“Joseph, Maria!” exclaimed one of them, a man with gray hairs and unpleasing features. “We sink! the water is in the hold!”
All three clambered now toward the hinder part of the vessel, where a little boat floated after. One of them sprang into it.
“My daughter!” cried the elder, and bent himself toward the narrow entrance into the cabin. “Sidsel, save thy life!” and so saying, he sprang into the boat.
“We must have my daughter out,” cried he. One of the ship’s cabin windows was under water; he burst in the other window.
“We are sinking!” cried he, and a horrible scream was heard within.
The old man was German Heinrich, who was about to come with this vessel from Copenhagen to Jutland: Sidsel was his daughter, and therefore he wished now to save her life a second time.
The water rushed more and more into the ship. Heinrich thrust his arm through the cabin-window, he grasped about in the water within; suddenly he caught hold on a garment, he drew it toward him; but it was only the captain’s coat, and not his daughter, as he had hoped.
“The ship sinks!” shrieked the other, and grasped wildly on the rope which held the boat fast: in vain he attempted to divide it with his pocket-knife. The ship whirled round with the boat and all. Air and water boiled within it, and, as if in a whirlpool, the whole sunk into the deep. The sea agitated itself into strong surges over the place, and then was again still. The moon shone tranquilly over the surface of the water as before. No wreck remained to tell any one of the struggle which there had been with death.
The bell tolled a quarter past twelve; and at that moment the last light at the hall was extinguished.
“I will go to Paris,” said Wilhelm, “to my glorious Switzerland; here at home one is heavy-hearted; the gillyflowers on the grave have an odor full of melancholy recollections. I must breathe the mountain air; I must mingle in the tumult of men, and it is quite the best in the world.”