"Thus I managed to propel my body slowly, painfully toward the stable earth"
A seemingly endless time elapsed before I reached the foot of the embankment, and all the while there was a sound in my ears as of waves dashing against rocks, each wave crying hoarsely: "Curse you!" "Curse you!"
When at last, dripping with ice-cold perspiration and quivering with horror, I reached the top of the dike, I could see only the red velvet cap on the sands; and as I looked, a sudden gust of wind sweeping up from the sea, seized it and bore it toward me.
Overcome by terror I turned and fled like a madman down the road. All day long I continued my flight over pathless wastes; through withered copses, which had been destroyed by frequent inundations; across marshes filled with croaking frogs, and nesting storm-petrels; the lurking place of weasels and others, and from every corner I heard voices calling after me: "Murder!" "Murder!" The frogs croaked it from the water, the birds piped it from the air. The withered trees moaned it, and stretched their branches threateningly toward me; and the briars trailing along the ground caught at my feet and cried: "Stop, stop! let me bind you, murderer!"
All things animate and inanimate joined in accusing me; and at last a wall rose before me to hinder further flight.
It was only a broken dike; but to me it seemed a prison. Foot-sore and weary, I lay down amid the stones fallen from the wall. They were covered with thick moss, and it was a relief to stretch my tired limbs among them.
I began to collect my scattered senses, to think calmly over what had happened, and after awhile I began to excuse myself to the frogs and the petrels, the moles and the sparse-branched withered trees that stood around me staring at me as if they would say:
"Come, murderer, decide which of us will best suit you."
I defended myself: "I am not a murderer; I am not going to hang myself. I did not lay a finger on the woman—it was she who thrust me over the dike into a pool where I nearly drowned. She was foolish enough to go where certain death awaited her—she alone is to blame!"