The great Nichus is, as we have seen, the master, the despot, the _Wassermann_, par excellence, of all this watery, dark world, peopled by Nixen and Undines. His authority is, moreover, by no means limited to the exercise of judicial functions; his will, constantly under the influence of an ill-regulated appetite, is law for everybody; the male Nixen are his Court, and his harem is kept full by the fairest among those women who become his own by suicide. This greenish-complexioned Sardanapalus is said to celebrate incredibly monstrous orgies with his drowned Odalisques. He is, in reality, Niord, the Scandinavian god, {299}and this Niord again is, originally, one of those old Roman emperors, who were deified, and whose portraits Petronius has left us drawn in mud and blood. [Illustration: 319] His principal agent, and the Jack-of-all-trades of the whole community, Nixcobt, the messenger of the dead, has to maintain communication between the people who live on the river, and those who live in it. He is perhaps the most eccentric of all the mythical personages of the Rhine. When morning is about to dawn and the mountain tops are beginning to glow in a faint subdued light, a kind of low, thickset man of the most hideous appearance, may occasionally be seen gliding along the houses of a town, keeping carefully in the shade, or slipping down the hill-side between the long rows of grapes, which are almost as high as he is. His terrible head turns upon his slender neck as upon a pivot, and thus he can see and examine everything without stopping for a moment. His bare shoulders, his elbows, knees, and cheekbones are covered with scales; small pins appear {300}at intervals at his ankles; his round glamous eyes have a bright red point in the centre; his teeth and hair are green, and his enormous mouth, split wide open and shaped like the mouth of a fish, wears a fixed smile, which strikes terror in the beholder. This creature is Nixcobt. [Illustration: 320] With daybreak he is back in the river to inquire if its mournful population has been added to over night by some victim, suicide or not. He takes down a description of each one, draws up a report, inquires as to what induced them to seek refuge in the new world, and offers them his services for the purpose of letting the friends and parents know, {301}whom they may have left behind, ignorant of their fate and inconsolable at their loss. Then he amuses the great Nichus with all his stories and all the clever tricks he has been playing during his nocturnal visits to the people in the villages and towns on the river. These merry tricks of Master Nixcobt form even in our day an ever welcome staple of amusement to the young spinners during the long winter nights, accompanied as they are by the cheerful hum of the swiftly turning wheels.