"And if I succumb?"
"Then I jump into the first air-hole we meet with! Better at the bottom of the sea than in his power!"
"Are you quite sure?"
"As sure as I live, and as I love you."
Oswald bent down and kissed the beautiful, pale face.
"Now it is all right," he said; "now come what may." Those were terrible minutes, and the gloomy surroundings only heightened the impressive character of the situation. All was perfectly silent around them; nothing was heard but the ceaseless striking of hoofs on the ringing ice, and that peculiar sound, resembling a long-drawn sigh, which is produced when an object moves with great rapidity over a plain of ice. As far as the eye reached nothing but the fearful solitude of a plain covered with a thin layer of snow, and the dark night lowering over it like a leaden cover. Even the stars were now hid by a light, drizzling fog, and yet it began to be lighter and lighter every moment. A reddish streak on the gray sky announced the rising moon. The sleigh of the pursuers could already be seen more distinctly, like a great black spot, which grew every instant greater and blacker as the light on the sky grew brighter.
Only a few minutes had passed since they had left Ferrytown, but they appeared to Oswald an eternity. He looked ahead for the shore, but nothing could be seen yet; he looked behind at the pursuers, and the great black spot bad again grown larger and blacker.
"We can't do it, Claus," said Oswald.
"What will you bet, sir?" replied Claus. "I will eat Fox alive if he does not win. Why, sir, there is no such horse to be found far and near. We are some twenty sleigh-owners in Ferrytown, and thirty over in Grunwald, and all of us have good horses in our sleighs, but Fox beats them all. Eh, Fox?"
And, as if Fox had been cheered by the praise of his master, he shook his cropped mane, and cut with his sharp hoofs faster and faster into the clear ice.