The child looked at him for a while. "Father," she said, "you can surely do that! Can't you do everything?"
"What ought I to be able to do, Wienke?"
But she was silent; she seemed not to have understood her own question.
It was high tide; when they came up on the dike the reflection of the sun on the great expanse of water shone in her eyes, a whirlwind drove the waves up high in an eddy, and others followed and beat splashingly against the shore; she clasped her little hands so fearfully about her father's fist in which he held the reins that the white horse bounded to one side. Her pale blue eyes looked up in confused terror to Hauke: "The water, Father, the water!" she cried.
But he freed himself gently and said: "Be quiet, child, you are with your father; the water won't hurt you!"
She smoothed the pale blonde hair away from her forehead and ventured to look out at the sea again. "It won't hurt me," she said trembling; "no, tell it not to hurt us; you can do that and then it won't hurt us."
"I can't do that, child," replied Hauke seriously; "but the dike on which we're riding protects us and it was your father who thought that out and had it built."
Her eyes looked at him as if she did not quite understand that; then she hid her strikingly small head in her father's loose coat.
"Why do you hide yourself, Wienke?" he whispered to her; "are you still frightened?" And a trembling voice came from the folds of his coat: "Wienke doesn't want to see; but you can do everything, can't you, Father?"
A distant clap of thunder rolled up against the wind. "Oh ho!" exclaimed Hauke, "there it comes!" and turned his horse to go back. "Now we'll go home to Mother."