Frederick remained in the captain’s cabin over half an hour.  His presence seemed to give the skipper special pleasure.  It was astonishing what a gentle, tender soul was hidden beneath the commanding exterior.  Before disclosing a bit of that soul, he always puffed harder at his cigar and gave Frederick a long, searching look.  By degrees Frederick discovered what magnet was tugging strongly at the blond giant’s heart.  He kept recurring alternately to the Black Forest and the Thueringian Forest, and Frederick had a mental picture of the magnificent man clipping his privet hedge in front of his cosey cottage, or walking among his rose bushes with a pruning knife in his hand.  He could detect that the captain would far rather be living secluded in a sea of green leaves and green pine needles; and he felt convinced that it would have been delicious to him to submerge himself forever in the soft rushing of endless forests and dispense forever with the rushing and roaring of all the oceans in the world.

“Perhaps the night of all days has not yet come,” said the captain, with a humorous expression.  He rose and placed the large album in front of Frederick.  “Now I am going to lock you in here with this pen and this ink, and when I return, I want to find something clever on this page.”

Frederick von Kammacher turned the leaves of the mariner’s album.  It was unmistakable that the hope for a vegetable garden, gooseberry bushes, the chirping of birds, and the buzzing of bees was most intimately connected with this book.  Under the pressure of dreariness and the grave responsibility for many a sea trip, it must expand the captain’s soul to look over it, Frederick thought.  It seemed to point to a time when, in the peace and security of his simple home, it would serve its turn by testifying to all the dangers its possessor had gone through, all his past struggles and hardships.  In a sheltered haven it would afford pleasant retrospect, full of content.

Frederick’s own quietistic ideal in the form of a farm and a solitary log hut occurred to him.  But he was not living in it alone.  The little devil Mara was sharing it with him.  In embitterment he mentally climbed to still lonelier regions, and saw himself a hermit, who prayed, drank nothing but water, and lived on roots, nuts, and sometimes a fish of his own catching.

When the captain returned and he and Frederick had taken leave of each other, this is what he found in his book: 

  Borne aloft on wave and ocean,
  Of thy master’s course partaking,
  Some day thou wilt cease thy motion,
  Of thy master’s rest partaking. 
  In the garden of his stillness,
  To his manly deeds inspiring,
  Thou wilt faithfully bear witness. 
  Thou art language well becoming
  Him who daily danger faces,
  Gratitude of souls proclaiming,
  Whom he bore through cosmic spaces.

The signature was

“Frederick von Kammacher, Globetrotter.”