There were fifteen persons in all, three sailors and a cabin-boy, with the well-known name of the Roland on their caps, two ladies, a woman evidently from the steerage, a maid, a long-haired man of about thirty in a velvet jacket, an armless man, the man who had been steering, two other men, and two children, a boy and a girl.  The boy was dead.

The hardships and terrors to which the delicate child had succumbed had had almost equally dire effects upon the others.  With the exception of the maid Rosa, they looked as if they had been drowned beyond hope of resuscitation.  A very wet man—­it was Frederick—­attempted to drag an unconscious wet young woman up the gangway-ladder, but his strength failed him, and the sailors of the trader had to catch him as he tottered, take the young woman from his arms, and help him struggle up the ladder on deck, like a man whose every bone and muscle is racked by rheumatism.  Attempting to speak, he could produce only an asthmatic, sibilant wheeze.  On deck, he groaned, burst into a senseless, cackling laugh, and spread out his purple, frozen hands.  His lips, too, were purple, and his sunken eyes glowed feverishly from a face crusted with dirt and brine.  He seemed to want nothing so much as to be dried, warmed and cleaned.

He was followed by Rosa.  Upon laying an unconscious little girl in the arms of the first mate, she turned back to descend to the boat again, but found the way barred by Bulke and one of the sailors of the trader, hauling up the armless actor, Arthur Stoss.  He was dripping wet, his eyes were staring blankly, his nose was running, and his eyelids were red and inflamed, while the tip of his nose was waxen white.  After several vain attempts to produce a sound through his chattering teeth, he finally succeeded in framing “Rum!  Hot rum!”

A mutual inclination seemed to make Bulke and Rosa pull together in their rescue work like two old mates.  Fairly raining water, they descended again for Mrs. Liebling, who was lying prone in the bottom of the boat in a serious condition.

“She’s dead, and the boy is dead,” said the sailors of the trader, and wanted first to carry up the other woman, the steerage passenger, who showed she was still alive by a rattle in her throat, fearful to hear.  Rosa burst into a howl and swore Mrs. Liebling was not dead.

“She’s blue,” the sailors declared.  “She swallowed too much water.”

But Rosa would not desist, and the sailors were compelled to carry Mrs. Liebling up first.

As they were lifting on deck the unconscious woman from the steerage, still emitting the fearful rattle, one of the Roland sailors, whose feet were frozen and who, during the whole long, dreadful drifting about on the ocean had not uttered a sound, suddenly began to bellow in pain.

“Shut up!” said his mates.  “Don’t carry on like an old woman.”

He was the next to be lifted on board, merely whimpering now in ineffable agony.  After him came the man in the velvet jacket, who was maundering, Doctor Wilhelm, Max Pander, and the other two sailors.  Lastly the little corpse of Siegfried Liebling was lifted from the boat.