Frederick had one of those idealistic heads set on broad shoulders characteristic of certain circles in the "nation of poets and philosophers." His ancestors had been scholars, statesmen, and soldiers. The general, his father, was in externals wholly the soldier; but beneath his uniform, his heritage from his own father, a renowned botanist, director of the botanical gardens at Genoa, actively manifested itself in a strong interest in science. Frederick's mother was a well-read woman, passionately fond of the theatre and an enthusiastic lover of Goethe and the poets of the romantic school. Her father, who had been prime minister of Wittenberg, as a student and even later in his career, composed poetry, which her adoring love for him had caused her to publish and several times revise and reprint.

Though Frederick had never been ill, there were times when he showed symptoms of a peculiar passionateness. His friends knew that when all went well, he was a dormant volcano; that when things did not go so well, he was a volcano spitting fire and smoke. To all appearances equally removed from effeminateness and brutality, he was subject, nevertheless, to accesses of both. Now and then a dithyrambic rapture came over him, especially when there was wine in his blood. He would pace about, and if it was daytime, might address a pathetic, sonorous invocation to the sun, or at night, to the constellations, particularly to the chaste Cassiopeia.

Since she had known him, Mara felt that his proximity was by no means lacking in danger; but being what she was, it piqued her to play with fire.

"I don't like people that think themselves better than others," she said.

"Being a Pharisee, I do," Frederick drily rejoined, and went on cruelly: "I think for your years you are extremely forward and cock-sure. Your dance pleases me better than your conversation." He felt much like a man berating his sister.

Mara silently studied him for a moment, a suggestive smile on her lips.

"According to your notions," she finally said, "a girl mustn't speak unless she's spoken to, and she mustn't have any opinions of her own. You look as if the only sort of girl you could love would be one that was always saying, 'I am a poor, ignorant thing. I don't understand what he sees in me.' I hate such nincompoops!"

Conversation came to a halt. Frederick half rose to leave, but she restrained him with a self-willed, pouting, "No." There was something childlike and honest in that pouting "no" which touched his soul and drew him down on the stool again.

"In Berlin, while I danced, I always had to look at you," she continued, holding her doll against her lips so that her little nose was a bit flattened. "The very first time I saw you, I felt something like a bond between us; I knew we should meet again."

Frederick started, though not for an instant deceived, knowing this must be an oft-used formula for establishing a relationship, and in essence a lie.

"Are you married?" he heard before he had fully recovered his balance. He turned pale. His answer was hard and repellent.

"It would be well, Miss Hahlstroem, if you were to examine me more closely before you treat me as one among many. So far, I don't believe in the bond that unites us. During your dance you looked not only at me, but at everybody else." He spoke with increasing coldness. "At any rate, it doesn't in the least concern you whether I am, or am not, married—just as little as it concerns me what repulsive personages, whom nothing but a depraved instinct can enjoy, you keep company with." He meant Achleitner.

Ingigerd gave a short laugh. "Do you take me for Joan of Arc?"

"Not exactly that," rejoined Frederick, "but if you would allow me, I should like to regard you as still a girl, a distinguished little lady, whose reputation cannot be too carefully guarded against the faintest blemish."

"Reputation!" sneered the girl. "You are very much mistaken if you think I ever cared for anything of the sort. I'd rather be disreputable ten times over and live as I please, than have a good reputation and die of boredom. I must enjoy my life, Doctor von Kammacher."

Frederick's teeth clenched. Outwardly composed, he was suffering the pangs of torture.

Ingigerd proceeded to reveal her life in a series of confidences of such shocking content as to be worthy of a Lais or a Phryne. Doctor von Kammacher, she said, might be sorry for her if he wanted to, but nobody was to make a mistake about her. Everybody associating with her was to know exactly who she was. In this she betrayed a certain dread, as one who would absolutely guard others as well as herself against the catastrophe of disillusionment.

When the sun had set, and Ingigerd, still with that suggestive, sensual, evil smile on her lips, had finished her hideous confession, Frederick found himself confronting the knowledge of a childhood so outrageous as to be worse than anything he had met with in all his experience as a physician.

Several times in the course of her narrative, Achleitner and her father had come to take her inside, but she had angrily driven them away. It was Frederick who finally helped her back to her cabin.

In his own cabin, without even removing his overcoat, he threw himself on his berth to think over the inconceivable story. He sighed, he gnashed his teeth, he wanted to doubt it. Several times he said aloud, "No!" or "Impossible!" and beat his fists against the mattress of the berth above. He could have sworn an oath that this time there had not been a single lie in Mara's whole shameless narrative. "Mara, or the Spider's Victim." Now, of a sudden, he understood her dance! She had danced the thing she had lived in her own life!



XIV

"I have set my all on nothing."

To the accompaniment of this refrain beating in his soul Frederick maintained an outer show of hilarity. He and the ship's doctor were drinking champagne. He had ordered the first bottle with the soup and had immediately drunk several glasses.

The more he drank the less he felt the smart of a certain burning wound, and the more wonderful the world appeared, full of miracles and riddles, surrounding and penetrating him with the intoxication of an adventurer's life. He was a brilliant entertainer, with an easy, happy way in conversation of popularising his rich store of knowledge, and with a light humour, which stood at his command even when, as now, grim humour crawled in the depths of his being, like evil reptiles. Thus it was that the captain's corner that evening fell under his spell, both of his jocular self and serious self.

Though he had lost his belief that science and modern progress alone possess the power to convey happiness, he extolled their virtues. As a matter of fact, in the festive gleam of the countless electric lights, excited by the wine, the music, and the rhythmic pulse beat of the moving vessel, it seemed to him at times as if humanity in a festal procession with music playing were sailing to the Isles of the Blessed. Perhaps, he said, science may some day teach man the secret of immortality. Ways and means would be found to keep the cells of the body young. Dead animals had been brought back to life by pumping a salt solution into them. He spoke of the wonders of surgery, always the theme of conversation when a man of the present, over his champagne and pate de foie gras, triumphs in the superiority of his age over all other ages. In a short while, he declared, chemistry would solve the social question, and man would forget what it is to worry about food. Why, chemistry was on the verge of discovering how to make bread of stones, a thing that hitherto only plants could do. Frederick continued in a similar strain, speaking by rote, and scarcely looking up, yet fascinating his listeners.

But in the midst of the whirl of self-intoxication, he thought with a shudder of bedtime, knowing he should not close his eyes the whole night. And what recompense was the brightest height of the clearest day for the hell of a single sleepless night, such as he had often spent within the last years.

After dinner, he went with Doctor Wilhelm to the ladies' parlour, from there to the smoking-room. Soon after, he went on deck, where it was dark and gloomy and the wind was again whining dismally through the rigging of the four masts. It was bitter cold, and snowflakes, it seemed to him, swept his cheeks. Finally, there was nothing for him to do but go to bed.

For two hours, between eleven and one, he lay writhing in his berth, sometimes for a short while falling into a troubled state between waking and sleeping. In both states he saw visions, now a wild dance of faces, now a single stark face, which tormented him and would not budge. Yet an irresistible impulse gathered in him to keep his mental eye open for the devilish play of supernatural powers.

He had turned out the electric lights, and in the dark, when the eye is unoccupied, one is doubly sensitive to the messages of hearing and feeling. He caught every sound, felt every movement, of the mighty ship, steadily pursuing its course through the midnight. He heard the churning of the propeller, like the labouring of a great demon condemned to slave for mankind. He heard shouts and calls and the walking of men when the coal-passers threw overboard the cinders from the huge boiler furnaces. On the trip to New York those furnaces consumed over a thousand tons of coal, and the casting away of the slag and ashes was left for the nighttime. Thus, to the relief of the man wrestling with sleep, his attention was drawn to the present and the things taking place in the ship's body.

Yet, when there was no sound or movement to distract him, his imagination succumbed to torturing thoughts of Mara and sometimes of his wife, with whose sufferings he occasionally used to reproach himself. Now that Ingigerd Hahlstroem had dishonoured his love for her, his conscience smote him all the more. His whole mentality seemed to have entered a state of reaction against the poison of his passion. A high fever raged in his veins. The thing that in this condition represented his "I" was engaged in a wild chase after the "you" of Mara. He picked her up in the streets of Prague and dragged her back to her mother. He discovered her in houses of ill repute. He saw her standing before the home of a man who had taken her with him out of pity and then had turned her away in scorn, and she stood for hours weeping outside his window. Frederick had by no means fully sloughed the skin of the conventional German youth. The old hackneyed ideal of virginity was in his eyes still surrounded by a sacred aureole; but no matter how often he discovered Mara in evil things, no matter how often he rejected her in his imagination, or tried with all the moral strength of his being to destroy her image in his mind, her face in its golden setting, her frail, white girlish body pierced through each curtain, each wall, each thought with which he strove to conceal the evil spirit that would not be exorcised either by prayers or curses.

