ng them mere bagatelles, which on solid land they
would never have condoned in themselves. Their rejoicing was a crucible
melting together all the barriers by which convention divides man from
man. They experienced a sense of relief and liberation, and drew in deep
breaths of this atmosphere of freedom.

At the captain's order, the band set up its music stands and instruments
on deck amidships; and when the blithe strains resounded through the
whole of the _Roland_, that was the climax of festivity. For half an hour
it seemed as if the few clouds floating in the blue sky, the steamer, the
people on the steamer, and the ocean had agreed to dance a quadrille.

For moments at a time the waves would form the droll, chubby-cheeked
face of a jolly old man. All at once the dreadful old man of the sea
had turned good-humoured. He even seemed to be in a jocular mood and
displayed a certain clumsy vanity in letting his puppets, swarms of
flying fish, dance their dance, too, in a circle about the _Roland_.
Perhaps, at his bidding, a whale would soon be spouting. Indeed, within
a few minutes, the immigrants on the fore-deck were shouting, "Dolphins!"

The gentlemen could not for any length of time avoid Ingigerd.

"Theridium triste, the gallows spider, you know," said Wilhelm, as they
approached her.

"How so?" said Frederick, slightly startled.

"You know what a gallows spider does near an ant nest. It sits on the top
of its blade of grass, and when a myrmidon passes below, it throws a
little skein of cobweb at its head. The ant does the rest. It gets
tangled up until it is absolutely helpless, and then the tiny little
spider comfortably eats it up."

"If you had seen her dance," said Frederick, "you would be more inclined
to assign her the role of the ant throttled by the spider."

"I don't know who," said Wilhelm, "but some poet says, the sex is
strongest when it is weak."

Ingigerd was able to boast a new sensation, which she owed to Mr. Rinck,
the officer in charge of the mail, a pretty little dog, a ball of white
wool, scarcely larger than a man's two fists put together. The polar bear
in miniature was barking wildly in its ridiculous thin falsetto at the
great ship's cat, which Mr. Rinck was holding to its nose.

"With your permission, Mr. Rinck, we shall sleep well to-night," said
Wilhelm.

"I always sleep well," replied the other phlegmatically. Close to the
cat's soft, heavy, hanging body, his cigarette, as al