"When Captain Butor had me look through the spy-glasses," Wendler would say, "his face was the colour of green cheese. And when I thought for a moment that I made out a boat and the next second heard the captain say, 'Look sharp, there are people in it,' I felt my knees getting weak."
In telling of his impressions when the boat entered, and immediately disappeared from, the field of his spy-glasses, the captain invariably declared that he had suddenly been beset by a paralysed feeling in his feet, and rubbed the glasses, and began to search again. He was on the point of leaving the bridge, since he could not get another view of that strange little flyspeck on the ocean and decided it was an allusion, when it occurred to him that for reasons of general security he had better scan the entire circle of the horizon. This time he looked backwards. Instantly he had the Hamburt stopped and turned, because he had sighted the boat a second time and it was now decidedly nearer. The first mate, too, on looking through the glasses saw it was a boat and that it contained passengers. Wendler was called on deck. When he peered through the glass, he distinguished white cloths waving.
"When my boys found out what was doing," said Captain Butor, "they began to carry on like lunatics. I had to use some of my sea-lingo on them. They wanted to dive over the railing into the sea, and swim to the boat."
Ingigerd was lying stretched out in her comfortable steamer chair, and Frederick was sitting on a camp-stool in front of her. On the Roland, when the sense of danger began to thicken, a feeling of ownership in regard to Ingigerd had taken hold of Frederick and never left him. Doctor Wilhelm and, as a result of his influence, everybody on the Hamburt looked upon Frederick as the romantic rescuer and lover of the little dancer. All were conscious of witnessing the development of a romance especially sanctioned by Divine Providence, and looked on with interest and respect. Ingigerd's attitude to Frederick was that of tacit docility, as if she, the obedient ward, recognised in him her natural guardian.
The air was fresh, the motion of the sea was easy. Suddenly, after a long spell of silence, which Frederick had imposed upon her, Ingigerd asked:
"Was it really nothing but chance that brought us together on the Roland?"
"There is no such thing as chance, or, rather, everything is chance, Ingigerd," was his evasive answer.
Ingigerd was not satisfied, and did not desist until she learned the causes and circumstances that had led Frederick to board the unfortunate Roland at Southampton.
"So for my sake," she said, "you came within a hair's breadth of losing your life. Instead, you saved my life."