"Are you tipsy, there, or tired of life? What do you put yourself across the channel for--and without a light?" rang out over the water from one of the vessels. "Help! Throw a line!" cried Marjon. "Help! help!" cried Johannes, after her. Then a rope came wabbling across their oarless craft. By good luck Johannes caught it, and pulled himself, hand over hand, up to the vessel. The helmsman, standing beside the great, high-arched rudder, looked overboard, with a lantern in his hand. "What wedding do you hail from?" Johannes and Marjon climbed into the boat and Marjon pushed off their own little shallop. "Two boys!" exclaimed the helmsman. "And a monkey!" subjoined Marjon. Johannes looked round at her. By the light of the lantern he saw a little figure that he hardly recognized--a slip of a boy wearing a cap on his closely cropped head. She had sacrificed for the flight her silky blonde hair. Keesje's head was sticking up out of her jacket, and he was blinking briskly in the glare of the lantern. "Oh, that's it! Fair-folk!" grumbled the skipper. "What's to become of that boat?" "It knows the way home!" said Marjon. XII I will simply tell you, without delay, in order that you may be able to read what follows in peace of mind, that Johannes and Marjon became husband and wife ere the ending of the story. But at the time the old skipper pointed out to them a comfortable sleeping-corner in the deck-house of the long Rhine-boat, they had not the least idea of it. Being very tired, they were soon lying, like two brothers, in deep sleep, with Keesje, now warm and contented, between them. When it grew light, the whole world seemed to have vanished. Johannes had been wakened by the rattling of the anchor-chains, and when he looked out, he saw on all sides nothing but white, foggy light; no sky, no shore--only, just under the little windows, the yellow river current. But he heard the striking of the town clocks, and even the crowing of cocks. Therefore the world was still there, as fine as ever, only hidden away under a thick white veil. The boats lay still, for they could not be navigated. So long as the waters of the Rhine could not be seen frothing about the anchor-chains, so long must they wait for a chance to know the points of the compass. Thus they remained for hours in the still, thick white light, listening to the muffled sounds of the town coming from the shore. The two children ran back and forth over the long, long vessel, and had a fine time. They had already become good friends of the skipper, especially since he had learned that they could pay for their passage. They ate their bread and sausage, peering into the fog in suspense, for fear that Lorum and the dark woman might be coming in a boat to overtake them. They knew that they could not yet be very far away from their last camping-place.