"Be careful!" cried some of the sailors. "Never mind! We will sail with the current," cried out the majority. But once such a storm came that to that hour its like had not been on the water. The wind whirled ocean and clouds into one hellish chaos. Pillars of water rose up and flew then with roars at "The Purple"; they were raging and bellowing dreadfully. They fell on the ship, they drove her down to the bottom, they hurled her up to the clouds, then cast her down again. The weak rigging snapped, and now a quick cry of despair was heard on the deck of that vessel. "'The Purple' is sinking!" "The Purple" was really sinking, while the crew, unaccustomed to work and to navigate, knew not how to save her. But when the first moment of terror had passed, rage boiled up in their hearts, for those mariners still loved that ship of theirs. All sprang up speedily, some rushed to fire cannon-balls at the winds and foaming water, others seized what each man could find near him and flogged that sea which was drowning "The Purple." Great was that fight of despair against the elements. But the waves had more strength than the mariners. The guns filled with water and then they were silent. Gigantic whirls seized struggling sailors and swept them out into watery chaos. The crew decreased every minute, but they struggled on yet. Covered with water, half-blinded, concealed by a mountain of foam, they fought till they dropped in the battle. Strength left them, but after brief rest they sprang again to the struggle. At last their hands fell. They felt that death was approaching. Dull despair seized them. Those sailors looked at one another as if demented. Now those same voices which had warned previously of danger were raised again, and more powerfully, so powerfully this time that the roar of the waves could not drown them. Those voices said: "O blind men! How can ye cannonade wind, or flog waves? Mend your vessel! Go to the hold. Work there. The ship 'Purple' is afloat yet." At these words those mariners, half-dead already, recovered, all rushed to the hold and began then to work in it. And they worked from morning till night in the sweat of their brows and with effort, seeking thus to retrieve their past sloth and their blindness. THE CRANES IV THE CRANES Homesickness (nostalgia) tortures mainly people who for various reasons are utterly unable to return to their own country, but even those for whom return is merely a question of will power feel its attacks sometimes. The cause may be anything: a sunrise or a sunset which calls to mind a dawn or an evening at home, some note of a foreign song in which the rhythm of one's own country is heard, some group of trees which call to mind remotely the native village--anything suffices!