NONNENMATTWEIHER
But the worst was yet to come. They hurried now, for whatever the cause
of this extraordinary incident, they wished to get away from it, and
having crossed the lake they paused not to dry their garments but
continued southward following the almost obliterated wagon tracks which
ran from the shore.
"I wonder how the wagons got across?" said Tom.
"Wings," said Archer solemnly, shaking his head.
In a little while they came to the toymaker's cottage, with the
mechanical cuckoo and the windmills and the basket of soldiers and
animals and the old Swiss toymaker himself, sitting like a big toy, in
the doorway.
"Well--I'll--be----" began Archer.
Tom simply gaped, too perplexed to speak. He had believed that he was
something of a woodsman, and he certainly believed that he would not go
north supposing that he was going south! Could there be another Swiss
toymaker, and another cottage and another squawking cuckoo, exactly like
the others? Were they all alike, the lonesome denizens of this spooky
place, like the wooden inhabitants of a Noah's ark?
"This Hun forest has got Aladdin's cave beat twenty ways," said Archer.
"Either we'rre crazy or this place is."
Suddenly the bright thought occurred to Tom to look at his compass.
Unless the magnetic pole had changed its position, and the whole earth
gone askew, they were tramping northward, as he saw to his unutterable
amazement.
"Did we swim across the lake or didn't we?" he demanded of Archer,
roused out of his wonted stolidness.
"Surre, we did!"
"Then I give it up," said Tom resignedly. "The compass says north--we're
going north. This is the very same toymaker."
"Go-o-od _night_!" said Archer, with even more than his usual vehemence.
"Maybe the Gerrmans have conquerred the Norrth Pole and taken all the
steel to make mountains, just like they knocked international law all
endways, hey? That's why the compass don't point right. G-o-o-o-o-od
_night_!"
This ingenious theory, involving a rather large piece of strategy even
for "supermen," did not appeal to Tom's sober mind.
"That's what it is," said Archer. "You've got to admit that if they
could send Zeps and submarines and things to the North Pole and cop all
the steel, the British navy, and ourrs too, would be floppin' around the
ocean like a chicken with its head cut off.--It's a good idea!"
Tom went up to the old toymaker, who greeted them with a smile, seeming
no more surprised to see them than he had been the day before.
"North--_north_?" asked Tom, pointing.
"Nort--yah," said the old man, pointing too.
"Water," said Tom; "swim--_swim_ across" (he pointed southward and made
the motions of swimming). The old man nodded as if he understood.
"Ach--vauder, yach,--Nonnenmattweiher."
"What?" said Tom.
"_What_?" said Archer.
"Nonnenmattweiher," said the old man. "Yah."
"He wants to know what's the matter with you," said Archer.
"Water," Tom repeated, almost in desperation.
"Swim (he went through the motions): Swim across water to south--start
south, go north." He made no attempt to convey the incident of the
vanishing coats.
"Water--yah,--Nonnenmattweiher," the man repeated.
At last, by dint of repeating words and swinging their arms and going
through a variety of extraordinary motions, the boys succeeded in
conveying to the little man that something was wrong in the neighborhood
of the lake, and he appeared willing enough to go back with them,
trotting along beside Tom in his funny belted blouse, for all the world
like a mechanical toy. Tom had his misgivings as to whether they would
really reach the lake no matter which way they went, but they did reach
it, and standing under the tree where they had recovered their vanished
coats they tried to explain to the old man what had happened--that they
had crossed from the north to the south bank and continued southward,
only to find that they were going north!
Suddenly a new light illumined the little man's countenance and he
chuckled audibly. Then he pointed across the lake, chattering and
chuckling the while, and went through a series of strange motions,
spreading his legs farther and farther apart, pointing to the ground
between them, and concluded this exhibition with a sweeping motion of
his hands as if bidding some invisible presence of that enchanted place
God-speed across the water.
"Och--goo," he said, and shook his head and laughed.
"I know what he means," said Tom at last, with undisguised chagrin, "and
I'm a punk scout. I didn't notice anything at all. Come on. We've got to
swim across again--that's south, all right."
"What is it?" asked Archer.
"I'll show you when we get there--come on."
The little Swiss toymaker stood watching them and laughing with a
spasmodic laugh which he might have caught from his own wooden cuckoo.
When they reached the other shore Tom fell at once to examining a very
perceptible rift in the earth a few feet from the shore.
"Do you see?" he said, "we floated over on this piece of land. The tree
where we hung our coats was on the _real_ shore, and----"
"Go-od night, and it missed the boat," concluded Archer.
"This tree here is something like it," said Tom, "and that's where I
made my mistake. I ought to have noticed the trees and I ought to have
noticed the crack. Gee, if my scout patrol ever heard of that!
'Specially Roy Blakeley," he added, shaking his head dubiously.
It was indeed something of a "bull" in scouting, though perhaps a more
experienced forester than Tom would have become as confused as he in the
same circumstances. Perhaps if he had been as companionable with his
school geography as Archer had been with his he might have known about
the famous Lake Nonnenmattweiher in the silent depths of the Schwarzwald
and of its world-famed floating island, which makes its nocturnal
cruises from shore to shore, a silent, restless voyager on that black
pine-embowered lake.
As the boys looked back across the water they could see the little Swiss
toymaker still standing upon the shore, and looking at him through the
rescued glass (of which they were soon to make better use), Tom could
see that his odd little figure was shaking with merriment--as if he were
wound up.