A noise was heard outside; Christel turned away and began clearing the table, while the voices of the two who were returning from the beach came nearer and nearer.
I do not know what another would have done in my place; I can only say that the girl's warning produced upon me an effect precisely opposite to that intended. True, I well remember that my heart beat quicker, and that I cast a hurried glance at the four double-barrels and the long fowling-piece that hung in the old places on the wall; but the desire to go through with the adventure was now fully awaked in me. I felt equal to any danger that might beset me; and, for the matter of that, Christel had just said that no harm was intended to me.
Besides--and this circumstance is, perhaps, the real key to my conduct that evening--the stranger, whoever he might be, with his partly serious and partly jocose, half-sympathetic and half-mocking language, had somehow established a mysterious influence over me. In later years, when I heard the legend of the Piper of Hameln, whom the children were irresistibly compelled to follow, I at once recalled this night and the stranger.
He now appeared at the door, dressed in a coarse, wide sailor's jacket, and wearing a low-crowned tarpaulin hat in place of his cloth cap. Pinnow opened a press in the wall, and produced a similar outfit for me, which the stranger made me put on.
"It is turning cold," he remarked, "and your present dress will be but little protection to you, though I trust our passage will be a short one. So: now you are equipped capitally: now let us be off."
The smith had stepped to Christel and whispered her a few words, to which she made no reply. She had turned her back upon me since the men had entered, and did not once turn her head as I bade her good-night.
"Come on," said the stranger.
We went through the forge, where the fire had now burnt down, and stepped out into the windy night. After proceeding a few steps, I turned my head: the light in the living-room was extinguished; the house lay dark in the darkness, and the wind roared and moaned in the dry branches of the old oak.
The noise of the sea had increased; the wind had freshened to a stiff breeze; the moon had set; no star shone through the scudding clouds which from time to time were lighted with a lurid gleam, followed by a mutter of distant thunder.
We reached the boat which was already half in the water, and they made me get on board, while the stranger, Pinnow, and the deaf and dumb Jacob, who had suddenly made his appearance out of the darkness, and was, as well as I could make out, also in sailor's dress and fisherman's boots--pushed off. In a few minutes we were flying through the water; the stranger stood at the helm, but presently yielded it to Pinnow, when the latter with Jacob's assistance had finished setting the sails, and took his seat beside me.