The slight increase of light they had had, when the driving mist was partly blown aside, had disappeared again. Hitherto the leaden sky and dense storm-driven mist had made the evening seem like night; but now the real night was drawing in. Only a very sharp eye could still distinguish the black figure on the balcony, and even the balcony itself was not visible to all. At the same time the gale decidedly increased in violence, and had again veered from northeast to southeast, while the water rose considerably in consequence of the backward flow from Wissow Head. Now might have been a good opportunity, as the velocity of the stream was thus diminished; but no one had the heart to renew the hopeless effort. If there were no means of getting a rope over to the other side and fastening it there, so that some men might pass over the frail bridge to guide the raft over from that side, there was no hope.
So thought the Mayor, and the rest agreed with him. But they had to shout it into each other’s ears; no word spoken in an ordinary tone could have been heard through the fearful uproar.
Suddenly Ottomar stood amongst them. He had taken in the whole position at a glance. “A rope here!” he cried, “and lights! The willows there!”
They understood him at once; the four old hollow willow-trunks close to the edge! Let them be set on fire! It was true, if they could succeed in doing it, there would be danger to the village; but no one thought of that. They rushed to the nearest houses and dragged out armfuls of fir-wood and pitch, and thrust it all into the hollow trunks, which fortunately opened to westward. Two or three vain efforts—and then it flamed up—blazing, crackling—sometimes flaming high, sometimes sinking down again—throwing shifting lights upon the hundreds of pale faces which were all turned with anxious gaze upon the man who, with the rope round his body, was fighting with the stream.
Would he hold out?
More than one pair of rugged hands was clasped in prayer; women were on their knees, sobbing, wailing, pressing their nails into their hands, tearing their hair, shrieking aloud madly, as another fearful wave came up and rolled over him, and he disappeared in the billows.
But there he was again; he had been thrown back nearly half the distance which he had already won—in another minute he had recovered it. He had been carried down some way, too; but he had chosen his point of departure well, the summerhouse was still far below him; he was traversing the stream as if by a miracle.
And now he was in the middle, at the worst place; they had known it to be that from the first. He did not seem to make any progress, but slid slowly down stream. Still the summerhouse was far below him; if he could pass the centre, he might, he must succeed!
And now he was evidently gaining ground, nearer and nearer, foot by foot, in an even, slanting line towards the balcony! Rough, surly men, who had been at enmity all their lives, had grasped each other’s hands: women fell sobbing into one another’s arms. A gentleman with close-cut grey hair and thick grey moustache, who had just arrived, breathless, from the village, stood close to the burning willows, almost touched by the flames, and followed the swimmer with fixed gaze, and fervent prayers and promises—that all, all should be forgiven and forgotten if he might only receive him back—his beloved, heroic son. Suddenly he gave a loud cry—a terrible cry—which the storm swallowed up, and rushed down to the bank where the men stood who had hold of the rope, calling to them to “Haul in, haul in!”
It was too late.
Shooting down the current came the great pine-tree, at the foot of which the swimmer had sat half an hour ago, torn up by the storm, hurled into the flood, whirled round by the eddying waters like some monster risen from the deep, now showing its mighty roots still grasping the stone, now lifting its head, now rising erect as it had once stood in the sunshine, and the next moment crashing down over the swimmer—upon him—then, with its head sunk in the foaming whirlpool and the roots raised above, it went out from the realm of light down into the dark night.
Strangely enough, the slender cord had not been broken, and they drew him back—a dead man, at whose side, as he lay stretched on the bank, with only one broad, gaping wound upon his forehead, like a soldier who has met his death gallantly, the old man with the grey moustache knelt and kissed the dead lips of the beautiful pale mouth, and then rose to his feet.
“Give me the rope now! He was my son! And my daughter is there!”
It seemed insanity. They had seen how the young man had battled—but the old one! He threw off coat and waistcoat. He might be an old man—but he was still a strong man, with a broad powerful chest.
“If you feel that you can’t keep up, General, give us a signal in good time,” said the Mayor.
And now there happened what, to the people who in this one hour had seen such strange and terrible horrors, seemed a miracle. The blazing willow-stumps, which were burning now from the roots to the stiff branches, threw a light almost like day over the bank, the crowd, the stream, and the summerhouse opposite—far into the flooded park up to the castle, whose windows here and there gave back a crimson reflection of the flames.
And in this light, floating down the narrow stream, on whose grassy bed the village children were wont to play, down the foaming current which had just now whirled along the branching pine-tree, like
