CHAPTER XIV.
"That won't do," cried the village Mayor; "haul it in again!"
"Ho! heave ho!" cried the thirty men who had hold of the rope. "Ho! heave ho!"
They had hurriedly constructed a kind of raft from a few beams, boards, and doors torn from the nearest houses, and let it go into the stream experimentally. Instantly it had been whirled round and upset, and the thirty men had enough to do to haul it on shore again.
For what had been the side of the hill was now the shore of a rushing, foaming stream. And on the hill-side half the village was already collected, and others were ever breathlessly joining the crowd. There was no danger for the village; the nearest houses stood ten or fifteen feet above the water, and it seemed impossible that it should rise so much, more especially as in the last few minutes it had already gone down about a foot. The gale had shifted more to the north, the incoming flood would be driven towards the headland; and although the storm still raged with unabated fury, it had grown a little lighter. The first comers had no need now to point out the place to the new arrivals; every one could see the whitewashed balcony on the other side, and the dark women's figures--once there were two, then again only one, who at first, said the first comers, had waved her handkerchief constantly, but now sat crouched in a corner, as if she had given up all hope, and was resignedly awaiting her fate.
And yet it seemed as if the work of deliverance must succeed. The distance was so small; a strong man could throw a stone across. They had even--foolishly--tried it, the best thrower amongst them had flung a stone, fastened to the end of a thin cord; but the stone had not flown ten feet, and with the cord had been blown away like gossamer. And now a huge wave from the other side rolled through the park, broke over the balcony, and, joining the stream, ran up to the top of the bank. The women shrieked aloud, the men looked at each other with grave, anxious faces.
"It won't do, boys!" said the Mayor; "long before we can get the raft across, the thing over there will have given way. Another such wave, and it must be knocked to pieces; I know it well, the pillars are not six inches across, and worm-eaten besides."
"And if we got to the other side and ran against it we should go to pieces and be upset ourselves," said Jochen Becker, the blacksmith.
"And there would be ten of us in the water instead of two," said Carl Peters, the carpenter.
"There is no good talking like that," said the Mayor; "we can't let them be drowned there before our very eyes. We'll take the raft thirty yards higher up, and the men must go off at once; I'll go with it myself. Haul away, my men. Ho! heave ho!"
A hundred hands were ready to drag the raft up stream. But thirty yards were not enough, it would require twice as much. Half-a-dozen courageous men had been found, too, to make the attempt; the Mayor might stay behind; who else was to command those who held the ropes? And that was the principal matter!
With long poles they steadied themselves on the raft. "Let go!" The raft shot out like an arrow into the centre of the stream.
"Hurrah!" cried those on shore, thinking the object already attained, fearing only that the raft would be carried into the park and driven against the trees.
But suddenly they came to a standstill; not a foot farther would it go, but danced about in midstream till the six men on board were forced to throw themselves down and cling fast, then darted down like an arrow against the near shore, to the spot where they had stood before. It took all the strength of the fifty men there assembled to hold it in, and it was only by the greatest exertion and with much apparent danger that the six men got safely off the raft and up the steep bank.
"This won't do, boys!" said the Mayor. "I wish the Lieutenant would come back; they are his relations. He drives us down here, and then doesn't come himself."
The slight increase of light they had had, when the driving mist was partly blown aside, had disappeared again. Hitherto the leaden sky and dense storm-driven mist had made the evening seem like night; but now the real night was drawing in. Only a very sharp eye could still distinguish the black figure on the balcony, and even the balcony itself was not visible to all. At the same time the gale decidedly increased in violence, and had again veered from north-east to south-east, while the water rose considerably in consequence of the backward flow from Wissow Head. Now might have been a good opportunity, as the velocity of the stream was thus diminished; but no one had the heart to renew the hopeless effort. If there were no means of getting a rope over to the other side and fastening it there, so that some men might pass over the frail bridge to guide the raft over from that side, there was no hope.
So thought the Mayor, and the rest agreed with him. But they had to shout it into each other's ears; no word spoken in an ordinary tone could have been heard through the fearful uproar.
Suddenly Ottomar stood amongst them. He had taken in the whole position at a glance. "A rope here!" he cried, "and lights! The willows there!"
They understood him at once; the four old hollow willow-trunks close to the edge! Let them be set on fire! It was true, if they could succeed in doing it, there would be danger to the village; but no one thought of that. They rushed to the nearest houses and dragged out armfuls of fir-wood and pitch, and thrust it all into the hollow trunks, which fortunately opened to westward. Two or three vain efforts--and then it flamed up--blazing, crackling--sometimes flaming high, sometimes sinking down again--throwing shifting lights upon the hundreds of pale faces which were all turned with anxious gaze upon the man who, with the rope round his body, was fighting with the stream.
