Chapter 103
"No matter where! That way!"
"We can pa.s.s it," said the Neuenfahr man, thinking only that the gentleman was afraid that in the narrow road they could not get out of the way of a carriage which had just appeared coming towards them through the grey mist, and might still be a few hundred yards from them.
The gentleman caught him by both shoulders.
"Confound it!" cried the Neuenfahr man. "Are you mad?"
"I will give you a hundred thalers!"
"I'll not be drowned for a hundred thalers!"
"Two hundred!"
"All right!" cried the driver, and whipped up his horses as he turned them to the left from the sandy road down to the marshes. The water oozed up under their feet, but then came firmer ground again. It might not be so bad after all; and two hundred thalers! He called to his horses, and whipped them up again.
They dashed forward as if the devil were behind them; he could hardly keep them in hand. And meanwhile he had gone much farther than he had intended; he had meant only to turn off a little way from the road, and then come back to it again. But when he looked round, the road and the trees had alike disappeared, as if all had been wiped out with a wet sponge. And from the thick, dark atmosphere the mist was falling so that he could not tell at last whether he ought to go straight on, or turn to right or left. Neither could he trust his ears. Along the road the roaring of the sea had been on his left hand, then in front of him; now there was such an infernal din all round him--could they be already so near the sea?
The fumes of the brandy suddenly vanished from the Neuenfahr man, and instead of them a terrible fear took possession of him. Who was the mysterious pa.s.senger who was sitting behind him in the carriage, and who had promised him two hundred thalers if he would avoid the other carriage which was coming towards them? Was he an accomplice of the foreign vagabond? He had just the same black eyes and black hair, and a long black beard too, and just such a curious foreign accent! Was it the devil himself to whom he had sold his miserable soul for two hundred thalers, and who had meant to wring his neck just now when he took him by the shoulders, and who had enticed him out into the marshes this fearful night to make an end of him in the storm and mist? And there were his wife and children at Neuenfahr! "Good Lord! good Lord!"
groaned the man. "Only let me get out of this! I will never do it again, so help me G.o.d! Oh Lord! oh Lord!"
The carriage was driving through water; the man could hear it splas.h.i.+ng against the wheels. He flogged his horses madly; they reared and kicked, but did not move a step forward.
With one bound the man was off the box beside his horses. There was only one means of safety now--to unharness them and dash forward at their full speed. He had said nothing; the thing spoke for itself. He had thought, too, that the man in the carriage would help him. He had just got the second horse out, and raised his head, when--his hair stood on end, as if all that had pa.s.sed before were child's play to what he saw now! There had been only one person in the carriage, and now there were two; and the two were taking each other by the throat, and were struggling and shouting together--one of them, his pa.s.senger, as if he were asking for mercy, and the other yelling like the very devil himself--and the other was the murderer of that afternoon.
The Neuenfahr man saw no more. With a desperate spring, he threw himself on to the near horse, and dashed away, the other horse galloping beside him. The water splashed over him, and then he was up to his waist in water, and then up to his neck and the horses swimming; and again he had dry land under him, and got on to firm ground, and the horses stopped because they could go no farther, and the one on which he sat had trembled so that he had nearly fallen off. And he looked round to see what had happened and where he was.
He was on rising ground, and before him lay a village. It could only be Faschwitz; but Faschwitz was two or three miles in a straight line from the sea, and there behind him, from where he came--it was a little clearer now, so that he could see some little distance--was the open sea, rising in fearful waves, which roared and foamed, as they rolled farther and farther--who could tell how far inland?
"They have been drowned like kittens, and my beautiful new carriage.
May the----"
But the Neuenfahr man felt as if he could not swear just then.
He dismounted, took the horses by the bridle, and led them, almost exhausted, at a foot's pace into Faschwitz, his own knees trembling at every step.
CHAPTER XIV.
"That won't do," cried the
"Ho! heave ho!" cried the thirty men who had hold of the rope. "Ho!
heave ho!"
They had hurriedly constructed a kind of raft from a few beams, boards, and doors torn from the nearest houses, and let it go into the stream experimentally. Instantly it had been whirled round and upset, and the thirty men had enough to do to haul it on sh.o.r.e again.
For what had been the side of the hill was now the sh.o.r.e of a rus.h.i.+ng, foaming stream. And on the hill-side half the village was already collected, and others were ever breathlessly joining the crowd. There was no danger for the village; the nearest houses stood ten or fifteen feet above the water, and it seemed impossible that it should rise so much, more especially as in the last few minutes it had already gone down about a foot. The gale had s.h.i.+fted more to the north, the incoming flood would be driven towards the headland; and although the storm still raged with unabated fury, it had grown a little lighter. The first comers had no need now to point out the place to the new arrivals; every one could see the whitewashed balcony on the other side, and the dark women's figures--once there were two, then again only one, who at first, said the first comers, had waved her handkerchief constantly, but now sat crouched in a corner, as if she had given up all hope, and was resignedly awaiting her fate.
And yet it seemed as if the work of deliverance must succeed. The distance was so small; a strong man could throw a stone across. They had even--foolishly--tried it, the best thrower amongst them had flung a stone, fastened to the end of a thin cord; but the stone had not flown ten feet, and with the cord had been blown away like gossamer.
And now a huge wave from the other side rolled through the park, broke over the balcony, and, joining the stream, ran up to the top of the bank. The women shrieked aloud, the men looked at each other with grave, anxious faces.
"It won't do, boys!" said the Mayor; "long before we can get the raft across, the thing over there will have given way. Another such wave, and it must be knocked to pieces; I know it well, the pillars are not six inches across, and worm-eaten besides."
"And if we got to the other side and ran against it we should go to pieces and be upset ourselves," said Jochen Becker, the blacksmith.
"And there would be ten of us in the water instead of two," said Carl Peters, the carpenter.
"There is no good talking like that," said the Mayor; "we can't let them be drowned there before our very eyes. We'll take the raft thirty yards higher up, and the men must go off at once; I'll go with it myself. Haul away, my men. Ho! heave ho!"
A hundred hands were ready to drag the raft up stream. But thirty yards were not enough, it would require twice as much. Half-a-dozen courageous men had been found, too, to make the attempt; the Mayor might stay behind; who else was to command those who held the ropes?
And that was the princ.i.p.al matter!
With long poles they steadied themselves on the raft. "Let go!" The raft shot out like an arrow into the centre of the stream.
"Hurrah!" cried those on sh.o.r.e, thinking the object already attained, fearing only that the raft would be carried into the park and driven against the trees.
But suddenly they came to a standstill; not a foot farther would it go, but danced about in midstream till the six men on board were forced to throw themselves down and cling fast, then darted down like an arrow against the near sh.o.r.e, to the spot where they had stood before. It took all the strength of the fifty men there a.s.sembled to hold it in, and it was only by the greatest exertion and with much apparent danger that the six men got safely off the raft and up the steep bank.
"This won't do, boys!" said the Mayor. "I wish the Lieutenant would come back; they are his relations. He drives us down here, and then doesn't come himself."
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 north-east to south-east, 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 pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 summer-house 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 summer-house was far below him; if he could pa.s.s 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 suns.h.i.+ne, and the next moment cras.h.i.+ng 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!"