in his neck, behind his skull-

when, behold! the brute screamed wildly,

sprang upon his feet like lightning,

with a back-cast of his head

from my fist made knife and sheath fly,

pinned me tightly by the thigh,

jammed his horns against my legs,

clenched me like a pair of tongs;-

then forthwith away he flew

right along the Gendin-Edge!

ASE [involuntarily].

Jesus save us-!

PEER

Have you ever

chanced to see the Gendin-Edge?

Nigh on four miles long it stretches

sharp before you like a scythe.

Down o'er glaciers, landslips, scaurs,

down the toppling grey moraines,

you can see, both right and left,

straight into the tarns that slumber,

black and sluggish, more than seven

hundred fathoms deep below you.

Right along the Edge we two

clove our passage through the air.

Never rode I such a colt!

Straight before us as we rushed

'twas as though there glittered suns.

Brown-backed eagles that were sailing

in the wide and dizzy void

half-way 'twixt us and the tarns,

dropped behind, like motes in air.

Ice-floes on the shores broke crashing,

but no murmur reached my ears.

Only sprites of dizziness sprang,

dancing, round;-they sang, they swung,

circle-wise, past sight and hearing!

ASE [dizzy].

Oh, God save me!

PEER

All at once,

at a desperate, break-neck spot,

rose a great cock-ptarmigan,

flapping, cackling, terrified,

from the crack where he lay hidden

at the buck's feet on the Edge.

Then the buck shied half around,

leapt sky-high, and down we plunged

both of us into the depths!

[ASE totters, and catches at the trunk of a tree. PEER GYNT

continues:]

Mountain walls behind us, black,

and below a void unfathomed!

First we clove through banks of mist,

then we clove a flock of sea-gulls,

so that they, in mid-air startled,

flew in all directions, screaming.

Downward rushed we, ever downward.

But beneath us something shimmered,

whitish, like a reindeer's belly.-

Mother, 'twas our own reflection

in the glass-smooth mountain tarn,

shooting up towards the surface

with the same wild rush of speed

wherewith we were shooting downwards.

ASE [gasping for breath].

Peer! God help me-! Quickly, tell-!

PEER

Buck from over, buck from under,

in a moment clashed together,

scattering foam-flecks all around.

There we lay then, floating, plashing,-

But at last we made our way

somehow to the northern shore;

buck, he swam, I clung behind him:-

I ran homewards-

ASE

But the buck, dear?

PEER

He's there still, for aught I know;-

[Snaps his fingers, turns on his heel, and adds:]

catch him, and you're welcome to him!

ASE

And your neck you haven't broken?

Haven't broken both your thighs?

and your backbone, too, is whole?

Oh, dear Lord-what thanks, what praise,

should be thine who helped my boy!

There's a rent, though, in your breeches;

but it's scarce worth talking of

when one thinks what dreadful things

might have come of such a leap-!

[Stops suddenly, looks at him open-mouthed and wide-eyed; cannot

find words for some time, but at last bursts out:]

Oh, you devil's story-teller,

Cross of Christ, how you can lie!

All this screed you foist upon me,

I remember now, I knew it

when I was a girl of twenty.

Gudbrand Glesne it befell,

never you, you-

PEER

Me as well.

Such a thing can happen twice.

ASE [exasperated].

Yes, a lie, turned topsy-turvy,

can be prinked and tinselled out,

decked in plumage new and fine,

till none knows its lean old carcass.

That is just what you've been doing,

vamping up things, wild and grand,

garnishing with eagles' backs

and with all the other horrors,

lying right and lying left,