The position was indeed simple enough. The gentleman was leaning against a seat with his hands in his pockets, and was looking directly westward into the sea; his face was in a bright light, although the sun had gone behind a cloud, and in addition he stood in sharp profile, which Else always especially liked. "Really a pretty profile," thought Else; "although the prettiest part, the large blue kindly eyes, did not come out well. But, as compensation, the dark full beard promises to be so much the better; I am always successful with beards. The hands in the pockets are very fortunate; the left leg is entirely concealed by the right--not especially picturesque, but extremely convenient for the artist. Now the seat--a bit of the railing--and 'The Indefatigable' is finished!" She held the book at some distance, so as to view the sketch as a picture; she was highly pleased. "That shows that I can accomplish something when I work with interest," she said to herself; and then she wrote below the picture: "The Indefatigable One. With Devotion. August 26th, '72. E. von W...." While the young lady was so eagerly trying to sketch the features and figure of the young man, her image had likewise impressed itself on his mind. It was all the same whether he shut his eyes or kept them open; she appeared to him with the same clearness, grace, and charm--now at the moment of departure from Stettin, when her father presented her to the President, and she bowed so gracefully; then, while she was breakfasting with the two gentlemen, and laughing so gaily, and lifting the glass to her lips; again, as she stood on the bridge with the captain, and the wind pressed her garments close to her figure and blew her veil like a pennant behind her; as she spoke with the steerage woman sitting on a coil of rope on the forward deck, quieting her youngest child wrapped in a shawl, then bending down, raising the shawl for a moment, and looking at the hidden treasure with a smile; as she, a minute later, went past him, inquiring with a stern glance of her brown eyes whether he had not at last presumed to observe her; or as she now sat next to the cabin and read, and drew, and read again, and then looked up at the cloud of smoke or at the sailors at the rudder! It was very astonishing how her image had stamped itself so firmly in this short time--but then he had seen nothing above him but the sky and nothing below him but the water, for a year! Thus it may be easily understood how the first beautiful, charming girl whom he beheld after so long a privation should make such a deep and thrilling impression upon him. "And besides," said the young man to himself, "in three hours we shall be in Sundin, and then--farewell, farewell, never to meet again! But what are they thinking about? You don't intend, certainly," raising his voice, "to go over the Ostersand with this depth of water?" With the last words he had turned to the man at the helm.