definite leave of
everything that was dear to him in life, who has felt the rattle in his
throat, and received extreme unction, and death, death itself, has
settled on his flesh and limbs. I still feel death in my joints. And yet
I am sitting here in safety, in the pleasant lamplight, almost as in a
circle of friends and relatives. I am sitting in the cosiest home, with
the difference that I still cannot get myself to look upon you"--they
were the captain, the engineer, the boatswain, and the first mate--"as
something so insignificant as mere men."

"When we sighted the _Hamburg_", said Wilhelm, "I had just made my last
will and testament. You see I don't give myself up for lost as quickly as
my friend, Doctor von Kammacher. When your ship gradually grew from the
size of a pinhead to the size of a full-grown pea, all of us who could,
screamed at the top of our voices. We nearly burst our throats screaming.
And when your _Hamburg_ attained the size of a walnut, and we realised we
had been sighted, your ship flamed in my eyes like a huge diamond or
ruby, and to me the east from which you came shone more brilliantly than
the west, where the sun was still shining above the horizon. All of us
howled like watch-dogs."

"It will always be a miracle to me," Frederick resumed, "that such an
evening as this could follow such a morning. I have let days slip past,
by the hundreds, holding no more in them than minutes. But in this one
day, a whole summer has passed, and a whole winter. I feel as if the
first violet had followed directly upon the first snow."

Wilhelm told of how excited the sailors had been in Cuxhaven because
Catholic priests had boarded the _Roland_. Then he mentioned a dream his
old mother had had the night before he was to sail. A child of hers that
had been born many years before and had lived only a day, appeared to her
as a grown-up man and warned her not to let him make the trip.

"She begged me not to go," he said, "but, as I am an enlightened man, I
simply laughed at her for her fears."

Once launched upon the boundless sea of superstition, beloved by sailors,
the men went on to recite cases they knew of prophetic dreams, of
forebodings fulfilled, and the appearance of dying or dead men. This
suggested his friend's last letter to Frederick. He drew his portfolio
from his waistcoat pocket, where it had remained throughout his perilous
trip, and passed the letter around.

They read the passage, "In th