three sides.
Once a person was seated, it was impossible to pass him; and when the
officers gathered for meals, they shoved themselves into place in a
certain order, the captain first.

At seven o'clock Doctor Wilhelm and Frederick appeared for supper. They
found a soup tureen sending up clouds of steam and a well-constructed oil
lamp over the table shedding a cheerful light. The _Hamburg_ was not
lighted by electricity.

The two physicians, like all victims of accidents, the objects of really
touching solicitude, were assigned seats against the warmest wall,
dividing the cabin from the engine-room. Captain Butor served the strong
hot soup, and Mr. Wendler, chief engineer, a rotund little mariner, in an
attempt to enliven the shipwrecked men, cautiously ventured a joke or two
even before the roast was served. He came from Lindenau near Leipzig, and
the rest of the crew teased him for his Low German.

"Don't talk," said the captain to Wilhelm and Frederick. "Just eat,
drink, and sleep."

At first they were inclined to take his advice, but in the course of the
meal, after one of the sailors had served an immense cut of roast beef,
and the captain had carved it, and they had washed the meat down with red
wine, their spirits rose from moment to moment.

Bulke appeared at the door showing evidences of the royal banquet to
which he and the sailors of the _Roland_ had been treated by the sailors
of the _Hamburg_. Notwithstanding his condition, pardonable enough in
the circumstances, he would not go to sleep without first receiving
instructions from Doctor Wilhelm and Frederick, before whom he stood in
military attitude, hand to his cap, awaiting orders.

It was decided that the sailor-nurse and another sailor of the _Hamburg_
should go on night duty, since all the men from the _Roland_ needed rest
and sleep.

Though Frederick's and Doctor Wilhelm's spirits rose visibly, they never
referred to the sinking of the _Roland_. It was too tremendous a thing,
too dreadful, too near for any of the survivors, except the sailors, to
speak of it without intense emotion. It was like a dull weight on their
souls. Whatever Wilhelm and Frederick said related merely to their
difficulties in the life-boat, or to the trip on the _Roland_ before it
overstepped that moment in eternity which determined its awful fate.

"Captain," said Frederick, "you don't know how astonishing it is to be
raised from the dead. Conceive a man who has taken