Tollef Kolstad was a cooper, and a very skilful cooper he was said to be. He had a little son named Thor, who was as fond of his father as his father was of him. Whatever Tollef did or said, Thor was sure to imitate; if Tollef was angry and flung a piece of wood at the dog who used to come into the shop and bother him, Thor, thinking it was a manly thing to do, flung another piece at poor Hector, who ran out whimpering through the door.
Thor, of course, was not very old before he had a corner in his father’s shop, where, with a small set of tools which had been especially bought for him, he used to make little pails and buckets and barrels, which he sold for five or ten cents apiece to the boys of the neighborhood. All the money earned in this way he put into a bank of tin, made like a drum, of which his mother kept the key. When he grew up, he thought, he would be a rich man.
The last weeks before Christmas are, in Norway, always the briskest season in all trades; then the farmer wants his horses shod, so that he may take his wife and children to church in his fine, swan-shaped sleigh; he wants bread and cakes made to last through the holidays, so that his servants may be able to amuse themselves, and his guests may be well entertained when they call; and, above all, he wants large tubs and barrels, stoutly made of beech staves, for his beer and mead, with which he pledges every stranger who, during the festival, happens to pass his door. You may imagine, then, that at Christmas time coopers are much in demand, and that it is not to be wondered at if sometimes they are behind-hand with their orders. This was unfortunately the case with Tollef Kolstad at the time when the strange thing happened which I am about to tell you. He had been at work since the early dawn, upon a huge tub or barrel, which had been ordered by Grim Berglund, the richest peasant in the parish. Grim was to give a large party on the following day (which was Christmas-Eve), and he had made Tollef promise to bring the barrel that same night, so that he might pour the beer into it, and have all in readiness for the holidays, when it would be wrong to do any work. It was about ten o’clock at night when Tollef made the last stroke with his hatchet on the large hollow thing, upon which every blow resounded as on a drum. He went to a neighbor and hired from him his horse and flat sleigh, and was about to start on his errand, when he heard a tiny voice calling behind him:
“Father, do take me along, too!”
“I can’t, my boy. There may be wolves on the lake, to-night, and they might like to eat up little boys who stay out of bed so late.”
“But I am not afraid of them, father. I have my whip and my hatchet, and I’ll whip them and cut them.”
Thor here made some threatening flourishes with his weapons in the air, indicating how he would give it to the wolves in case they should venture to molest him.
“Well, come along, you little rascal,” said his father, laughing, and feeling rather proud of his boy’s dauntless spirit. “You and I are not to be trifled with when we get mad, are we, Thor?”
“No, indeed, father,” said Thor, and clenched his little mittened fist.
Tollef then lifted him up, wrapped him warmly in his sheepskin jacket, and put him between his knees, while he himself seized the reins and urged the horse on.
It was a glorious winter night. The snow sparkled and shone as if sprinkled with starry diamonds, the aurora borealis flashed in pale, shifting colors along the horizon, and the moon sailed calmly through a vast, dark-blue sea of air. Little Thor shouted with delight as he saw the broad expanse of glittering ice, which they were about to cross, stretching out before them like a polished shield of steel.
“Oh, father, I wish we had taken our skates along, and pulled your barrel across on a sled,” cried the boy, ecstatically.
“That I might have done, if I had had a sled large enough for the barrel,” replied the father. “But then we should have been obliged to pull it up the hills on the other side.”
The sleigh now struck the ice and shot forward, swinging from side to side, as the horse pulled a little unevenly. Whew! how the cold air cut in their faces. How it whizzed and howled in the tree-tops! Hark! What was that? Tollef instinctively pressed his boy more closely to him. Hush!—his heart stood still, while that of the boy, who merely felt the reflex shock of his father’s agitation, hammered away the more rapidly. A terrible, long-drawn howl, as from a chorus of wild, far-away voices, came floating away over the crowns of the pine-trees.
“What was that, father,” asked Thor, a little tremulously.
“It was wolves, my child,” said Tollef, calmly.
“Are you afraid, father?” asked the boy again.
“No, child, I am not afraid of one wolf, nor of ten wolves; but if they are in a flock of twenty or thirty, they are dangerous. And if they scent our track, as probably they will, they will be on us in five minutes.”
