config error

[John F. Whitehead]

I am getting the error "configure: error: calling emacs" when trying to 
configure tramp 2.1.1. (Unlike the same error message reported at 
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/tramp-devel/2003-05/msg00016.html> 
this isn't caused by a faulty site-start.el because "--no-site-file" is 
now specified in the configure script.)

My emacs installation is fine:
> emacs --version
GNU Emacs 21.3.50.1

Does anyone know how I can avoid this error (or avoid the test) and 
continue with the configuration/installation?  None of these commands 
work for me, either as written or while executed under "sudo":
./configure
./configure --with-contrib
./configure --with-emacs
./configure --with-contrib --with-emacs

Any ideas?  Thanks.

Here is the config.log:
configure:1242: Tramp 2.1.1
configure:1255: checking for gmake
configure:1284: result: no
configure:1255: checking for make
configure:1271: found /usr/bin/make
configure:1281: result: make
configure:1298: checking for reasonable make version
configure:1301: result: ok
configure:1311: checking whether make sets $(MAKE)
configure:1331: result: yes
configure:1411: checking for emacs
configure:1428: found /usr/bin/emacs
configure:1439: result: yes
configure:1453: checking for emacs flavor
emacs --no-site-file -batch -eval (let ((x (if (featurep 'xemacs) "yes" 
"no"))) (write-region (if (stringp x) (princ x) (prin1-to-string x)) 
nil "./conftest-1896"))
End of file during parsing
configure:1476: result:
configure:1478: error: calling emacs