“Look, John, look!” cried Jess with an hysterical laugh; “it is like a huge graveyard, and the dark shadows between are the ghosts of the buried.”
“Nonsense,” said John sternly; “why do you talk such rubbish?”
He felt that her mind had lost its balance, and, what is more, his own nerves were shaken. Therefore he was naturally the angrier with her, and the more determined to be perfectly matter-of-fact.
Jess made no answer, but she was frightened, she could not tell why. The scene resembled that of some awful dream, or of one of Doré’s pictures come to life. No doubt, also, the near presence of the tempest exercised a physical effect upon her. Even the wearied horses snorted and shook themselves uneasily.
They crept over the ridge of a wave of land, and the wheels rolled softly on the grass.
“Why, we are off the road!” shouted John to Muller, who was still guiding them, fifteen or twenty paces ahead.
“All right! all right! it is a short cut to the ford!” he called in answer, and his voice rang strange and hollow through the great depths of the silence.
Below them, a hundred yards away, the light, such as it was, gleamed faintly upon the wide surface of the river. Another five minutes and they were on the bank, but in the gathering gloom they could not see the opposite shore.
“Turn to the left!” shouted Muller; “the ford is a few yards up. It is too deep here for the horses.”
John turned accordingly, and followed Muller’s horse some three hundred yards up the bank till they came to a spot where the water ran with an angry music, and there was a great swirl of eddies.