He stared for a moment, and Alan flung off his hat, and as the storm broke, beating upon the cabin in a mighty shock of thunder and wind and rain, a bellow of recognition came from Ericksen.

They gripped hands.
The Swede's voice rose above wind and rain and the rattle of loose windows, and he was saying something about three years ago and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, when the strange look in Alan's face made him pause to hear other words than his own.
Five minutes later he opened a door looking out over the black sea, bracing his arm against it.

The wind tore in, beating his whitening beard over his shoulders, and with it came a deluge of rain that drenched him as he stood there.

He forced the door shut and faced Alan, a great, gray ghost of a man in the yellow glow of the oil lamp.
From then until dawn they waited.

And in the first break of that dawn the long, black launch of Olaf, the Swede, nosed its way steadily out to sea..