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 demoralised crowd, trouble broke out. Two men who
had no business there had jumped into the boat under the pretence of