Dreamily he gazed about from his boat. Over the lake, transparent white mists were floating, through which the little belfry of Egina's cloister, Niederzell, peeped out on the left, while on the other side, the island stretched out its farthest points. A large stone-built castle could be seen through the willow-bushes, but Ekkehard's eyes were riveted on a more distant point. Proud and grand, in steep, bold outlines a rocky mountain-peak rose above the hills on the shore, like to a mighty spirit, which, ponderous and pregnant with action, towers over the insignificant objects around. The morning sun was casting faint gleams of light on the rocky edges and steep walls. A little to the right, several lower hills of the same shape, stood modestly there, like sentinels of the mighty one.
"The Hohentwiel," said the boat-man to Ekkehard. The latter had never before beheld the place of his destination, but he did not need the boatman's information. Inwardly thinking, "thus must the mountain be, which she has chosen for her residence."
A deep, earnest expression overspread his features. Mountain-ranges, extensive plains, water and sky, in fact all that is grand and beautiful in nature always produces seriousness. Only the actions of men, sometimes bring a smile to the lips of the looker on. He was thinking of the apostle John, who had gone to the rocky isle of Patmos, and who had there met with a revelation.
The boat-man rowed steadily onwards; and they had already come to the projecting neck of land, on which Radolfszell and a few scattered houses were situated, when they suddenly came in view of a strange little canoe. It was simply made of the rough, hollow trunk of a tree; roofed over and quite covered up with green boughs and water-rushes, so that the rower inside was invisible. The wind drifted it towards a thick plantation of water reeds and bulrushes near the shore.
Ekkehard ordered his ferry-man to stop this curious little boat, and in obedience he pushed his oar into the green covering.
"Ill luck befall you!" called out a deep bass voice from the inside, "oleum et operam perdidi, all my labour lost!--Wild geese and water-ducks are gone to the Devil!"
A covey of water-fowl, which hoarsely shrieking rose up from the rushes, corroborated the truth of this exclamation.
After this, the leafy boughs were pushed aside, and a brown weather-beaten and deeply furrowed countenance, peeped out. The man it belonged to, was clothed in an old faded priest's robe, which cut off at the knees, by an unskilled hand, hung down in a ragged fringe. At his girdle, the owner of the boat wore, instead of a rosary, a quiver full of arrows; whilst the strung bow lay at the head of the boat.
The individual just described, was about to repeat his cursing, when he beheld Ekkehard's tonsure and Benedictine garment, and quickly changing his tone, he cried: "Oho! salve confrater! By the beard of St. Patrick of Armagh! If your curiosity had left me unmolested another quarter of an hour, I might have invited you to a goodly repast of the game of our lake." With a melancholy expression he cast a look at the covey of wild ducks in the distance.
Ekkehard smilingly lifted his fore-finger: "Ne clericus venationi incumbat! No consecrated servant of God shall be a sportsman!"