Slowly the dark grey of the early dawn turned into the lighter grey of the day, approaching coldly and indifferently.  When the fog lifted a little, Frederick for seconds at a time had a dismaying illusion that he was in a green valley with glorious, flowery meadows, through which a snowstorm of blossoms was sweeping.  But then the mountains came, driven by the ferocious spirits of the hurricane, and closed down on the valley.  The heavy, glassy heights broke, and with the weight of their fluid masses, snapped away two of the Roland’s masts like reeds.

With its boilers quenched, the poor wreck could no longer send up a cry for help.  Its sad body was still towering upward at the bow in colossal majesty.  Rockets flew, signals of distress fluttered briskly from the foremast; a futile language in that merciless raging of the elements.

In the steerage it had grown still.  But from the port side came a peculiar, persistent, unbroken sound, resembling the shouting and screaming of a crowd on toboggan-slides and merry-go-rounds at a village fair.  A buzzing as of swarming bees pierced distinctly through the roaring of the tempest, while above it rose the shrieking of infuriated, frenzied women.  Frederick thought of his dark-eyed Deborah.  She, too, was doomed.  He thought of Wilke.

Bulke, the faithful valet, appeared, leading Arthur Stoss by his coat collar.  Within the next few moments, Wilke also appeared.  He had been drinking, and was shouting as if the whole thing were a frolic; but he was half dragging, half carrying on deck an old, wheezing working woman.  Thrusting Stoss and Bulke aside, he landed her safely in the boat.

Ingigerd was clamouring incessantly for her father and Achleitner.  Instead of either of these, Stoss, whom Bulke and Wilke had lowered by a rope, dropped down beside her.

About thirty feet from Frederick, a man was standing in a cabin door, carefully hooked back.  With incredible calm he was smoking a cigarette and inhaling, and stroking a yellow cat on his arm.

“It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it, Mr. Rinck?” Frederick said, going up to him.

“Why?”

“Well, don’t you think we’re lost?”

Mr. Rinck shrugged his shoulders without answering.

“What’s the matter?  What’s the matter?” somebody bellowed in his ear.

“Nothing,” he said, stroking his cat.

In the meantime Bulke and Wilke had lowered Doctor Wilhelm into the boat.

“That girl down there is giving herself a sore throat screaming for her father,” said Bulke.

Frederick decided, cost what it might, to take a look around below deck.  Perhaps fortune might favour him; he might discover Hahlstroem and perhaps Achleitner, too, and help one or both into the boat.  There was danger, to be sure, that the boat would put off before he returned.

He had worked his way as far as the unused smoking-room.  It was empty.  Suddenly Wilke was standing beside him.