Here all the great warehouses were desolate and deserted; he sat down quite breathless on the quay to recover himself, and think of the means of escape. It was past midnight. The moon shone upon the broad stream and the tall warehouses on Bremen island. He felt oppressed by the death-like stillness around him. The wild scene of the murder in the alehouse was now solemnly and fearfully present to his imagination--he heard his heart beat; he wiped the blood from off his sword, and put it into the sheath. He perceived spots of blood upon his clothes, and was about to go down to the water to wash them out, but he now heard a sound near him like the gasping of a dying man; he looked around him with uneasiness, but no human being was to be seen. The singular sound still fell on his ear, and mingled with his vivid recollection of the death-rattle of the slain Rostocker. He had felt no dread of the living adversary,--now he shuddered at the thought of the dead. The hair of the fugitive squire stood on end; he hastily started off from the quay, and would have fled further; but he now distinctly heard that the sound which terrified him proceeded from the sea-shore. The faint ray of the moon now lit up the beach, on which he beheld a man lying stretched at full length. "The pepper 'prentice! What became of him?"--he heard the voice gasp forth, and recognised its tones. "Our Lady be merciful to us! Sir Helmer! what hath happened you?" exclaimed Canute, aghast, and hasted down to the half-expiring knight, who was utterly exhausted by fighting and swimming, and whom, with much difficulty, he raised on his legs, and in some degree restored to consciousness. His drenched clothes were rent and bloody; his long brown locks clung to his swollen cheeks, and in his left hand, which was convulsively clenched, he held a thick tuft of reddish hair. "Look! look!" he said, "it was all I got hold of, the rest the devil hath taken. He twined round me like a water-snake. He bit and tore like the devil. The stream put an end to our embrace, it had well nigh put an end to my life, I perceive." "Our Lady and St. George help you, noble sir!" said the squire, crossing himself, as he reached him a small flask. "Take something to strengthen your heart after that joust! If you have fought with the evil one at the bottom of the sea you have surely had to stand a hard encounter." "I hope it was the right one," said Helmer, and drained the flask, "Thanks, countryman! it hath helped me! Now I have got my strength again. I ail nothing in reality; my limbs are sound; I am but a little bruised, and dizzy in my head." "But what in all the world have you been about? Have you been seeking the pepper 'prentice, or Satan himself, at the bottom of the sea, and know not rightly yourself whether you found him?"