The unexpected arrival of the little troupe of peculiar passengers on the
_Hamburg_ in mid-ocean produced a flutter of excitement in both captain
and crew. It was a feeling of mingled solemnity and gaiety. For the
benefit now of the captain, now of the boatswain, or the first mate, or
the cook, or the engineer, the physicians had to repeat again and again
the account of how they had been sighted and rescued. It was a story that
never grew stale, and from the eagerness with which the _Hamburg's_ crew
listened to the oft-told tale, the physicians realised that even to those
old sea-dogs the event was a miracle. None of them, in all the years they
had been sailing the high seas, had ever fished up such booty.
"When Captain Butor had me look through the spy-glasses," Wendler would
say, "his face was the colour of green cheese. And when I thought for a
moment that I made out a boat and the next second heard the captain say,
'Look sharp, there are people in it,' I felt my knees getting weak."
In telling of his impressions when the boat entered, and immediately
disappeared from, the field of his spy-glasses, the captain invariably
declared that he had suddenly been beset by a paralysed feeling in his
feet, and rubbed the glasses, and began to search again. He was on the
point of leaving the bridge, since he could not get another view of that
strange little flyspeck on the ocean and decided it was an allusion, when
it occurred to him that for reasons of general security he had better
scan the entire circle of the horizon. This time he looked backwards.
Instantly he had the _Hamburg_ stopped and turned, because he had sighted
the boat a second time and it was now decidedly nearer. The first mate,
too, on looking through the glasses saw it was a boat and that it
contained passengers. Wendler was called on deck. When he peered through
the glass, he distinguished white cloths waving.
"When my boys found out what was doing," said Captain Butor, "they began
to carry on like lunatics. I had to use some of my sea-lingo on them.
They wanted to dive over the railing into the sea, and swim to the boat."
* * * * *
Ingigerd was lying stretched out in her comfortable steamer chair, and
Frederick was sitting on a camp-stool in front of her. On the _Roland_,
when the sense of danger began to thicken, a feeling of ownership in
regard to Ingigerd had taken hold of Frederick and never left him. Doctor
Wilhelm and, as a result of his influence, everybody on the _Hamburg_
looked upon Frederick as the romantic rescuer and lover of the little
dancer. All were conscious of witnessing the development of a romance
especially sanctioned by Divine Providence, and looked on with interest
and respect. Ingigerd's attitude to Frederick was that of tacit docility,
as if she, the obedient ward, recognised in him her natural guardian.
The air was fresh, the motion of the sea was easy. Suddenly, after a long
spell of silence, which Frederick had imposed upon her, Ingigerd asked:
"Was it really nothing but chance that brought us together on the
_Roland_?"
"There is no such thing as chance, or, rather, everything is chance,
Ingigerd," was his evasive answer.
Ingigerd was not satisfied, and did not desist until she learned the
causes and circumstances that had led Frederick to board the unfortunate
_Roland_ at Southampton.
"So for my sake," she said, "you came within a hair's breadth of losing
your life. Instead, you saved my life."
This brief conversation cemented the bond between them more firmly.
In the survivors, with the exception of Frederick and Ingigerd, the
consciousness of their newly acquired life soon assumed exuberant forms.
Scarcely two days lay between them and the sinking of the _Roland_, yet
these very people, who had undergone the brutal terrors of that awful
event, abandoned themselves to the greatest gaiety. Arthur Stoss probably
had never before shot off such an incessant fire of jokes and jibes, and
probably never before had set such an audience a-laughing as the captain,
the first mate, the boatswain, Wendler, the ship's cook, Fleischmann,
Doctor Wilhelm, and even Mrs. Liebling, Rosa, Bulke, and the sailors of
the _Roland_ and the _Hamburg_.
Fleischmann involuntarily and unconsciously danced to the tune that Stoss
in perfect good humour intentionally piped. It was most amusing when the
man with black locks, dressed in a black velvet suit saturated with salt
water, swaggeringly passed judgment upon Adolf Menzel, Böcklin,
Liebermann, and other celebrated German masters. In expanding his
theories of painting, he always used his lost treasures as examples.
Stoss never wearied of getting the caddish genius to describe his
paintings, the loss of which in Fleischmann's opinion was the worst
disaster connected with the sinking of the _Roland_. The form that Doctor
Wilhelm's teasing of Fleischmann took was, when Ingigerd was not present,
to make him describe his rescue in detail. In the artist's brain, it was
an event in an eminent degree glorifying to himself. All the sorry
incidents had completely passed from his mind, including the fact that
Rosa, Bulke and Ingigerd had pulled him out of the waves howling like a
wet poodle.
The sum at which he estimated the loss of his pictures and which he
intended to demand of the steamship company was a matter of general
knowledge, like the price of stocks and bonds, within two and a half
days jumping from eight hundred dollars to six thousand. There was no
telling to what amount it might soar.
Fleischmann had contrived to get some writing paper on the _Hamburg_,
and industriously set to work to caricature everybody on board. Thus, he
often bestowed his company unbidden upon Frederick and Ingigerd, who had
no need of anybody else in the world. That would ruffle Frederick's
temper.
"I am surprised," he once said to him, by no means amiably, "that after
so solemn an event, you are capable of such superficial trifling."
"A strong character!" said Fleischmann, laconically.
"Don't you think," Frederick continued, "that Miss Hahlström may be
annoyed by your constantly looking at her?"
"No," said Fleischmann, "I don't think so."
Ingigerd took Fleischmann's part, thereby heightening Frederick's ill
humour.