Told by the Death's Head Part 36

I could not see my wife anywhere on the embankment. What had become of her?

I was compelled to wade through the pools a considerable distance, in order to get back to the dike-road, for the embankment where I had fallen over was too steep to be climbed.

Therefore, a half hour or more pa.s.sed before I stood again on the dike-road looking about for my wife. She was nowhere in sight on the road. Then I turned toward the sands, and what I saw there caused the blood to curdle in my veins--the foolish woman had gone after her cap!

She had it on her head, which, with her two arms, was all that was visible of her body above the sands. It was a horrible sight. Her staring eyes were fixed on me in accusation, her hands battled vainly with the empty air, her lips were open, but no sound issued forth. She was still alive, but entombed.

I thought of nothing but saving her. I sprang down the embankment, but when the sinking woman saw me coming toward her, she began to beat the sand furiously with her hands, as if she were trying to prevent my approach. I could not have saved her. I had made but fifty steps toward her when I too began to sink. Recognizing the futility of further effort on my part, I flung myself face down on the sand, that my entire weight might not rest on my feet, and thus I managed to propel my body slowly, painfully, toward the stable earth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Thus I managed to propel my body slowly, painfully toward the stable earth"]

A seemingly endless time elapsed before I reached the foot of the embankment, and all the while there was a sound in my ears as of waves dashing against rocks, each wave crying hoa.r.s.ely: "Curse you!" "Curse you!"

When at last, dripping with ice-cold perspiration and quivering with horror, I reached the top of the dike, I could see only the red velvet cap on the sands; and as I looked, a sudden gust of wind sweeping up from the sea, seized it and bore it toward me.

Overcome by terror I turned and fled like a madman down the road. All day long I continued my flight over pathless wastes; through withered copses, which had been destroyed by frequent inundations; across marshes filled with croaking frogs, and nesting storm-petrels; the lurking place of weasels and others, and from every corner I heard voices calling after me: "Murder!" "Murder!" The frogs croaked it from the water, the birds piped it from the air. The withered trees moaned it, and stretched their branches threateningly toward me; and the briars trailing along the ground caught at my feet and cried: "Stop, stop! let me bind you, murderer!"

All things animate and inanimate joined in accusing me; and at last a wall rose before me to hinder further flight.

It was only a broken dike; but to me it seemed a prison. Foot-sore and weary, I lay down amid the stones fallen from the wall. They were covered with thick moss, and it was a relief to stretch my tired limbs among them.

I began to collect my scattered senses, to think calmly over what had happened, and after awhile I began to excuse myself to the frogs and the petrels, the moles and the spa.r.s.e-branched withered trees that stood around me staring at me as if they would say:

"Come, murderer, decide which of us will best suit you."

I defended myself: "I am not a murderer; I am not going to hang myself. I did not lay a finger on the woman--it was she who thrust me over the dike into a pool where I nearly drowned. She was foolish enough to go where certain death awaited her--she alone is to blame!"

"But, why did you throw her cap on the sands?" questioned the frogs, the storm-birds, and the moles. "Had not I a right to do it? Hadn't I a right to prevent her from wearing the cap which disgraced her and me? Had not she brought dishonor on me once before? Was I to permit it a second time? By throwing the cap away I was only defending my honor and her virtue. I did not kill her--she alone is to blame for her death!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" sneered every animate creature. "Ha, ha, ha!" scoffed the breeze sweeping over the moor. No one--nothing in the wide world took sides with me. The elements were against me; every human being on the globe--large, small, white, black, olive-hued--all were against me. Cities, towns, villages; houses palaces, huts--all were my enemies; I must flee from every human habitation.

And yet, I am not guilty. All the world will say that I am. My wife will be missed; she was seen going away in my company; her cap will be found beside the dike. It will be said that I murdered her, and thrust her body into the quicksands.

I am not my wife's murderer. Did no one see her thrust me over the dike? Will no one testify for me?

