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 to produce a sound through his chattering teeth, he finally succeeded in framing "Rum! Hot rum!"
A mutual inclination seemed to make Bulke and Rosa pull together in their rescue work like two old mates. Fairly raining water, they descended again for Mrs. Liebling, who was lying prone in the bottom of the boat in a serious condition.
"She's dead, and the boy is dead," said the sailors of the trader, and wanted first to carry up the other woman, the steerage passenger, who showed she was still alive by a rattle in her throat, fearful to hear. Rosa burst into a howl and swore Mrs. Liebling was not dead.
"She's blue," the sailors declared. "She swallowed too much water."
But Rosa would not desist, and the sailors were compelled to carry Mrs. Liebling up first.
As they were lifting on deck the unconscious woman from the steerage, still emitting the fearful rattle, one of the Roland sailors, whose feet were frozen and who, during the whole long, dreadful drifting about on the ocean had not uttered a sound, suddenly began to bellow in pain.
"Shut up!" said his mates. "Don't carry on like an old woman."
He was the next to be lifted on board, merely whimpering now in ineffable agony. After him came the man in the velvet jacket, who was maundering, Doctor Wilhelm, Max Pander, and the other two sailors. Lastly the little corpse of Siegfried Liebling was lifted from the boat.
When the absurdly dressed man with long hair reached deck, he performed the drollest antics. For a moment he would stand upright, chest out, like a recruit, the next instant bow profoundly, or take aim, as if hunting; and all the time he kept bawling:
"I'm an artist. I paid for my cabin. I am well known in Germany"—striking a conscious attitude—"I am Jacob Fleischmann. I am a painter, from Fürth."
Every now and then he would writhe pitifully and vomit salt water. The water dripping from his clothes formed a pool where he stood.
Doctor Wilhelm had completely lost the faculty of speech. All he could do was to sneeze incessantly.
In the meantime, the steward of the vessel brought Frederick hot tea, and one of the sailors, who acted as barber and nurse on the vessel, attempted to restore Mrs. Liebling to life. Within less than two minutes, Frederick felt sufficiently revived to meet the demands of the occasion and assist the sailor-nurse with his Good Samaritan work.
After swallowing several glasses of brandy, Doctor Wilhelm with the help of the chief engineer, Mr. Wendler, attempted to revive Siegfried Liebling, though with small hope of success.
Mrs. Liebling, in no wise differing from a corpse, had been laid on the long mahogany table in what would have been the dining-room, had the vessel been carrying passengers. Ugly, dark, purplish patches disfigured the forehead, cheeks, and throat of the woman, who was still young and who, before the shipwreck, had been beautiful. On baring her body, they found that it, too, was marked, though less closely, with the same gangrenous spots, somewhat duller in colour. Her body was swollen. Death might have resulted from choking in a moment when she fell into a faint unobserved by any of her companions. Toward the last, there had been several feet of water in the boat, and Rosa had for some time been entirely occupied with the dying boy.
When Frederick and the sailor-nurse laid Mrs. Liebling's body face downward on the table, water flowed from her nose and mouth. Her heart was no longer beating, and she gave no sign of life. As Frederick assumed, what had happened was, that she had sunk unconscious to the bottom of the boat and had lain for some time under water. He opened her mouth, forced her gold-filled teeth apart, put her tongue in the right position, and removed mucus, which had gathered at the opening of the air-passages. While the ship's cook rubbed her body with hot cloths, Frederick tried to induce artificial respiration by raising and lowering her arms and legs like a pump-handle.
The mahogany table took up the larger part of the low, creaking saloon, the only one the vessel possessed. It was on the quarter-deck and was lighted from above. The two walls running the length of the room were formed of the mahogany doors of the twelve staterooms, six on each side. In the twinkling of an eye the deserted saloon was converted into a medical laboratory.
A common sailor had peeled Ingigerd Hahlström out of her clothes, and without circumstance had laid her delicate body, shining like mother-of-pearl, on a couch against the wall taking up the full width of the room. At Frederick's instruction, he rubbed her body vigorously with woollen cloths. Rosa was doing the same for Ella Liebling, who was the first to be put to bed. The steward was working away in a glow of zeal to get each of the dozen beds freshly spread, and as soon as the second one was ready, Ingigerd was laid between the warmed covers. Thanks to his faithful valet, Arthur Stoss, his teeth still chattering, was the next to be ready for bed.
Jacob Fleischmann gave his rescuers much trouble. When a sailor spoke to him kindly and attempted to undress him, he struck about wildly, and shouted in a rage, "I'm an artist!"
The steward and Bulke had to hold him fast and use main force in putting him to bed. Doctor Wilhelm abandoned his vain efforts to revive Siegfried Liebling and came with his leather case of drugs, which he had managed to save, just in time to give the painter an injection of morphine.
The sailor whose agony of pain had overcome him before he was lifted on deck had such badly swollen, frostbitten feet that his boots had to be cut off bit by bit. He clenched his teeth to keep from screaming, and merely uttered low groans until they laid him in bed; when he called for chewing tobacco.
The woman from the steerage clad in rags was also put to bed. All she could tell was that she was bound for Chicago with her sister, her four children, her husband, and her mother. Nothing of what had in the meantime befallen her seemed to have penetrated, or remained in, her consciousness.
The whole while Frederick, his upper body bared, with only the barber to help him, kept working uninterruptedly over Mrs. Liebling. It was good for him, because it made him perspire. Finally, however, his strength gave out, and Doctor Wilhelm came to his relief. He tottered into the nearest cabin, the door of which stood open, and fell face downward into the unmade bed, utterly exhausted.