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Updated: June 25, 2025
Pelle kept with the shore boys; Henry Bodker and Nilen were among them, and they were something new! They did not care about the land and animals, but the sea, of which he was afraid, was like a cradle to them. They played about on the water as they would in their mother's parlor, and had much of its easy movement.
For a moment he ran to and fro and breathed the air; then he got upon the scent, and ran at a breathless gallop toward the sea-dunes, where the young folk of the town played late into the summer night that lay over the wan sea. Of course, it was only a loan. Pelle had to sole a pair of shoes for a baker's apprentice who worked with Nilen; as soon as they were finished he would repay the money.
"So you've become a cobbler?" says Nilen, to begin with, compassionately, for he feels a deucedly smart fellow himself in his fine white clothes, with his bare arms crossed over his naked breast. Pelle feels remarkably comfortable; he has been given a slice of bread and cream, and he decides that the world is more interesting than ever.
Pelle says nothing; he knows he cannot thrash Nilen. Nilen has lit his pipe and is lying on his back in bed with his muddy shoes on chattering. "What's your journeyman like? Ours is a conceited ass. The other day I had to fetch him a box on the ears, he was so saucy. I've learned the Copenhagen trick of doing it; it soon settles a man. Only you want to keep your head about it."
Lasse believed that he was a visionary, and saw things that others could not see, so that the very fact of living and drawing breath frightened him. But however that might be, Pelle must on no account do anything to him, not for all the world. The crowd of boys had retired to the shore, and there, with little Nilen at their head, suddenly threw themselves upon Henry Bodker.
Outside the waves broke without ceasing, and when their roar sank for a moment, the shrill voices of boys rose into the air. All the boys of the village were on the beach, running in and out under the breakers that looked as if they would crush them, and pulling driftwood upon shore. Pelle had hardly thawed himself when Nilen made him go out with him.
A deuce of a fellow, this Nilen, he is so grown up! Pelle feels smaller and smaller. But suddenly Nilen jumps up in the greatest hurry. Out in the bakery a sharp voice is calling. "Out of the window to the devil with you!" he yelps "the journeyman!" And Pelle has to get through the window, and is so slow about it that his boots go whizzing past him.
"No; it's my brother Karl," said Nilen. "Then Niels is gone," said Ole plaintively. "Then Niels is gone." The others had nothing to answer; it was a matter of course that Niels would be lost. Ole stood for a little while shrinkingly, as if expecting that some one would say it was Niels. He dried his eyes, and tried to make it out for himself, but they only filled again.
Pelle had ventured into the battle and had received a kick, but he bore no malice. If he had had a sweet, he, like the girls, would have given it to Henry Bodker, and would have put up with ungentle treatment too. He worshipped him. But he measured himself by Nilen the little bloodthirsty Nilen, who had no knowledge of fear, and attacked so recklessly that the others got out of his way!
It was his mediocrity as a teacher of arithmetic that the imps were always aiming at, but he would not be drawn into a discussion with them. Nilen repeated his question, while the others tittered; but Fris did not hear he was too deep in his paper. So the whole thing dropped. Fris looked at his watch; he could soon give them a quarter of an hour's play, a good long quarter of an hour.
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