“It will always be a miracle to me,” Frederick resumed, “that such an evening as this could follow such a morning.  I have let days slip past, by the hundreds, holding no more in them than minutes.  But in this one day, a whole summer has passed, and a whole winter.  I feel as if the first violet had followed directly upon the first snow.”

Wilhelm told of how excited the sailors had been in Cuxhaven because Catholic priests had boarded the Roland.  Then he mentioned a dream his old mother had had the night before he was to sail.  A child of hers that had been born many years before and had lived only a day, appeared to her as a grown-up man and warned her not to let him make the trip.

“She begged me not to go,” he said, “but, as I am an enlightened man, I simply laughed at her for her fears.”

Once launched upon the boundless sea of superstition, beloved by sailors, the men went on to recite cases they knew of prophetic dreams, of forebodings fulfilled, and the appearance of dying or dead men.  This suggested his friend’s last letter to Frederick.  He drew his portfolio from his waistcoat pocket, where it had remained throughout his perilous trip, and passed the letter around.

They read the passage, “In the vivid, flashing orgies of my nocturnal dreams, you are always tossing in a ship on the high seas.  Do you intend to make an ocean trip?” Of course, it excited not a little astonishment, and it was with some thrills that they read:  “Should it be possible for me, after the great moment, to make myself noticeable from the Beyond, you will hear from me again.”

Captain Butor asked with an incredulous smile, yet eagerly, whether his friend had indeed made himself noticeable from the Beyond.

“This is what happened to me in a dream.  Judge for yourselves.  I don’t know,” said Frederick, in a voice still hoarse and barking.  It was unlike him to go on and relate, as he did, the dream that had been greatly occupying his thoughts, which began with the landing in a mystic port and ended with the Toilers of the Light.  He described his friend, Peter Schmidt, and declared that Peter had sent his astral self half way across the Atlantic to greet him.  He spoke of 1492, of Columbus’s flag-ship, the Santa Maria, but chiefly of his meeting with Rasmussen in the form of an old chandler, giving a detailed description of the remarkable ship in the shop window, the shop itself, and the chirping of the goldfinches.  He drew out his note-book and read aloud what the mysterious chandler had said to him: 

“It was precisely thirteen minutes past one on the twenty-fourth of January when I drew my last breath.”