e vivid, flashing orgies of my nocturnal
dreams, you are always tossing in a ship on the high seas. Do you intend
to make an ocean trip?" Of course, it excited not a little astonishment,
and it was with some thrills that they read: "Should it be possible for
me, after the great moment, to make myself noticeable from the Beyond,
you will hear from me again."

Captain Butor asked with an incredulous smile, yet eagerly, whether his
friend had indeed made himself noticeable from the Beyond.

"This is what happened to me in a dream. Judge for yourselves. I don't
know," said Frederick, in a voice still hoarse and barking. It was unlike
him to go on and relate, as he did, the dream that had been greatly
occupying his thoughts, which began with the landing in a mystic port and
ended with the Toilers of the Light. He described his friend, Peter
Schmidt, and declared that Peter had sent his astral self half way across
the Atlantic to greet him. He spoke of 1492, of Columbus's flag-ship, the
_Santa Maria_, but chiefly of his meeting with Rasmussen in the form of
an old chandler, giving a detailed description of the remarkable ship in
the shop window, the shop itself, and the chirping of the goldfinches. He
drew out his note-book and read aloud what the mysterious chandler had
said to him:

"It was precisely thirteen minutes past one on the twenty-fourth of
January when I drew my last breath."

"Whether that is true," Frederick concluded, "remains to be proved. So
much is certain--if there is anything about this dream that isn't the
illusory work of my imagination--my soul grazed the boundaries of the
world beyond, and I received a hint of the catastrophe to come. As to the
_Roland_, my friend, Peter Schmidt, showed me a ship in the harbour with
a tremendous hole in its side and said it had brought in a great many
people,--which would mean, it had transferred them to the world beyond.
In regard to my rescue, my disguised friend, Rasmussen, said I should
soon celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of 1492 with Peter Schmidt
in New York. But dreams are froth and foam. I fancy it would not be
difficult to explain all this rationalistically, from psycho-physiologic
causes."

Before the little family circle of the _Hamburg_ broke up for the night,
they touched glasses again with great gravity, even solemnity.

LII

Frederick awoke the next morning from an eleven hours' sleep, for which
he was indebted chiefly to a dose