Rage and grief boiled over in him, foamed at the father in a hundred savage and evil words.  Then the boy ran away and only returned late at night.

But the next morning, he had disappeared.  What had also disappeared was a small basket, woven out of bast of two colours, in which the ferrymen kept those copper and silver coins which they received as a fare.  The boat had also disappeared, Siddhartha saw it lying by the opposite bank.  The boy had ran away.

“I must follow him,” said Siddhartha, who had been shivering with grief since those ranting speeches, the boy had made yesterday.  “A child can’t go through the forest all alone.  He’ll perish.  We must build a raft, Vasudeva, to get over the water.”

“We will build a raft,” said Vasudeva, “to get our boat back, which the boy has taken away.  But him, you shall let run along, my friend, he is no child any more, he knows how to get around.  He’s looking for the path to the city, and he is right, don’t forget that.  He’s doing what you’ve failed to do yourself.  He’s taking care of himself, he’s taking his course.  Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you’re suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you’ll soon laugh for yourself.”

Siddhartha did not answer.  He already held the axe in his hands and began to make a raft of bamboo, and Vasudeva helped him to tied the canes together with ropes of grass.  Then they crossed over, drifted far off their course, pulled the raft upriver on the opposite bank.

“Why did you take the axe along?” asked Siddhartha.

Vasudeva said:  “It might have been possible that the oar of our boat got lost.”

But Siddhartha knew what his friend was thinking.  He thought, the boy would have thrown away or broken the oar in order to get even and in order to keep them from following him.  And in fact, there was no oar left in the boat.  Vasudeva pointed to the bottom of the boat and looked at his friend with a smile, as if he wanted to say:  “Don’t you see what your son is trying to tell you?  Don’t you see that he doesn’t want to be followed?” But he did not say this in words.  He started making a new oar.  But Siddhartha bid his farewell, to look for the run-away.  Vasudeva did not stop him.

When Siddhartha had already been walking through the forest for a long time, the thought occurred to him that his search was useless.  Either, so he thought, the boy was far ahead and had already reached the city, or, if he should still be on his way, he would conceal himself from him, the pursuer.  As he continued thinking, he also found that he, on his part, was not worried for his son, that he knew deep inside that he had neither perished nor was in any danger in the forest.  Nevertheless, he ran without stopping, no longer to save him, just to satisfy his desire, just to perhaps see him one more time.  And he ran up to just outside of the city.