursed wall, and prepared himself for the shock. But the wall was giving! Yet again he charged it —a terrible blow—and part of the barrier was down!

He was met by a rush of stifling heat and smoke; he had to hold his breath and cover his face with his hands as he pressed forward. A little child lay there in a cradle. He stumbled over to it and groped his way back to the wall. The fire, now that it had access to the air, suddenly leaped at him with an explosive force that made him stagger. He felt as though a thirsty bull had licked his cheek. It bellowed at his heels with a voice of thunder, but was silent when he slammed the door. Half choking he found his way to the window and tried to shout to those below, but he had no voice left; only a hoarse whisper came from his throat.

Well, there he stood, with a child in his arms, and he was going to die! But that didn’t matter—he had got through the wall! Behind him the fire was pressing forward; it had eaten a small hole through the door, and had thus created the necessary draught. The hole grew larger; sparks rose as under a pair of bellows, and a dry, burning heat blew through the opening. Small, almost imperceptible flames were dancing over the polished surface; very soon the whole door would burst into a blaze. His clothes smelt of singeing; his hands were curiously dry like decaying wood, and he felt as if the hair at the back of his head was curling. And down below they were shouting his name. But all that was of no consequence; only his head was so heavy with the smoke and heat! He felt that he was on the point of falling. Was the child still alive? he wondered. But he dared not look to see; he had spread his jacket over its face in order to protect it.

He clutched the window-frame, and directed his dying thoughts toward Ellen and the children. Why was he not with them? What nonsense had it been that induced him to leave them? He could no longer recollect; but if it had not been all up with him now he would have hurried home to them, to play with Young Lasse. But now he must die; in a moment he would fall, suffocated—even before the flames could reach him.

There was some slight satisfaction in that—it was as though he had played a trick on some one.

Suddenly something shot up before his dying gaze and called him back. It was the end of a fire-escape, and a fireman rose out of the smoke just in front of him, seized the child, and handed it down. Pelle stood there wrestling with the idea that he must move from where he was; but before it had passed through his mind a fireman had seized him by the scruff of his neck and had run down the ladder with him.

The fresh air aroused him. He sprang up from the stretcher on which the fireman had laid him and looked excitedly about him. At the same moment the people began quite senselessly to shout his name and to clap their hands, and Madam Johnsen pushed her way through the barrier and threw herself upon him. “Pelle!” she cried, weeping; “oh, you are alive, Pelle!”