Would he hold out?
More than one pair of rugged hands was clasped in prayer; women were on their knees, sobbing, wailing, pressing their nails into their hands, tearing their hair, shrieking aloud madly, as another fearful wave came up and rolled over him, and he disappeared in the billows.
But there he was again; he had been thrown back nearly half the distance which he had already won--in another minute he had recovered it. He had been carried down some way, too; but he had chosen his point of departure well, the summer-house was still far below him; he was traversing the stream as if by a miracle.
And now he was in the middle, at the worst place; they had known it to be that from the first. He did not seem to make any progress, but slid slowly down stream. Still the summer-house was far below him; if he could pass the centre, he might, he must succeed!
And now he was evidently gaining ground, nearer and nearer, foot by foot, in an even, slanting line towards the balcony! Rough, surly men, who had been at enmity all their lives, had grasped each other's hands: women fell sobbing into one another's arms. A gentleman with close-cut grey hair and thick grey moustache, who had just arrived, breathless, from the village, stood close to the burning willows, almost touched by the flames, and followed the swimmer with fixed gaze, and fervent prayers and promises--that all, all should be forgiven and forgotten if he might only receive him back--his beloved, heroic son. Suddenly he gave a loud cry--a terrible cry--which the storm swallowed up, and rushed down to the bank where the men stood who had hold of the rope, calling to them to "Haul in, haul in!"
It was too late.
Shooting down the current came the great pine-tree, at the foot of which the swimmer had sat half an hour ago, torn up by the storm, hurled into the flood, whirled round by the eddying waters like some monster risen from the deep, now showing its mighty roots still grasping the stone, now lifting its head, now rising erect as it had once stood in the sunshine, and the next moment crashing down over the swimmer--upon him--then, with its head sunk in the foaming whirlpool and the roots raised above, it went out from the realm of light down into the dark night.
Strangely enough, the slender cord had not been broken, and they drew him back--a dead man, at whose side, as he lay stretched on the bank, with only one broad, gaping wound upon his forehead, like a soldier who has met his death gallantly, the old man with the grey moustache knelt and kissed the dead lips of the beautiful pale mouth, and then rose to his feet.
"Give me the rope now! He was my son! And my daughter is there!"
It seemed insanity. They had seen how the young man had battled--but the old one! He threw off coat and waistcoat. He might be an old man--but he was still a strong man, with a broad powerful chest.
"If you feel that you can't keep up, General, give us a signal in good time," said the Mayor.
And now there happened what, to the people who in this one hour had seen such strange and terrible horrors, seemed a miracle. The blazing willow-stumps, which were burning now from the roots to the stiff branches, threw a light almost like day over the bank, the crowd, the stream, and the summer-house opposite--far into the flooded park up to the castle, whose windows here and there gave back a crimson reflection of the flames.
And in this light, floating down the narrow stream, on whose grassy bed the village children were wont to play, down the foaming current which had just now whirled along the branching pine-tree, like a sea-monster stretching out a hundred feelers for its prey, there came a slender well-built boat, that had just landed a strange cargo at the back entrance of the castle, as if at a quay. They had heard there how matters stood, and the man sitting at the helm had said: "My men, she is my betrothed!" And the six others, had shouted, "Hurrah for the Captain! and hurrah for his betrothed!" And now they shot past with lowered mast, and the crew holding their oars erect, as if they were bringing the Admiral on shore in his own boat. And the flag fluttered behind the man who sat at the helm, and with a light touch of his strong hand guided the willing vessel through the eddying foam to the goal which the clear keen eyes held fast, as the eagle his prey, however wildly the brave heart might beat against his bosom.
So they shot past--past the crowd who gazed breathlessly at the miracle, past the summer-house, but only a few yards. Then the man at the helm turned the boat suddenly like an eagle in its flight; and the six men took to their oars, at one stroke--and "Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"--the oars were withdrawn again, and the boat lay alongside the balcony, over which and over the boat an immense wave reared its foaming crest towards the bank, and there breaking threw its spray up into the burning trees, covering the breathless lookers-on with a cloud of moisture.
And as the cloud dispersed, they saw in the dim light of the decaying fire that the summer-house was gone, and there was only left a shadowy boat that vanished into the darkness.
They drew a long breath then, as if from a single oppressed spirit relieved from a weight of fear. And "Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" resounded as if from a single throat, rising above even the howling storm.
The boat might disappear in the darkness, but they knew that the man sitting at the helm knew what he was about, and the six men who were with him knew what they were about; and it would return in safety, carrying the rescued from storm and flood.