Aside from little tiffs between Ingigerd and Frederick, the spirit on board the Hamburg was generally good-humoured, even jolly.  The weather remained clear, and the place of terror already lay eight hundred miles behind in the ocean.  Each minute carried the passengers of the Roland farther along in their newly acquired lives.  The ladies were feasted from the cargo of tropical fruit in the hold of the vessel, which had a carrying capacity of some two thousand register tons.  Often the men for Ingigerd’s amusement would use the oranges for playing ball.  The Atlantic Ocean about the Hamburg seemed a very different thing from that awful, treacherous sea which had swallowed the Roland.  It lay like a wave-tossing heaven under the steamer, and gave it a gentle rocking motion, by no means unpleasant.  There was majesty in the course of even the plain little trader, painted black above the water-line and red below.  Compared with that mechanical marvel, the Roland, it was like a comfortable old stage-coach, and could be depended upon to make its ten knots an hour with a great show of speed.  Captain Butor in all seriousness declared the castaways had brought him good luck.  The moment they appeared, the old man of the sea turned as peaceful and serene as an octogenarian English rector.

“Yes,” said Stoss, “but your old English rector first filled his belly with a few hecatombs of human lives.  Stop, look, listen!  Don’t be too quick to trust him.  When he’s done assimilating, he’ll have a still better appetite.”

Up to the very end of the trip, though there was a corpse on board and the woman from the steerage 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.