The other laughed, even though horror sounded through his laughter: "Oh, bosh, it's a live creature, a big one! Who the devil has chased it on to the clay out there? Look, now it's stretching its neck our way! No, it's drooping its head; it is feeding. I'd have thought, there was nothing to feed on there! What can it be?"
"That's not our business!" replied the other. "Good night, Iven, if you don't want to go with me; I'm going home!"
"Oh, yes; you've got a wife, you can go into your warm bed! But I've got a lot of March air in my room!"
"Good night, then," the laborer called back, as he marched home on the dike. The hired man looked round a few times after his fleeing companion; but the desire to see something gruesome held him fast. Then a dark, stocky figure came toward him on the dike from the village; it was the servant boy of the dikemaster. "What do you want, Carsten?" the hired man called to him.
"I?--nothing," said the boy; "but our master wants to speak to you, Iven Johns."
The man's eyes were drawn back to the island again. "All right, I'm coming right off," he said.
"What are you looking at so?" asked the boy.
The man raised his arm and pointed silently to the island. "Oh, look!" whispered the boy; "there goes a horse--a white horse--the devil must be riding that--how can a horse get to Jevers Island?"
"Don't know, Carsten; if it's only a real horse!"
"Yes, yes, Iven; look, now it's feeding just like a horse! But who has brought it there--we have no boats in the village big enough! Perhaps it's only a sheep; Peter Ohm says by moonlight ten circles of peat look like a whole village. No, look! Now it's jumping around--it must be a horse, after all!"