Book Three — Unity, Unity.

A woman pulled from the water believes she has heard God speaking through the noise of the disaster — the churning, the shrieking, the waves — a voice saying "Unity, Unity." She is rescued by a small boat with three occupants: a brawny old sailor, an elderly woman with round owlish eyes, and a poor little heartbroken boy. Lagerlöf renders the rescue with the same spare precision as the sinking.

The following afternoon, a Norwegian ship sailing along the Newfoundland banks finds bodies in the water. The sea is clear and still as a mirror. The bodies drift past one by one, and the sailors watch them in silence. There is a child among them, eyes open, as if out upon an urgent errand.

The chapter establishes the novel's providential register without asserting it directly. Things happen; some people find God's hand in them. Lagerlöf does not confirm or deny. What she shows is the texture of how disasters produce faith, and how that faith travels — across oceans, into villages, through the hands of a preacher who himself survived something he could not explain.