“Madame laughs,” said François, speaking French as he always did when he wished to be impressive; “but I can assure madame that it is no laughing matter, and that if madame is not back at the castle before , something terrible will happen.”
“I will come.”
François bowed, swung himself into the saddle again, and—to the breathless astonishment of the village children who had been attracted by the unusual spectacle of a horseman—set spurs to his horse, and, with his head bowed almost to the saddle, dashed off, while Valerie begged Frau Rickmann to send for the carriage which had been put into the head pilot’s barn up in the village, and then with a heavy heart went to separate the happy pair. But if she made up her mind to a last meeting with her dreaded, hated tyrant, it was only for the sake of those she loved, and for whom in the threatening catastrophe she would save whatever might still be possible to save! It would not be much—she knew his rapacity—but enough perhaps to secure her Elsa’s future, to free poor Ottomar from his difficulties. And she smiled as she thought that even Elsa could believe she was thinking of herself in this matter, of her future!—Good God!
Elsa was ready at once, and Reinhold would not detain her by word or look. He would have dearly liked to go with her, but that was not to be thought of. He must not leave his post now for a single hour; at any moment duty might call upon him again.
And before Elsa had got her cloak on a pilot came in to bring news of the boat which had gone out at after the steamer that had been signalled from Wissow Head, asking for a pilot. They had got out to sea in ten minutes and round the Head in half an hour; but the steamer was no longer there, and must meanwhile have doubled the Golmberg and got out to sea, as they had seen for themselves when they had passed the Golmberg. On their way back—about —they had been alarmed at seeing so much surf on the dunes between the Head and the Golmberg, and had kept inshore as much as possible, to make out if the sea had broken through there as the Captain had foretold. They could not make quite certain at first, just on account of the heavy sea; but when they went in closer still, so as to be sure, Clas Lachmund first, and then all the rest too, had seen two people on the White Dune, one of whom looked like a woman and had not moved, but the other—a man—had made signs to them. They could not reach them, however, try as they would, and might think themselves lucky that they got off again even, for they had run aground close by the White Dune, and had seen then for certain that the sea had broken in—north and south of the White Dune, and probably at other points too—for they could see nothing but water far inland. How far they could not say; the weather was too hazy. They must be in a bad way at Ahlbeck too; but they had not gone nearer in there, for the people there, with Wissow Head hard by, could be in no danger of losing their lives; but the two people on the White Dune would be in a very bad case if they could not be brought off before night.
“Who can the unfortunate people be?” asked Valerie.
“Shipwrecked folk; what else could they be!” answered Reinhold.
“Goodbye, my Reinhold,” said Elsa; and then clinging to him, half laughing, half crying: “Take six more men with you who know what they are about!”
“And you will pledge me your word,” said Reinhold, “that the carriage shall not drive down from the village to the castle, if from the height above you cannot see the road absolutely clear through the hollow!”
The two ladies were gone, and Reinhold got ready for his second expedition. It was not exactly his duty, any more than the morning’s work had been; only none of the men—not even the best of them—quite knew how to handle the new lifeboat.
Those two people on the dune, however—he had not liked to say so to Elsa—but they could not be shipwrecked people, for any vessel that had gone ashore there would have been signalled long ago from Wissow Head. They could not well be from Pölitz’s farm either, though that was close by, for Frau Rickmann had told him when he went to change his clothes, that Pölitz had sent back word by the messenger he had despatched to him, that he would send little Ernst and his men with the livestock to Warnow; but he could not go away himself, neither could Marie, and still less his wife, who had been confined last night, of a boy. Things could not be so bad with them either.
But things were serious now—very serious—and even if the head pilot Bonsak had a little exaggerated, as he did sometimes in similar cases, there was danger any way; danger for poor Frau Pölitz, who was kept to the house by the most sacred of duties; greater danger still for the two of whom he asked to know nothing but that they were fellow-creatures who without him must perish.
X
The large room at the Warnow Inn, filled with the smoke of bad tobacco and the odour of stale beer and spirits, was crowded with the noisy wagoners who had arrived that morning, and who had been joined in the course of the afternoon by two or three drovers, who also thought it pleasanter to remain here. The landlord stood near, snuffing the tallow-candles