Shortly after one o'clock, Frederick was tossed out of his berth. This time it was not one of those dream-like visions that had roused him with a start from a doze. The next instant he was thrown against the frame of the berth. It was evident that the weather had grown worse and the Roland was travelling in heavier waters of the Atlantic.



XV

A few minutes after five o'clock Frederick was already on deck. He seated himself on the same bench as yesterday, opposite the companionway leading down to the dining-room. His steward, a sympathetic, indefatigable young man from the province of Magdeburg, brought him tea and toast. It was a boon to Frederick.

Every few minutes the water dashed over the railing and washed the deck. From the penthouse over the door of the companionway, streams would suddenly come raining down, completely drenching Max Pander's little mate, who was now standing on guard. The masts and rigging were decorated with icicles, and rain and snow were falling alternately. It seemed as if the dreary grey dawn, with its uproar, with the whining, whistling, and howling of the furious wind in the masts and rigging, with the swishing and seething of the waters, wanted to prolong its existence infinitely, while the day refused to enter.

Warming his hands on his big tea-cup, he looked out over the ship's side, which every now and then seemed to sink perpendicularly. His eyes glowed. He felt as if they had sunk deep into their sockets. After the hardships of the last few days, especially the past night, it was natural that he should feel bruised, bodily and spiritually. He had a sense of vacancy and dull-mindedness, a welcome feeling, to be sure, compared with his sensations of the night, when the procession of images passed through his brain. Nevertheless, the strong, moist, tonic wind, the taste of salt on his lips refreshed him. He shivered a little, and sat with his head sunk in the upturned collar of his overcoat. Presently he began to feel pleasantly drowsy.

But he did not fail to perceive the full majesty in the turmoil of the waves and the struggle of the floating palace. There was beauty and strength in the steamer's fixed course, in the way it clove the rolling crests of the bottle-green waves, steady, tranquil, fearless. He admired the Roland, praised it, and was grateful to it as to a living being.

Next after him to appear on deck were three children, two girls and a boy, of from five to eleven. One of the helpful stewards fastened their chairs and most solicitously guided them to their seats, one at a time. Children are spoiled on steamers. There they sat, rocked to and fro, fearlessly looking out upon the solemn, awful rolling of the long waves, upon the horror of the tempest.

Shortly after seven o'clock, a slim man wearing the ship's uniform slowly approached Frederick. Frederick had noticed him the day before and been interested by his air of cool impassibility. He was smoking a cigarette and inhaling, as when Frederick had first seen him. Wearing an expression of profound apathy, he seemed to be completely absorbed in this occupation of smoking and inhaling. As if casually, he drew near Frederick's bench, touched his cap, and said:

"Doctor von Kammacher?"

"Yes."

"Here is a letter for you," he said, drawing it from his waistcoat pocket. "It came by the French pilot-boat yesterday. The reason I did not deliver it is, that I could not find your name on the passenger list. My name is Rinck. I am in charge of the mail on board."

Frederick thanked him. He was moved to see his father's handwriting. Rather for the sake of being friendly than from genuine interest at that moment, he asked Mr. Rinck what prospect there was of better weather. The sole answer was an unintelligible English word, a shrug of the shoulders, and a puff of cigarette smoke blown with gusto.

Frederick put the letter in his breast pocket, and he felt his heart beneath beat more warmly, less turbulently. He had to close his eyes to prevent a hot gush of tears. Doctor Wilhelm found him in this soft mood, and it occurred to him that perhaps after all Frederick had been tragically affected by the bitter close of his professional career.

"I slept like a bear," he said. And it was evident from the healthy colour of his face and his comfortable way of stretching and yawning that his night's sleep had thoroughly refreshed him. "But the weather is fiendish," he added, seating himself close beside Frederick.

"Congratulate you," said Frederick. "I didn't sleep a wink."

"Take some veronal. But whatever you do, come down now to breakfast with me. The best thing for you is to keep moving. So I advise you, after breakfast to come with me on my visit to the steerage. It will take your mind off things and may interest you. There are interesting types there, women, too. But before we go, we must make ourselves insect-proof. We'll puff powder on our clothes in my room."



XVI

The gentlemen had breakfasted—baked potatoes and cutlets, ham and eggs, broiled flounder and other fish, beside tea and coffee—and were entering the steerage.

Here, to keep from falling, they had to hold fast to the iron posts supporting the ceiling. After their eyes had grown accustomed to the twilight always reigning in the steerage, they saw a swarm of human beings rolling on the floor, groaning, whimpering, wailing, shrieking. The weather did not permit of the opening of the port-holes, and the exhalations of about twenty Russian-Jewish families, with bag and baggage and babies, polluted the air to such an extent, that Frederick could scarcely breathe. Mothers lying on their backs with open mouths and closed eyes, more dead than alive, had infants at their breasts; and it was fearful to see how the retching convulsed them.

"Come," said Doctor Wilhelm, observing something like a tendency to faint in Frederick's face. "Come, let us show how superfluous we are."

But Doctor Wilhelm and the Red Cross nurse, who accompanied him, had a chance, here and there, to do some good. He ordered grapes and a tonic for those who were suffering most. These things were obtained from the store-rooms of the first and second cabin.

With great difficulty they made their way from section to section. Everywhere the same misery, the same flight from want and infuriated persecution. Even the pale faces of those who were able to keep on their feet and had found a place to stand in that swaying shelf of misery, were marked by a hopeless, brooding expression of anguish and bitterness.

Among the hundreds of immigrants, there were some pretty girlish faces. To a few the fever produced by the unusual circumstances had imparted a bold, passionate charm. The glances of the physicians and these girls met. Such circumstances overstimulate the feelings and make them highly susceptible. Great stress, great danger cause the life of the moment to flare up more alluringly and also create a sense of profound equality among human beings. In the very midst of fear and tension, a boldness develops ready at any moment to make a leap.

Doctor Wilhelm pointed out to Frederick a Russian-Jewish girl of about seventeen. The expression of her face was sombre. Her features were most delicately chiselled, and she was as transparent as an image of wax. Doctor Wilhelm, observing the defiant air with which she glowered at Frederick, remarked that he must have conquered at first sight.

On passing farther, Frederick heard a voice bawl his name. It was Wilke, but a very different Wilke from the one he had met on deck the morning before. He was cursing and scolding at everybody and everything, while trying to raise himself from his mattress; a feat rather difficult for him to accomplish, because, in the first place, the rolling of the vessel in the steerage was fearful, and in the second place, he had evidently been trying to counteract the wretchedness of his condition by the imbibing of whisky. Doctor Wilhelm gave him a sharp berating. Wilke, very clearly, was a nuisance, perhaps even a danger, to everybody about him. In his intoxication he fancied he was being pursued. The rags from his open bundle lay spread on his mattress mixed with cheese and bread-crumbs, and in his right hand he held open a large pocket-knife.

Doctor Wilhelm had not been aware that he was dealing with a particular acquaintance of Frederick's. His admonitions were of no effect. Wilke shouted that his neighbours had robbed him, and so had the stewards, and the sailors and the captain. Frederick took his knife away from him, spoke to him in a military tone, and unceremoniously touched a scar on the rough fellow's hairy neck to recall to him the fact that he had already sewed one knife wound, from which he had barely escaped with his life. That worked, and Wilke seemed to be repentant. Frederick gave him some money, but not for whisky, as he told him, and added he would try his best for him, but only if he heard that he had been behaving like a decent human being.



XVII

The physicians ascended on deck again. On breathing in the ocean's pure breath after the foul odours of the steerage, Frederick felt as if he had escaped from a hideous, suffocating hell.

With difficulty they made their way across the wet, empty deck, ever and again washed by waves sweeping overboard. To keep their footing they had to cling to the railing. Not a soul was on deck. The ship, restlessly rolling and pounding, seemed to have been left to fight its fight alone. But this was an awful scene that relieved and refreshed Frederick.

