But the professor, wishing to examine it still more carefully, rose, listened again to satisfy himself that the poor girl upstairs was not calling her mother or brother, and then entered his room.

The ticket proved to be a ticket in the Christiania Schools Lottery—­a very popular lottery in Norway at that time.  The capital prize was one hundred thousand marks; the total value of the other prizes, ninety thousand marks, and the number of tickets issued, one million, all of which had been sold.

Ole Kamp’s ticket bore the number 9672; but whether this number proved lucky or unlucky, whether the young sailor had any secret reason for his confidence in it or not, he would not be present at the drawing, which was to take place on the fifteenth of July, that is to say, in twenty-eight days; but it was his last request that Hulda should take his place on that occasion.

By the light of his candle, Sylvius Hogg carefully reread the lines written upon the back of the ticket, as if with the hope of discovering some hidden meaning.

The lines had been written with ink, and it was evident that Ole’s hand had not trembled while tracing them.  This showed that the mate of the ‘Viking’ retained all his presence of mind at the time of the shipwreck, and that he was consequently in a condition to take advantage of any means of escape that might offer, such as a floating spar or plank, in case the raging waters had not swallowed up everything when the vessel foundered.

Very often writings of this kind that are recovered from the sea state the locality in which the catastrophe occurred; but in this neither the latitude nor longitude were mentioned; nor was there anything to indicate the nearest land.  Hence one must conclude that no one on board knew where the “Viking” was at the time of the disaster.  Driven on, doubtless, by a tempest of resistless power, the vessel must have been carried far out of her course, and the clouded sky making a solar observation impossible, there had been no way of determining the ship’s whereabouts for several days; so it was more than probable that no one would ever know whether it was near the shores of North America or of Iceland that the gallant crew had sunk to rise no more.

This was a circumstance calculated to destroy all hope, even in the bosoms of the most sanguine.

With some clew, no matter how vague, a search for the missing vessel would have been possible.  A ship or steamer could be dispatched to the scene of the catastrophe and perhaps find some trace of it.  Besides, was it not quite possible that one or more survivors had succeeded in reaching some point on the shores of the Arctic continent, and that they were still there, homeless, and destitute, and hopelessly exiled from their native land?

Such was the theory that gradually assumed shape in Sylvius Hogg’s mind—­a theory that it would scarcely do to advance to Joel and Hulda, so painful would the disappointment prove if it should be without foundation.