The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction - German Part 29

Then the pet.i.tion was sent into the city by a messenger on horseback.

I must call your attention to the fact, dear sir, the schoolmaster interrupted his account, fixing his eyes pleasantly upon me, that what I have told you up to this point I have gathered during my activity of almost forty years in this district from the traditions of intelligent people or from the tales of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What I am about to tell you now, so that you may find the right connection between what has gone before and the final outcome of my story, used to be and is still the talk of the whole marsh village, as soon as the spinning-wheels begin to whir round All Saints' Day.

If one stood on the dike, about five or six hundred feet to the north of the dikemaster's farm, one could, at that time, look a few thousand feet out over the sea, and somewhat farther from the opposite sh.o.r.e one could see a little island, which they called "Jeverssand," or "Jevers Island." Our forefathers of that generation had used it as a pasture for sheep, for at that time gra.s.s was still growing on it; but even that had stopped, because the low island had several times been flooded by the sea, and in midsummer too, so that the growth of gra.s.s was stunted and made useless as a sheep pasture. So it happened that the island had no more visitors except gulls and other birds and occasionally a sea eagle; and on moonlight nights from the dike one could only see the light or heavy mists pa.s.s over it. And people believed that, when the moon shone upon the island from the east, they could recognise a few bleached skeletons of drowned sheep and that of a horse, although, to be sure, no one could understand how it had come there.

It was at the end of March that the day laborer from the house of Tede Haien and Iven Johns, the hired man of the young dikemaster, stood beside each other at that place and without stirring stared at the island which could scarcely be recognised in the dim moonshine; but something out of the ordinary seemed to hold them there. The laborer put his hands into his pockets and shuddered: "Come, Iven," he said; "there's nothing good in that; let us go home."

The other laughed, even though horror sounded through his laughter: "Oh, bosh, it's a live creature, a big one! Who the devil has chased it on to the clay out there? Look, now it's stretching its neck our way!

No, it's drooping its head; it is feeding. I'd have thought, there was nothing to feed on there! What can it be?"

"That's not our business!" replied the other. "Good night, Iven, if you don't want to go with me; I'm going home!"

"Oh, yes; you've got a wife, you can go into your warm bed! But I've got a lot of March air in my room!"

"Good night, then," the laborer called back, as he marched home on the dike. The hired man looked round a few times after his fleeing companion; but the desire to see something gruesome held him fast. Then a dark, stocky figure came toward him on the dike from the village; it was the servant boy of the dikemaster. "What do you want, Carsten?" the hired man called to him.

"I?--nothing," said the boy; "but our master wants to speak to you, Iven Johns."

The man's eyes were drawn back to the island again. "All right, I'm coming right off," he said.

"What are you looking at so?" asked the boy.

The man raised his arm and pointed silently to the island. "Oh, look!"

whispered the boy; "there goes a horse--a white horse--the devil must be riding that--how can a horse get to Jevers Island?"

"Don't know, Carsten; if it's only a real horse!"

"Yes, yes, Iven; look, now it's feeding just like a horse! But who has brought it there--we have no boats in the village big enough! Perhaps it's only a sheep; Peter Ohm says by moonlight ten circles of peat look like a whole village. No, look! Now it's jumping around--it must be a horse, after all!"

Both stood silent for a while, their eyes fixed on what they saw indistinctly going on upon yonder island. The moon stood high in the heavens and shone upon the wide sea that was just beginning, as the tide rose, to wash with its waters over the glistening flats of clay.

Only the low murmur of the water, not the sound of a single animal was heard here in the vast open; on the marshes behind the dike, too, all was deserted, and cows and oxen were still in their stalls.

Nothing stirred; only the thing that they took for a horse--a white horse--seemed to be moving on Jevers Island. "It is growing lighter,"

the hired man broke into the silence; "I can see the white sheeps'

skeletons shimmer distinctly!"

"I too," said the boy and stretched his neck; but then, as if it came over him suddenly, he pulled the man by the sleeve. "Iven," he gasped, "the horse skeleton, that used to lie there too--where is that? I can't see it!"

"I don't see it either. Strange!" said the man.

"Not so strange, Iven! Sometimes, I don't know in what nights, the bones are supposed to rise and act as if they were alive!"

