Suddenly a storm of shouts and hisses broke out, mingled with a little applause.
Pelle stood looking out over the crowd with an expression of terrible earnestness. Their demonstration against him did not move him; he was standing here in the stead of a dead man. He still felt Peter’s heavy head on his arm.
When comparative quiet was restored he raised his head. “Peter Dreyer is dead!” he said in a voice that was heard by every one. Whispers passed through the crowd, and they looked questioningly at one another as though they had not heard correctly. He saw from their expression how much would go to pieces in their lives when they believed it.
“It’s a lie!” suddenly cried a voice, relieving the tension. “You’re hired by the police to entice us round the corner, you sly fellow!”
Pelle turned pale. “Peter Dreyer is lying in the factory with a bullet through his head,” he repealed inexorably. “The police were going to arrest him, and he shot both the policeman and himself!”
For a moment all the life in the crowd seemed to be petrified by the pitiless truth, and he saw how they had loved Peter Dreyer. Then they began to make an uproar, shouting that they would go and speak to the police, and some even turned to go.
“Silence, people!” cried Pelle in a loud voice. “Are you grown men and yet will get up a row beside the dead body of a comrade?”
“What do you know about it?” answered one. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I do know at any rate that at a place out by Vesterbro there sits a woman with a child, waiting for Peter, and he will not come. Would you have more like them? What are you thinking of, wanting to jump into the sea and drown yourselves because you’re wet through? Will those you leave behind be well off? For if you think so, it’s your duty to sacrifice yourselves. But don’t you think rather that the community will throw you into a great common pit, and leave your widows and fatherless children to weep over you?”
“It’s all very well for you to talk!” some one shouted. “Yours are safe enough!”
“I’m busy making yours safe for you, and you want to spoil it by stupidity! It’s all very well for me to talk, you say! But if there’s any one of you who dares turn his face to heaven and say he has gone through more than I have, let him come up here and take my place.”