“How will they scent our track, father?”
“They smell us in the wind; and the wind is from us and to them, and then they howl to notify their comrades, so that they may attack us in sufficient force.”
“Why don’t we return home, then?” inquired the boy, still with a tolerably steady voice, but with sinking courage.
“They are behind us. Our only chance is to reach the shore before they overtake us.”
The horse, sniffing the presence of wild beasts, snorted wildly as it ran, but, electrified as it were, with the sense of danger, strained every nerve in its efforts to reach the farther shore. The howls now came nearer and nearer, and they rose with a frightful distinctness in the clear, wintry air, and resounded again from the border of the forest.
“Why don’t you throw away the barrel, father?” said Thor, who, for his father’s sake, strove hard to keep brave. “Then the sleigh will run so much the faster.”
“If we are overtaken, our safety is in the barrel. Fortunately, it is large enough for two, and it has no ears and will fit close to the ice.”
Tollef was still calm; but, with his one disengaged arm, hugged his little son convulsively.
“Now, keep brave, my boy,” he whispered in his ear. “They will soon be upon us. Give me your whip.”
It just occurred to Tollef that he had heard that wolves were very suspicious, and that men had often escaped them by dragging some small object on the ground behind them. He, therefore, broke a chip from one of the hoops of the barrel, and tied it to the lash of the whip; just then he heard a short, hungry bark behind him, and, turning his head, saw a pack of wolves, numbering more than a dozen, the foremost of which was within a few yards of the sleigh. He saw the red, frothy tongue hanging out of its mouth, and he smelt that penetrating, wild smell with which everyone is familiar who has met a wild beast in its native haunts. While encouraging the reeking, foam-flecked horse, Tollef, who had only half faith in the experiment with the whip, watched anxiously the leader of the wolves, and observed to his astonishment that it seemed to be getting no nearer. One moment it seemed to be gaining upon them, but invariably, as soon as it reached the little chip which was dragging along the ice, this suddenly arrested its attention and immediately its speed slackened. The cooper’s hope began to revive, and he thought that perhaps there was yet a possibility that they might see the morrow’s sun. But his courage again began to ebb when he discovered in the distance a second pack of wolves, larger than the first, and which, with terrific speed, came running, leaping, and whirling toward them from another direction. And while this terrible discovery was breaking through his almost callous sense, he forgot, for an instant, the whip, the lash of which swung under the runners of the sleigh and snapped. The horse, too, was showing signs of exhaustion, and Tollef, seeing that only one chance was left, rose up with his boy in his arms, and upsetting the barrel on the ice, concealed himself and the child under it. Hardly had he had time to brace himself against its sides, pressing his feet against one side and his back against the other, when he heard the horse giving a wild scream, while the short, whining bark of the wolves told him that the poor beast was selling its life dearly. Then there was a desperate scratching and scraping of horseshoes, and all of a sudden the sound of galloping hoof-beats on the ice, growing fainter and fainter. The horse had evidently succeeded in breaking away from the sleigh, and was testing his speed in a race for life. Some of the wolves were apparently pursuing him, while the greater number remained to investigate the contents of the barrel. The howling and barking of these furious creatures without was now incessant. Within the barrel it was dark as pitch.
“Now, keep steady!” said Tollef, feeling a sudden shock, as if a wolf had leaped against their improvised house with a view to upsetting it. He felt himself and the boy gliding a foot or two over the smooth ice, but there was no further result from the attack. A minute passed: again there came a shock, and a stronger one than the first. A long, terrible howl followed this second failure. The little boy, clutching his small cooper’s hatchet in one hand, sat pale but determined in the dark, while with the other he clung to his father’s arm.
“Oh, father!” he cried, in terror, “I feel something on my back.”
The father quickly struck a light, for he fortunately had a supply of matches in his pocket, and saw a wolf’s paw wedged in between the ice and the rim of the barrel; and in the same instant he tore the hatchet from his son’s hand and buried its edge in the ice. Then he handed the amputated paw to Thor, and said:
“Put that into your wallet, and the sheriff will pay you a reward for it.[7] For a wolf without paws couldn’t do much harm.”
