Atlantis

The international gong had not been introduced on the Roland. The trumpeter of the band sent two blasts across the promenade deck and through the corridors of the first cabin as a signal for the midday meal. The first blast entered with the howling of the wind into the close, noisy, crowded smoking saloon. The attendant of the man without arms came to conduct his master across the deck again. Frederick watched the armless man with great interest. He seemed to be extraordinarily brisk and quick-witted. He spoke English, French and German with equal fluency, and to everybody's delight parried the impertinences of a saucy young American, whose disrespectfulness did not yield even before the sacred person of the captain; for which the dignified skipper sometimes rewarded him by staring over his head like a lion over a yapping terrier.

The table in the dining-room was in the form of a trident, with the closed end at the rear and the three prongs pointing to the prow. Opposite the centre prong was a false mantel with a mirror, where was posted the elegant figure in blue livery of Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward. He was a man of between forty and fifty. With his white, artificially curled hair, which gave the impression of being powdered, he resembled a major-domo of Louis XIV's time. As he stood there, head erect, looking over the swaying hall, he seemed to be the special squire of Captain von Kessel, who sat at the end of the middle prong, in the capacity both of host and most honoured guest. Next to the captain sat Doctor Wilhelm and the first mate. Frederick, having found favour in the captain's eyes, was assigned a place next to Doctor Wilhelm. The ship was no longer tossing so violently, and the dining-room, in consequence, was fairly well filled. The last ones to enter were the card players of the smoking-room, who came storming in. At the closed end of the trident, Frederick saw Mr. Hahlström, but without his daughter.

Many stewards very quickly and deftly served a vast quantity of dishes. Wine was also placed on the table. Within a short while the corks were popping from champagne bottles in the vicinity of the card players. In a gallery the band played without interruption. There were seven numbers on the printed music programme, which bore the name of the vessel, the date, and a picture of negroes in evening dress and high hats plucking at banjos.

Still the forward part of the vessel and, along with it, the dining-room with all its dishes, plates, and bottles, with its gentlemen guests and lady guests and the steward-waiters, with its fish and vegetables and meats and drinks and brass band, were lifted high on the mountain top of one wave and plunged deep in the trough of the next. The mighty working of the engines quivered through the ship. The dining-room walls had to cope with the onslaught of the opposing element.

The electric lights were turned on full. The grey of the cloudy winter day did not suffice to illuminate the room, especially since what brightness there was outside was every instant shut off by the water splashing against the port-holes.

Frederick enjoyed the daring of it—to be dining in festivity to the accompaniment of frivolous music in the illuminated bowels of this monster, this Roland. From time to time the mighty ship seemed on the point of encountering invincible resistance. A combination of opposing forces would rise up against the stem, producing the effect of a solid body, a veritable mountainside. At such moments the noise of the talking would die down, and many pale faces would exchange glances and turn to the captain or to the prow of the vessel. But Captain von Kessel and his officers were absorbed in their meal and paid no attention to the phenomenon, which for moments at a time brought the Roland to a quivering standstill. They never looked up, but kept to their eating and talking, even when, as often happened, tremendous masses of water hurled themselves against the walls, threatening to crash through what seemed like pitifully thin partitions for excluding that mighty, wrathful element, thundering and roaring with suppressed hate and fury.

During the meal Frederick's eyes were constantly drawn to Hahlström's tall figure. Though his hair was touched with grey, he was certainly still to be counted a handsome man. Next to him sat a man of about thirty-five, with a bushy beard, dark, bushy eyebrows, and dark, deep-set eyes, which sometimes darted a sharp, piercing glance at Frederick—at least so it seemed to Frederick. The man troubled him. He noticed that Hahlström graciously permitted the stranger to entertain him and pay him court.

"Do you know that tall, fair-haired man, Doctor von Kammacher?" the physician asked. In his confusion Frederick failed to answer, looking helplessly at Doctor Wilhelm. "He is a Swede. His name is Hahlström," Doctor Wilhelm continued. "A peculiar fellow. Earlier in his life he made a mess of your and my profession. He is travelling with his daughter, not an uninteresting little miss. She's been dreadfully seasick, and hasn't left the horizontal in her berth since we set sail from Bremen. That dark fellow sitting next to Hahlström seems to be something like, well, let us say, her fiancé."

