"Well, we shall hear this evening how it works."
"Perhaps--perhaps not. I shouldn't be too certain. There's a heap of things to take into consideration, apart from what you might call the principle of the thing."
"Well, you wouldn't see it, of course, but there's a hundred odd things. That boiler there, for instance--can he get up a sufficient head of steam with that? I don't believe it. A turbine wants any amount of steam to drive. If he got it fairly going, the thing'd simply burst. Hark! how it's thumping away already. But there's no danger as long as he's only got that dolls' house grate to heat it with. And as for the boat"--Rothe looked round to make sure that Lange was out of hearing; the others were limping back shiveringly to land--"the freckle-nosed birch-and-ruler merchant's right enough; it's simply falling to pieces as it is. Egholm, poor devil, he got some odd bits of tin from my place and patched up the worst parts, but the nails wouldn't hold even then.--Coming off, Doctor? Here, get up again.--And the stuff he's burning's no better than hay. He's been stoking away for a couple of hours now, and hasn't got up steam yet."
"What d'you reckon it would cost to make the experiment properly?" asked the Doctor, with his expressionless face, as they reached dry land again.
"Oh, any amount of money. Thousands of _kroner_. It's hopeless for a poor devil like him to try. But, of course, once he could get the thing to go once round and reverse, why, _he'd be a millionaire!_"
Rothe shouted out the last words to the whole assembly; then he hopped across to Henrik Vang's bush. He pricked up his ears at the murmur that arose from his words.
Madam Hermansen had only just discovered Vang. Suddenly she stood at the foot of the slope and gave an amorous laugh.
Vang took the bottle from his lips in the middle of a draught, and the beer frothed over down his vest.
"Get out!" he cried, with horror in his face. "Get out!" And he threw the bottle at her.
Vang was a big man among his fellows; but under Madam Hermansen's glance he felt himself naked and ashamed.
Madam Hermansen sidled away in her polished clogs, still smiling.
Egholm came back at a trot, pushing an old perambulator full of coals. He breathed in relief to find that the crowd was still there; it had, indeed, increased. The workmen from the factory had come down to the beach on their way home, and stood there now talking in bass voices, their eyes turning ridiculously in their black faces. The apprentice lads had come, too--unable to resist. They felt a kind of primitive, brutally affectionate attraction towards the boat, which for some unexplained reason they had christened _The Long Dragon_. It was just the right distance for a stone-throwing target, and gave a delightful metallic sound when hit. They had used it as a bathing-station while the weather was still warm, undressing in it, diving in from it, and rocking it in the water till the waves washed up on the sand. They heaved up the anchoring stones, and sailed out with it, shouting and singing, into deep water, where they swam round it in flocks, like grampus about a whale. They turned the screw and made bonfires under the boiler. But they did more: they laid an oar across from gunwale to gunwale, and danced on it to see if it would break. And found it did. They threw the manometer into the water to see if it would float. And found it didn't. A pale youngster, the son of Worms, the brewer, who was not a factory apprentice at all, but a fine gentleman in the uniform of the Academy, found a pot of paint under one of the seats, and promptly painted his name, _Cornelius_, in red on the side of the boat.