He went to the ladies' parlour, there to read the letter from home, which he had nearly forgotten. A few women, who were not seasick, were scattered through the room, lolling in their chairs in a state of limp exhaustion. The saloon smelled of plush and varnish. It was decorated with a number of mirrors in gold frames, there was a grand piano, and the sound of footsteps was muffled by the soft carpet covering the floor. The prevailing colour was blue.

Frederick made himself comfortable in one of the blue arm-chairs, and opened the envelope. He found a letter from his mother also. But he was more anxious to learn his father's feelings and opinion of the step he had taken, and he read his letter first.

* * * * *

Dear Frederick,

I do not know whether this letter will find you, or where it will find you. Perhaps not until you reach New York, where it may arrive later than you. I should really like you to have your old father's and mother's greetings on your trip, which is something of a surprise to us. But we are used to surprises from you, since we have not had your unreserved confidence for a long time. I am a fatalist, and far from wishing to bore you with reproaches; but it is a pity that ever since you have been of age, so many differences have arisen in our ways of thinking and acting. A great pity, God knows. If only you had sometimes listened to me—but, as I said, there's no use to come limping after with "if only's" and the like.

My dear boy, now that fate has afflicted you so sorely—I told you from the very first that Angele comes of a diseased family—at least hold your head up. If you do, then nothing's lost. And I especially beseech you—don't take that nonsense of your failure with bacilli too much to heart. You know, I've already told you I think all the noise they make about bacilli is a hoax. Why, Pettenkofer himself swallowed the whole culture of a typhus bacillus without its hurting him.

For all I care, go to America. It may not be a bad idea and need not be a failure, I know persons whose lives were wrecked here and who went to America and returned millionaires, to be envied and fawned upon. I don't doubt that after all you have gone through, you have carefully weighed and considered the step you are taking. Dear Frederick, I beg of you, concentrate. The man who wants too much wants nothing. Above all, get rid of your philanthropic notions. You would never believe me when I told you that you uselessly sacrificed your money, your time, and your career to your philanthropic notions. And don't take up with Utopias, such as, for example, Socialism is, even at best. Bismarck is gone. The exceptional law against the Socialists has been repealed. Now we'll be seeing wonders from that pack of red internationals without a country. Did you read that some Anarchist dogs have again been throwing bombs—in Paris in a cafe not far from the Gare St. Lazare, right among a lot of innocent people, and seven or eight were killed. My dear boy, you were in Paris. For God's sake, in the discontented mood you are in, don't throw yourself in with such desperate elements.

Forgive me. It was a slip of my pen. But here in Goerlitz, far from the firing line, even a rational man, when he is troubled, begins to imagine things. With your talents you might have been an officer on a general's staff long ago.

God be with you. Write to us. I am convinced that with your great talents, you will strike root over there and make your fortune. Be on your guard against art and against side interests, from which a man cannot make a living. Do you know that the Grand Duke has made Botho his adjutant? It looks as if the boy might rise pretty high.

Have a good trip and sometimes think of your devoted father.

* * * * *

With a sigh and a short, almost inaudible laugh of great compassion and great bitterness, Frederick folded up the letter.

"'I don't know whether this letter will find you, or where it will find you,'" he repeated, and added mentally, "or how it will find you."

Then he sat still for a while, staring into space.

After a time he became observant of the American jackanapes, who had annoyed him in the smoking-room the day before. He was flirting with a young lady apathetically lounging in an easy-chair, a Canadian, Frederick had been told. He did not trust his eyes when he saw the American, who had been toying with a small box of matches, pile them up carelessly, and set fire to them in that inflammable room. A steward came up and modestly explained that it was his duty to ask him to refrain from what he was doing. At which the jackanapes dismissed him with "Get out of here, you idiot."

Frederick drew out his mother's letter, but before reading it, he had to meditate briefly upon the matter that took the place of brains in the young American's skull.

* * * * *

My Dear Son,

Your mother's prayers accompany you. You have gone through a great deal and suffered very much for one of your years. To let you hear something pleasant at the very start, I will tell you of the children. They are very well. This week I convinced myself with my own eyes that they have a good home with Pastor Mohaupt. Albrecht is splendid. Bernhard, you know, is more like his mother and always has been a quiet child. But he seemed more alert and more talkative. The life in the pastor's house and on the farm seems to please him. Pastor Mohaupt thinks both boys are by no means untalented. He has already begun to give them lessons in Latin. Little Annemarie asked me very timidly about her mother, but especially about you. She spoke of you often. I told the children there was a medical congress in New York or Washington, where they would at last make an end of that dreadful disease, consumption. My dear child, do come back soon to this dear old Europe.

I had a long talk with Doctor Binswanger. He told me your wife's trouble is hereditary. It was in her all the time and would certainly have cropped out, sooner or later. He spoke of your work, too, dear child, and thought you ought not allow yourself to be crushed. Four or five years of hard work, he said, would make up for your set-back.

Dear Dietrich, listen to your old mother and put your trust in our loving Father in heaven. I think you are an atheist. Just laugh at your old mother. But believe me, we are nothing without God's help and mercy. Pray sometimes. It won't do any harm. I know how you reproach yourself on Angele's account. Binswanger says you may have a perfectly easy conscience. And if you pray, believe me, God will remove every thought of guilt from your harassed soul. You are only thirty. I am seventy. From the experience of the forty years more that I have, I tell you, your life can still turn out so that some day you will scarcely have a recollection of all you are now suffering. You will remember the facts; but you will try in vain to recall the feelings of anguish with which they are now connected in your mind. I am a woman. I was fond of Angele. And yet I could observe you two together perfectly objectively. Believe me, there were times when she would have driven any man desperate.

* * * * *

The end of the letter was all motherly tenderness. Frederick saw himself at his mother's sewing-table by the window, and in his thoughts kissed her hair, her forehead, her hands.

When he looked up, he heard the steward remonstrating with the American and heard the American say in good German:

"The captain's a donkey."

The word had the effect of an electric shock. The next instant another pile of matches sent up a wavering flare in the gloomy, terrifying twilight.

Frederick mentally cut out the young man's cerebrum and cerebellum for an anatomical examination, proceeding strictly according to the rules of dissection, as he had so frequently done in actuality. He hunted for the centre of stupidity, which undoubtedly composed the American's whole soul, though his impudence, which he possessed in a rare degree, may also have had its seat in the brain. Frederick had to laugh. In his amusement he realised that little Ingigerd Hahlstroem no longer had any power over him, less, perhaps than, for example, the dark Jewess from Odessa, whom he had seen for the first time only a quarter of an hour before.

Captain von Kessel entered. He greeted Frederick with a slight nod of his head and seated himself at a table beside a lady, with whom he was acquainted, apparently. The American coxcomb and the pretty Canadian exchanged glances. She was languishing in her easy-chair, pale but coquettish. Frederick set her down as a woman of unusual southern beauty—straight nose, quivering nostrils, heavy, nobly arched eyebrows, black as her hair and the shadowy down over her fine, expressive, twitching lips. Her gestures had the weary grace of a Spaniard. She was laughing, and her long, slim form stretched on the chair shook. Her admirer, with a comic expression of seriousness, was again building a little pile of matches. In her weak condition she was unable to resist the impulse to laugh, and every now and then hid her face behind a black lace shawl.

It was an exciting moment when the American, in defiance of the Captain's presence, again made ready for his dangerous play.

Von Kessel, broad and ponderous and somewhat too short-legged, seemed out of proportion in the dainty parlour. He was speaking quietly with his lady. From the expression of his face it was evident that the weather was giving him cause to be serious. Suddenly the matches flared up. Now the captain's calm St. Bernard head turned slightly, and a voice said in a tone not to be misunderstood:

"Put that fire out!"

Frederick had never heard an order from a man's lips so incisive, so truly commanding, so fearful. The American turned pale and in the twinkling of an eye smothered the flame. The beautiful Canadian closed her eyes. But the captain, as if nothing had occurred, continued to converse with his lady.



XVIII

Soon after, Frederick was in the barbershop getting a shave.

"Wretched weather," observed the barber, wielding the razor with a sure hand, despite the dreadful tossing of the vessel. He seemed to be an intelligent man. Frederick had to listen to a second account of the Nordmania, of how the waterspout had plunged through the ladies' parlour and carried the piano down into the hold.

An ordinary German servant-girl of the peasant class entered. She looked healthy to the core and none too intelligent. The barber called her Rosa and gave her a bottle of eau de Cologne.