"Is that so?" said the man; "that's an old wives' story!"

"May be, Iven," said the boy.

"But I thought you were sent to get me. Come, we have to go home. It always stays the same, anyway."

The man could not get the boy away until he had turned him round by force and pushed him on to the way. "Listen, Carsten," said the former, when the ghostly island lay a good way behind him, "you are supposed to be a good sport; I believe you would like to inspect these doings yourself."

"Yes," replied Carsten, still shuddering a little. "Yes, I'd like to do that, Iven."

"Do you really mean that? Then," said the man after he had given his hand to the boy emphatically, "we'll take our boat to-morrow evening; you row to Jeverssand; I'll stay on the dike in the meantime."

"Yes," replied the boy, "that'll work! I'll take my whip with me."

"Do that."

Silently they came near the house of their employers, to which they slowly climbed up the high hill.

At the same hour on the following night the hired man sat on the big stone in front of the stable door, when the boy came to him, snapping his whip. "What a strange sound!" said the former.

"I should say--take care!" returned the boy; "I have stuck nails into the string, too."

"Then come," said the other.

As on the night before, the moon stood in the eastern sky and looked down with a clear light. Soon both were out on the dike again and looked over to Jevers Island, that looked like a strip of mist in the water. "There it goes again," said the man; "I was here in the afternoon, and then it wasn't there; but I saw the white horse skeleton lying there distinctly!"

The boy stretched his neck: "That isn't there now, Iven," he whispered.

"Well, Carsten, how is it?" said the man. "Are you still keen on rowing over?"

Carsten stopped to think a moment; then he struck the air with his whip: "Go ahead and slip the mooring, Iven."

But over yonder it seemed as if the creature moving there were stretching its neck and raising its head toward the mainland. They were not seeing it any more; they were already walking down the dike to the place where the boat was moored. "Now get in," said the man, after he had slipped the mooring. "I'll wait till you are back. You'll have to land on the eastern side; that's where one always could land." And the boy nodded silently and rowed away into the moonlit night with his whip; the man wandered back to the foot of the dike and climbed on to it again at the place where they had stood before. Soon he saw how the boat was moored at a steep, dark place, where a broad creek flowed out, and how a stocky figure leaped ash.o.r.e. Didn't it seem as if the boy were snapping his whip? But then, too, it might be the sound of the rising flood. Several hundred feet to the north he saw what they had taken for a white horse; and now--yes, the figure of the boy came marching straight up to it. Now it raised its head as if it were startled; and the boy--now one could hear it plainly--snapped his whip.

But--what was he doing? He was turning round, he was going back the same way he had come. The creature over there seemed to graze on unceasingly; no sound of neighing could be heard; sometimes it seemed as if strips of water were drawn across the apparition. The man gazed as if spellbound.

Then he heard the arrival of the boat at the sh.o.r.e he was on, and soon in the dusk he saw the boy climb toward him up the dike. "Well, Carsten," he asked, "what was it?"

The boy shook his head. "It was nothing!" he said. "From the boat I saw it a short way off; but then, when I was on the island--the devil knows where that animal has hid himself! The moonlight was bright enough; but when I came to that place there was nothing there but the pale bones of a half dozen sheep, and a little farther away lay the horse skeleton, too, with its white, long skull and let the moon shine into its empty sockets."

"Hm!" replied the man; "are you sure you saw right?"

"Yes, Iven, I stood in the place; a forlorn bird that had cowered behind the skeleton for the night flew up screaming so that I was startled and snapped my whip after it a few times."

"And that was all?"

"Yes, Iven; I don't know any more."

"It is enough, too," said the man, then he pulled the boy toward him by the arm and pointed over to the island. "Do you see something over there, Carsten?"

"It's true, there it goes again."

"Again?" said the man; "I've been looking over there all the time, and it hasn't been away at all; you went right up to the monster."

The boy stared at him; all at once horror was in his usually so pert face, and this did not escape the man. "Come," said the latter, "let's go home: from here it looks alive and over there is nothing but bones--that's more than you and I can grasp. But keep quiet about it, one mustn't talk of these things."

They turned round and the boy trotted beside him; they did not speak, and by their side the marshes lay in perfect silence.

But when the moon had vanished and the nights were black, something else happened.