apsizing, Frederick and Wilhelm each seized an oar
and rowed with the sailors.

Minutes passed. The fog lifted. Many eternally moving mountains and
valleys of water had rolled between the little boat and the wreck. Of the
_Roland_, the mighty fast mail steamer of the North German Steamship
Company, nothing was to be seen.

XLIX

Late in the afternoon of the same day, the captain of a sturdy little
trading vessel from Hamburg sighted a boat drifting on the long, high
swells. The weather was clear, and the captain made certain that the
people in the boat were signalling with handkerchiefs. Within half an
hour, the shipwrecked passengers of the _Roland_ were with great
difficulty hoisted on board the trader, one at a time.

There were fifteen persons in all, three sailors and a cabin-boy, with
the well-known name of the _Roland_ on their caps, two ladies, a woman
evidently from the steerage, a maid, a long-haired man of about thirty in
a velvet jacket, an armless man, the man who had been steering, two other
men, and two children, a boy and a girl. The boy was dead.

The hardships and terrors to which the delicate child had succumbed had
had almost equally dire effects upon the others. With the exception of
the maid Rosa, they looked as if they had been drowned beyond hope of
resuscitation. A very wet man--it was Frederick--attempted to drag an
unconscious wet young woman up the gangway-ladder, but his strength
failed him, and the sailors of the trader had to catch him as he
tottered, take the young woman from his arms, and help him struggle up
the ladder on deck, like a man whose every bone and muscle is racked by
rheumatism. Attempting to speak, he could produce only an asthmatic,
sibilant wheeze. On deck, he groaned, burst into a senseless, cackling
laugh, and spread out his purple, frozen hands. His lips, too, were
purple, and his sunken eyes glowed feverishly from a face crusted with
dirt and brine. He seemed to want nothing so much as to be dried, warmed
and cleaned.

He was followed by Rosa. Upon laying an unconscious little girl in the
arms of the first mate, she turned back to descend to the boat again, but
found the way barred by Bulke and one of the sailors of the trader,
hauling up the armless actor, Arthur Stoss. He was dripping wet, his eyes
were staring blankly, his nose was running, and his eyelids were red and
inflamed, while the tip of his nose was waxen white. After several vain
attempts t