the boat with staves. They had the current with them, and swiftly they glided down the stream, through the lakes which sometimes seemed shut in by woods and reeds. But there was always room for them to pass, even if the old trees bent quite forward over the water, and the old oaks bent down their bare branches, as if they had turned up their sleeves, and wanted to show their knotty naked arms. Old alder trees, which the stream had washed away from the bank, clung with their roots to the bottom of the stream, and looked like little wooded islands. The water-lilies rocked themselves on the river. It was a splendid excursion; and at last they came to the great eel-weir, where the water rushed through the flood-gates; that was something for Ib and Christine to see!
In those days there was no manufactory there, nor was there any town: only the old farm-yard, and the stock there was not large; and the rushing of the water through the weir and the cry of the wild ducks were the only signs of life in Silkeborg. After the firewood had been unloaded, the father of Christine bought a whole bundle of eels and a slaughtered sucking-pig, and all was put into a basket and placed in the stern of the boat. Then they went back again up the stream; but the wind was favourable, and when the sails were hoisted it was as good as if two horses had been harnessed to the boat.
When they had arrived at a point in the stream where the assistant-boatman dwelt, a little way from the bank, the boat was moored, and the two men landed, after exhorting the children to sit still. But the children did not do that very long. They must be peeping into the basket in which the eels and the sucking-pig had been placed, and they must needs pull the sucking-pig out, and take it in their hands; and as both wanted to hold it at the same time, it came to pass that they let it fall into the water, and the sucking-pig drifted away with the stream—and here was a terrible event!
Ib jumped ashore, and ran a little distance along the bank, and Christine sprang after him.
'Take me with you!' she cried.
And in a few minutes they were deep in the thicket, and could no longer see either the boat or the bank. They
