Stoss could drink holding a glass between his teeth; but he was not touching liquor to-day.  Nevertheless, he was in a treating mood, a circumstance by which Captain Butor, Wendler, Fleischmann and the sailors profited to toast one another freely.  Nor did Doctor Wilhelm require much urging.

In an undertone he informed Frederick that The Staats-Zeitung in its issue of the morning before had opened a collection for Fleischmann, and a sum had already come in such as the poor fellow in his whole life had probably never before seen.  At last Frederick laughed, and heartily.  He understood why Fleischmann was drinking heavily, with so determined a manner, and why he was puffing himself like a turkey.

“What do you think of that stuff, Doctor von Kammacher?” he asked, pointing to the paintings and snorting disdainfully.  “To call such stuff art!  Millions and millions are spent on getting those things over from France.  They palm the trash off on the Americans.  I’ll wager that if one of us Germans in Munich, Dresden, or Berlin were to do no better than that, or that”—­he pointed at random to several pictures—­“we’d put him in the A B C class.”

“Perfectly true,” said Frederick, laughing.

“Just you wait,” cried Fleischmann.  “I’ll show the Americans a thing or two.  German art—­”

But Frederick ceased to listen.  His only impression after the lapse of some time was, that in the meanwhile Fleischmann had misused the same words, “German art,” an endless number of times.  Turning to Doctor Wilhelm he said unblushingly: 

“Do you remember the way this howling dog, this creature laughing like a lunatic, rose up out of the waves beside our boat?”

Captain Butor and Wendler, who had been laughing mightily over something, now stepped up with brimming eyes, as if they deemed the time had come to be serious for a few moments in the company of the two physicians.

“Did you hear, gentlemen, that Newfoundland fishermen have sighted corpses and floating fragments of the Roland?” said Captain Butor.  “Life-preservers from the Roland have also been found.  The corpses and fragments are said to have been washed on a sand reef, where a lot of sharks and birds are hovering and swarming.  The fishermen say the sharks and birds are what first attracted their attention.”

“What is your opinion, Captain?” asked Doctor Wilhelm.  “Do you think anybody from the Roland beside ourselves will turn up dead or alive?”

As to living persons, the captain would not commit himself.

“It may be,” he said, “that one or two of the life-boats were carried farther south and entered calm waters.  Only, in that case, they were not in the course of the large steamers, and they may not have met a vessel for three or four days.  Derelicts, fragments, and corpses are usually carried south by the Labrador Current until they meet the Gulf Stream, which carries them to the northeast.  If they turn northward with the Gulf Stream at the Azores, they may soon reach the coast of Scotland.”