infully. "To call such stuff
art! Millions and millions are spent on getting those things over from
France. They palm the trash off on the Americans. I'll wager that if one
of us Germans in Munich, Dresden, or Berlin were to do no better than
that, or that"--he pointed at random to several pictures--"we'd put him
in the A B C class."

"Perfectly true," said Frederick, laughing.

"Just you wait," cried Fleischmann. "I'll show the Americans a thing or
two. German art--"

But Frederick ceased to listen. His only impression after the lapse of
some time was, that in the meanwhile Fleischmann had misused the same
words, "German art," an endless number of times. Turning to Doctor
Wilhelm he said unblushingly:

"Do you remember the way this howling dog, this creature laughing like a
lunatic, rose up out of the waves beside our boat?"

Captain Butor and Wendler, who had been laughing mightily over something,
now stepped up with brimming eyes, as if they deemed the time had come to
be serious for a few moments in the company of the two physicians.

"Did you hear, gentlemen, that Newfoundland fishermen have sighted
corpses and floating fragments of the _Roland_?" said Captain Butor.
"Life-preservers from the _Roland_ have also been found. The corpses and
fragments are said to have been washed on a sand reef, where a lot of
sharks and birds are hovering and swarming. The fishermen say the sharks
and birds are what first attracted their attention."

"What is your opinion, Captain?" asked Doctor Wilhelm. "Do you think
anybody from the _Roland_ beside ourselves will turn up dead or alive?"

As to living persons, the captain would not commit himself.

"It may be," he said, "that one or two of the life-boats were carried
farther south and entered calm waters. Only, in that case, they were not
in the course of the large steamers, and they may not have met a vessel
for three or four days. Derelicts, fragments, and corpses are usually
carried south by the Labrador Current until they meet the Gulf Stream,
which carries them to the northeast. If they turn northward with the Gulf
Stream at the Azores, they may soon reach the coast of Scotland."

"Then there is a chance," said Frederick, "that our magnificent Captain
von Kessel may still find a grave in some Scotch potter's field."

"We poor captains," said Butor, who looked more like a German horse-car
conductor than a captain. "They ask us to command the sea and the storm,
like o