We were wet to the skin, and cold and miserable.

We began to wonder whether there were only four islands or more, or whether we were near the islands at all, or whether we were anywhere within a mile of where we ought to be, or in the wrong part of the river altogether; everything looked so strange and different in the darkness.

We began to understand the sufferings of the Babes in the Wood.
Just when we had given up all hope--yes, I know that is always the time that things do happen in novels and tales; but I can't help it.

I resolved, when I began to write this book, that I would be strictly truthful in all things; and so I will be, even if I have to employ hackneyed phrases for the purpose.
It _was_ just when we had given up all hope, and I must therefore say so.
Just when we had given up all hope, then, I suddenly caught sight, a little way below us, of a strange, weird sort of glimmer flickering among the trees on the opposite bank.

For an instant I thought of ghosts: it was such a shadowy, mysterious light.