ing attendance on him.
The others could hear him loudly reiterate again and again that though
the loss of his oil-paintings, sketches, and etchings, which he had
intended to sell in America, was irreparable and beyond compensation, yet
the steamship company was unquestionably liable, and as soon as he
reached New York, he would take to haunting the company's office, until
they paid him full damages. They were to find out who and what he was.

Rosa, happy and eager, though with eyes red from crying, passed to and
fro between her mistress's cabin and the dining-room table, carrying now
one thing, now another, to Mrs. Liebling, who was still whining
reproachfully. It had been agreed to keep Siegfried Liebling's death a
secret from her, an easy thing to do since she had declared she was not
yet strong enough to see the children. Yet it was remarkable how the dead
woman had revived. When Frederick after breakfast paid her a professional
visit, he found she had only a dim recollection of having been
unconscious. She had had glorious dreams, she said, and when she realised
she was to be awakened, had felt so regretful that she tried to resist
the summons back to earthly life, back from the wondrous isle, the
veritable paradise, in which she had been.

Mrs. Liebling was beautiful. She complained of pains, and at Frederick's
bidding bared her body. He found it marked with blue spots, the result of
the rough tossings in the life-boat, which had left him, too, bruised and
wounded in various places and with frozen toes and fingers.

"My dear Mrs. Liebling," he said, "put up with your slight discomfort. We
were all dead, and we have undeservedly been granted a second life."

Shortly before ten o'clock, Captain Butor entered the dining-room, shook
hands with the gentlemen, asked how they had slept, and told them that
all night the men on the bridge had redoubled their vigilance on the
chance of discovering more survivors of the _Roland_. Since the wind was
still from the northwest, it was possible that the _Hamburg_ might chance
on the wreck, in case it had not sunk.

"As a matter of fact," he said, "we did sight a derelict at one o'clock,
but there were absolutely no persons aboard. It was an older wreck and a
sailing vessel, not a steamer."

"Perhaps it was the _Roland's_ murderer," said Doctor Wilhelm.

The captain asked the two physicians to come to the chart-room where they
and the sailors of the _Roland_, who were already