"By the way, what do you do for seasickness?" Frederick asked hastily, to conceal his dismay and turn the conversation.

"You here, Doctor von Kammacher? I can scarcely trust my eyes." At the bottom of the companionway Frederick felt Hahlström tackle him, just as he was about to mount to deck.

"Why, Mr. Hahlström, what a peculiar coincidence! It's as if the whole of Berlin had agreed to emigrate to America!" Frederick exclaimed, simulating surprise with somewhat forced liveliness.

"May I present Mr. Achleitner? Mr. Achleitner is an architect from Vienna."

The man with the piercing eyes smiled with an air of interest, holding fast to the brass balustrade to keep from being hurled against the wall.

The door of a rather gloomy saloon opened on the first landing. It bore the misleading sign "smoking-room," misleading because the smokers never used it, far preferring the cosey little saloon on deck. A brown upholstered bench ran around the brown, wainscoted walls. Kneeling on the bench one could look out through three or four port-holes upon the seething and boiling of the waves. The entire floor space between the benches was taken up by a table finished in a dark stain.

"This room is a horrid hole," said Hahlström. "It positively makes me creepy."

A loud, trumpet-like, laughing voice called out from inside the room:

"I say, Hahlström, if this sort of weather holds out, neither your daughter nor I will keep the first day of our engagement with Webster and Forster. We're not even making eight knots. Perhaps I'll be able to manage. A big dose of salt water doesn't hurt me. To-day is the twenty-fifth. If we reach Hoboken at eight o'clock the evening of the first of February, I can appear for my act in perfect serenity at nine o'clock; but that frail blossom of yours can't. She will certainly need a few days to recover from the hardships of this trip."

The three men entered the smoking-room. Frederick had already recognised the voice as belonging to the man without arms, who, he learned later, from Hahlström, was a world-renowned celebrity. For more than ten years the bill-boards of every great city in the world had been displaying simply his name, Arthur Stoss, which alone sufficed to draw throngs to the theatres. His special art consisted in doing with his feet whatever other people do with their hands.

The first sight of him, of course, was repellent; but in the smoking-room on deck Frederick had got over his first repulsion and had become interested in his personality. Yet the situation in which he now beheld him was so novel, so remarkable, almost to the point of improbability, that he had difficulty in concealing his amazement. Arthur Stoss was eating lunch. Since this room was so little used and since a man forced to handle his knife and fork with his feet could not be permitted to eat in the public dining-room, they served Arthur Stoss with his meals here. To the three onlookers it had the value of an artistic performance to see how the actor managed to manipulate his instruments with his clean, bare toes—and that despite the pitching of the vessel—meanwhile, in the best of humour, uttering the wittiest remarks as bite after bite disappeared down his throat. He began to banter Hahlström and Achleitner, sometimes in rather caustic fashion, while exchanging glances with Frederick, as if he thought vastly more of him than of the other two men, who soon withdrew from his attacks to go on deck.

"My name is Stoss."

"Mine, Von Kammacher."

"It's very good of you to keep me company. That Hahlström and his henchman are disgusting. Though I have been an actor for twenty years, I can't stand the sight of such weedy weaklings, who don't do anything themselves and exploit their daughters. They have the effect of an emetic on me. For all that, he plays the great man. He has no talent, so he is going to boil soup from his daughter's bones. Yet he goes about nose up in the air. If he sees a dollar in the dirt and somebody of distinction is looking, he will let it lie. He won't pick it up. There is no denying he has an attractive appearance. He has the stuff in him for a very clever, fashionable swindler. But he would rather take it easy and live off his daughter and his daughter's admirers. It's astonishing how many people are willing to make asses of themselves. There's that Achleitner—look at the condescension with which Hahlström treats him and the lofty way Hahlström plays the rôle of benefactor! He used to be a riding-master. Then he got mixed up in some quack cure, a combination of Swedish gymnastics and hydrotherapeutics, and his wife left him, a fine, hard-working woman, now doing splendidly as head of a department at Worth's in Paris."

