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The eldest apprentice had not had the pluck to leave the island; he was now a postman in Sudland and cobbled shoes at night in order to live. Now Peter stood on the deck above, while Jens and Pelle stood below and looked up at him admiringly. "Good-bye, Pelle!" he cried. "Give Jeppe my best respects and tell him he can kiss my bootsoles!"
In a little while we saw three others arrive Father Roach of the 17th King's Company of Liverpool and Private Stringfellow of the Liverpools, also Mechanic Jens Laursen of our own "M" Company who had escaped death in the machine gun ambush that had killed his comrade Mechanic Dial and driver and horse. Later Lieut. Tatham of the Royal Air Force came in with a shattered arm.
Some of the masters were strolling to and fro on the quay, in order to note that none of their apprentices were absconding from the town. Jens foresaw the time when he himself would stand there penniless. "Send me your address," he said, "and find me something over there." "And me too," said Pelle. Peter spat.
The "ordeal by wax" could not really be so terrible, since all the others had undergone it he had certainly seen tougher fellows than these in his lifetime! Jens sat down and ducked his head, as though he was expecting a box on the ears; that was the curse of the house which continually hung over him.
Through Morten, Pelle drew nearer to Jens, and found that he had many good qualities under his warped exterior. Jens had just that broken, despondent manner which makes a child instinctively suspect a miserable home.
When Pelle went to see them they were usually sitting still and staring at one another with red eyes; and over their heads hung the threat of the police, for they were not yet married. "If I only understood farm work!" said Jens. "Then I'd go into the country and serve with a farmer."
The thought that he was the comrade of Jens and Morten made him quite giddy, and he could not understand why they bowed themselves so completely to the judgment of the town, as no one could cast it in their teeth that they were on the parish, but only that their father was a powerful fellow.
Perhaps it was the cruelties practised by Swedish troops in Denmark that preyed upon the mind of Jens Kofoed when he sent the parson to prepare them for death then and there; but better counsel prevailed. They were allowed to live. The whole war cost only two lives, the governor's and that of a sentinel at the castle, who refused to surrender.
At first he went out to see Jens, but the young couple had had a dispute and had come to blows. The girl had let the frying-pan containing the dinner fall into the fire, and Jens had given her a box on the ears. She was still white and poorly after her miscarriage. Now they were sitting each in a corner, sulking like children. They were both penitent, but neither would say the first word.
It was on the fourth of these, in 1619, that Jens Munk with two ships and sixty-four sailors was caught in the ice of Hudson Bay and compelled to winter there. One after another the crew died of hunger and scurvy. When Jens Munk himself crept out from what he had thought his death-bed, he found only two of them all alive.
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