Aunt Valerie, who could not sleep, came out of her room in terror, to be assured by Frau Rickmann that there was no cause for alarm, as the house would stand a good shaking, and Wissow Head sheltered them from the worst; and as for the flood, they stood like the other houses, fifty feet above high-water mark, and they might wait some time before the tide came up there!
Therewith Frau Rickmann went into the kitchen, after again ushering the ladies into the Captain’s study; and here they now sat at the window, which also looked out to sea, each trying to turn her thoughts to that of which she knew the other’s heart was full, from time to time exchanging a loving word or a pressure of the hand, till Elsa, noticing the growing uneasiness on her aunt’s pale face, pressed for an immediate departure, if only on the ground that the darkness was gathering rapidly, and they could not possibly take the perilous journey back by night.
Frau Rickmann came in with her honest face glowing from the kitchen fire, and took her modest part in the deliberations. The ladies might as well wait another hour; it would not get darker now before sunset, and the Captain must come in now soon, if her dinner was not to be done to rags.
And Frau Rickmann had hardly spoken, when a finger knocked at the window, and a rough voice outside called: “Boat in sight!”
And then, it was in a bewildering, delicious dream, that Elsa ran down to the beach beside a man in high seaboots and a curious-looking hat, who, as they ran, told her a long story of which she understood not a word, and she reached the place where she had gone on her arrival under the shelter of the dunes, and then went up on to the dune, where the beacon was now glimmering through the evening mist, amongst a number of other men in high waterproof boots and odd hats, who pointed to the sea and then spoke to her, without her again understanding a single word, and one of whom hung a great pea-jacket over her shoulders and fastened it securely, without her asking him for it or even thanking him. Then suddenly she saw the boat, which she had been looking for persistently, heaven knows where in the misty air, quite close to her; and then she was in another place where the beach was flat and the surf did not roar so fearfully, and she saw the boat again, which seemed now twice as big as it had been before, and the whole keel was lifted out of the white foam and sunk again, and rose a second time, while some dozens of the men ran into the foam which closed over their heads in spray. And a man came up through the ebbing waves, in high boots and just such another odd hat, and she gave a cry of joy and rushed towards him and threw her arms round him, and he lifted her up and carried her a little way, till she could set her feet again upon the sand; and whether he carried her again, or whether they flew, or walked on side by side, she never knew, and only saw him really when he had changed his clothes and was sitting at his dinner-table, while she poured him out glass after glass of wine, and her aunt sat by smiling, and Frau Rickmann went in and out and brought in mutton chops with steaming-hot potatoes, and ham and eggs, and he, though he never turned his eyes from her, ate everything with the hunger of a man who had not tasted food since that morning. There had been no time for that; it had been a nasty bit of work getting to the stranded vessel, and still worse to take off the poor men through the surf; but it had been successful; they were all saved, the whole eight of them. They had to be put ashore at Grünwald then, which was another difficult job, and had kept them a long time; but it could not be helped, the poor fellows who had been clinging to the rigging all night were in such a deplorable condition, but they would be all right now.
Intoxicated with the bliss of that flower of happiness which they had plucked from the edge of the abyss, they remarked now for the first time that Aunt Valerie had left them. Elsa, who had no secrets from her Reinhold, explained to him in a few words the poor thing’s position, and that they had not now a moment to lose in starting on their disagreeable journey homewards.
“Not a moment!” cried Reinhold, rising; “I will give the necessary orders at once.”
“They have already been given,” said Valerie, who had heard the last words as she entered; “the carriage is at the door.”
The noise of the wheels had been inaudible in the deep sand to the happy lovers, as had been also the approach of the rider, whom Aunt Valerie had seen from the window, and to receive whom she had left the room.
He was there; he ordered her to come! She knew it before she opened the letter which François handed to her. She had read the letter—in the little room to the left, standing at the open window, while François stood outside—and then the enclosure; and as she read the
