“Would that she passed away in those illusions!” thought Frederick.

Arthur Stoss, transported up-stairs by his faithful Bulke, and Jacob Fleischmann strolled about on deck, or reclined in the steamer chairs, which even the trading vessel possessed.  Stoss needed some massaging and patching up, and while the physicians were busy with him, he crowed and cawed in his most jovial manner: 

“I always say you can’t destroy weeds.  Tanned leather is impervious to salt water.  I am like an ant which can spend a week under water without dying.”

Thanks to Rosa’s unwearying care, Ella Liebling escaped with nothing but a bad cold.  Looking very pretty and saucy in her own clothes, which had been cleaned and dried, the little maiden pried about in every nook and cranny of the vessel.  The skipper granted her a free pass to his bridge, the engineers to the engine-room.  She was even admitted into the great tube of the propeller-shaft.  She was everybody’s pet, and all soon became acquainted with her mother’s position in the world and manner of life.

When Ingigerd, after about fifty hours of rest in bed, finally appeared on deck, wrapped in Frederick’s overcoat, the passengers and crew fairly celebrated the event.  The exquisite creature, who had lost her father, was regarded with the same masculine pity by all the men on board.  Pander, the gallant cabin-boy, converted himself into her shadow.  He made a stool for her feet from an empty box of smoked sprats, and while she sat talking to Frederick, he stood off at a short distance ready to receive her orders.  Even Flitte, sailor and barber and nurse, who was supposed to give all who needed him equal attention, ran hither and thither for her sake with special zeal.

The call for Flitte was the one most frequently heard on the Hamburg.  The undersized little man from Brandenburg, whom a love of adventure had changed from a barber-surgeon into a sailor, unexpectedly experienced a triumph of his personality.  Now it was Mrs. Liebling who summoned him, now Ingigerd, now the sailor with the frozen feet, now Fleischmann, now Stoss, and even Bulke and Rosa—­Rosa, who for several hours during the day made herself useful in the contracted little kitchen, which was ruled by a shrewd old cook.  The physicians, too, had, of course, constant use for him; and it was the most natural thing that he should become a man of importance in the eyes of even his idolised captain, whom, in the ordinary course of things it was his duty to shave.  He was well aware of this, and since, moreover, pity had fanned into a lively flame his old inclination for nursing, he outdid himself in self-sacrificing deeds for the sick, both by day and night.  Frederick asked him the same question he had asked each member of the Roland’s crew: 

“Would you rather be a seaman than anything else?”

And Flitte was the first that without hesitation answered, “Yes.”