The company landed, except De Forrest and Beckwith, whose liberty had been stopped, and they were handed over to the care of Peaks, the boatswain, who put them both into the fourth cutter, and pulled back to the ship, leaving the other forward officers in charge of the rest of the boats. The party took the train at Neufahrwasser, and in a quarter of an hour were in Danzig. "Large vessels used to go up to the city," said Dr. Winstock, who was in the compartment with Lincoln and the Kinnairds; "but on the breaking away of the ice in the Vistula in 1840, a new passage to the sea was opened, and the water was diverted from the deep channel." "Danzig is a great grain city--isn't it?" asked Lincoln. "Yes; immense quantities of wheat come down the Vistula from the grain regions of Prussia, Poland, and other countries. It was formerly the greatest grain port in the world, but is now far surpassed by Chicago. It is five miles from the Baltic. The granaries are on an island in the river, where no dwelling-house can be built, and no fires or lights are allowed." The company left the train in the city, and went to the cathedral, commenced by one of the Grand Masters of the Teutonic order in the fourteenth century, and finished in the sixteenth. It is a fine church, and has fifty chapels, founded by the chief citizens as burial-places for their families. The principal curiosity in the church is a picture of the Last Judgment, painted for the pope, but captured by pirates on its way from Bruges to Rome. It was retaken by a Danzig vessel, and placed in this cathedral, but in 1807 was carried to Paris by the French. It was reclaimed after the war by the King of Prussia, who offered forty thousand thalers for the privilege of retaining it in Berlin; but when the owners declined the offer, he returned it to them. Danzig is one of the oldest cities in Germany, and resembles Nuremburg in the quaint old structures which it contains, and the walk through the _Langgasse_, the principal street, and the Long Market, was full of interest to the students. At half past seven all hands had collected at the railroad station, and before nine were on board the vessels. As the breeze was both fresh and fair, the squadron got under way, and the next day it was far out in the Baltic. CHAPTER XVIII. THE STRANDED STEAMER IN THE BALTIC. On the morning of the first day of July, at nine o'clock, the squadron had accomplished half the distance from Danzig to the mouth of the Oder, or rather to Swinemünde, on the outlet of the Haff to the Baltic. This Haff is the estuary of the Oder, and forms a considerable lake inside of the two islands which separate it from the sea.