The dark-looking monk entered the boat, and the ferryman shoved off
from the bank. They soon reached the opposite shore. The ferryman,
however, had scarce time to give his fare a good-evening ere he
disappeared from his sight, in the direction of the Devil's House.
Pondering a little on this strange circumstance, and inwardly thinking
that the dark monk might as well have paid him his fare, or, at least,
bade him good-night before he took such unceremonious leave, he rowed
slowly back across the stream to his abode at Andernach.
"Hilloa! ferry," once more resounded from the margin of the river as
he approached, "hilloa!"
"Here, ahoy!" responded the ferryman, but with some strange sensation
of fear. "What would ye?"
He rowed to the shore, but he could see no one for a while, for it was
now dark. As he neared the landing-place, however, he became aware of
the presence of two monks, garbed exactly like his late passenger,
standing together, concealed by the shadow of the massive ruins.
"Here! here!" they cried.
"We would ye would ferry us over to yonder shore of the river," said
the foremost of the twain. "We go afar on a weighty errand from the
Convent of St. Thomas, and we must onwards this night. So be up
quick, friend, and run us over soon."
"Step in, then," said the ferryman, not over courteously, for he
remembered the trick played on him by their predecessor.
They entered the boat, and the ferryman put off. Just as the prow of
the boat touched the opposite bank of the river, both sprang ashore,
and disappeared at once from his view, like him who had gone before
them.
"Ah!" said the ferryman, "if they call that doing good, or acting
honestly, to cheat a hard-working poor fellow out of the reward of his
labour, I do not know what bad means, or what it is to act knavishly."
He waited a little while to see if they would return to pay him, but
finding that they failed to do so, he put across once more to his home
at Andernach.
"Hilloa! ferry," again hailed a voice from the shore to which he was
making, "hilloa!"
The ferryman made no reply to this suspicious hail, but pushed off his
boat from the landing-place, fully resolved in his own mind to have
nothing to do with any more such black cattle that night.
"Hilloa! ferry," was again repeated in a sterner voice. "Art dead or
asleep?"
"Here, ahoy!" cried the ferryman. "What would ye?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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