CHAPTER III
HOW UNDINE WAS FOUND AGAIN
Hereupon the story telleth how Huldbrand fared in his search for Undine.
The longer he sought for her beneath the shades of the trees and found her not, the more anxious and distraught did he become. Once more the thought that Undine was but a phantom, a vision caused by the mysterious forest, took possession of him. Indeed, as the waves howled and the tempest roared, and the trees crashed down in ruin, the complete change and contrast in a scene which had been but a few moments agone so peaceful and beautiful, made him marvel whether peninsula, cottage and fisherman were not all a mockery and an illusion. Yet still from afar he could hear through the din the cries of the old man for Undine, and the wife’s loud prayers and hymns.
At length cometh he to the brink of the swollen stream and marked how it had driven its wild course right in front of the forest, so that the peninsula was turned into an island. “Ah, God,” he thought, “it might well be that Undine has adventured herself into that fearful wood—perchance in her pretty petulance because I was not allowed to tell her aught of its horrors; and now behold how the stream severs us from her, and she may well be weeping on the other side alone, among ghosts and spectres!” Sharply did he cry out in his terror, and swiftly did he clamber down some rocks and uprooted pine-stems, that he might reach the raging stream and by wading or swimming across find the fugitive on the other side. He bethought him of all the shapes of wonder and fear that he had encountered even in daylight beneath the branches that now rustled and roared so ceaselessly. And more than all, it seemed to him as though on the opposite shore a tall man in white, whom he knew only too well, were grinning and nodding at him in mockery. It was these very monstrous forms which urged him to cross the flood, as he bethought him that Undine might be among them, alone in her agony.
Now, as he grasped the stout branch of a pine and stood, supporting himself by it in the midst of the current, which only with all his force could he withstand; and while yet with unblenching courage he pressed further into the stream, he heard a soft voice which said to him, “Venture not, venture not; full crafty is that old man, the stream!”He knew the sweet tones, he stood there, beneath the shadows which shrouded the moon, as though in a trance, all dizzy and bewildered in the waves which were now rapidly rising up to his very waist. Nathless he would not desist.