"That's the fifth bottle of eau de Cologne that I've given her for her mistress since we left Cuxhaven," the barber explained after she had left. "Her mistress is a divorced woman with two children. Her name is Mrs. Liebling. She is very nervous. Rosa hasn't a very easy time of it. For five dollars a month she has to be at Mrs. Liebling's beck and call morning, noon and night. She takes entire charge of the children. Soon after we left Cuxhaven, Mrs. Liebling came to have her hair dressed. You should have heard how she went on about that girl. The things she said against her. Not a spark of gratitude. She said the stupid, lazy thing wasn't worth the price of her second-class cabin."

Several times Frederick had heard the sound of quarrelling mingled with children's crying in the cabin opposite his. Once he had even distinctly caught the slapping sound of what must have been a box over somebody's ear.

"Does she hit Rosa?" he asked the barber.

"Yes."

Clearly, then, it was his neighbour of the opposite cabin in whose service the girl was.

Frederick enjoyed listening to the lively barber retail gossip, while he lay stretched out in his patented chair. It diverted his mind from troublesome thoughts. The barber, who had been sailing the seas for many years, was by no means of the ordinary type of his class. He delivered a short discourse on modern shipbuilding, the moral of which was, not to construct light steamers for speed.

"Altogether," he observed, "it's a pity to lay so much stress on record-making. How is a great big body with walls like a wafer to resist heavy seas for any length of time? And see what tremendous engines it has to carry and what an enormous amount of coal it consumes. But the Roland's a good boat. It was built in Glasgow in the yards of John Elder and Company. It has been running since June, 1881. The engines are compound steam-engines with three cylinders and 5800 horse power. They require one hundred and fifteen tons of coal every day. The boat makes sixteen knots an hour, and has a tonnage of 4510. There are one hundred and sixty-eight men in the crew."

The barber had all these details at his fingers' ends. In a tone of annoyance, as if the thing caused him personally a lot of trouble, he told that the Roland on each trip to or from New York dragged one thousand and three hundred tons of anthracite coal in its coal-bunkers. A slow trip, he insisted, was safe and comfortable, while a quick trip was dangerous and expensive.

The little saloon with its electric lighting would have been a very comfortable place to be in, had it only stood at rest. But unfortunately its walls were quivering to the pulse of the engines and the floor was rising and sagging to the swell and fall of the waves, which every now and then leapt against the port-hole with tiger-like fury. The flasks in the closets rattled.

"A heavier ship," said the barber, "built to go more slowly, wouldn't be pitching like this."

Next he spoke of a little person, who dyed her hair, a dancer. She had spent more than an hour in his chair, having him show her rouge and face powders, until finally he had displayed his entire stock of Pinaud and Roger et Gallet. The barber chuckled.

"On sea trips," he said, "a man has a chance of getting to know the queerest women." And he proceeded to recount a number of incidents, which, on his own word, he himself had witnessed. The heroine in each case was an erotomanic woman.

"Just ask our doctor," he said. He was of the old-fashioned sort of barber-surgeon, and in the capacity of surgeon had gathered the most scandalous portion of his experiences. "One of the worst cases," he went on, "was that of an American girl, who was found lying unconscious in one of the life-boats swinging from the davits. She was hideously abused by all the crew, one at a time, but they fixed it so that the whole blame could be laid on her."

Frederick knew that none other than Ingigerd Hahlstroem was responsible for the direction the barber's thoughts had taken. She had been sitting in the very chair in which he was now reclining. A current streamed from its upholstery into his body. His heart began to beat irregularly, ceasing for an instant, then leaping wildly. To his horror, he observed that Mara's power over him was not yet broken.

He jumped up and shook himself. He felt as if he must plunge into a hot and cold bath and let stinging douches run down his spine to wash him outwardly and inwardly clean and expel that foul poison from his blood.



XIX

The barbershop lay aft, and nearby one could look through glass panes upon the working of the cylinders and pistons. Frederick toilsomely clambered up to the promenade deck and crept into the overcrowded smoking-room. Though it disgusted him to be wedged into a small space with a lot of noisy men, he had come here in the desire to escape the wild orgy of his thoughts. Doctor Wilhelm had kept a place for him.

"The doctor tells me you were in the steerage, and a beautiful Deborah made a dangerous impression upon you," the captain said, smiling roguishly.

Frederick laughed. He ordered beer, and the conversation was jolly from the start.

In their corner the skat players were sitting over their cards. They were business men, all of apoplectic constitution. They had been drinking beer and playing skat ever since breakfast, in fact, except when they slept, ever since boarding the steamer. The conversation in the room was of no interest to them. Even the weather failed to elicit any questions from them. They seemed to be insensible to the tossing of the great vessel, or the dismal howling of the wind. The force of the roll was so tremendous that Frederick involuntarily clutched at the thing nearest to him. Up went the port side, down went the starboard. Up went the starboard, down went the port side. Sometimes Frederick felt as if port and starboard might plunge one over the other; in which case the Roland's keel would float above water, while the bridge, masts, and smoke-stacks would be submerged at a distance below the surface. And in that case all would be lost; but those skat players, it seemed to him, would go on playing undisturbed.

Hahlstroem's tall figure came creeping with bent head into the tobacco smoke. His clear, cold, critical eyes roved about looking for a seat. He paid no attention to the armless man, who jestingly shouted an ironic remark to him. With cool politeness he seated himself at the greatest possible distance from Stoss, drew a pouch of tobacco from his pocket, and filled a short Dutch pipe. Frederick's immediate thought was, "Where is Achleitner?"

"How is your daughter feeling?" Doctor Wilhelm asked.

"Oh, she's just a little upset now. The weather will be getting better, I suppose."

The whole company, which, of course consisted of the men either by nature or from frequent exposure proof against seasickness, now entered into the usual discussion of the weather.

"Is it true, Captain," somebody asked, "that last night we nearly collided with a derelict?"

The captain smiled, raised his brows, and made no reply.

"Where are we now, Captain? Was there fog last night? I saw some snow fall. And for at least an hour I heard the siren blow every two minutes."

But Captain von Kessel remained highly monosyllabic in everything pertaining to the management of the vessel and the prospects for a good or bad crossing.

"Is it true that there is gold bullion on board for the treasury in Washington?"

Von Kessel smiled and sent a thin wreath of cigarette smoke curling through his moustache.

"That would be carrying coals to Newcastle," remarked Wilhelm.

And now the great theme, the theme of themes, became the general topic of conversation. Each of the travellers, of course, straightway had a picture of his own fortune in mind, every cent of it, or else tried to make an accurate mental calculation. They all turned into calculating machines, while aloud comparing the capitals of the great American banking firms, the Bank of England, the Credit Lyonnais and the wealth of all the American millionaires. Even the skat players gave their attention for a few moments at a time.

America was then suffering from a business depression, a crisis, as the political economists dub it. The causes of the depression came up for discussion. Most of the Americans present happened to be Democrats, and they threw the blame on the Republicans. The Tammany Tiger was the subject of especial execration. It not only controlled New York City, the mayor of which was a creature of Tammany, but had also put its men into the most influential positions throughout the land. And every Tammany man knew how to shear his sheep. As a result, the American people were thoroughly bled. The corruption in the highest offices was said to be on a tremendous scale. Millions of dollars were appropriated to the navy, but if a man-of-war actually happened to be built, the thing was a great achievement, since the money, long before it was applied to its proper purpose, sifted down into the pockets of peaceful Americans, whose interest in the navy was of the slightest.

"I shouldn't care to be buried in America," cried Stoss, in his sharp voice. "It would be too dreary and boresome for me in my grave. I hate their spitting and their ice-water." The burst of laughter that greeted his remark encouraged him to further sallies. "Americans are parrots, incessantly chattering two words, dollar and business, dollar and business, dollar and business. Those two words have been death to culture in America. An American doesn't even know what it is to have the Englishman's spleen. Think of the fearfulness of living in a country called the land of dollars. We have human beings living in Europe. The Americans regard everything, even their fellow-men, from the point of view of the number of dollars they represent. If a thing can't be reckoned in dollars, they have no eyes for it. And then Carnegie and Company come and want to astonish us with their disgusting shopkeeper's philosophy. Do you think they're helping the world on by slicing off some of the world's dollars and then returning some of the sliced off dollars with a great flourish of trumpets? Do you think that if they do us the favour to give us some of their money, we'll throw overboard our Mozart and Beethoven, our Kant and Schopenhauer, our Schiller and Goethe, our Rembrandts, Leonardos, Michael Angelos, in short, all our wealth of art and intellect? What is a miserable cur of an American millionaire, a dollar maniac, as compared with all those great men? Let him come and ask us for alms."



