For the first time we saw one another's faces, and how pale and woe-begone, mudstained and draggled we were! The cold, grey light, which so mercilessly unmasked our refuge, did not spare us. It helped even my lady to look her worst. Fraulein Anna sat a mere lifeless lump in her saddle. The waiting-women cried softly; they had cried all night. The Waldgrave looked dazed, as if he barely understood where he was or why he was there.
To think over-much in such a place was to weep. Instead, I hastened to get them all off their horses, and with Steve's help and a great bundle of osiers and branches which we cut, I made nests for them in the lower boughs of the willows, well out of reach of the water. When they had all taken their places, I served out food and a dram of Dantzic waters, which some of us needed; for a white mist, drawn up from the swamp by the rising sun, began to enshroud us, and, hanging among the osiers for more than an hour, prolonged the misery of the night.
Still, even that rolled away at last--about six o'clock--and let us see the sun shining overhead in a heaven of blue distance and golden clouds. Larks rose up and sang, and all the birds of the marsh began to twitter and tweet. In a trice our mud island was changed to a bower--a place of warmth and life and refreshment--where light and shade lay on the dappled floor, and the sunshine fell through green leaves.
Then I took the cloaks, and the saddles, and everything that was wet, and spread them out on branches to dry; and leaving the women to make themselves comfortable in their own way and shift themselves as they pleased, we two, with the Waldgrave and the two servants, went away to the other end of the eyot.
'I shall sleep,' Steve said drowsily.
The insects were beginning to hum. The horses stood huddled together, swishing their long tails.
'You think they won't track us?' I asked.
'Certain,' he said. 'There are six hundred yards of mud and water, eel-holes, and willow shoots between us and the road.'
The Waldgrave assented mechanically; it seemed so to me too. And by-and-by, worn out with the night's work, I fell asleep, and slept, I suppose, for a good many hours, with the sun and shade passing slowly across my face, and the bees droning in my ears, and the mellow warmth of the summer day soaking into my bones. When I awoke I lay for a time revelling in lazy enjoyment. The oily plop of a water-rat, as it dived from a stump, or the scream of a distant jay, alone broke the laden silence. I looked at the sun. It lay south-west. It was three o'clock then.
