We do not sing and chatter and laugh.
We play no pranks.

For once our volatile and exuberant spirits are hopelessly subdued.

We make plaintive, querulous noises, look at one another, and cluster close together.

It is like the meeting of the handful of survivors after the day of the end of the world.
This event is without connection with the other events in the swamp.
How we ever managed to cross it, I do not know, but at last we came out where a low range of hills ran down to the bank of the river.

It was our river emerging like ourselves from the great swamp.