XX

The captain invited Frederick to his cabin and asked him to write a few words in his album. On the way, he showed him the chart-room and the wheel-house, where a sailor was turning the great wheel at the directions of the first mate, whose voice came from the bridge through a speaking-tube. Frederick read the compass in front of the wheel and saw that the Roland lay west-southwest. The captain was in hopes of striking better weather by taking a more southerly route. The helmsman did not allow his attention to be diverted for the fraction of a second. He kept his bronzed, weather-beaten face with its corn-coloured beard turned unwaveringly toward the compass, and his sea-blue eyes fastened upon the west-southwest line. And the face of the compass, in its round copper case, notwithstanding the vessel's elephantine leaps and bounds, never deviated from the horizontal.

When they reached his cabin, the handsome blond German, whose eyes came of the same stock as the mariner's at the wheel, became more expansive. He insisted on Frederick's taking a comfortable seat and offered him a cigar. He spoke of his own life. Frederick learned that he was unmarried, had two unmarried sisters and a brother with a wife and children. The pictures of his sisters, his brother, his brother's wife, his brother's children, and his parents were hung symmetrically on the wall over a red plush sofa. They were sacred objects.

Frederick did not fail to ask his stereotyped question:

"Do you follow your calling because you have a decided preference for it?"

"Tell me of a position on land where I could command the same salary, and I'd exchange without an instant's hesitation. Seafaring begins to lose its charms when a man gets on in years."

The captain's guttural voice was extremely agreeable. It suggested to Frederick the sound of colliding billiard balls. His enunciation was perfect, absolutely free of a dialectic tinge.

"My brother has a wife and children," he said. Though there was, of course, not the slightest trace of sentimentality in his tone, it was evident from the gleam in his eyes how he idolised his nieces and nephews. He pointed out each one's picture and at the end said frankly, "My brother is an enviable man." Then he asked Frederick whether he was the son of General von Kammacher. He had taken part in the campaign of 1870 and 1871 as lieutenant of the regiment of artillery of which Frederick's father had been chief. He spoke of him with great admiration and reverence.

Frederick remained in the captain's cabin over half an hour. His presence seemed to give the skipper special pleasure. It was astonishing what a gentle, tender soul was hidden beneath the commanding exterior. Before disclosing a bit of that soul, he always puffed harder at his cigar and gave Frederick a long, searching look. By degrees Frederick discovered what magnet was tugging strongly at the blond giant's heart. He kept recurring alternately to the Black Forest and the Thueringian Forest, and Frederick had a mental picture of the magnificent man clipping his privet hedge in front of his cosey cottage, or walking among his rose bushes with a pruning knife in his hand. He could detect that the captain would far rather be living secluded in a sea of green leaves and green pine needles; and he felt convinced that it would have been delicious to him to submerge himself forever in the soft rushing of endless forests and dispense forever with the rushing and roaring of all the oceans in the world.

"Perhaps the night of all days has not yet come," said the captain, with a humorous expression. He rose and placed the large album in front of Frederick. "Now I am going to lock you in here with this pen and this ink, and when I return, I want to find something clever on this page."

Frederick von Kammacher turned the leaves of the mariner's album. It was unmistakable that the hope for a vegetable garden, gooseberry bushes, the chirping of birds, and the buzzing of bees was most intimately connected with this book. Under the pressure of dreariness and the grave responsibility for many a sea trip, it must expand the captain's soul to look over it, Frederick thought. It seemed to point to a time when, in the peace and security of his simple home, it would serve its turn by testifying to all the dangers its possessor had gone through, all his past struggles and hardships. In a sheltered haven it would afford pleasant retrospect, full of content.

Frederick's own quietistic ideal in the form of a farm and a solitary log hut occurred to him. But he was not living in it alone. The little devil Mara was sharing it with him. In embitterment he mentally climbed to still lonelier regions, and saw himself a hermit, who prayed, drank nothing but water, and lived on roots, nuts, and sometimes a fish of his own catching.

When the captain returned and he and Frederick had taken leave of each other, this is what he found in his book:

Borne aloft on wave and ocean, Of thy master's course partaking, Some day thou wilt cease thy motion, Of thy master's rest partaking. In the garden of his stillness, To his manly deeds inspiring, Thou wilt faithfully bear witness. Thou art language well becoming Him who daily danger faces, Gratitude of souls proclaiming, Whom he bore through cosmic spaces.

The signature was

"Frederick von Kammacher, Globetrotter."



XXI

Frederick, holding on to his hat with one hand and clinging to the railing with the other, descended from the windy heights of the captain's cabin to the promenade deck. When he passed the cabin of the first mate, the door opened, and Von Halm appeared in conversation with Achleitner. Achleitner was pale, and there was an anxious look in his face.

"I have rented the lieutenant's cabin for Miss Hahlstroem. I could not bear to see her suffering so in her own cabin," he called to Frederick.

The gale had increased. Not a passenger was to be seen on deck. Sailors were inspecting the life-boats. Huge masses of water seethed against the ship's side, cutting into its course obliquely. The waves made a mad leap into the air, hung there for an instant in the form of white corals, and fell like a thousand lashes on the deck, which was all awash. The breath of the gale tore the smoke backward from the mouths of the smoke-stacks and scattered it in the wild chaos in which heaven and sea were mingled. Frederick glanced down at the fore-deck. In his burning brain arose a thought of the Jewess and then of the scoundrel, Wilke. But the fore-deck was so swept by the seas that nobody could keep his footing there, except the lookout men, who were holding watch at the beak of the vessel, not far from the cat-head.

Between the door leading to the main companionway and the companionway itself was a square level space, about which a railing ran and in which a few people could stay and enjoy the fresh air without being drenched. When Frederick, on his way below deck, passed through the open door, he found a quiet assemblage of pale-faced passengers. One chair was still unoccupied. He seated himself in it, with the fanciful notion that he was joining a gathering of condemned men.

"That poor sinner there must be Professor Toussaint, the famous sculptor in need," Frederick thought, judging so from the man's slouched hat and great cape. Now and then the man exchanged a few words with a person sitting next to him, who might be Geheimrat Lars. Frederick had once met the Geheimrat at a dinner at the mayor's house, but he had only a faded recollection of his appearance. The clothing manufacturer had dragged himself from his cabin, heaven knows how, and was lying in his chair like a corpse. Besides these, there were two men conversing with each other, one small, rotund and scary-faced, the other tall and thin.

The tall one was showing the other a section of a submarine cable and letting the hard piece, intricately braided of hemp, metal and gutta-percha, pass from hand to hand. From his choppy, whispered sentences, the company learned that in 1877 he had worked as electrical engineer on a steamer laying a cable between Europe and the United States. The work on the high seas had lasted without interruption for many months. He had spent several months supervising the construction of the steamer itself in the yards, especially the riveting of its metal plates. He spoke of what is called the cable plateau at the bottom of the ocean, stretching from Ireland to Newfoundland, a strip of grey sand so named because it supports the main transatlantic cable.

The copper wires in the centre of the cable, he said, were called its soul, the rest of the mass, almost as thick as a man's fist and resembling a great hawser, served merely as a sheath to protect the soul. Frederick had a mental vision of the fearful solitudes of the ocean depths, with the monstrous metal serpent, apparently without beginning and without end, creeping over the sandy bottom peopled by the enigmatic creatures of the deep. It seemed to him as if such profound isolation must be gruesome even for the dead mass of cable.

Then he wondered why it was that mankind at each end of the cable had burst into jubilation upon the transmission of the first messages. Perhaps there was some mystic cause for rejoicing. The real cause could not possibly be that one was now able to telegraph "Good morning, Mr. Smith," or "Good morning, Mr. Brown," twenty times a minute around the earth's circumference, or that one could adulterate humanity's mind with newspaper gossip from the four quarters of the globe.

In the midst of these meditations, his chair slipped, and Frederick, in company with the electrical engineer, the dozing manufacturer, a lady physician, and a lady artist, was hurled against the banister, while the opposite row of passengers, including the Geheimrat and the professor, was hurled on top of them. It was a ridiculous incident, but Frederick observed that no one seemed to find it so.

They tried to arrange themselves in order again. One of the ever-industrious stewards appeared, and, as if to comfort them for their overthrow, passed about Malaga grapes from the ship's inexhaustible store.

