teerage was still very sick, the atmosphere on the
_Hamburg_ lost none of its festal character. The bridge was free
territory. Ingigerd was usually to be seen there in the daytime playing
chess with Wendler, or looking on while Frederick won one game after the
other from the engineer. Naturally enough, the entire crew, by no means
exclusive of Captain Butor, felt profound satisfaction because of the
booty they had recovered on the high seas, each wearing an air of evident
pride in the catch. Had the exalted feelings that swelled the hearts of
all on board the gallant freight coach, the _Hamburg_, been transferred
into od-rays, the steamer would have sailed up New York Harbour
surrounded, even at high noon, by an aureole of its own radiance.

There was betting as to the number of the pilot-boat that would come to
meet the _Hamburg_, when suddenly it appeared hard by, with the number
"25" decipherable on its sail. Arthur Stoss had won. Almost choking with
laughter, he raked in a considerable sum, and Jacob Fleischmann envied
him with comically obvious greed.

The close companionship with his fellow-passengers on the small steamer,
the compulsion he was under to listen to their jokes and to the
superficial, reiterated tale of the disaster made Frederick inwardly
impatient. Unlike the others, he had not yet recovered his old relation
to life. His soul was numbed. He had lost his feeling for the past, his
feeling for the future, even his passion for Ingigerd. The moment of the
catastrophe seemed to have snapped all the threads that bound him to the
events, men, and things of his former life. Whenever he looked upon
Ingigerd, he felt an oppressive consciousness of responsibility. In these
days it almost seemed as if the girl in her predominatingly soft, serious
mood were awaiting the declaration of his love.

"You all want to have fun with me," she once said, "but nobody wants
anything serious of me."

Frederick did not understand himself. Hahlstroem was no longer living,
Achleitner had had to pay the penalty of his undignified, dog-like love,
and the girl, shaken and refined to the depths of her being, was wax in
his hands. Often he would look at her to find that her eyes had been
fixed upon him in a long, grave, meditative gaze. Then he would seem to
himself a very sorry sort of person, and was compelled to admit that he
who had once wished to overwhelm the girl with the infinite riches of a
passionately loving soul, was