Percy reached out his arm just in time to receive her inanimate form.
The swoon lasted but a moment: yet during that moment Percy experienced the delicious pleasure of holding her fair head upon his shoulder, of clasping her lovely shape against his heart. All his well-controlled emotions seemed to cry out against their long constraint; and a sudden desire to seize her in his arms and cover her beautiful face with kisses might have overruled his reason, his sense of propriety and his good breeding, had she not opened her eyes and drawn herself out of his arms.
"How foolish I am," she said. "But I really thought we were to be crushed between those great ice jaws. I will not be so weak again."
"Please do," whispered Percy. "It was the happiest moment of my life." His warm audible breath fanned her cheek; his eyes were full of a fire she had never before seen in them; her blood tingled through her veins, producing a slight intoxication. Her lids drooped, her cheek crimsoned, but she did not rebuke him for his speech or his glance.
A strange, sweet languor filled her heart, and rendered any commonplace remark impossible. For the first time in her life she was conscious of a vague pleasure in the close proximity of a human being.
Out in the middle of the Sound they could see the black smoke of the steamer "Absolem" awaiting them in a long strip of open sea. By noon they were within a mile of her: and here the crew stopped their boats in the middle of an ice-floe, and served a sort of Arctic dinner.
An hour later, they reached the steamer; the mails and passengers were transferred and the ice-boats returned to Korsör.
The "Absolem" had been two days and two nights in the ice, and had narrowly escaped destruction among the sunken rocks, whither it had been carried by the powerful ice currents.
But now, with an open sea before them, they approached the western shore. As they neared Nyborg, Percy called the attention of the ladies to the remarkable thickness of the land ice. And to their surprise a few moments later, they saw the ship make fast to this clearly-defined and solid ice pier, and unload its freight and passengers as readily as if it had been in harbor.
Here they were huddled into Russian sleighs, and driven rapidly to the station at Nyborg, where they took the train for Hamburg.