made desperate signs over their shattered bulwarks.
Suddenly her main-topsail went, yard and all, in a terrific squall; she
had to bear up under bare poles, and disappeared.

Other ships had spoken them before, but at first they had refused to be
taken off, expecting the assistance of some steamer. There were very few
steamers in those latitudes then; and when they desired to leave this
dead and drifting carcase, no ship came in sight. They had drifted south
out of men's knowledge. They failed to attract the attention of a lonely
whaler, and very soon the edge of the polar ice-cap rose from the sea
and closed the southern horizon like a wall. One morning they were
alarmed by finding themselves floating amongst detached pieces of ice.
But the fear of sinking passed away like their vigour, like their hopes;
the shocks of the floes knocking against the ship's side could not
rouse them from their apathy: and the Borgmester Dahl drifted out again
unharmed into open water. They hardly noticed the change.

The funnel had gone overboard in one of the heavy rolls; two of their
three boats had disappeared, washed away in bad weather, and the davits
swung to and fro, unsecured, with chafed rope's ends waggling to the
roll. Nothing was done on board, and Falk told me how he had often
listened to the water washing about the dark engine-room where the
engines, stilled for ever, were decaying slowly into a mass of rust, as
the stilled heart decays within the lifeless body. At first, after the
loss of the motive power, the tiller had been thoroughly secured by
lashings. But in course of time these had rotted, chafed, rusted,
parting one by one: and the rudder, freed, banged heavily to and fro
night and day, sending dull shocks through the whole frame of the
vessel. This was dangerous. Nobody cared enough to lift a little finger.
He told me that even now sometimes waking up at night, he fancied he
could hear the dull vibrating thuds. The pintles carried away, and it
dropped off at last.

The final catastrophe came with the sending off of their one remaining
boat. It was Falk who had managed to preserve her intact, and now it
was agreed that some of the hands should sail away into the track of the
shipping to procure assistance. She was provisioned with all the food
they could spare for the six who were to go. They waited for a fine day.
It was long in coming. At last one morning they lowered her into the
water.

Directly, in that d