He wore a little metal whistle, suspended by a green cord from a button on his waistcoat. With this he piped a sort of boatswain's signal. Elfinger started. "That is Roland's call!" he said, seriously. "What can he want of us?" Felix raised his oar from the water; the two boats approached one another. "Ladies and gentlemen," said Schnetz, "allow me, first of all, to make you acquainted with one another, as well as such a thing can be done on such a rocking floor, and without the customary bows. I have the honor, ladies, to introduce you to my friend Baron Felix von Weiblingen, who has just deserted a diplomatic career for the liberal arts, and, as you perceive, knows how to handle the oar as skillfully as the chisel and modeling-tool. Herr Graf ----, Herr Baron ----, Messieurs Rosenbusch and Elfinger--the ladies, I understand, are already known to one another. Look here, baron, can't you help us out with an oar? One of ours has come to grief. We have suffered a slight shipwreck." Felix stood up. Although the waves rocked the little boat violently, his slender, powerful figure stood out strong and erect against the black, stormy sky. At the approach of danger he had recovered all his coolness and confidence, qualities which he had often enough had a chance to test in his adventurous journeyings through the solitudes of the New World. Even the face opposite him in the other boat, the pale oval framed by the hood of a gray cloak from beneath which straggled a brown lock--even the glance of those eyes, which preferred to gaze down into the dark, tempestuous depths rather than to meet his--nothing could shake his coolness now when the time had come for him to show himself master of the moment. "We carry a few extra oars with us, it is true," he shouted back, raising his voice, for the storm began to howl louder and louder. "But I should prefer to help you with them in our own boat--Elfinger is an excellent oarsman--and to fasten your craft to ours. Then we will take you in tow, and the passage will be much safer and quicker; for your boat is a flat-bottomed, badly-built affair, without keel or cut-water, and all you gentlemen are in it for the first time." "Agreed!" roared Schnetz in return. "Let us connect ourselves with our _remorqueur_ with all possible speed, and then _vogue la galere!_" Rossel's well-equipped craft had, fortunately, a good supply of ropes at hand, so that Kohle, from his seat at the stern, soon drew the drifting boat up to his own and made it fast with a firm knot. Then Felix and Elfinger bent to their oars, and their four strong arms seemed to drive the two boats as if in sport over the raging surface of the water.