darkness and running water, until he found a tree and was able to
climb to the surface.

Now he had lost his bearings, and when that became clear he lost his
head as well. Nothing was left of the confident Pelle of a while ago;
he ran blindly forward, in order to reach the summit of the hill.
And as he was hastening upward, so that he might take note of the
crags that lay about him, the ground rose and closed above him with
a frightful clamor, and the air turned black and full of noises, and
he could not see his hand before his eyes. It was like a stupendous
explosion--as though released by his cheerful stamping over the
rocks, the earth was hurled into the sky and dissolved in darkness,
and the darkness itself cried aloud with terror and eddied round him.
His heart pounded in his breast and robbed him of his last remnant
of understanding; he jumped for sheer unbridled terror and bellowed
like a maniac. The black mass drove over his head, so that he was
forced to duck, and gleaming rifts showed and disappeared; and the
darkness surged like the ocean and cried continually aloud with a
hellish chaos of sounds. Then it suddenly swung to one side, drifted
northward, and descended. And Pelle understood that he had stumbled
upon a rookery.

He found himself behind a great rock. How he got there he did not
know; but he knew that he was a terrible duffer. How easily he could
have brought confusion on the fifty-odd crows by tossing a few
stones into the air!

He went along the slope, very valiant in his resolve, but with
shaking knees. In the far distance a fox sat upon a cliff and howled
insanely at the moon, and far to the north and the south lay a