Those promenading men and women were each glad of the other’s existence.  They loved one another and were ready without hesitation to commit all sorts of follies, deeming them mere bagatelles, which on solid land they would never have condoned in themselves.  Their rejoicing was a crucible melting together all the barriers by which convention divides man from man.  They experienced a sense of relief and liberation, and drew in deep breaths of this atmosphere of freedom.

At the captain’s order, the band set up its music stands and instruments on deck amidships; and when the blithe strains resounded through the whole of the Roland, that was the climax of festivity.  For half an hour it seemed as if the few clouds floating in the blue sky, the steamer, the people on the steamer, and the ocean had agreed to dance a quadrille.

For moments at a time the waves would form the droll, chubby-cheeked face of a jolly old man.  All at once the dreadful old man of the sea had turned good-humoured.  He even seemed to be in a jocular mood and displayed a certain clumsy vanity in letting his puppets, swarms of flying fish, dance their dance, too, in a circle about the Roland.  Perhaps, at his bidding, a whale would soon be spouting.  Indeed, within a few minutes, the immigrants on the fore-deck were shouting, “Dolphins!”

The gentlemen could not for any length of time avoid Ingigerd.

“Theridium triste, the gallows spider, you know,” said Wilhelm, as they approached her.

“How so?” said Frederick, slightly startled.

“You know what a gallows spider does near an ant nest.  It sits on the top of its blade of grass, and when a myrmidon passes below, it throws a little skein of cobweb at its head.  The ant does the rest.  It gets tangled up until it is absolutely helpless, and then the tiny little spider comfortably eats it up.”

“If you had seen her dance,” said Frederick, “you would be more inclined to assign her the role of the ant throttled by the spider.”

“I don’t know who,” said Wilhelm, “but some poet says, the sex is strongest when it is weak.”

Ingigerd was able to boast a new sensation, which she owed to Mr. Rinck, the officer in charge of the mail, a pretty little dog, a ball of white wool, scarcely larger than a man’s two fists put together.  The polar bear in miniature was barking wildly in its ridiculous thin falsetto at the great ship’s cat, which Mr. Rinck was holding to its nose.

“With your permission, Mr. Rinck, we shall sleep well to-night,” said Wilhelm.

“I always sleep well,” replied the other phlegmatically.  Close to the cat’s soft, heavy, hanging body, his cigarette, as always, was burning between the fingers of his right hand.

The cat spat, the dog barked.  The piping sound drilled Frederick’s ears like needle pricks.  Ingigerd laughed and kissed the little yelper.

Wilhelm began a conversation by telling of the tremendous amount of work Mr. Rinck had to do between Cuxhaven and New York.