Both stood silent for a while, their eyes fixed on what they saw indistinctly going on upon yonder island. The moon stood high in the heavens and shone upon the wide sea that was just beginning, as the tide rose, to wash with its waters over the glistening flats of clay. Only the low murmur of the water, not the sound of a single animal was heard here in the vast open; on the marshes behind the dike, too, all was deserted, and cows and oxen were still in their stalls. Nothing stirred; only the thing that they took for a horse--a white horse--seemed to be moving on Jevers Island. "It is growing lighter," the hired man broke into the silence; "I can see the white sheeps' skeletons shimmer distinctly!"
"I too," said the boy and stretched his neck; but then, as if it came over him suddenly, he pulled the man by the sleeve. "Iven," he gasped, "the horse skeleton, that used to lie there too--where is that? I can't see it!"
"I don't see it either. Strange!" said the man.
"Not so strange, Iven! Sometimes, I don't know in what nights, the bones are supposed to rise and act as if they were alive!"
"Is that so?" said the man; "that's an old wives' story!"
"May be, Iven," said the boy.
"But I thought you were sent to get me. Come, we have to go home. It always stays the same, anyway."
The man could not get the boy away until he had turned him round by force and pushed him on to the way. "Listen, Carsten," said the former, when the ghostly island lay a good way behind him, "you are supposed to be a good sport; I believe you would like to inspect these doings yourself."
"Yes," replied Carsten, still shuddering a little. "Yes, I'd like to do that, Iven."
"Do you really mean that? Then," said the man after he had given his hand to the boy emphatically, "we'll take our boat to-morrow evening; you row to Jeverssand; I'll stay on the dike in the meantime."