Frederick felt drawn up-stairs to Hahlström. The man's past as Stoss described it was at that moment a matter of indifference to him. But Stoss's remark about the asses some people are willing to make of themselves sent a fleeting red to his face.

Arthur Stoss grew more and more communicative. He sat like an ape, a resemblance impossible to avoid when a man uses his feet instead of his hands. When he had finished his meal, he stuck a cigar in his mouth, like any other gentleman. In him the likeness to an ape was accentuated by the breadth and flatness of his nose and the formation of his heavy jaws. He looked like a fair-skinned orang-outang. However, his high, broad forehead gave him the mark of the human intellect. He had no beard, that is, he had never in his life, probably, had to remove a hair from his parchmenty, freckled, yellow skin. His cheek bones were prominent, and his head unusually large. Though his general appearance made a most energetic, by no means effeminate impression, there still was something eunuch-like about it, the high pitch of his voice adding to this impression. While casting about for an opportunity to escape the monster's spell, Frederick was nevertheless deeply interested in him from a medical and anthropological standpoint. The man, without doubt, was an extremely instructive specimen of abnormality. His facies was that of an intermediate sexual stage.

"People like Hahlström," he continued, "are actually not worthy of the healthy limbs with which God endowed them. Of course, even if one has a figure like a statue by Myron, it is awkward if there is too little up here"—he tapped his forehead. "That is what is the trouble with Hahlström. There is too little up here. Look at me. I don't say everybody, but at least nine out of ten, in my position would have succumbed as a child. Instead of that, I have a wife, I own a villa in the Kahlenberg Mountains, I support three children of my step-brother and an older sister of my wife, who was a singer and lost her voice. I am absolutely independent. I remain on the stage because I want to bring my wealth up to a certain point. If the Roland were to sink to-day, I could go down with perfect equanimity. I have done my work. I have invested my money at a high rate of interest. My wife, my wife's sister, and my step-brother's children are all provided for."

The actor's attendant appeared, to help his master to his cabin for his afternoon nap.

"My days are mapped out like a time-table," Stoss explained. "My attendant here, Bulke, served his four years in the German navy. With all the ocean crossings I have to make, I couldn't get along with a man who wasn't used to the water. I need a perfect water rat."

A little spell of dizziness came over Frederick when he went to his cabin to fetch his heavy overcoat. On deck it was very quiet as compared with the morning. Hahlström was nowhere to be seen, and Frederick seated himself on a bench near the entrance to the main companionway. With his collar turned up and his hat drawn over his forehead, he succumbed to the state of drowsiness characteristic of sea trips, in which, despite the heaviness of one's eyelids, one feels and perceives with a restless lucidity of the inner vision. Images chase through one's mind, a kaleidoscopic stream, shifting incessantly, going and coming, and finally reducing the soul to a state of torture. The sybaritic meal with its clatter of plates, its talking and music, was still whirling through Frederick's brain. He heard the vaudeville actor declaiming. The half-ape was holding Mara in his arms. Hahlström in all his height was looking on, smiling. The waves were rolling heavily against the tiny dining-room and pressing hard on the creaking hull. Bismarck, a huge figure in armour, and Roland, the valiant warrior in armour, were laughing grimly and conversing. Frederick saw both wading through the sea. Roland was holding Mara, the tiny dancer, on his right palm. Every now and then Frederick shivered. The ship careened, a stiff southeaster heeling her to starboard. The waves hissed and foamed. The rhythm produced by the rise and fall of the pistons finally seemed to turn into the rhythm of Frederick's own body. The working of the screw was distinctly audible. At regular intervals the stern would rise out of the water, carrying with it the screw, which would then buzz in the air, and Frederick would hear Wilke from the Heuscheuer saying:

"Doctor, if only the screw doesn't snap."

