On the back seat of the carriage lay a figure stretched at full length. The light of the lantern fell on a pale haggard face--it was Arthur.
"What has happened to him?" I asked.
Hans asked no question: he knew what had happened when a young man, who has never learned to control himself; lies stretched upon the back seat of a carriage in his return from a picnic, and not all the turmoil of the unchained elements can awaken him from his stupid sleep.
"Never mind about him," said the driver; "he is safe enough."
"One of you must stay here," I said to the men with lanterns. "Forward, the rest!"
We went on, the men, of whom there were five or six, holding up their lanterns, and shouting all together at intervals, calling all who might hear to try to get to us.
We were answered from different points; it was now plain that the whole company was widely scattered. The carriages alone had kept somewhat together; and a minute later I came upon another which had been overturned and dashed to pieces by the maddened horses, so that we had no difficulty in getting them clear of what remained of the harness. Then we found the third, which had turned a little to one side and stalled, sunk up to the axle in a marshy place, and the driver had released the horses by cutting the traces.
It was a strange and weird-looking scene. The lightning flashed so incessantly that we seemed enveloped in its awful glare. Then the shouts and cries of the frightened excursionists who came hurrying up from all sides, the swearing of the coachmen and grooms, the snorting and struggling of the scared horses, and amid all, the mutterings and long roll of thunder, the whistling and shrieking of the gusts of wind that every now and then swept with frightful fury over the heath, and seemed to hold up the rain, of which only occasional heavy drops smote me in the face; the whole company, so far as they were now collected, resembling a party about to be led to execution, the men with agitated features, and the women pale as death, and all bearing abundant traces of their wanderings about the heath and the miry ground.
But if it had been difficult to get them together, I now found that it was impossible to keep them so. All were for pushing on at once, Why waste a moment here? All were together. In an instant the rain would pour down in torrents, the lanterns be put out, and what would become of them then?
"Forward, my friends, forward!" screamed the steuerrath, and Herr von Granow also shouted "Forward! forward!" and in the next moment all had started.