"I didn't know it was you, Nan," he heard Greta whisper.
"You knew it was somebody," came the answer at last.
"All I could think of is, he's waiting for me! Ernst! He's escaped. I dare not die while Ernst needs me."
The girl made no sound.
"Can't you understand what it means to me that he should say, 'For the sake of everything we care for, I must come and help him!' How could I think that anybody else's life mattered—when Ernst is waiting for me!"
"Waiting for you.... Where?"
"Oh, I shall find him—And nobody else will! 'It all depends on you, Greta'; that's what he says. He'll see that I'm safe, he says,' and happy!' For the first time he speaks of marriage. He needs me!" she triumphed.
"One last great service is laid upon us, then Buenos Aires—Ernst and I."
The stoker's moaning mounted to a horrible, hoarse yell. It waked the sleeping, half-numb children. They, too, screamed with fright and misery. So the hours wore on, with appeals for water, with weeping and with worse. Once the stoker wrenched himself free. They bound him again. That made him more violent than before. All the rest of the night he raved. In the morning he was gone. No one asked a question.
The sail went up early that day, though the sea looked threatening and the wind was squally. Within the hour all canvas had to be furled and the sea-anchor streamed. The lamentable figures in the boat huddled closer. Of Greta you could hardly see a distinguishing sign, so was she muffled and surrounded. The seas rose higher and the wash came flooding in.