Christian was not afraid of that he wasn’t afraid of anything, so they
drank another bottle of wine on this, and Christian went with them up
to the colonel, where he was put into uniform with musket, and all the
rest, and was then shut up in the church, to stand as sentinel that
night.
It was eight o’clock when he took up his post, and for the first hour
he was quite proud of his courage; during the second hour he was well
pleased with the large reward that he would get, but in the third hour,
when it was getting near eleven, the effects of the wine passed off, and
he began to get uncomfortable, for he had heard about this post; that
no one had ever escapeed alive from it, so far as was known. But neither
did anyone know what had become of all the sentinels. The thought of
this ran in his head so much, after the wine was out of it, that he
searched about everywhere for a way of escape, and finally, at eleven
o’clock, he found a little postern in the steeple which was not locked,
and out at this he crept, intending to run away.
At the same moment as he put his foot outside the church door, he saw
standing before him a little man, who said, ‘Good evening, Christian,
where are you going?’
With that he felt as if he were rooted to the spot and could not move.
‘Nowhere,’ said he.
‘Oh, yes,’ said the little man, ‘You were just about to run away, but
you have taken upon you to stand sentinel in the church to-night, and
there you must stay.’
Christian said, very humbly, that he dared not, and therefore wanted to
get away, and begged to be let go.
‘No,’ said the little one, ‘you must remain at your post, but I shall
give you a piece of good advice; you shall go up into the pulpit, and
remain standing there. You need never mind what you see or hear, it will
not be able to do you any harm, if you remain in your place until you
hear the lid of the chest slam down again behind the dead; then all
danger is past, and you can go about the church, wherever you please.’
The little man then pushed him in at the door again, and locked it after
him. Christian made haste to get up into the pulpit, and stood there,
without noticing anything, until the clock struck twelve. Then the lid
of the princess’s chest sprang up, and out of it there came something
like the princess, dressed as you see in the picture. It shrieked and
howled, ‘Sentry, where are you? Sentry, where are you? If you don’t
come, you shall get the most cruel death anyone had ever got.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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