loped two ineffectual planks, one for each set
of wheels, up the side of the boat, and he and August, hatless,
coatless, and breathless, lifted the carriage over on to them. It was a
horrid moment. The front wheels twisted right round and were as near
coming off as any wheels I saw in my life. I was afraid to look at
August, so right did he seem to have been when he protested that the
thing could not be accomplished. Yet there was Ruegen and here were we,
and we had to get across to it somehow or turn round and do the dreary
journey to Stralsund.

The horses, both exceedingly restive, had been unharnessed and got in
first. They were held in the stern of the boat by two boys, who needed
all their determination to do it. Then it was that I was thankful for
the boat's steep sides, for if they had been lower those horses would
certainly have kicked themselves over into the sea; and what should I
have done then? And how should I have faced him who is in authority over
me if I returned to him without his horses?

'We take them across daily,' the ferryman remarked, airily jerking his
thumb in the direction of the carriage.

'Do so many people drive to Ruegen?' I asked astonished, for the plank
arrangements were staringly makeshift.

'Many people?' cried the ferryman. 'Rightly speaking, crowds.'

He was trying to make me happy. At least it reassured August to hear it;
but I could not suppress a smile of deprecation at the size of the fib.

By this time we were under weigh, a fair wind sending us merrily over
the water. The ferryman steered; August stood at his horses' heads
talking to them soothingly; the two boys came and sat on some coiled
ropes close to me, leaned their elbows on their knees and their chins on
their hands, and fixing their blue fisher-boy eyes on my face kept them
there with an unwinking interest during the entire crossing. Oh, it was
lovely sitting up there in the sun, safe so far, in the delicious quiet
of sailing. The tawny sail, darned and patched in divers shades of brown
and red and orange, towered above us against the sky. The huge mast
seemed to brush along across the very surface of the little white
clouds. Above the rippling of the water we could hear the distant larks
on either shore. August had put on his scarlet stable-jacket for the
work of lifting the carriage in, and made a beautiful bit of colour
among the browns of the old boat at the stern. The eyes of the ferryman
lost all the alert