I started off with my cap full of nuts in one hand and my handkerchief full in the other.
After going a few steps, I shouted again, “John! Peter!” but this time even the echo made no reply and my voice sounded so strangely in my ears that I did not recognize it.
I ran for about an hour and a half, when all at once I felt as though I was bound with ropes and I fell. I was held fast by the long tendrils of a blackberry-bush which I had not noticed in the gathering darkness.
I dropped my handkerchief and could barely distinguish it in the darkness.
I then shouted again as loudly as ever I could until I lost courage and could shout no more. I dared not, I dared not, because of the terrible silence which seemed to close round me. The silence was so uncanny that I distinctly heard the blood coursing through my veins.
I was alone, alone in the vast never-ending forest, lost, strayed, and far from the road when night fell. I thought of home, of my gentle mother and my good father. I thought of the terrible anxiety they would be in when I did not return. Feeling my way I sat down on the roots of a tree and began to cry....
I then closed my eyes as tightly as ever I could in order to see nothing. I meant to sit there and see what would happen, but when I raised my eyes to say a short prayer, I saw a soft light piercing through the roof of branches above my head, which seemed to me like a smiling face trying to throw its silver rays upon me.
It was the moon; she was rising in the opposite direction to which I had seen the last rays of the sinking sun. As my eyes grew accustomed to the light I began to distinguish things around me. At first the tree-trunks, some as thick as my body, others as thick as my head, others as thick as my legs and arms. Then I saw the shrubs and bushes, the flowers in the grass, and the ferns.
I SAW SOMETHING WHITE