While on the _Roland_, time had crawled at a snail's pace, the hour hand
of the clock on the _Hamburg_ travelled twice around its face with
surprising rapidity. During that interval, the two ladies remained in
bed, though the weather, which was clear and moderate, permitted being
on deck. In Mrs. Liebling the consequences of the strain manifested
themselves in periodic attacks of great excitement and fear accompanied
by violent palpitation; in Ingigerd Hahlström, in healthy sleepiness,
which made the administration of morphine in her case unnecessary.
Neither of the women developed fever. But the sailor whose feet were
frozen and the woman from the steerage had a high temperature. The
immigrant in her delirium wanted to jump from bed, and, at the
physicians' request, Captain Butor appointed one of the well sailors from
the _Roland_ and a sailor from the _Hamburg_ to relieve each other in
keeping constant watch over her.
Each time Frederick went to look after the poor creature, he felt himself
assailed by the temptation to save her forever from the moment of
awakening. From her own lips, while she had still been conscious, he had
heard of all the relatives she had probably lost on the _Roland_, her
husband, three sons, and a daughter-ranging from seven to eighteen years
of age--a sister and her mother. At first her fevered fancy occupied
itself with the shipwreck, her husband, children, and sisters. Later she
seemed to become a child again, reliving her life in her parents' home.
Swallows' nests, a cow, a goat, a meadow, in which there was a haystack
roofed to keep off the rain, figured as important things.
"Would that she passed away in those illusions!" thought Frederick.
Arthur Stoss, transported up-stairs by his faithful Bulke, and Jacob
Fleischmann strolled about on deck, or reclined in the steamer chairs,
which even the trading vessel possessed. Stoss needed some massaging
and patching up, and while the physicians were busy with him, he crowed
and cawed in his most jovial manner:
"I always say you can't destroy weeds. Tanned leather is impervious to
salt water. I am like an ant which can spend a week under water without
dying."
Thanks to Rosa's unwearying care, Ella Liebling escaped with nothing but
a bad cold. Looking very pretty and saucy in her own clothes, which had
been cleaned and dried, the little maiden pried about in every nook and
cranny of the vessel. The skipper granted her a free pass to his bridge,
the engineers to the engine-room. She was even admitted into the great
tube of the propeller-shaft. She was everybody's pet, and all soon became
acquainted with her mother's position in the world and manner of life.
When Ingigerd, after about fifty hours of rest in bed, finally appeared
on deck, wrapped in Frederick's overcoat, the passengers and crew fairly
celebrated the event. The exquisite creature, who had lost her father,
was regarded with the same masculine pity by all the men on board.
Pander, the gallant cabin-boy, converted himself into her shadow. He made
a stool for her feet from an empty box of smoked sprats, and while she
sat talking to Frederick, he stood off at a short distance ready to
receive her orders. Even Flitte, sailor and barber and nurse, who was
supposed to give all who needed him equal attention, ran hither and
thither for her sake with special zeal.
The call for Flitte was the one most frequently heard on the _Hamburg_.
The undersized little man from Brandenburg, whom a love of adventure had
changed from a barber-surgeon into a sailor, unexpectedly experienced a
triumph of his personality. Now it was Mrs. Liebling who summoned him,
now Ingigerd, now the sailor with the frozen feet, now Fleischmann, now
Stoss, and even Bulke and Rosa--Rosa, who for several hours during the
day made herself useful in the contracted little kitchen, which was ruled
by a shrewd old cook. The physicians, too, had, of course, constant use
for him; and it was the most natural thing that he should become a man
of importance in the eyes of even his idolised captain, whom, in the
ordinary course of things it was his duty to shave. He was well aware of
this, and since, moreover, pity had fanned into a lively flame his old
inclination for nursing, he outdid himself in self-sacrificing deeds for
the sick, both by day and night. Frederick asked him the same question he
had asked each member of the _Roland's_ crew:
"Would you rather be a seaman than anything else?"