Section 53 The White Ship. — VII
The other two clung1 to the yard for some hours. At length (App. § 14) the young noble said faintly2: “I am exhausted, and benumbed3 with cold, and can hold4 no longer. Farewell, good friend. God preserve (App. § 34) you!”
So5 he dropped and sank, and of all the brilliant crowd6, the poor butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In7 the morning, some fishermen saw him floating in his sheep-skin coat8, and got9 him into their boat,—the sole relater of the dismal tale.
For1 three days no one dared to carry10 the intelligence to the king; at length they11 sent into his presence a little boy, who, weeping12 bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that the White Ship was13 lost, with all on board.
The king fell to the ground like14 a dead man, and15 never afterwards was seen to smile.—C. Dickens, A Child’s History of England.
Notes
1 to cling to the yard, sich an eine Segelstange an´klammern; for some hours, einige Stunden lang, for three days, drei Tage lang.
2 kraftlos.
3 vor Kälte erstarrt.
4 ‘to hold,’ here sich halten.
5 Say ‘Upon this (Hereupon) he fell into the water and sank to the bottom (in die Tiefe hinab´sinken)’.
6 crowd = company.
7 In the morning, am Morgen.
8 sheep-skin coat, Schafpelz, m.
9 nehmen; the appositional clause ‘the sole relater (Überbringer) of the dismal (traurig) tale (Kunde)’ must be placed immediately after the pronoun ‘him’, to which it belongs; and mark that: The apposition must always agree in number, gender, and case with the noun or pronoun to which it belongs.
10 to carry an intelligence to a person, Einem eine Botschaft verkünden. See App. § 5.
11 man; into his presence = to (zu) him, which place after ‘boy’.
12 The Present Participle may be used adverbially, as in English, to denote manner or state. Say ‘who told him kneeling and weeping bitterly, that’, etc.
13 was — board, mit Mann und Maus gesunken sei.
14 like — man = as if dead (wie tot), which place after ‘fell.’
15 Say ‘and never has one seen him smile again’.