"What will happen if the steamer goes to England and tells our
position? Following the events of yesterday afternoon, this morning and
now, the English can easily figure out our course."

"By Jove, you are right there! I had not happened to think of that. It
is indeed true that one gets duller as the years go by. That must be
prevented under all circumstances, especially on account of to-morrow.
You know what then--don't you?"

Groening nodded.

"Yes, to-morrow we'll have a trying day," I continued, "and, if we are
going to succeed, we can't make conditions any harder for ourselves."

I was pondering the question of how we were going to avoid the danger of
being betrayed by the fishermen without endangering their lives, which I
did not want to do. I thought this over for a moment. Suddenly I struck
my forehead with my hand and laughed.

"So stupidly foolish! One is never able to think of the simplest way!" I
said. "We'll simply shift the entire crowd to one of the sailing-ships.
With this light breeze, it will take them at least three days to reach
the coast and, after that, it does not matter. It will be a little
crowded for so many people, but that can't be helped."

"And the provisions?" Groening asked. "What are they going to live on?"

"That's simple," I answered. "First of all they can take off all the
provisions from the steamer and, besides that, they have all the fish in
the sailing-ship."

I sank the smaller of the two sailboats and then approached the steamer
which had taken aboard the crews from the other boats.

The captain of the steamer was bitterly disappointed, of course, when I
brought him word that all hands would have to go to the sailboat. He had
been so delighted to be the one chosen to keep his steamer. On the other
hand, to the captain of the sailing-ship, the message that he could go
back to his old, faithful smack came as a gift from heaven.

Yes, indeed, joy and sorrow lie close together and go hand in hand.

After a short half hour the shift was made, and the steamer also went
down into the deep--the fifteenth ship within two hours. First the
skipper carefully hauled up his nets and then with flapping sails slowly
swung around and laid his course toward the west.

During the night we dropped down to the bottom of the ocean at X----. We
wanted to get some rest for one night and gather strength for the next
day. It is comfortable to lie in the soft sands of the North Sea. It is