Finally, all the machinery of the vessel seemed to be turning in his brain. Sometimes one engineer in the engine-room would call out to another, and the clang of the metal shovels when the stokers fed the furnace penetrated to the deck.

All of a sudden Frederick jumped to his feet; he thought he saw a ghost, or a dead-alive corpse, reeling up the companionway and making for him. It was the clothing manufacturer whom he had met at Southampton, looking more like a man in his death throes than one already dead. He gave Frederick a ghastly glance of unconsciousness and let a steward support him to the nearest steamer chair.

"If that man," Frederick thought, "is not to be reckoned among the heroes, then there never have been any heroes in the world."

"Each time I cross," the clothing manufacturer had said, "I suffer from seasickness, from the moment I set foot on the ship until I leave it."

And what horrible extremes of suffering he had to go through!

Opposite Frederick, at the entrance to the companionway, stood a cabin-boy. From time to time at the signal of a whistle from the bridge, he would disappear to receive orders from the first or second mate, or whatever officer happened to be on duty. Often an hour and more would pass without the summons, and the handsome lad had plenty of time to meditate upon himself and his lot in life. Frederick felt sorry for him as he stood there on guard, bored and chilly; so he spoke to him.

He learned that his name was Max Pander and that he came from near the Black Forest. The next logical question to put to him was whether he liked his work. The boy answered with a resigned smile, which heightened the charm of his handsome head, but showed he had none too much passion for the seaman's calling.

"There is not much in travelling on steamers," he observed. "A real sailor belongs on board a sailing vessel. There is a mate of mine here on the Roland," he added in a tone of great admiration, "who is only eighteen years old and has already been on two long, dangerous trips on a schooner."

To Frederick, it seemed as if lasting passion for the sea—the sea, which was already making him miserable—must be a conventional myth. It was three o'clock. He had been on board only nineteen or twenty hours, and already found it a petty hardship. "If the Roland doesn't make better time," he calculated, "I shall have to go through the same difficulties of existence eight or nine times twenty-four hours. But I will get back to land and remain there, while Pander, the cabin-boy, will have to return across the ocean a few days after landing."

"If someone were to find you a good position on land," Frederick asked, "would you give up your position here?"

"Yes, indeed," said Pander, emphasising his reply with a decided nod of his head.

"A nasty southeaster," said Doctor Wilhelm, passing by beside the tall figure of the first mate. "How would you like to come to my room? We can smoke and have some coffee there without being disturbed."

Walking along the deck below the promenade deck, one passed a covered gangway on both the starboard and port sides, into which opened various official rooms, including the officers' cabins, among them Doctor Wilhelm's, a comparatively spacious room, containing a bed, a table, chairs, and a well-equipped medicine closet.

The gentlemen had scarcely seated themselves when a Red Cross sister, who worked under Doctor Wilhelm's direction, appeared and gave a report, smiling as she did so, of a woman patient in the second cabin.

"In my two years of practice on a steamer, this is the fifth time I have had a case like this," Doctor Wilhelm said after the sister had left. "Girls who can no longer conceal the consequences of their mistake and are at loss what to do, take passage on a ship, when it is almost certain that the event they expect will occur. Such girls, of course, never suspect that they are typical on all sea trips, and are surprised when our stewards and stewardesses sometimes treat them with corresponding respect. I myself, of course, always do all I can for the poor creatures, and I usually succeed in inducing the captains not to make an announcement of the birth, in case there is one. Once a girl about whom we could not help giving notice was found hanging to the window sash in her lodgings near the harbour."

Over their coffee and Simon Arzt cigarettes, the whole woman question was unrolled.

"So far," said Frederick, "the woman question is nothing but the old-maid question, at least in the way women conceive it. The sterility of old maids sterilizes the whole movement."

Frederick developed his ideas. But tormenting visions of Mara and her admirer pursued him, and he discoursed mechanically, his reasoning on the woman question having become a matter of rote to him.

