But the "St. Barbara" was saved.
Euthemio pressed the hands of the returning oarsmen—Timar he embraced. Timar might have expected that Timéa would say a friendly word; but she only asked, pointing to the gulf with a disturbed face, "What is become of the mill?"
"Chips and splinters!"
"And the poor cat?" The girl's lips trembled, and tears stood in her eyes.
"It's all up with her."
"But the mill and the cat belonged to some poor man?" said Timéa.
"Yes; but we had to save our ship and our lives, or else we should have been wrecked, and the whirlpool would have drawn us into the abyss, and only thrown up our bones on the shore."
Timéa looked at the man who said this, through the prism of tear-filled eyes.
It was a strange world into which she gazed through these tears. That it should be permissible to destroy a poor man's mill in order to save one's own ship, that you should drown a cat so as not to get into the water yourself!—she could not understand it. From this moment she listened no more to his fairy stories, but avoided him as much as possible.