On the last afternoon, Niels and Erik were sitting in their room, Niels looking at the pictures in a penny magazine, Erik deep in Spengler’s critical catalogue of the art collection at Christiansborg. How often he had turned the leaves of this book and tried to form a conception of the pictures from its naive description! Sometimes he would get almost sick with longing to behold all this art and beauty with his own eyes, to grasp it in very truth and make that glory of line and color his own by the mere strength of his enthusiasm. And how often, too, he had closed the book, weary of gazing into that drifting, fantastic mist of words which refused to solidify and take shape, refused to give forth anything, but went on in a vague and confused shifting—flowing and slipping away—flowing and slipping away.
But today it was all different. Now he had the certainty that the shapes he read about would not be shadows from dreamland much longer, and he felt rich in the promise of the book. The pictures rose before him as never before, flashing out like brilliant, many-colored suns from a mist that was golden and dancing with gold.
“What are you looking at?” he asked Niels.
Niels pointed to a portrait in his book representing Lassen, the hero of the Second of April.
“How ugly he is!” commented Erik.
“Ugly! Why, he was a hero—would you call him ugly, too?” Niels turned the leaves back to the picture of a great poet.
“Awfully ugly!” replied Erik decisively, making a grimace. “What a nose! And look at the mouth, and the eyes, and those tufts around his head!”
Then Niels saw that he was ugly, and he was silenced. It had never occurred to him that greatness was not always cast in a mould of beauty.
“While I think of it,” said Erik, closing his Spengler, “let me give you the key to the deck-house.”
Niels would have brushed him aside gloomily, but Erik hung a small padlock key around his friend’s neck on a broad piece of ribbon. “Shall we go down there?” he asked.
They went. Frithjof they found by the garden fence. He lay there eating green gooseberries, and had tears in his eyes because of the parting. Besides he was hurt that the others had not looked him up; for though he generally came uninvited, he felt that such a day demanded a certain amount of formality. Without speaking, he held out a handful of berries to them, but they had had their favorite dishes for dinner, and turned up their noses.
“Sour!” said Erik with a shudder.
“Indigestible truck!” added Niels, disdainfully looking down at the proffered berries. “How can you eat it? Chuck the stuff, we’re going down to the deck-house,” and he pointed with his chin at the key, for his hands were in his pockets.
At that they all three set forth.
The deck-house was an old green-painted ship’s cabin, which had once been bought at a beach auction. It had been put up by the fjord, and had served as a tool-house when the dam was being built, but now it was no longer in use. So the boys had taken possession of it, and concealed in it their ships, bows and arrows, leaping-poles, and other treasures, particularly such forbidden but indispensable things as powder, tobacco, and matches.
Niels opened the door of the deck-house with an air of gloomy solemnity. They went in and fumbled till they found their things in the dark corners of the empty bunks.
“Do you know,” said Erik, with his head deep in a distant corner, “I’m going to blow mine up.”
“Mine and Frithjof’s too!” cried Niels with a grand, consecrating gesture.
“Not mine, by Joe!” exclaimed Frithjof; “then what’d we have to sail with when Erik’s gone?”
“What indeed!” mocked Niels, turning away contemptuously.
Frithjof felt uncomfortable, but when the others had gone outside, he carefully moved his ship to a safer shelter.
Outside they quickly laid the powder in the ships imbedded in a nest of tarred oakum, set the sails, fixed the fuses, lighted them, and sprang back. Running along the beach, they signalled to the crew on board, loudly explaining to one another every chance turn of the ships as the result of the good captain’s nautical skill. But the ships ran aground at the point without the desired explosion having taken place, and this gave Frithjof an opportunity nobly to sacrifice the wadding of his cap to the manufacture of new and better fuses.
With all sails set, the ships stood in toward Zealand reef; the Britisher’s huge frigates came heavily lurching in a closed ring, while the foam blew white around the black bows, and the cannon mounted at the head filled the air with their harsh clamor. Nearer and nearer—glowing with red and blue, glittering with gold, the figureheads of the Albion and the Conqueror rose fathom-high. Grayish masses of sails hid the horizon; the smoke rolled out in great white clouds, and drifted as a veiling mist low over the sun-bright glitter of the waves. Then the deck of Erik’s ship was splintered with a feeble little puff; the oakum caught fire, a red blaze burst forth, and the nimble flames licked the shrouds and ran along the spars, ate their way smouldering along the bolt-rope, then shot like long flashes of lightning into the sails, while the burning canvas shrivelled up, broke, and flew in large black flakes far out to sea. The Dannebrog was still waving high on the slender top of the tall schooner-mast, the flagstaff was burned in two, the flag fluttered wildly like red wings eager for battle—but the flame caught it, and the smoke-blackened ship drifted without rudder or helmsman, dead and powerless, the sport of the winds and breakers. Niels’s ship did not burn so well; the powder had caught fire and some smoke came out, but that was all, and it was not enough.
“Hey, there!” called Niels from
