This brief conversation cemented the bond between them more firmly.
In the survivors, with the exception of Frederick and Ingigerd, the consciousness of their newly acquired life soon assumed exuberant forms. Scarcely two days lay between them and the sinking of the Roland, yet these very people, who had undergone the brutal terrors of that awful event, abandoned themselves to the greatest gaiety. Arthur Stoss probably had never before shot off such an incessant fire of jokes and jibes, and probably never before had set such an audience a-laughing as the captain, the first mate, the boatswain, Wendler, the ship's cook, Fleischmann, Doctor Wilhelm, and even Mrs. Liebling, Rosa, Bulke, and the sailors of the Roland and the Hamburt.
Fleischmann involuntarily and unconsciously danced to the tune that Stoss in perfect good humour intentionally piped. It was most amusing when the man with black locks, dressed in a black velvet suit saturated with salt water, swaggeringly passed judgment upon Adolf Menzel, Böcklin, Liebermann, and other celebrated German masters. In expanding his theories of painting, he always used his lost treasures as examples. Stoss never wearied of getting the caddish genius to describe his paintings, the loss of which in Fleischmann's opinion was the worst disaster connected with the sinking of the Roland. The form that Doctor Wilhelm's teasing of Fleischmann took was, when Ingigerd was not present, to make him describe his rescue in detail. In the artist's brain, it was an event in an eminent degree glorifying to himself. All the sorry incidents had completely passed from his mind, including the fact that Rosa, Bulke and Ingigerd had pulled him out of the waves howling like a wet poodle.
The sum at which he estimated the loss of his pictures and which he intended to demand of the steamship company was a matter of general knowledge, like the price of stocks and bonds, within two and a half days jumping from eight hundred dollars to six thousand. There was no telling to what amount it might soar.
Fleischmann had contrived to get some writing paper on the Hamburt, and industriously set to work to caricature everybody on board. Thus, he often bestowed his company unbidden upon Frederick and Ingigerd, who had no need of anybody else in the world. That would ruffle Frederick's temper.
"I am surprised," he once said to him, by no means amiably, "that after so solemn an event, you are capable of such superficial trifling."
"A strong character!" said Fleischmann, laconically.
"Don't you think," Frederick continued, "that Miss Hahlström may be annoyed by your constantly looking at her?"
"No," said Fleischmann, "I don't think so."
Ingigerd took Fleischmann's part, thereby heightening Frederick's ill humour.