ry town; a child cries at
the top of its voice. They are poor people there in hundreds, living,
packed as in boxes. The princes alight and step into a boat and are
rowed to the spot; it becomes known who they are; they themselves help
an old woman with three children, all wet to the waist, to climb on to a
raft; they themselves give them money, shout instructions to them. And
they point to the old fortress of St. Ladislas as a refuge....

But a cry arises, farther on, a cry at first not clearly perceived in
the darkness of the evening, then at last distinctly audible:

"The Therezia Dyke! The Therezia Dyke!..."

The princes want to go there; it is not possible on horseback; the only
way is in boats. Prince Herman himself grasps the sculls; in the next
boat Dutri declares to Von Fest, one of the Gothlandic equerries, that,
taken all round, he thinks Venice more comfortable....

"The Therezia Dyke! The Therezia Dyke!..."

The dyke lies like the black back of a great, long beast just outside
the town, on the left bank of the Zanthos, and protects the whole St.
Therezia district, the eastern portion of the city, which stands
tolerably high, from the river, which generally overflows in springtime.
The boats glide over the water-streets; a landing is possible in the
Therezia Square; lanterns are burning; torches flare, ruddy
scintillations dart over the water. The square is large and wide; the
houses stand black round about it and surround it in the night with
their irregular lines of gables and chimneys, with the massive pile of
the church of St. Therezia, whose steeples are lost in the dark sky; in
the centre of the square rises a great equestrian statue of a Liparian
emperor, gigantic in motionless bronze, stretching one arm, sword in
hand, over the petty swarming of the crowd.

Othomar and Herman have sent their three equerries, Dutri, Leoni and Von
Fest, for whom horses have been found and saddled, to the dyke, which
protects a whole suburb of villas, factories and the St. Therezia
railway-station against the waters of the Zanthos, which has already
poured its right bank over the country and is drowning it. The princes
stand in the middle of the square on the steps of the pedestal of the
statue; they would have liked to go on farther, but the mayor himself
has begged them to stay where they are: farther on mortal danger
threatens at every moment.... All that could be done has been done;
there is nothing more to do