Uttering a cry of rage, with lifted stiletto Antonio rushed toward him--but Ferdinande threw herself between them, before Ottomar could pass the threshold, covering her lover with her outstretched arms, offering her own breast to the impending blow, collapsing without a sound of complaint in Ottomar's arms, while the murderer, the assassin, at the sight of the deed which he had not intended, and which, like a gleaming flash of lightning, rent the darkness of his insanity, rushed past them in cowardly, confused flight, down the stairs, through the midst of the multitude, which the tolling of the storm-bell and the cries of those passing by had frightened from the bar-room and the houses and which shrank back in terror at the strange man with his black hair waving in the wind and a bloody dagger in his hand--up the village street, running, crying, screaming, over everything that came in his way, into the howling darkness. And--"Murder! Murder! Seize him! Stop him! Stop the murderer!" they shouted from the house. * * * * * [The driver from Neuenfähr is trying to find stable room for his horses in Warnow. A man in great haste rushes up to him and asks to be driven to Neuenfähr, offering whatever he may ask, while the mob clamors for the murderer of Ferdinande. The driver starts in the face of the flood and the storm. He is terrified and wishes to turn back. The passenger offers him five thalers, twenty thalers, a hundred thalers--anything--and tells him to drive on--anywhere to get away from the place. The driver wonders who the raving man can be--a tramp! The murderer of Ferdinande, or the devil? The horses plunge on through the flood; the driver curses, and then prays. Instead of one passenger there are now two, grappling like fiends at each other's throats. The horses are swimming. The driver unhitches them, mounts one of them, and leaves his uncanny passengers to perish in the flood, reaching at last the little village of Faschwitz.] * * * * * "That won't do," cried the Burgess. "Take it in again!" "Ho! Ho, heave ho!" cried the thirty who held the cable--"Ho, heave ho!" In their haste they had constructed a kind of raft by tying together a few boards and doors from the nearest houses, and had now tentatively let it into the stream. The flood carried it away instantly and turned it upon end! the thirty had all they could do to get it back on shore again.