While engaged in this she heard voices approaching.

A moment's listening to teh mingling of tones convinced her that it was another crowd of stragglers, and she obeyed her first impulse, which was to leap her horse over a low stone wall to her right.
Taking her head again, the mare did not stop until she galloped down to the water's edge.
"I'll accept this as lucky," said Rachel to herself.

"The ancients trusted more to their horses' instincts than their own perceptions in times of danger, and I'll do the same.

I'll cross here." She urged the mare into the water.

The beast picked her way among the boulders on the bottom successfully for a few minutes.