The Dark Monks

In Andernach there once was a flourishing nunnery on one side of the Rhine, and on the other side a ruin called the Devil's House.

Late on an autumn night a stranger came up to the ferryman, who lived on the edge of the bank. The stranger desired to be put across just as the man was about to haul up his boat for the day. The stranger seemed to be a monk, for he was closely cowled, and gowned from head to foot in the long, dark, flowing garb of some monk.

"Hello! ferry," he shouted aloud as he approached the shore of the river, "Hello!"

"Here, ahoy! here, reverend father!" answered the poor ferryman. "What would you have with me?"

"I would that you ferry me across the Rhine to the other shore of the river on a weighty mission," replied the man. "Good friend, run me over."

"Most willingly," said the ferryman. "Most willingly. Step into my boat, and I'll put you across in a twinkling."

The dark-looking monk entered the boat, and the ferryman shoved off from the bank. They soon reached the opposite shore. The ferryman, however, had scarcely said good-evening before the other disappeared from his sight, headed for the Devil's House.

As the ferryman rowed slowly back across the stream to his abode at Andernach, he thought that the dark monk might as well have paid him his fare, or, at least bidden him good-night before he took leave so abruptly,.

"Hello! ferry," once more resounded from the margin of the river as he approached, "Hello!"

"Here, ahoy!" responded the ferryman, but with some strange feeling of fear. "What do you want?"

He rowed to the shore, but he could see no one for a while, for it was dark now. As he neared the landing-place, however, he became aware of two monks standing there in the shadow of some ruins. They were garbed exactly like his late passenger.

"Here! here!" they cried.

"Please ferry us over to the other shore of the river," said one of them. " We are on a weighty errand, and we must onwards tonight. So be up quick, friend, and run us over soon."

"Step in, then," said the ferryman, not over courteously, for he remembered the trick played on him by the other monk.

They entered the boat, and the ferryman put off. Just as the prow of the boat touched the opposite bank of the river, both sprang ashore, and disappeared at once from his view, like the one who had gone before them.

"Ah!" said the ferryman, "if they call that doing good, or acting honestly, to cheat a hardworking poor fellow out of the reward of his labour, I do not know what bad means, or what it is to act knavishly."

He waited a little while to see if they would return to pay him, but they did not. In the end he put across once more to his home at Andernach.

"Hello, ferry!" again hailed a voice from the shore he was making for, "hello!"

The ferryman did not answer, but pushed off his boat from the landing-place, fully resolved in his own mind to have nothing to do with any more such people that night.

"Hello, ferry!" was again repeated in a sterner voice. "Are you dead or asleep?"

"Here, ahoy!" cried the ferryman. "What do you want?" He thought of passing downwards to the other end of the town, and moor his barque there, below the place she usually lay in, so that any other monks would not as easily make him serve them without anything offered for it. He had, however, scarcely entertained the idea, when three black-robed men in long, flowing garments, stood on the edge of the stream, and beckoned him to them.

It was in vain for him to try to evade them, for now the moon broke forth from the thick clouds and lit up the scene all around with a radiance like day.

"Step in, holy fathers! step in! Quick!" he said in a gruff voice, after they had told him the same tale in the very same words as the three others had used previously.

They entered the boat, and again the ferryman pushed off. They had reached the centre of the stream, when he came to think that now was a good time to talk of his fee, before they could escape him.

"What do you mean to give me for my trouble?" he asked. "Nothing for nothing, you know."

"We shall give you all that we have to give," answered one of the monks. "Won't that be enough?"

"What is that? " asked the ferryman.

"Nothing," said the monk who had answered him first.

"But our blessing," interposed the second monk.

"Blessing! bah! That won't do. I can't eat blessings!" responded the grumbling ferryman.

"Heaven will pay you," said the third monk.

"That won't do either," answered the enraged ferryman. "I'll put back again to Andernach!"

"So be it," said the monks.

The ferryman put about the head of his boat, and began to row back towards Andernach, as he had threatened. He had, however, scarcely made three strokes of his oars, when a high wind sprang up and the waters began to rise and rage and foam, like the billows of a storm-vexed sea. Soon a hurricane of the most fearful kind followed, and swept over the chafing face of the stream. In his forty years' experience of the river, the ferryman had never before seen such a tempest - so dreadful and so sudden. He gave himself up for lost, threw down his oars, and flung himself on his knees, praying to Heaven for mercy.

At that moment two of the dark-robed monks seized the oars which he had abandoned, while the third wrenched one of the thwarts of the boat from its place in the centre. All three then began to beat the ferryman with all their might and main, till at last he lay senseless and without motion at the bottom of the boat. The barque, which was now veered about, bore them rapidly towards the brink the monks had wanted him to row to.

The only words that passed on the occasion were an exclamation of the first monk who struck the ferryman down.

"Steer your boat aright, friend," he cried, "if you value your life, and leave off your prating."

When the poor ferryman recovered his senses, day had long dawned, and he was lying alone at the bottom of his boat. He found that he had drifted below Hammerstein, close to the shore of the right bank of the river. He could discover no trace of his companions. With much difficulty he rowed up the river, and reached the shore.

He learned afterwards from a gossiping neighbour, that, as the man returned from Neuwied late that night, or rather early the next morning, he met, just emerging from the Devil's House, a large black chariot running on three huge wheels, drawn by four horses without heads. In that vehicle he saw six monks seated face to face, seemingly enjoying their morning ride. The driver, a curious-looking carl, with a singularly long nose, took, he said, the road along the edge of the river, and continued lashing his three coal-black, headless steeds at a tremendous speed, till a sharp turn hid them from the man's view.