Aside from little tiffs between Ingigerd and Frederick, the spirit on
board the _Hamburg_ was generally good-humoured, even jolly. The weather
remained clear, and the place of terror already lay eight hundred miles
behind in the ocean. Each minute carried the passengers of the _Roland_
farther along in their newly acquired lives. The ladies were feasted from
the cargo of tropical fruit in the hold of the vessel, which had a
carrying capacity of some two thousand register tons. Often the men for
Ingigerd's amusement would use the oranges for playing ball. The Atlantic
Ocean about the _Hamburg_ seemed a very different thing from that awful,
treacherous sea which had swallowed the _Roland_. It lay like a
wave-tossing heaven under the steamer, and gave it a gentle rocking
motion, by no means unpleasant. There was majesty in the course of even
the plain little trader, painted black above the water-line and red
below. Compared with that mechanical marvel, the _Roland_, it was like
a comfortable old stage-coach, and could be depended upon to make its
ten knots an hour with a great show of speed. Captain Butor in all
seriousness declared the castaways had brought him good luck. The moment
they appeared, the old man of the sea turned as peaceful and serene as an
octogenarian English rector.
"Yes," said Stoss, "but your old English rector first filled his belly
with a few hecatombs of human lives. Stop, look, listen! Don't be too
quick to trust him. When he's done assimilating, he'll have a still
better appetite."
Up to the very end of the trip, though there was a corpse on board and
the woman from the steerage was still very sick, the atmosphere on the
_Hamburg_ lost none of its festal character. The bridge was free
territory. Ingigerd was usually to be seen there in the daytime playing
chess with Wendler, or looking on while Frederick won one game after the
other from the engineer. Naturally enough, the entire crew, by no means
exclusive of Captain Butor, felt profound satisfaction because of the
booty they had recovered on the high seas, each wearing an air of evident
pride in the catch. Had the exalted feelings that swelled the hearts of
all on board the gallant freight coach, the _Hamburg_, been transferred
into od-rays, the steamer would have sailed up New York Harbour
surrounded, even at high noon, by an aureole of its own radiance.
There was betting as to the number of the pilot-boat that would come to
meet the _Hamburg_, when suddenly it appeared hard by, with the number
"25" decipherable on its sail. Arthur Stoss had won. Almost choking with
laughter, he raked in a considerable sum, and Jacob Fleischmann envied
him with comically obvious greed.
The close companionship with his fellow-passengers on the small steamer,
the compulsion he was under to listen to their jokes and to the
superficial, reiterated tale of the disaster made Frederick inwardly
impatient. Unlike the others, he had not yet recovered his old relation
to life. His soul was numbed. He had lost his feeling for the past, his
feeling for the future, even his passion for Ingigerd. The moment of the
catastrophe seemed to have snapped all the threads that bound him to the
events, men, and things of his former life. Whenever he looked upon
Ingigerd, he felt an oppressive consciousness of responsibility. In these
days it almost seemed as if the girl in her predominatingly soft, serious
mood were awaiting the declaration of his love.
"You all want to have fun with me," she once said, "but nobody wants
anything serious of me."
Frederick did not understand himself. Hahlström was no longer living,
Achleitner had had to pay the penalty of his undignified, dog-like love,
and the girl, shaken and refined to the depths of her being, was wax in
his hands. Often he would look at her to find that her eyes had been
fixed upon him in a long, grave, meditative gaze. Then he would seem to
himself a very sorry sort of person, and was compelled to admit that he
who had once wished to overwhelm the girl with the infinite riches of a
passionately loving soul, was a bankrupt, groping with empty hands in
empty pockets. He ought to speak, ought to open the sluices on the other
side of which the flood of his passionate love must have gathered and
risen high; but all the waters had trickled away, all the sources had
dried up. To mask the aridity of his soul, he adopted his old method of
a curt, dictatorial manner.