But the girl seemed absolutely paralyzed with terror. She turned an inch or two, and looked helplessly around.
"I—I don't know the way we came," she said—and her eyeballs were contracted as if with pain. "Will you try, Mary?"
And then she made a strenuous effort to pull herself together.
"No, no!—let me go first!" she said in a kind of desperation, "I am lighter than you."
"No," Mary made answer, quite calmly, "I will go first."
Yes, outwardly she was quite calm; but dismay had possession of her too. For the whole world underneath felt so strangely unstable; it shivered even as she stood; and as for going back the way they came—why, it seemed to her that the smallest movement in any one direction must necessarily cause this quaking morass to open like the sea and engulf them for ever. She had undertaken to go first; but whither was she to go? When she put out a foot tentatively, the solid earth seemed to slide away from her in billows. Again and again she tried; and again and again she instinctively drew back—her whole frame trembling like the trembling soil beneath her; until at last she stood speechless and motionless, turning strange eyes towards Käthchen—eyes that asked a question her white lips could not utter. And the dusk was now coming over the world.
But help was near. They were suddenly startled by a sound—a distant cry—and at the same moment they caught sight of a man who had come running from the direction of the cottage. As soon as he perceived he was seen, he held up both arms: it was a signal to them not to move—as if movement were possible to them in this prostration of fear! He came along with an incredible rapidity, by the outskirts of the morass, until he was opposite them, and then he ventured in a little distance. But he did not attempt to approach them; with his hand he directed them which way to go; and they—their heart in their mouth the while—obeyed him as well as they could. By the time they got near to where he was waiting, they found themselves with some firmer consistency under their feet; and then, without a word, he turned and led the way off the morass, they following. There he paused for a second, to give them a brief direction.
"You must keep along the side; it is very dangerous," he said, in a somewhat cold manner.
But in an instant Mary had divined who this was. The young man with the pale, clear-cut features and coal-black eyes belonged to no shepherd's hut.
"I—I want to thank you, sir," she said, breathlessly (he had raised his cap to them slightly, and was going away). "If it had not been for you, what should we have done? It is a dreadful place—we were afraid to move—"