“Soldier, pray to your patron saint that these hands may never leave their mark upon your face!”
“Oh!—enough of this!” cried the soldier, in a rage. Then, pausing suddenly, he said: “No, there must be no word of a duel before dead men.”
The little man growled a few words in a foreign tongue, and vanished.
A voice cried out: “He was found on Urchtal Sands.”
“On Urchtal Sands?” said the soldier; “Captain Dispolsen was to land there this morning, from Copenhagen.”
“Captain Dispolsen has not yet reached Munkholm,” said another voice.
“They say that Hans of Iceland haunts those sands just now,” added a fourth.
“Then it is possible that this may be the captain,” said the soldier, “if Hans was the murderer; for we all know that the Icelander murders in so devilish a fashion that his victims often seem to be suicides.”
“What sort of man is this Hans?” asked some one.
“He is a giant,” said one.