er to become
disfigured. It was as if the sailor were complacently letting
himself be rocked by the tiny rippling wavelets.

When the sailors turned their gaze in the opposite direction, they
let out a cry. Before they could turn their faces, another body
appeared on the surface close to the bow of the boat. They came
near passing over it, but at the last moment it was washed away by
the swell. Now they all rushed to the side of the ship and looked
down. This time they saw the body of a child, a daintily dressed
little girl. "Dear, dear!" said the sailors, drying their eyes.
"The poor little kiddie!"

As the body of the little girl drifted past it seemed as if the
child were looking up at them. And there was such a serious
expression in its wistful eyes-as if it were out upon some very
urgent errand. Immediately after, one of the sailors shouted that
he saw another body, and the same thing was said by one who was
looking in an opposite direction. All at once they saw five bodies,
they saw ten, and then there were so many they could not count
them.

The ship moved slowly on among all these dead people, who
surrounded the vessel as if they wanted something. Some came
floating in large groups; they looked like driftwood that had been
carried away from land; but they were just a mass of dead bodies.

The sailors stood aghast, afraid to move. They could hardly believe
that what they saw was real. All at once they seemed to see an
island rising up out of the sea. From a distance it looked like
land, but, on coming nearer, they saw hundreds of bodies floating
close together, and surrounding the vessel on all sides. They moved
with the ship, as if wanting to make the voyage across the water in
its company. Then the skipper turned the rudder, so as to coax a
little wind into the sails; but it did not help much. The sails
hung limp, and the dead bodies continued to follow.

The sailors turned ashen, and silence fell upon them. The ship had
so little headway that she could not seem to get clear of the dead.
They were fearful lest it should go on like this the whole night.
Then a Swedish seaman stood up in the bow and repeated the Lord's
Prayer. Thereupon, he began to sing a hymn. When he had got half
through the hymn the sun went down, and the evening breeze came
along and carried the ship away from the region of the dead.

HELLGUM'S LETTER

An old woman came out from her little log cabin in the woods.
Although it w