nst the
black, stormy sky. At the approach of danger he had recovered all his
coolness and confidence, qualities which he had often enough had a
chance to test in his adventurous journeyings through the solitudes of
the New World. Even the face opposite him in the other boat, the pale
oval framed by the hood of a gray cloak from beneath which straggled a
brown lock--even the glance of those eyes, which preferred to gaze down
into the dark, tempestuous depths rather than to meet his--nothing
could shake his coolness now when the time had come for him to show
himself master of the moment.

"We carry a few extra oars with us, it is true," he shouted back,
raising his voice, for the storm began to howl louder and louder. "But
I should prefer to help you with them in our own boat--Elfinger is an
excellent oarsman--and to fasten your craft to ours. Then we will take
you in tow, and the passage will be much safer and quicker; for your
boat is a flat-bottomed, badly-built affair, without keel or cut-water,
and all you gentlemen are in it for the first time."

"Agreed!" roared Schnetz in return. "Let us connect ourselves with our
_remorqueur_ with all possible speed, and then _vogue la galere!_"

Rossel's well-equipped craft had, fortunately, a good supply of ropes
at hand, so that Kohle, from his seat at the stern, soon drew the
drifting boat up to his own and made it fast with a firm knot. Then
Felix and Elfinger bent to their oars, and their four strong arms
seemed to drive the two boats as if in sport over the raging surface of
the water.

Not a word was spoken in either vessel. To the countess's whispered
question to Irene: whether this young baron belonged to the well-known
Weiblingens in D----, there came no answer. The young countess had
grown as pale as her high-colored complexion would permit. Her cousin
sought to conceal his ill-humor at the accident, by trying to light a
cigar; but the wind was too much for him. In the first boat, too, a
breathless silence reigned. Rosenbusch alone bent over from time to
time, and whispered a few words to his blonde sweetheart, but they were
lost forever in the storm. The gale raged above their heads with
increasing fury, lightning and thunder burst almost continuously from
the black clouds, and the blast, as it whirled the tumult through the
sky, seemed so violent that the clouds had no time to dissolve in rain.
All around the shore lay wrapped in darkness, and in the south, whe