ut boldly on a bit of rising ground, end
ways on to the sea. The door was open and we went in, knocking with my
sunshade on the floor. We stirred up no life of any sort. Not even a dog
barked at us. The passage was wide and clean with doors on each side of
it and an open door at either end--the one we had come in by followed by
the afternoon sun, and the other framing a picture of sky with the sea
at the bottom, the jetty, the smack with folded sails, and the coast of
Ruegen. Seeing a door with _Gaststube_ painted on it I opened it and
peeped in. To my astonishment it was full of men smoking in silence, and
all with their eyes fixed on the opening door. They must have heard us.
They must have seen us passing the window as we came up to the house. I
concluded that the custom of the district requires that strangers shall
in no way be interfered with until they actually ask definite questions;
that it was so became clear by the alacrity with which a yellow-bearded
man jumped up on our asking how we could get across to Ruegen, and told
us he was the ferryman and would take us there.

'But there is a carriage--can that go too?' I inquired anxiously,
thinking of the deep bottom and steep sides of the fishing-smack.

'_Alles, Alles_,' he said cheerily; and calling to a boy to come and
help he led the way through the door framing the sea, down a tiny, sandy
garden prickly with gooseberry bushes, to the place where August sat
marvelling on his box.

'Come along!' he shouted as he ran past him.

'What, along that thing of wood?' cried August. 'With my horses? And my
newly-varnished carriage?'

'Come along!' shouted the ferryman, half-way down the jetty.

'Go on, August,' I commanded.

'It can never be accomplished,' said August, visibly breaking out into a
perspiration.

'Go on,' I repeated sternly; but thought it on the whole more discreet
to go on myself on my own feet, and so did Gertrud.

'If the gracious one insists----' faltered August, and began to drive
gingerly down to the jetty with the face of one who thinks his last hour
well on the way.

As I had feared, the carriage was very nearly smashed getting it over
the sides of the smack. I sat up in the bows looking on in terror,
expecting every instant to see the wheels wrenched off, and with their
wrenching the end of our holiday. The optimistic ferryman assured us
that it was going in quite easily--like a lamb, he declared, with great
boldness of imagery. He s