Neb and Denmark were washed from the deck straight into the Atlantic Ocean. Clinging to the dog's collar with both hands, the boy did not see the wooden spar that struck him, nor did he know that his good and faithful dog pulled him up on to that same spar, saving them both. The last thing he remembered was a cold abyss of darkness. The Flying Dutchman receded into storm-torn darkness, leaving astern a dog clinging to a spar, with an unconscious boy draped across it, cast away upon the deeps.