Public-domain ebook
Victoria
by Knut Hamsun
English420 downloads on Project GutenbergDownload EPUB
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #74458.
The opening · free to read
The Miller's son walked in thought. He was a big lad of fourteen, tanned by sun and wind and full of all manner of ideas.
When he grew up he would go to work in a match factory. It was so jolly and dangerous; he might get his fingers covered with sulphur so that nobody would dare shake hands with him. He would be thought a lot of by his chums on account of his lurid trade.
He looked about in the wood for his birds. For he knew them all, knew where their nests were, understood their cries and had different calls to answer them. More than once he had given them dough balls made of flour from his father's mill.
All these trees along the path were good friends of his. In spring he had drawn their sap and in winter had been a little father to them, freeing them of snow and helping them to hold up their boughs. And even up in the abandoned granite quarry there wasn't a stone that was a stranger to him, he had cut letters and signs on them and set them up, arranged them like a congregation around their parson. All kinds of strange things happened in that old granite quarry.
He turned off and came down to the mill-dam. The mill was at work; an immense and ponderous noise surrounded him. He was in the habit of wandering about here, talking to himself aloud. Every bead of foam seemed to have a little life to talk about, and over by the sluice the water fell straight down and looked like a shining sheet of stuff hung out to dry. In the pool below the fall there were fish; he had stood there with his rod many a time.
When he grew up he would be a diver. That was it. Then he would step down into the sea from the deck of a ship and enter strange realms and countries where great and wonderful forests stood swaying and a castle of coral lay at the bottom. And the Princess beckoned to him from a window and said "Come in!"
Then he heard his name called; his father stood behind him and shouted "Johannes!"
"There's a message for you from the Castle. You're to row the children over to the island!"
He went off in a hurry. A new favour and a great one had been vouchsafed to the Miller's son.
"The Mansion" looked like a little castle in the green landscape, indeed it was like a stupendous palace in its solitude. The house was built of wood and painted white, with many bow-windows in its walls and roof, and a flag flew on the round tower when there were visitors. People called it the Castle. And outside its grounds lay the bay to one side, and to the other the great forests; far away some little farms were to be seen.
Johannes appeared at the landing-stage and got the young people into the boat. He knew them of old; they were the children of the "Castle" and their friends from town. They all had on high boots for wading; but Victoria, who only had little shoes on and besides was not more than ten, she had to be carried ashore when they reached the island.
"Shall I carry you?" asked Johannes.
"Let me!" said Otto, the gentleman from town, a man nearly old enough to leave school, and he took her in his arms.
Johannes stood and watched her being carried high up on land and heard her thanks. Then Otto looked back:
"Well, you'll look after the boat--what was his name?"
"Johannes," answered Victoria. "Yes, he'll look after the boat."
He was left behind. The others went off into the island, carrying baskets for collecting eggs. He stood pondering for a while; he would have liked to go with the others and they could have dragged the boat ashore for the matter of that. Too heavy? It wasn't too heavy. And he laid his fist on the boat and hauled it up a little way.
He heard the laughter and chatter of the young party growing fainter. All right, good-bye for the present. But they might have taken him with them. He knew of nests that he could have taken them to, wonderful hidden holes in the rock, where lived birds of prey with tufts on their beaks. And once he had seen a stoat.
He shoved the boat off and started to row round to the other side of the island. He had rowed a good way when they shouted to him:
"Row back. You're scaring the birds."
"I only wanted to show you where the stoat lives?" he answered tentatively. He waited a moment. "And then we could smoke out the snakes' nest? I've got some matches."
He got no answer. Then he turned the boat and rowed back to the landing-place. He drew the boat up.
When he grew up he would buy an island of the Sultan and forbid any one to approach it. A gunboat should guard his shores. Your Lordship, the slaves would come and tell him, there's a boat aground on the reef; she has struck, the young people in her will perish. Let them perish! he answers. Your Lordship, they are calling for help; we can save them yet and there is a woman in white among them. Save them! he commands in a voice of thunder. Then he meets the children of the Castle again after many years and Victoria throws herself at his feet and thanks him for her rescue. Nothing to thank me for, it was but my duty, he answers; go freely where you will within my domains. And then he has the gates of the palace thrown open to the company and feasts them on golden dishes and three hundred brown slave girls sing and dance the whole night long. But when it is time for the children of the Castle to leave, Victoria cannot go. She throws herself in the dust before him and sobs because she loves him. Let me stay here, thrust me not away, Your Lordship, let me be one of your slaves....
He began to walk quickly across the island, thrilled through with emotion. Very well, he would rescue the Castle children. Who knows, perhaps they had lost their way? Perhaps Victoria had got stuck between two rocks and could not get out? He would only have to reach out his arm to set her free.
But the children looked at him in astonishment when he came. Had he left the boat?
"I hold you responsible for the boat," said Otto.
"I could show you where there are some wild raspberries?" suggested Johannes.
Silence among the party. Victoria came to the rescue.
"No? Where are they?"
But the gentleman from town put temptation aside and said:
"We can't bother about that now."
Johannes replied, No, he didn't know about that; but the mussels were a long way out on the white sand; they would have to have the boat and dive for them.
That finished that idea, and Otto remarked:
"Yes, you look like a diver, don't you?"
Johannes began to breathe heavily.
"If you like I can go up the rocks there and roll a big stone down into the sea," he said.
"What for?"
"Oh nothing. But you could watch it."
But that proposal was not accepted either and Johannes held his tongue and felt ashamed. Then he went off to look for eggs a long way from the others, in another part of the island.
When the whole party came together again down by the boat Johannes had many more eggs than the rest; he carried them carefully in his cap.
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