LIV

The unexpected arrival of the little troupe of peculiar passengers on the Hamburg in mid-ocean produced a flutter of excitement in both captain and crew.  It was a feeling of mingled solemnity and gaiety.  For the benefit now of the captain, now of the boatswain, or the first mate, or the cook, or the engineer, the physicians had to repeat again and again the account of how they had been sighted and rescued.  It was a story that never grew stale, and from the eagerness with which the Hamburg’s crew listened to the oft-told tale, the physicians realised that even to those old sea-dogs the event was a miracle.  None of them, in all the years they had been sailing the high seas, had ever fished up such booty.

“When Captain Butor had me look through the spy-glasses,” Wendler would say, “his face was the colour of green cheese.  And when I thought for a moment that I made out a boat and the next second heard the captain say, ‘Look sharp, there are people in it,’ I felt my knees getting weak.”

In telling of his impressions when the boat entered, and immediately disappeared from, the field of his spy-glasses, the captain invariably declared that he had suddenly been beset by a paralysed feeling in his feet, and rubbed the glasses, and began to search again.  He was on the point of leaving the bridge, since he could not get another view of that strange little flyspeck on the ocean and decided it was an allusion, when it occurred to him that for reasons of general security he had better scan the entire circle of the horizon.  This time he looked backwards.  Instantly he had the Hamburg stopped and turned, because he had sighted the boat a second time and it was now decidedly nearer.  The first mate, too, on looking through the glasses saw it was a boat and that it contained passengers.  Wendler was called on deck.  When he peered through the glass, he distinguished white cloths waving.

“When my boys found out what was doing,” said Captain Butor, “they began to carry on like lunatics.  I had to use some of my sea-lingo on them.  They wanted to dive over the railing into the sea, and swim to the boat.”

* * * * *

Ingigerd was lying stretched out in her comfortable steamer chair, and Frederick was sitting on a camp-stool in front of her.  On the Roland, when the sense of danger began to thicken, a feeling of ownership in regard to Ingigerd had taken hold of Frederick and never left him.  Doctor Wilhelm and, as a result of his influence, everybody on the Hamburg looked upon Frederick as the romantic rescuer and lover of the little dancer.  All were conscious of witnessing the development of a romance especially sanctioned by Divine Providence, and looked on with interest and respect.  Ingigerd’s attitude to Frederick was that of tacit docility, as if she, the obedient ward, recognised in him her natural guardian.