it were striking us astern instead of ahead, it would
not be so bad. As it is, the _Roland_ at the utmost cannot make more than
three miles an hour. Were I on my schooner and had the same storm blown
up so suddenly, we should not have had time to furl a sail. We should
have been lost. Thank the Lord, it is better on modern steamers.
Nevertheless, I feel more comfortable on my four-master, and the devil
knows, I'd like to be on it now."

Frederick could not help laughing.

"As for the _Roland_," he said, "I would rather be, let us say, in the
Hofbraeuhaus in Munich. Your four-master has no greater charms for me than
a cabin on the _Roland_."

Hans Fuellenberg came lounging in and told them a wave had swept away one
of the life-boats on the after quarter. At the very same instant an
arched mass of water came flying slantwise over the port bow.

"Oh!" everybody cried.

"Magnificent, beautiful," said Frederick.

"That's cyclonic," the woman artist repeated.

"Believe me," they heard the colonel say again, "the stretch from New
York to Chicago alone"--

"That was a Niagara Falls," said Toussaint.

The wave, dropping into the ventilators and chimneys, had fairly bathed
the vessel. It was cold, too, and the _Roland_ was continuing its
obstinate, praiseworthy trip under a crust of ice and snow. Icicles were
hanging from the rigging. Glassy stalactites formed about the chart-room
and everywhere on the railings and edges of things. The deck was
slippery, and it was a perilous venture to attempt to make one's way
forward. But when Ingigerd's cabin door opened and her long light hair
rumpled by the wind appeared in the slit, Frederick instantly made the
venture. She drew him into her cabin, where he found two children keeping
her company.

"I invited them to stay with me because it's fairly comfortable in this
cabin."

The seriousness of the situation had extinguished in the girl all
coquetry and capriciousness. Frederick almost forgot what he had suffered
on her account and in what fatal dependence he had been upon this
creature only a short time before.

"Tell me, is there danger, Doctor von Kammacher?" she asked.

His evasive answer seemed to make no impression upon her. He was
astonished to see how energetic and resolute she was, in contrast with
her behaviour of yesterday, when she played the spoiled, suffering,
helpless child. She begged him to go try to find her father.

"In case anything happens, you know