The attitude was certainly simple enough. He was leaning against a bench with his hands in his pockets, and as he looked straight out into the sea towards the west, his face was in full light, notwithstanding that the sun was hidden behind clouds, and it was also--what Elsa always particularly liked to draw--in profile. "A fine profile," thought Elsa, "although the finest features--the large, good-humoured blue eyes--are not seen at their best so. But, on the other hand, the dark beard will come out all the better, I can always succeed with beards; the hands in the pockets is very convenient, the left leg entirely hidden by the right, not particularly artistic but most convenient for the artist; now the bench--a little bit of the bulwarks and the 'Indefatigable' is finished." Elsa held the book at a little distance from her to look at the sketch as a picture; she was highly pleased. "That shows that I really can finish off a thing when I do it with all my heart," she said to herself, and wrote under the picture: "The 'Indefatigable.' With all my heart, 26th August, '72, E. v. W." While Elsa had been so busily trying to put upon paper the young man's figure and features, her image also had been present to his mind; and to him it was all the same, whether he shut his eyes or kept them open, he always saw her with equal clearness, and always equally graceful and charming, whether at the moment of their departure from Stettin, when her father introduced her to the President, and she bowed so prettily; or as she breakfasted with the two gentlemen, and laughed so merrily as she put her glass to her lips; or as she stood on the bridge with the Captain, and the wind blew her dress so close to the slender figure, and the grey veil fluttered like a flag over her shoulder; or as she spoke to the navvy's wife on the deck who was sitting in front of her on the coiled-up ropes and hushing her baby wrapped up in a shawl; as she stooped down, lifted the shawl for one moment, and looked with a smile at the hidden treasure; and as, a minute later, she passed by, and a severe look of the brown eyes asked him how he had dared to watch her? or as she now sat against the cabin and read and drew, and read again, and looked up to the clouds of smoke or to the sailor at the wheel. It was extraordinary how firmly her image had impressed itself on his mind in the short time; but then for more than a year he had seen nothing but the sky above and the water below. It was no wonder after all if the first pretty and nice-looking girl he saw after such long abstinence made so great an impression upon his feelings. "And besides," said the young man to himself, "in three hours we shall be at Sundin, and then farewell, farewell for ever more. But what are they doing? You are surely not going over the Oster sands with this tide?" With these latter words he turned to the man at the wheel.