“Undine! in God’s name, Undine!” cried the two men in an agony.  No answer was returned.  And now, regardless of everything else, they hurried from the cottage, one in this direction, the other in that, searching and calling.

CHAPTER 2

The longer Huldbrand sought Undine beneath the shades of night, and failed to find her, the more anxious and confused he became.  The impression that she was a mere phantom of the forest gained a new ascendency over him; indeed, amid the howling of the waves and the tempest, the crashing of the trees, and the entire change of the once so peaceful and beautiful scene, he was tempted to view the whole peninsula, together with the cottage and its inhabitants, as little more than some mockery of his senses.  But still he heard afar off the fisherman’s anxious and incessant shouting, “Undine!” and also his aged wife, who was praying and singing psalms.

At length, when he drew near to the brook, which had overflowed its banks, he perceived by the moonlight, that it had taken its wild course directly in front of the haunted forest, so as to change the peninsula into an island.

“Merciful God!” he breathed to himself, “if Undine has ventured a step within that fearful wood, what will become of her?  Perhaps it was all owing to her sportive and wayward spirit, because I would give her no account of my adventures there.  And now the stream is rolling between us, she may be weeping alone on the other side in the midst of spectral horrors!”

A shuddering groan escaped him; and clambering over some stones and trunks of overthrown pines, in order to step into the impetuous current, he resolved, either by wading or swimming, to seek the wanderer on the further shore.  He felt, it is true, all the dread and shrinking awe creeping over him which he had already suffered by daylight among the now tossing and roaring branches of the forest.  More than all, a tall man in white, whom he knew but too well, met his view, as he stood grinning and nodding on the grass beyond the water.  But even monstrous forms like this only impelled him to cross over toward them, when the thought rushed upon him that Undine might be there alone and in the agony of death.

He had already grasped a strong branch of a pine, and stood supporting himself upon it in the whirling current, against which he could with difficulty keep himself erect; but he advanced deeper in with a courageous spirit.  That instant a gentle voice of warning cried near him, “Do not venture, do not venture!—­that old man, the stream, is too full of tricks to be trusted!” He knew the soft tones of the voice; and while he stood as it were entranced beneath the shadows which had now duskily veiled the moon, his head swam with the swelling and rolling of the waves as he saw them momentarily rising above his knee.  Still he disdained the thought of giving up his purpose.