“If you’re looking for somebody, I’ll help,” the peasant declared.

The two together descended the rest of the companionway.  The space in front of the dining-room was empty and so was the dining-room.  It was tilted at an acute angle.  A heap of dishes and silverware blocked the doorway.

“Hahlstroem!  Achleitner!” Frederick shouted again and again.

Wilke pushed a short way down the long corridor, on which the cabins gave.  But the spot closed off by the rising waters was only too clearly distinguishable.

“Come away, come away!” Frederick cried, and ran.  He ran for his life.  He ran in wild fear of missing the boat.

XLVIII

A moment later he was on deck, over the railing, and in the boat.  The men wanted to put off.  Frederick protested, and disputed loudly with the third mate, who in the meantime had entered the boat and was grasping the tiller.

He could not make up his mind to desert Wilke of the Heuscheuer, who had so courageously followed him below deck and had not yet reappeared.  But now he saw him, literally sliding from the companionway entrance to the railing.

“Wilke!  Wilke!” he shouted.  “Jump into the boat!”

“Right away, right away,” Wilke answered several times.  Then he did something that Frederick tried to scold him out of doing, because it seemed so senseless and useless to everybody in the boat.  He had discovered a number of life-belts and was throwing them from various points out on the water, where persons swept overboard might be struggling desperately for their lives.

The boat did not wait for him.  Under the third mate’s command, the sailors began to row.  The sea favoured them, and soon they were more than thirty yards from the Roland’s side.

Now they could see the spot where another vessel, or a drifting derelict, had bored the flank of the Roland, making a great gash near the engine-room.  Since the whole of the breach was not yet under water, they could see the foaming sea streaming into the hold.  Frederick thought he could hear its greedy gulping.  At the sight, for all the horror about him, he felt a desire to burst into mourning for the brave warrior Roland, and with difficulty restrained an outcry.  The fog closed in and hid the fatally wounded giant from view.

When, in a few moments, the mist cleared, the wreck had in some incomprehensible way turned.  The twenty persons in the boat looked down from a dizzy height upon the after part of the deck, almost on a level with the water.  They shrieked in terror, for they thought that the next instant they would be hurled down upon the mass of human beings wedged in there, swarming like ants.

Not until that moment did Frederick grasp to its full extent the catastrophe that was occurring, a catastrophe beyond human conception.  All those dark little crowding ants, helplessly running up and down, were tearing at one another, hitting about, beating, wrestling, forcing their way.  Groups of men and women were united in struggling knots.  Some of the life-boats that had not yet been lowered seemed to have turned into dark, swaying bunches of grapes, from which every now and then a single grape dropped off and fell into the sea.