But soon a hard, dry soil, as it was sandy and more elevated, succeeded the soft lowlands, and no more tracks could be seen.
David then found himself in a sort of cross-roads where he could hear distinctly the sound of the Loire, whose waters, swollen to an unusual degree in a few days, roared with fury.
David at once resolved to run straight to the river, guiding himself by its sound, since it was impossible any longer to follow Frederick by his tracks. Full of anguish and concern for the boy's mother,—an anguish all the more intense from the recollection of the farewells addressed to her by Frederick,—he darted across the wood in an easterly direction according to the roar of the river.
At the end of ten minutes, leaving the undergrowth, David ran across a prairie which ended with the bluff of the river. This bluff he cleared in a few bounds.
At his feet he saw an immense sheet of water, yellow, rapid, and foaming, the waves of which broke and died upon the sand.
As far as his view extended, David, panting from his precipitate run, could discover nothing.
Nothing but the other shore of the river drowned in mist.
Nothing but a gray and sullen sky, from which a beating rain began to fall.
Nothing but this muddy stream muttering like distant thunder, and forming toward the west a great curve, above which rose the solid mass of the forest of Pont Brillant dominated by its immense castle.
Suddenly reduced to enforced inaction, David felt his strong and valiant soul bow beneath the weight of a great despair.