When the absurdly dressed man with long hair reached deck, he performed the drollest antics.  For a moment he would stand upright, chest out, like a recruit, the next instant bow profoundly, or take aim, as if hunting; and all the time he kept bawling: 

“I’m an artist.  I paid for my cabin.  I am well known in Germany”—­striking a conscious attitude—­“I am Jacob Fleischmann.  I am a painter, from Fuerth.”

Every now and then he would writhe pitifully and vomit salt water.  The water dripping from his clothes formed a pool where he stood.

Doctor Wilhelm had completely lost the faculty of speech.  All he could do was to sneeze incessantly.

In the meantime, the steward of the vessel brought Frederick hot tea, and one of the sailors, who acted as barber and nurse on the vessel, attempted to restore Mrs. Liebling to life.  Within less than two minutes, Frederick felt sufficiently revived to meet the demands of the occasion and assist the sailor-nurse with his Good Samaritan work.

After swallowing several glasses of brandy, Doctor Wilhelm with the help of the chief engineer, Mr. Wendler, attempted to revive Siegfried Liebling, though with small hope of success.

Mrs. Liebling, in no wise differing from a corpse, had been laid on the long mahogany table in what would have been the dining-room, had the vessel been carrying passengers.  Ugly, dark, purplish patches disfigured the forehead, cheeks, and throat of the woman, who was still young and who, before the shipwreck, had been beautiful.  On baring her body, they found that it, too, was marked, though less closely, with the same gangrenous spots, somewhat duller in colour.  Her body was swollen.  Death might have resulted from choking in a moment when she fell into a faint unobserved by any of her companions.  Toward the last, there had been several feet of water in the boat, and Rosa had for some time been entirely occupied with the dying boy.

When Frederick and the sailor-nurse laid Mrs. Liebling’s body face downward on the table, water flowed from her nose and mouth.  Her heart was no longer beating, and she gave no sign of life.  As Frederick assumed, what had happened was, that she had sunk unconscious to the bottom of the boat and had lain for some time under water.  He opened her mouth, forced her gold-filled teeth apart, put her tongue in the right position, and removed mucus, which had gathered at the opening of the air-passages.  While the ship’s cook rubbed her body with hot cloths, Frederick tried to induce artificial respiration by raising and lowering her arms and legs like a pump-handle.

The mahogany table took up the larger part of the low, creaking saloon, the only one the vessel possessed.  It was on the quarter-deck and was lighted from above.  The two walls running the length of the room were formed of the mahogany doors of the twelve staterooms, six on each side.  In the twinkling of an eye the deserted saloon was converted into a medical laboratory.