"When shall we reach New York?" somebody asked. The eyes of all the others instantly turned upon the questioner in amazement and alarm. The steward, usually so polite merely smiled an embarrassed smile and gave no reply. In his opinion an answer, one way or the other, would have been to challenge fate. The passengers felt much the same. Indeed, the idea that their feet would actually ever tread solid land again seemed in their present condition almost like an extravagant fairy tale.

The short, stout man, to whom the electrical engineer was chiefly directing his discourse, was conducting himself peculiarly. At short intervals he would look out anxiously into the uproar, turning his small, watchful eyes searchingly up to the tops of the masts, which never ceased to describe great arcs in the air (starboard to port, port to starboard!), and out into the monotonous rolling of the waves, swelling into ever higher and larger masses. His face was full of concern. Frederick was on the point of inwardly ridiculing the pitiful landlubber's cowardice, when he heard him say that scarcely three weeks before he had brought his schooner safely to New York from a three years' trip around the world, and intended to start out from New York on the same trip to last the same length of time. The little gentleman was the experienced captain of a sailing vessel. In the course of his fifty years, he had spent more than thirty on all the waters of the globe.



XXII

Frederick reflected upon the timid skipper, whose characteristics seemed to harmonise so poorly with the demands, active and passive, of his rigorous calling. He wondered what it is that permanently holds a man like that to his marriage ties and all the duties of his life. Then he arose to wander about the Roland vaguely.

The enforced idleness of a sea trip, especially in bad weather, induces passengers, when they have made the complete round of the vessel, to begin over again and go through the same circle. Thus, Frederick, after descending the companionway, ascending it, and descending again, found himself on the leather-seated bench in the smoking-room avoided by most of the smokers, in which the armless man had taken his meal the day before.

Hans Fuellenberg entered, asked whether he was not permitted to smoke a cigarette in the room, and began to grumble about the weather.

"Who knows how this thing is going to end?" he complained dismally. "Perhaps, instead of reaching New York, we'll have to be towed into port somewhere in Newfoundland."

Frederick was indifferent to the prospect. He noticed that young Fuellenberg cared for nothing except to produce an impression; and young Fuellenberg noticed that Frederick von Kammacher was not susceptible to the impression he tried to produce. He cast about for another theme of conversation.

"Do you know there are two priests on board? You should have been at Cuxhaven when they got on. The sailors were beside themselves. I hunted up the fellows, the sailors I mean, in the forecastle. How they did curse! It was fearful. The stoker told all the men of the engine-room. They said you could not get genuine seamen to think any differently—with priests on board something is bound to go wrong."

"How is your lady?" asked Frederick.

"My lady is retching her soul away, if she has such a thing as a soul. Two hours ago I helped her to bed. That Englishwoman is already a full-blooded American. Shameless, I tell you! Something tremendous. I rubbed her forehead with brandy. She partook of a goodly quantity, and then I unbuttoned her waist. She seems to take me for a masseur chartered extra by her munificent husband. The thing became boresome. And besides, in that pitching boudoir, my own soul began to rise up through my stomach, and the poetry went to the devil. She showed me the photograph of her devoted husband in New York. I think she has another in London." He was interrupted by the first call for dinner, which the trumpeter announced at the bottom of the companionway. The trumpet blast was lost without resonance in the heavy air and the bluster of the waves. "What's more," he concluded, "she sent for Doctor Wilhelm."

The dining-room presented a very dreary appearance. Neither the captain nor any of the officers of the Roland were present, the demands upon them in such bad weather being too severe to permit them to leave their posts. The tables had been provided with a wooden apparatus dividing them into small compartments, which prevented the plates, glasses and bottles from slipping any distance. Nevertheless, there was much breaking of crockery, and it required all the skill of the stewards to serve the dishes, especially the soup. From the kitchen and the china room every now and then came the sound of a tremendous crash. There were scarcely twelve people at table, among them Hahlstroem and Doctor Wilhelm. After a time the skat players, as usual, came bursting in, talking noisily and red of face. Their winnings were immediately transmuted into Pommery. Notwithstanding the fearful weather, the band was playing. There seemed to be something frivolous, almost challenging, in the playing of music when, at short intervals, the Roland would come to a quivering standstill, as if it had run upon a reef. Once the illusion was so strong that a panic arose in the steerage. Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward, brought this explanation of the horrified shrieks that had penetrated the dining-room above the noise of the raging waters, the rattling of the plates and the blare of the band.

At dessert Hahlstroem left his place at the other end of the room and, balancing himself with difficulty, came over to Frederick and Doctor Wilhelm, and asked permission to seat himself beside them. He seemed to have been drinking whisky, as he had dropped his natural shell of reticence. He spoke of hydrotherapy and gymnastic exercises, and called himself a quack. It was the gymnastics, he said, that had given his daughter the idea of taking up dancing. As if to challenge the others, he elaborated bold philosophic theories, dealing out one wild statement after the other, each of which would have been a trump sufficient to end the game for ten German Philistines. To believe his own word, he was a terroristic Anarchist, a white-slave trafficker, an adventurer always. At any rate, he espoused the cause of all who were Anarchists, procurers, or adventurers. He argued in all superiority, upon egotistic grounds, calling these the intellectuals, and all others, creatures without brains; in which his philosophy showed some similarity to Frederick von Kammacher's new philosophy, now that Frederick had entered upon a new phase of his life.

"America," said Hahlstroem, "is known to have been settled by rogues. Were you to spread a tent over America, you would have the most beautiful, the most comfortable penitentiary in the world. The natural form that survives and triumphs in America is the great rascal, the great Renaissance idiot. In fact, it is the one form that will triumph throughout the world. You'll see some day how the great American rascal will get the whole of Europe, including England, into his clutches. Europe is also dabbling a little in Renaissance ideals and Renaissance beasts. It is busily working away, so to speak, on its own rascalization. But America is in advance by ten horse lengths. Europe's Cesare Borgias sit in the cafes with Glockenroecken a la Biedermaier and give voice to their criminal genius in fairly innocent verses. They all look sickly, as if a barber had cupped all the blood out of their veins. If Europe wants to save herself, she has only one hope—to make a law by which it will be a crime to surrender an adventurer, an embezzler, a fraudulent bankrupt, the keeper of a disorderly house, a thief, or a murderer to America. On German, English and French vessels in American ports, such people have already been placed under the special protection of Europe. Then you will see how soon Europe will outdistance Uncle Sam."

The physicians burst out laughing.

"When did geniuses ever do anything morally? Even the creator of heaven and earth did not know how to. He produced an immoral world. Every high form of human intellectual activity has thrown ethics overboard. What would a historian be who, instead of making researches, would moralise? What would a physician be who would stop to moralise? Or a great statesman, who would toe the chalk-line of your middle-class ten commandments? As for an artist, when he moralises, he is a fool and a knave. And please tell me, what sort of a business would the church do if all of us were moral? There would be no church."

There was a cold gleam of audaciousness in the Swede's eyes. His utterances produced a strange impression. Even if he had pronounced fewer wild paradoxes, Frederick von Kammacher would have succumbed to his spell. He eagerly sought for resemblances between father and daughter, or, more accurately, he observed them without seeking. They were very evident to one who, alas, to his own torture, was carrying the daughter's picture alive in his soul. As long as the Swede spoke, he could not help wavering between repugnance and admiration, and he kept asking himself whether this man was really the sort of person that Arthur Stoss had described him to be, no gentleman, a weakling, an idle ragamuffin.



XXIII

As they arose from table and were ascending the companionway to the deck, Hahlstroem suddenly said to Frederick:

"My daughter is expecting you. We have a friend on board, Mr. Achleitner, a soft creature, but the possessor of much money, which he doesn't know the best way to get rid of. So he made it worth while for one of the officers to give up his luxurious cabin opening on deck to my daughter. Unfortunately, that gives him the right to make an unmitigated nuisance of himself sometimes."

When the men entered the comparatively roomy cabin on deck, they found Achleitner sitting on a rather unsteady chair, while Mara, carefully wrapped up, was lying stretched out on a couch. She instantly called to her father, please to remove Mr. Achleitner, who was boring her, and signified to Frederick that she had a special favour to ask of him. Hahlstroem and Achleitner obediently withdrew, and Frederick nolens volens had to seat himself on the camp-chair.

"How can I be of service?" he asked.

She put one of those inconsequential requests with which she liked to busy everybody about her. She did this, she explained, because if many people were not doing something for her, she felt neglected.