While he was yet speaking, a third assault upon the barrel lifted one side of it from the ice, and almost overturned it. Instead of pushing against the part nearest the ice, a wolf, more cunning than the rest, had leaped against the upturned bottom.
You can imagine what a terrible night father and son spent together in this constant struggle with the voracious beasts, that never grew weary of attacking their hiding-place. The father was less warmly clad than the son, and, moreover, was obliged to sit on the ice, while Thor could stand erect without knocking against the bottom of the barrel; and if it had not been for the excitement of the situation, which made Tollef’s blood course with unwonted rapidity, it is more than probable that the intense cold would have made him drowsy, and thus lessened his power of resistance. The warmth of his body had made a slight cavity where he was sitting, and whenever he remained a moment still, his trousers froze fast to the ice. It was only the presence of his boy that inspired him with fresh courage, whenever hope seemed about to desert him.
About an hour after the flight of the horse, when five or six wolves’ paws had been cut off in the same manner as the first, there was a lull in the attack, but a sudden increase of the howling, whining, yelping, and barking noise without. Tollef concluded that the wolves, maddened by the smell of blood, were attacking their wounded fellows; and as their howls seemed to come from a short distance, he cautiously lifted one side of the barrel and peered forth; but in the same instant a snarling bark rang right in his ear, and two paws were thrust into the opening. Then came a howl of pain, and another paw was put into Thor’s wallet.
But hark! What is that? It sounds like a song, or rather like a hymn. The strain comes nearer and nearer, resounding from mountain to mountain, floating peacefully through the pure and still air:
“Who knows how near I am mine ending;
So quickly time doth pass away.”
Tollef, in whose breast hope again was reviving, put his ear to the ice, and heard distinctly the tread of horses and of many human feet. He listened for a minute or more, but could not discover whether the sound was coming any nearer. It occurred to him that in all probability the people, being unarmed, would have no desire to cope with a large pack of wolves, especially as to them there could be no object in it. If they saw the barrel, how could they know that there was anybody under it? He comprehended instantly that his only chance of life was in joining those people before they were too far away. And, quickly resolved, he lifted the boy on his left arm, and grasped the hatchet in his disengaged hand. Then, with a violent thrust, he flung the barrel from over him, and ran in the direction of the sound. The wolves, as he had inferred, were lacerating their bleeding comrades; but the moment they saw him, a pack of about a dozen immediately started in pursuit. They leaped up against him on all sides, while he struck furiously about him with his small weapon. Fortunately, he had sharp steel pegs on his boots, and kept his footing well; otherwise the combat would have been a short one. His voice, too, was powerful, and his shouts rose high above the howling of the beasts. He soon perceived that he had been observed, and he saw in the bright moonlight six or eight men running toward him. Just then, as perhaps in his joy his vigilance was for a fraction of a second relaxed, he felt a pull in the fleshy part of his right arm. He was not conscious of any sharp pain, and was astonished to see the blood flowing from an ugly wound. But he only held his boy the more tightly, while he fought and ran with the strength of despair.
Now the men were near. He could hear their voices. But his brain was dizzy, and he saw but dimly.
“Hello, friend; don’t crack my skull for my pains!” someone was shouting close to his ear, and he let his hatchet fall, and he fell himself, too, prostrate on the ice.
The wolves, at the sight of the men, had retired to a safe distance, from which they watched the proceedings, as if uncertain whether to return.
As soon as Tollef had recovered somewhat from his exhaustion and his loss of blood, he and his boy were placed upon a sleigh, and his wound was carefully bandaged. He now learned that his rescuers were on their way to a funeral, which was to take place on the next day, but, on account of the distance to the church, they had been obliged to start during the night. Hence their solemn mood, and their singing of funeral hymns.
After an hour’s ride they reached the cooper’s cottage, and were invited to rest and to share such hospitality as the house could afford. But when they were gone, Tollef clasped his sleeping boy in his arms and said to his wife: “If it had not been for him, you might have had no husband to-day. It was his little whip and toy hatchet that saved our lives.”
Eleven wolves’ paws were found in Thor’s wallet, and, on Christmas eve, he went to the sheriff with them and received a reward which nearly burst his old savings-bank, and compelled his mother to buy a new one.