For a moment all the life in the crowd seemed to be petrified by the pitiless truth, and he saw how they had loved Peter Dreyer. Then they began to make an uproar, shouting that they would go and speak to the police, and some even turned to go.
“Silence, people!” cried Pelle in a loud voice. “Are you grown men and yet will get up a row beside the dead body of a comrade?”
“What do you know about it?” answered one. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I do know at any rate that at a place out by Vesterbro there sits a woman with a child, waiting for Peter, and he will not come. Would you have more like them? What are you thinking of, wanting to jump into the sea and drown yourselves because you’re wet through? Will those you leave behind be well off? For if you think so, it’s your duty to sacrifice yourselves. But don’t you think rather that the community will throw you into a great common pit, and leave your widows and fatherless children to weep over you?”
“It’s all very well for you to talk!” some one shouted. “Yours are safe enough!”
“I’m busy making yours safe for you, and you want to spoil it by stupidity! It’s all very well for me to talk, you say! But if there’s any one of you who dares turn his face to heaven and say he has gone through more than I have, let him come up here and take my place.”
He was silent and looked out over the crowd. Their wasted faces told him that they were in need of food, but still more of fresh hope. Their eyes gazed into uncertainty. A responsibility must be laid upon them—a great responsibility for such prejudiced beings—if possible, great enough to carry them on to the goal.
“What is the matter with you?” he went on. “You suffer want, but you’ve always done that without getting anything for it; and now when there’s some purpose in it, you won’t go any further. We aren’t just from yesterday, remember! Wasn’t it us who fought the great battle to its end together? Now you scorn it and the whole Movement and say they’ve brought nothing; but it was then we broke through into life and won our right as men.
“Before that time we have for centuries borne our blind hope safely through oppression and want. Is there any other class of society that has a marching route like ours? Forced by circumstances, we prepared for centuries of wandering in the desert and never forgot the country; the good God had given us some of His own infinite long-suffering to carry us through the toilsome time. And now, when we are at the border, you’ve forgotten what we were marching for, and sacrifice the whole thing if only you can be changed from thin slaves to fat slaves!”
“There are no slaves here!” was the threatening cry on all sides.