"But if you don't want to do it," she added—it was to get her a bottle of perfume, or something of the sort, for which a stewardess would have been the right person to ask—"but if you don't want to do it, then please don't. I should prefer it if you didn't. In fact, if I bore you, I would just as soon sit alone."

Frederick realised that this beginning was a foolish expression of embarrassment.

"I should like to be of service to you in anything I can, and you don't in the least bore me."

That was the truth. Alone with Ingigerd in her cabin, where the vessel's motion was less perceptible, he was sensitive to the full fascination of her presence. The pangs of the ocean crossing had given her sweet girlish face a waxen transparency. At her request the stewardess had loosened her hair, and it lay spread in a golden flood over her white pillow, a golden flood, the sight of which was highly disturbing to Frederick. Where was there an adornment for the head, a queen's diadem, which could exercise so powerful, so divine a charm? It seemed to Frederick as if that tremendous vessel, with its hundreds of human ants, were nothing more than the cocoon of this tiny silkworm, this delicately coloured, delicious little butterfly; as if the sixty naked helots down at the ship's bottom shovelling coal into the white heat under the boilers, were toiling and sweating merely to be of service to this childish Venus; as if the captain and officers were the paladins of the queen, and the rest of the crew her following; as if the steerage were rilled with blindly devoted slaves, and as if the Roland were proudly carrying a fairy tale from "A Thousand and One Nights" across the salt desert.

"Did I hurt your feelings yesterday by telling you my story?" she asked suddenly.

"Mine? No! You are the injured one in the life you have unfortunately led."

She looked at him with a sardonic smile, plucking a pink wad from the lid of a box of sweetmeats beside her. In her looks and smiles, Frederick felt her cold, wicked enjoyment. And since he was a man and knew he was impotent in the face of such fiendish mockery, a wave of physical fury mounted in him, driving the blood into his eyes and causing him involuntarily to clench his fists. His full-blooded nature occasionally had need of such frenzy. It was a phenomenon with which his friends were familiar.

"What is the matter with you?" whispered Ingigerd, plucking at the pink wad. "I am not afraid of a monk like you."

Her remark was not calculated to calm Frederick's passionate surge. However, he mastered his feelings with evident, redoubled exertion of his will power. Had he not succeeded in controlling himself, he might have more resembled a Papuan negro than a European. He might have turned into a beast in human form, and might have thrown overboard, as he himself clearly felt, more than was good of what both self-acquired and imposed culture had formed in him. He had no desire to turn into another animal in Circe's stables.

It was as if Ingigerd were the very incarnation of the evil Psyche, so few of a man's feelings were concealed from her. She knew what fight Frederick had just fought and she knew he had conquered.

"Oh, I wanted to become a nun once myself," she said, and began in a mixture of truth and fiction to prattle of a year she had spent in a convent. "I wanted to turn good, but didn't get very far. I am religious. Really I am. I can say so with a clear conscience. Anybody with whom I don't feel I could pray to God, is disgusting to me. Perhaps, after all, I shall end by being a nun, but not because I am pious." She did not realise how egregiously she was contradicting herself. "Oh, no! It wouldn't occur to me to be pious. I don't believe in anything but myself. Life is short, and nothing is coming afterward. A person ought to enjoy life. A person who deprives himself of a single enjoyment sins against himself, beside practising self-deception."

She was led to speak of her mother. Frederick was startled by the hatred, the vulgarity with which she referred to her.

"I could kill her," she said, "although, or just because she is my mother." Her face lost its purity of expression and assumed an ugly, repulsive look. "With papa it is different. But it gets to be an awful nuisance always to be dragging him about with me."

The stewardess came in. She spoke to Ingigerd in a loud, cheery way.

"Better here than down below, isn't it, Miss?"

She bolstered up her cushions, rearranged her coverings, and left again.

"The silly thing has already fallen in love with me, too," said Ingigerd.

"Why am I sitting here?" Frederick thought, and was about to attempt in all kindness to remove the cataract from the eyes of the foolish little creature. Why did great waves of pity keep sweeping over him? Pity for which she did not ask. Why could he not rid himself of the idea of innocence, of chastity, of the uncontaminated while in the presence of this child fiend? She seemed pure and unsullied, and each capricious movement, each remark of hers only heightened the impression of touching helplessness.

"All love is pity." This sentence of Schopenhauer's, which he held to be both true and paradoxical, flashed into his mind. He took one of her dolls in his hand, and tried in the kindly way that he had acquired with his patients to make Ingigerd Hahlstroem understand that one does not go through life unpunished in the belief that life is mere doll's play.

"Your dolls," he said, "are actually beasts of prey. Woe to you, if you don't realise they are beasts before they bury their claws in your flesh and rend you with their fangs."

She gave a short laugh without answering. She complained of a pain in her breast.

"You're a physician. Won't you examine me?"

"That's Doctor Wilhelm's business," Frederick answered brusquely.

"Well," she said, "if I am in pain and you as a physician can stop the pain, but don't want to, your friendship cannot amount to much."

Frederick did not turn a deaf ear to this correct reasoning. He had long before realised that her delicate constitution was with difficulty holding the balance between debit and credit. Each instant it was in danger of losing its balance.

"If I were your physician," he said, "I should send you to live for three years with a German country pastor, or an American farmer. I should not let you see anybody but the old pastor or the old farmer and his wife and their daughters. I should not let you go to see a play, let alone appear on the stage yourself. It is those cursed variety shows that have sent you to the dogs, physically and morally."

"I am a ruffian," he thought, "and there's medicine for her."

"Do you want to become a farmer?"

"Why?"

"Because you are already a pastor," she laughed.

The conversation was interrupted by the screeching of a cockatoo on a stand in the back of the cabin. Until then Frederick had not noticed it.

"What else will be turning up? Where did you get that beast?"

She laughed again.

"Please give me the beast. Koko! Koko!" Frederick arose and let the great, rosy-white seafarer clamber on his hand. "I like animals better than I do most people I meet," she said.

The bird kept screaming "Cockatoo!" until Frederick felt it fairly applied to him.

In the meantime the Roland, sinking into deep troughs and climbing over watery mountain crests in an ocean that was like a great machine regularly at work, had plowed its way into fog. The siren was bellowing.

"Fog?" exclaimed Ingigerd. Every bit of blood vanished from her face, which was already too pale. "But I am never afraid," she added immediately, took a bonbon in her mouth, and let the cockatoo nibble at it. The bird unfeelingly trod on the girl's beautifully heaving breast. She made it sing Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht and some well-known music-hall airs, and told stories of her menagerie.

Every instant Frederick had to perform some small service, and while she was giving an enthusiastic description of a little monkey from Java that she had once owned, he asked himself whether he was a physician, a nurse, a hairdresser, a chambermaid, or a steward, and whether Ingigerd Hahlstroem would not in the end reduce him to a messenger boy.

He yearned to be on deck in the open air.

Soon after, Achleitner entered with an anxious, questioning expression in his eyes, and Ingigerd dismissed Frederick most ungraciously. There was a look of hatred in her glance. But scarcely was Frederick outside in the fog with the knob of the door still in his hand, when it seemed to him as if ropes and chains, the chains of an enslaved man, were dragging him back to the girl's couch.



XXIV

"What is to become of me?" Frederick questioned himself. He scarcely heard Hans Fuellenberg's jolly shout of greeting as the young man reeled past. Hans Fuellenberg did not fail to observe whose door it was that Frederick von Kammacher had just closed behind him, nor that, as he stood there with the knob still in his hand, he seemed to be in a state of indecision and absorption.

The siren was sending up its deafening roar. It was that wild, fearful, ascending cry, as if torn from the breast of a monster bull, which he had first heard on the tender. There was something menacing in it, and at the same time something of an anxious warning. Frederick never heard it without applying menace and warning to himself. Likewise, the driving mist seemed to be a reflection of his soul; or his soul a reflection of the driving mist and also of the vessel, as it struggled onward into the unknown, unseeing and unseen. He stepped over to the railing and looked straight down the ship's side. There he could tell with what tremendous rapidity the Roland was cleaving the water.

"Isn't man's courage utter madness?" he thought. Could any one, from captain to the lowest sailor, prevent the propeller-shaft from snapping at any moment? The screw was constantly rising and buzzing in the air. Who could sight a vessel in time to prevent the collision that would inevitably smash in the thin walls of the great hollow body? Who could hope to avoid one of the many derelicts drifting in the fog almost submerged? What would happen if the might of the waves were to hurl that great lumped mass of wood and iron against the Roland's side? What would happen if the engines were to break down? If a boiler were to prove unequal to the uninterrupted strain put upon it? Then, too, icebergs were met with in those waters. And suppose the storm were to grow worse.

