ISLE RUGEN
They had travelled for six hours through high arched pines, their fallen
needles making a carpet green and springy underfoot. Then succeeded
oaks, stricken a little at top with the frosts of years. Alternating
with these came marshy tracts where alder and white birch gleamed from
the banks of shallow runnels and the margins of black peaty lakes. Anon
the broom and the gorse began to flourish sparsely above wide
sand-hills, heaved this way and that like the waves of a mountainous
sea.
The party was approaching that no-man's-land which stretches for upwards
of a hundred miles along the southern shores of the Baltic. It is a land
of vast brackish backwaters connected with the outer sea by devious
channels often half silted up, but still feeling the pulse of the outer
green water in the winds which blow over the sandy "bills," bars, and
spits, and bring with them sweet scents of heather and wild thyme, and,
most of all, of the southernwood which grows wild on the scantily
pastured braes.
It was at that time a beautiful but lonely country--the 'batable land of
half a dozen princedoms, its only inhabitant a stray hunter setting up
his gipsy booth of wattled boughs, heaping with stones a rude fireplace,
or fixing a tripod over it whereon a pottinger was presently a-swing, in
some sunny curve of the shore.
At eventide of the third day of their journeying the party came to a
great morass. Black decaying trunks of trees stood up at various
angles, often bristling with dead branches like _chevaux-de-frise_. The
horses picked their path warily through this tangle, the rotten sticks
yielding as readily and silently as wet mud beneath their hoofs. Finally
all dismounted except Joan, while Werner von Orseln, with a rough map in
his hand, traced out the way. Pools of stagnant black water had to be
evaded, treacherous yellow sands tested, bridges constructed of the
firmer logs, till all suddenly they came out upon a fairylike little
half-moon of sand and tiny shells.
Here was a large flat-bottomed boat, drawn up against the shore. In the
stern a strange figure was seated, a man, tall and angular, clad in
jerkin and trunks of brown tanned leather, cross-gartered hose of grey
cloth, and home-made shoon of hide with the hair outside. He wore a
black skull cap, and his head had the strange, uncanny look of a wild
animal. It was not at the first glance nor yet at the second that Boris
and Jorian found out the cause of this curious appearance.
Meanwhile Werner von Orseln was putting into his hand some pledge or
sign which he scrutinised carefully, when Jorian suddenly gripped his
companion's arm.
"Look," he whispered, "he's got no ears!"
"Nor any tongue!" responded Boris, staring with all his eyes at the
prodigy.
And, indeed, the strange man was pointing to his mouth with the index
finger of his right hand and signing that they were to follow him into
the boat which had been waiting for them.
Joan of the Sword Hand had never spoken since she knew that her men were
taking her to a place of safety. Nor did her face show any trace of
emotion now that Werner von Orseln, approaching cap in hand, humbly
begged her to permit him to conduct her to the boat.
But the Duchess leapt from her horse, and without accepting his hand she
stepped from the little pier of stone beside which the boat lay. Then
walking firmly from seat to seat she reached the stern, where she sat
down without seeming to have glanced at any of the company.
Werner von Orseln then motioned Captains Boris and Jorian to take their
places in the bow, and having bared his head he seated himself beside
his mistress. The wordless earless man took the oars and pushed off. The
boat slid over a little belt of still water through a wilderness of tall
reeds. Then all suddenly the wavelets lapped crisp and clean beneath her
bottom, and the wide levels of a lake opened out before them. The ten
men left on the shore set about building a fire and making shelters of
brushwood, as if they expected to stay here some time.
The tiny harbour was fenced in on every side with an unbroken wall of
lofty green pines. The lower part of their trunks shot up tall and
straight and opened long vistas into the black depths of the forest. The
sun was setting and threw slant rays far underneath, touching with gold
the rank marish growths, and reddening the mouldering boles of the
fallen pines.
The boat passed almost noiselessly along, the strange man rowing
strongly and the boat drawing steadily away across the widest part of
the still inland sea. As they thus coasted along the gloomy shores the
sun went down and darkness came upon them at a bound. Then at the far
end of the long tunnel, which an hour agone had been sunny glades, they
saw strange flickering lights dancing and vanishing, waving and leaping
upward--will-o'-the-wisps kindled doubtless from the stagnant boglands
and the rotting vegetation of that ancient northern forest.
The breeze freshened. The water clappered louder under the boat's
quarter. Breaths born of the wide sea unfiltered through forest dankness
visited more keenly the nostrils of the voyagers. They heard ahead of
them the distant roar of breakers. Now and then there came a long and
gradual roll underneath their quarter, quite distinct from the little
chopping waves of the fresh-water _haff_, as the surface of the mere
heaved itself in a great slope of water upon which the boat swung
sideways.
After a space tall trees again shot up overhead, and with a quick turn
the boat passed between walls of trembling reeds that rustled against
the oars like silk, emerged on a black circle of water, and then,
gliding smoothly forward, took ground in the blank dark.
As the broad keel grated on the sand, the Wordless Man leapt out, and,
standing on the shore, put his hands to his mouth and emitted a long
shout like a blast blown on a conch shell. Again and again that
melancholy ululation, with never a consonantal sound to break it, went
forth into the night. Yet it was so modulated that it had obviously a
meaning for some one, and to put the matter beyond a doubt it was
answered by three shrill whistles from behind the rampart of trees.
Joan sat still in the boat where she had placed herself. She asked no
question, and even these strange experiences did not alter her
resolution.
Presently a light gleamed uncertainly through the trees, now lost behind
brushwood and again breaking waveringly out.
A tall figure moved forward with a step quick and firm. It was that of a
woman who carried a swinging lantern in her hand, from which wheeling
lights gleamed through a score of variously coloured little plates of
horn. She wore about her shoulders a great crimson cloak which masked
her shape. A hood of the same material, attached at the back of the neck
to the cloak, concealed her head and dropped about her face, partially
hiding her features.
Standing still on a little wooden pier she held the lantern high, so
that the light fell directly on those in the boat, and their faces
looked strangely white in that illumined circle, surrounded as it was by
a pent-house of tense blackness--black pines, black water, black sky.
"Follow me!" said the woman, in a deep rich voice--a voice whose tones
thrilled those who heard them to their hearts, so full and low were some
of the notes.
Joan of the Sword Hand rose to her feet.
"I am the Duchess of Hohenstein, and I do not leave this boat till I
know in what place I am, and who this may be that cries 'Follow!' to the
daughter of Henry the Lion!"
The tall woman turned without bowing and looked at the girl.
"I am the mother of Maurice von Lynar, and this is the Isle Rugen!" she
said simply, as if the answer were all sufficient.