The Breaking of the Storm

when the animal under him fell like a lifeless thing⁠—perhaps really lifeless⁠—into the depths below. With hands and feet he worked his way up, up! cursing his ill luck that had led him to the steepest part, and yet not daring to turn farther to the left, since here at least there was grass and scrub to cling to, while there the smooth sand offered no hold. Drops of anguish trickled from his brow into his eyes⁠—he could see nothing more, could only hear the roaring of the sea as it broke on the other side of the hill, as a confused ringing in his ears. He gained the summit and staggered forward, as his groping hands found no resistance, gathered himself up again, and looked wildly round him.

There, not far from him, lay a dark object.

Was it Carla? How came she here? Dead?

The dark object moved. He tottered forward to her side.

“Carla!”

She raised herself to her knees and stared fixedly at him, as he bent down to lift her up.

But hardly had his hand touched her, than she started up and away from him.

“Wretch!” she shrieked, “I too will die alone! Back to your other mistress! You have one already at the farm!”

She laughed wildly, and the wind, which had carried away her hat, blew her long hair about her, some locks crossing her deadly-white face, distorted now to a ghastly smile.

“She is mad!” muttered the Count, drawing back as far as he could. He could have wished it had been farther. They were on a miserably small strip of ground, which in the centre was shaped like a trough, with sides which yesterday had been at least five feet high, with sharp clear edges, and which the storm had already reduced to two or three feet of smooth surface. How long would it be before the last hand’s breadth of sand remaining would be blown into the trough, and they would be left without the smallest shelter, even supposing that the flood did not rise above the summit?

And should neither of these things happen⁠—should this point remain unsubmerged⁠—the Count shuddered again and again. How could poor human nature endure it all⁠—the driving storm, the torrents of spray which were unceasingly flung up over the hill, the long long night which now began to close in? Already his keen eyes could only just distinguish through the grey mist the dim outlines of the Golmberg, which was hardly a mile off. Wissow Head had entirely disappeared; the farm itself, barely three hundred yards from him, seemed every moment to sink deeper in the water, which, as far as his eye could reach, covered fields and meadows far inland, perhaps even as far as Warnow, which only appeared at intervals out of the mist like a phantom castle. To the right, the thundering, raging, roaring sea, around him the surf creeping higher and higher up the dune, and here and there sending up columns of spray over the already covered line of hills. And there⁠—now seeming so close to him that he drew back in terror, and in the next moment so far off that she might have been on the Golmberg⁠—the dark, motionless figure of the woman whose lips had clung to his only an hour before⁠—no, no! no living, loved woman, but a spectre risen from depths of horror, and sitting there, crouched together, immovable, only to drive him mad!

And the wretched man cried aloud in his agony, and clasped his hands before his face and sobbed and whimpered like a child.

IX

“It is half-past four,” said Elsa, “we must go.”

“You might remain here.”

“I am not sure whether my father will have arrived yet; indeed, supposing he came by the midday train, he could not be at Warnow yet; but that terrible man is certainly there, expecting you, and perhaps may go away again without waiting for you⁠—”

“I must speak to him,” murmured Valerie.

“And you must not speak to him alone; I will not allow it; and so we must go.”

“Without taking with us any comfort for you, my poor child!”

“I am comforted, I am quite calm; you can surely perceive that by my voice and manner.” And Elsa bent down and kissed her aunt’s pale lips.

They were sitting at the window of Reinhold’s study, on the right hand as you entered the one-storied house, which was imposing compared with its neighbours, which were still smaller.

Elsa had entered almost all of them; the houses of the two chief pilots, and some of those amongst which the four and twenty other pilots were distributed; that of the chief revenue officer, who shared his house with his subordinate; and she would have gone into the other pilots’ houses and the fishermen’s huts, of which there might be perhaps a dozen, only that it was not necessary, as the people were all standing at their doors wherever she passed, and stretching out their hands to her⁠—the rough, hairy hands of two or three invalided old sailors who crept out from the warm chimney-corners; powerful sunburnt hands from strong, sunburnt women; hard little hands from ruddy, flaxen-haired children, who looked up curiously with their blue eyes to the beautiful strange lady, and could not believe what their mothers told them, that she was no princess, but the Captain’s betrothed, who was coming to live here always, and was so pleased with everything! And the Captain would come back, the women all said, though the storm was very high⁠—the worst that Clas Rickmann remembered, and he was ninety-two years old, and so might be allowed to know something about it! The Captain knew what he was about, and he had got six men with him who knew what they were about; and last time they had been out three times in the new lifeboat without being upset once, and it was not likely to upset now, especially when his own sweetheart had come here to receive him when he