The things that European civilisation has accomplished are tremendous. The trouble is, the object to which the means are applied is not worthy of the means. The how is great. The wherefore receives only a stammering reply. So much is certain, that the life of the average man to-day is fuller of adventure and heroism than the life of a bold adventurer a hundred and fifty years ago.

Frederick went to the smoking-room on deck. He found the card players, Doctor Wilhelm, Arthur Stoss, Professor Toussaint and some more gentlemen gathered over their afternoon coffee.

"Hullo!" they shouted when he appeared in the doorway.

The room smelled strong of coffee and the pungent odour of tobacco. In the instant that Frederick held the door open, the wreaths of mist and heavy tobacco smoke met.

"What's the matter, gentlemen?" Frederick asked.

"Did you operate on the dancer," someone cried, "to remove that mole two inches from her backbone right over her left hip?"

Frederick turned pale, and said nothing. Had he uttered a single word, the result might have been a scandal, perhaps even a duel, out there on the high seas.

He seated himself beside Doctor Wilhelm and acted as if the shout of greeting and the unknown man's question had not referred to him. Doctor Wilhelm proposed a game of chess. Frederick accepted, and while playing, he had time to choke down his humiliation and resentment. He glanced about furtively to find the speaker.

"There are some people, Doctor von Kammacher," Arthur Stoss said in a raised voice, "who leave their decency in Europe when they travel to America, though that does not reduce the price of the passage."

The man at whom the remark was aimed left it unanswered.

"But, Mr. Stoss," said an elderly man from Hamburg, whose conscience in regard to the offence thrust upon Frederick was evidently clear, "we're not in a ladies' parlour, and we needn't take jokes amiss."

"I am not in favour of jokes," said Stoss, "that are made at the expense of persons who are near at hand, but not present, especially when a lady is concerned. I am still less in favour of them when they are coarse and indecent."

"Oh, Mr. Stoss," rejoined the man from Hamburg, "everything in its place. I have nothing against sermons, but we're having bad weather here on the ocean and this room is not a church."

"Besides, nobody mentioned names," another man said.

Here the American jackanapes joined in the cross talk.

"When Mr. Stoss is in New York," he said drily, "he will hold services every night at Webster and Forster's."

"Some American youngsters are celebrated for their cheek," Stoss countered.

"Directly after the celebrated Barrison sisters' appearance, after the song 'Linger Longer Loo,' Mr. Stoss will raise his hands to heaven and beg the audience to pray." The American spoke without moving a muscle of his face. He had the last word. The next instant the slim young fellow was outside the door.

Arthur Stoss had the pleasure of knowing he was a fool for his pains. But, like Frederick, he paid no attention to the thrust, or to the laughter it provoked.

"People are very much mistaken," he said, turning to Professor Toussaint, who was sitting beside him and to whom he had been introduced a few minutes before, "if they suppose that morality among vaudeville performers is laxer than among any other set of persons. It's an absolutely false assumption. A performer above the average, who must always be at the very height of his powers, has to practise moderation to the point of abstinence if he wants to remain on top. Does anybody suppose that a loose life is compatible with those startlingly bold feats that an acrobat does every day and tries to improve upon every day? Damn it! It's something to make your ordinary mortal marvel at. Why, to do any one of the many things we do, we have to practise asceticism and chastity, and patiently peg away day after day at hard, dangerous work. Your plain business man, who never omits his glass of beer, has no idea what it is like." He continued to sing the praises of vaudeville actors.

"May I ask what your specialty is, Mr. Stoss?" asked Hans Fuellenberg.

"A very easy specialty, once you know how. But if it should ever come to a duel between you and me, young man, you'd have to choose what eye or ear or tooth you'd be ready to part with."

"He's as good a shot as Carver," someone said. "He can take the middle right out of an ace three or four times in succession."

"Just like any other display of skill. But don't for a moment suppose, gentlemen, that even if a man has arms and doesn't have to hold the gun with his feet and pull the trigger with his toes, that he learns how to do it without sweating and self-denial and endless patience."

"Somebody said you play the violin like Sarasate," said Hans Fuellenberg.

"Not exactly. Nor need I, considering the way I was born. But I am fond of music and my audiences go wild over my playing."

Captain von Kessel entered. He was received with a general "Ah!" Through the door burst a great wave of sunlight.

"The barometer is rising, gentlemen."

The fog had lifted, and now the men in the smoking-room realised that the Roland was rocking no more than easily and comfortably and was making its way with majestic speed.

This acted like a charm. The captain left the door open and had Pander hook it back. A man, who had been lying asleep in a corner—in that half sleep which is the mildest symptom of seasickness—rose to a sitting posture and rubbed his eyes. Hans Fuellenberg and a number of other men hastened out on deck. Doctor Wilhelm and Frederick, who had lost the game, followed.



XXV

The two physicians paced the full length of the promenade deck. The air was mild. The ship was moving quietly, as if its great body took delight in pushing onward through none but low waves. It was surprising to see how gay the life on deck was. They were constantly raising their hats and making way for somebody. The stewards had carried the news of the good weather down to the passengers in their stuffy cabins, and all the seasick travellers had come crawling on deck. There was much talking and laughing. Each moment brought fresh surprise over the galaxy of merry women that had kept themselves stowed away in the Roland's interior. It was just an ordinary Saturday afternoon in January; yet suddenly an atmosphere of festivity prevailed not to be outdone by a Christmas eve.

Hans Fuellenberg passed by. He was cracking jokes for everybody's benefit and flirting desperately with his Englishwoman, who had recovered from her seasickness. She had found a friend, a woman in a fur cap and coat, with a magnificent crown of light hair, like a Swedish woman's. She seemed to be greatly amused by Fuellenberg's poor jokes and poor English. He had abstracted her muff and was alternately conveying it to his stomach, his heart, and—this very passionately—his mouth. The young American jackanapes was promenading with his Canadian, who looked very haughty and blase, yet much fresher. The delicate creature seemed to be shivering with cold, though she was wearing an elegant coat of Canadian sable, which reached to her knees. Frederick greeted the clothing manufacturer, whom his steward had helped up on deck. He had been lying in his cabin more dead than alive, and his steward had been feeding him on nothing but Malaga grapes.

Ingigerd was holding court on the port side in front of her cabin, the door to which stood open, it flattering her vanity to have the many promenaders see and envy the privilege she was enjoying.

"If it is agreeable to you, Doctor Wilhelm, let us remain this side of the Rubicon. That little girl slightly bores me. By the way, can you tell me how I came to bring down on myself that shout when I entered the smoking-room and that man's vulgar remark? To be sure, as a physician and free-thinker it's a matter of indifference to me."

"Oh," said Wilhelm, trying by an air of lightness to appease Frederick, "this is all it was. Fuellenberg probably saw you coming out of Miss Hahlstroem's cabin, and said something in the smoking-room. You know his mischievous way."

"I'll box his ears," said Frederick.

"The trouble is, the little girl is making herself generally conspicuous. The worst rumours are afloat about her. All men seem alike to her, whether stewards, firemen, sailors, or cabin-boys. And that greasy Achleitner! I assure you, all over the ship, in the forecastle, among the stewards when they polish the silver, and in the officers' cabins, they do nothing but titter and laugh at her and Achleitner and anybody falling under suspicion on her account."

"Don't you think that's slander?"

"Why, you and I are physicians. I don't care a fig one way or the other."

Frederick laughed. "I have set my all on nothing."

Suddenly he said:

"You're right. I'm of the same opinion. I must really throw overboard that old idealistic German Adam sticking in me like a Sunday afternoon preacher."

The two men laughed. Their mood turned merrier, chiming in with the general atmosphere of hilarity.

One reason for this predominating sense of happiness was the fact that all the passengers, after struggling with nausea and sleeplessness during those miserable, crawling, endless hours in the doleful grave of their cabins, had learned to appreciate the value of mere healthy existence. Merely to live, merely to live! That was the cry that rang in every step, every laugh, every word, drowning all care. None of those concerns which each of them had dragged on board, whether from Europe or America, now had the least might. Merely to live was to win in the great lottery. They knew sunshine follows rain, and they said to themselves, "If worse comes to worst, you will willingly put up with bread and salt and a hoe and a vegetable garden, and no one in the world will be a happier mortal than you."