The carriage was driving through water; the man could hear it splashing against the wheels. He flogged his horses madly; they reared and kicked, but did not move a step forward.
With one bound the man was off the box beside his horses. There was only one means of safety now--to unharness them and dash forward at their full speed. He had said nothing; the thing spoke for itself. He had thought, too, that the man in the carriage would help him. He had just got the second horse out, and raised his head, when--his hair stood on end, as if all that had passed before were child's play to what he saw now! There had been only one person in the carriage, and now there were two; and the two were taking each other by the throat, and were struggling and shouting together--one of them, his passenger, as if he were asking for mercy, and the other yelling like the very devil himself--and the other was the murderer of that afternoon.
The Neuenfähr man saw no more. With a desperate spring, he threw himself on to the near horse, and dashed away, the other horse galloping beside him. The water splashed over him, and then he was up to his waist in water, and then up to his neck and the horses swimming; and again he had dry land under him, and got on to firm ground, and the horses stopped because they could go no farther, and the one on which he sat had trembled so that he had nearly fallen off. And he looked round to see what had happened and where he was.
He was on rising ground, and before him lay a village. It could only be Faschwitz; but Faschwitz was two or three miles in a straight line from the sea, and there behind him, from where he came--it was a little clearer now, so that he could see some little distance--was the open sea, rising in fearful waves, which roared and foamed, as they rolled farther and farther--who could tell how far inland?
"They have been drowned like kittens, and my beautiful new carriage. May the----"
But the Neuenfähr man felt as if he could not swear just then.
He dismounted, took the horses by the bridle, and led them, almost exhausted, at a foot's pace into Faschwitz, his own knees trembling at every step.
CHAPTER XIV.
"That won't do," cried the village Mayor; "haul it in again!"
"Ho! heave ho!" cried the thirty men who had hold of the rope. "Ho! heave ho!"