A fluttering wing brushed my cheek:

"Ah, my white dove! Are you there? You will speak for me. You will tell all the world that I am innocent--that I did not murder my wife?"

Filled with hope and joy, I turned my eyes toward my shoulder. The white dove was not perched there, but a coal black raven, and he croaked:

"Thou didst it!"

"At last," exclaimed the mayor as he shook the ink from the pen with which he had authenticated the protocol. "At last we have a confession that cannot be rendered invalid by a pharasaical _referrata mentalis_!

At last the executioner will get something to do! _Uxoricidium aequale_: quartering, _praecedente_: the right hand to be severed from the wrist."

"I don't agree with your honor," interposed the prince. "There is a law that was promulgated by _Sanctus Ladislaus rex_--he was a Hungarian king, to be sure, but he is a saint for all that; and because he was canonized his law is held sacred by all christendom; it reads something like this: 'If a man finds his wife guilty of infidelity, and takes her life, he is answerable to G.o.d alone for the deed--'"

"Of course!" angrily exclaimed the chair, "I'll warrant the knave never dreamed that _Sanctus Ladislaus rex_ would drag him by the hair of his head out of limbo!--Let it be added to the rest of the miracles performed by Saint Ladislas!"

PART XI.

IN SATAN'S REALM.

CHAPTER I.

THE SATYRS.

Not until the shadows of night had settled around me did I learn into what an accursed region I had strayed. It was the notorious "_kempenei_"--the rendezvous of witches and all evil spirits.

When it became quite dark, the jack-o'-lanterns began to flit over the moor--as if the witches were dancing a minuet; and suddenly I heard a tumult of shrieks and yells, and looking upward I beheld the most repulsive lot of females it has ever been the lot of man to see.

They had hairy chins; and huge warts on their noses. They came rushing through the air, seated on the shoulders of pallid-faced male forms.

Each hag hung her mount by the bridle around his neck to a limb of one of the dead trees, and clapped her heels three times together before she descended to the ground. Then the witches held a council, and each one detailed the evil she had perpetrated the past twenty-four hours.

I heard one say boastfully:

"I sent an angry woman running after her cap, which her husband had thrown on the quicksands, and I let her sink to her death. The man escaped--"

Here her sister-witches fell on her and beat her with switches, because she had allowed a man to escape from her.

"Let me alone! Let me alone!" she shrieked. "I'll find him yet--he won't get away from me a second time!"

Terror seized me anew. I shuddered, and pressed as closely as possible into my mossy bed.

Then the hags began to arrange their plans for the next day. They would send the "Bocksritter" to attack a caravan that was coming to Antwerp.

I had heard a good deal about the Bocksritter, a mounted band of ferocious robbers, who looked like satyrs, and were in league with Satan. They were even more to be dreaded than the Haidemaken. When the satyrs committed an extensive robbery, they took good care not to let a single one of their victims escape alive--not even the infant in its cradle. They left no one to witness against them; and, as they fled at once to another country, it was impossible to learn anything about them. Where they committed their depredations and the officers of the law failed to find trace of them, it was concluded, and naturally, that the Bocksritter were a myth, and the story of their depredations an idle fable.

When the witches had decided their plans for the next day, the most hideous of the hideous crew began to peer about her, and sniff the air.

"I smell something!" she exclaimed; "something that doesn't belong here."

"It smells like a human being," said a second, also sniffing around her.

"Ha, if only it were the fellow who escaped me this morning!" with a snort exclaimed a third. "It wouldn't take me long to prepare him for a bridle"--she glanced as she concluded toward the pallid creatures hanging on the trees.

I pressed still further into the moss and ferns; but the raven on my shoulder began to flutter his wings, as if to attract the witches'

attention.

"Some one is hiding over yonder!" they cried as with one voice. "Come on, sisters, let's tickle him!"

I heard them approach my hiding place, and in my despair I cried out: