“It is to-night that all the witches come home from Blakulla,” thought he, and laughed to himself.  For he was just a little afraid of both the sea-nymph and the elf, but he didn’t believe in witches the least little bit.

If there had been any witches out that night, he should have seen them, to be sure.  It was so light in the heavens that not the tiniest black speck could move in the air without his seeing it.

While the boy lay there with his nose in the air and thought about this, his eye rested on something lovely!  The moon’s disc was whole and round, and rather high, and over it a big bird came flying.  He did not fly past the moon, but he moved just as though he might have flown out from it.  The bird looked black against the light background, and the wings extended from one rim of the disc to the other.  He flew on, evenly, in the same direction, and the boy thought that he was painted on the moon’s disc.  The body was small, the neck long and slender, the legs hung down, long and thin.  It couldn’t be anything but a stork.

A couple of seconds later Herr Ermenrich, the stork, lit beside the boy.  He bent down and poked him with his bill to awaken him.

Instantly the boy sat up.  “I’m not asleep, Herr Ermenrich,” he said.  “How does it happen that you are out in the middle of the night, and how is everything at Glimminge castle?  Do you want to speak with mother Akka?”

“It’s too light to sleep to-night,” answered Herr Ermenrich.  “Therefore I concluded to travel over here to Karl’s Island and hunt you up, friend Thumbietot.  I learned from the seamew that you were spending the night here.  I have not as yet moved over to Glimminge castle, but am still living at Pommern.”

The boy was simply overjoyed to think that Herr Ermenrich had sought him out.  They chatted about all sorts of things, like old friends.  At last the stork asked the boy if he wouldn’t like to go out riding for a while on this beautiful night.

Oh, yes! that the boy wanted to do, if the stork would manage it so that he got back to the wild geese before sunrise.  This he promised, so off they went.

Again Herr Ermenrich flew straight toward the moon.  They rose and rose; the sea sank deep down, but the flight went so light and easy that it seemed almost as if the boy lay still in the air.

When Herr Ermenrich began to descend, the boy thought that the flight had lasted an unreasonably short time.

They landed on a desolate bit of seashore, which was covered with fine, even sand.  All along the coast ran a row of flying-sand drifts, with lyme-grass on their tops.  They were not very high, but they prevented the boy from seeing any of the island.

Herr Ermenrich stood on a sand-hill, drew up one leg and bent his head backward, so he could stick his bill under the wing.  “You can roam around on the shore for a while,” he said to Thumbietot, “while I rest myself.  But don’t go so far away but what you can find your way back to me again!”