The men gaped at him.
“Kindly tell me where the bridge is,” he said. “It's disgraceful that all the
street lamps are out, and besides, it's as muddy to walk here as in a swamp.”
But the more he talked with the boatmen, the less they understood each
other. “I can't understand your jabbering Bornholm accent,” he finally said,
and angrily turned his back on them. But no bridge could he find. Even the
fence was gone.
“What a scandalous state of affairs! What a way for things to look!” he
said. Never had he been so disgruntled with his own age as he was this
evening. “I think I'd better take a cab.” But where were the cabs? There
were none in sight. “I'll have to go back to King's Newmarket, where there
is a cab stand, or I shall never reach Christian's Harbour.”
So back he trudged to East Street, and had nearly walked the length of it
when the moon rose.
“Good Heavens, what have they been building here?” he cried as he
beheld the East Gate, which in the old days stood at the end of East Street.
In time, however, he found a gate through which he passed into what is now
Newmarket. But all he saw there was a large meadow. A few bushes rose
here and there and the meadow was divided by a wide canal or stream. The
few wretched wooden huts on the far shore belonged to Dutch sailors, so at
that time the place was called Dutch Meadow.
“Either I'm seeing what is called Fata Morgana, or I'm drunk,” the
Councilor of Justice moaned. “What sort of place is this? Where am I?” He
turned back, convinced that he must be a very ill man. As he walked
through the street again he paid more attention to the houses. Most of them
were of wood, and many were thatched with straw.
“No, I don't feel myself at all,” he complained. “I only took one glass of
punch, but it doesn't agree with me. The idea of serving punch with hot
salmon! I'll speak about it severely to our hostess-that agent's wife. Should I
march straight back and tell her how I feel? No, that would be in bad taste,