"The vital germinal spot of each reform in women's rights," he argued with apparent liveliness, blowing clouds of smoke, "must be the maternal instinct. The cells of the future cell-state, which will be a healthier social body, is the woman with the maternal instinct. The great women reformers are not those who would have women act just like men in all externals, but those who are conscious that all men, even the greatest, were born of women. They are the conscious mothers of the race of men and gods. A woman's natural right is her right to the child, and it is a most inglorious page in the history of woman that she has allowed herself to be deprived of that right. The birth of the child, in so far as it is not sanctioned by a man, is subject to the fire and brimstone of public scorn. And this scorn is the most pitiful page in man's history. The devil knows how it ever came to possess such awful, absolute dominion. Form a league of mothers, I should counsel women. Each member shall give token of her motherhood by having children without the sanction of a man, that is, without regard for so-called honour. In this lies woman's strength, but only if she takes pride in her child, instead of bearing it with a troubled conscience, in cowardice, concealment, and fear. Reacquire your proud, instinctive consciousness, which you are fully justified in having, of being the mothers of humanity; and having that consciousness, you will be invincible."

Doctor Wilhelm, who kept in touch with professional circles, was acquainted with Frederick's name and the outcome of his scientific career. His unfortunate bacteriological work was on his book shelf. Nevertheless, the name of Frederick von Kammacher had an authoritative ring, and association with the great man flattered him. He listened to Frederick's exposition intently.

The Red Cross sister entered again to summon Doctor Wilhelm to a first-class woman patient. The physician's small, close hermitage, in which Frederick was now left alone, gave him opportunity to reflect upon the meaning of his remarkable journey. The Roland was proceeding more smoothly, and while he sat there smoking cigarettes, a sense of comfort came over him, partly attributable, however, to the general effect of a sea trip on one's nerves. It seemed wonderful to him to be on this great transport of human cargo, to be driven onward to a new continent along with so many fellow-men, subject to the same weal and woe. And the cause of his presence on the ship was so curious! Never before had he had so strange a sense of being a will-less puppet in the hands of destiny. Again dark and light illusions mingled in his brain. He thought of Ingigerd, whom he had not yet seen; and when he touched the quivering wall of the low room, he was penetrated by happiness, that the same walls were protecting him as the little dancer and that the same bottom was holding them up.

"It's not true. It's a lie," he repeated half aloud, referring to the statement of the armless man, that Hahlström was exposing his daughter to dishonour and was exploiting her.

Doctor Wilhelm's return aroused Frederick from his dreams with a painful shock. Doctor Wilhelm laughed and continued to laugh, as he threw his cap on the bed and said:

"I've just dragged our little Hahlström and her pet dog on deck. The little imp has been giving a regular performance, in which her faithful poodle, Achleitner, plays the part, one moment of the beaten cur, the next moment of the spoiled darling."

Doctor Wilhelm's report made Frederick uneasy. The first time he had seen Mara, she seemed to him the incarnation of childish purity and innocence. But since then, rumours had reached his ears which shook his faith in her chastity and caused him many agonised hours and sleepless nights. He had even had an excellent opinion of her father, and that, too, was shaken.

Doctor Wilhelm, who also seemed to be extremely interested in Ingigerd, began to speak of Achleitner.

"He told me in confidence, he's engaged to her."

Frederick remained silent. That was his only way of concealing his profound dismay, now that the ship's doctor confirmed the supposition he had expressed at the dinner-table.

"Achleitner is a faithful dog," Doctor Wilhelm continued. "He is one of those men who have a canine sort of patience. He sits up on his hind legs and begs for a lump of sugar. He fetches and carries and lies down and plays dead. She could do whatever she wanted, and he would still, I think, be her patient, faithful poodle. If you'd like to, Doctor von Kammacher, we might go on deck and visit her. She's lots of fun. Besides we can watch the sun set."

Little Mara lay stretched out in a steamer chair. Achleitner was most uncomfortably perched on a small camp-stool directly in front of her, so that he could look straight into her face. He had wrapped her up to her shoulders in rugs. The setting sun, casting its rays across the mighty heavings of the sea, glorified a lovely face. The ship was no longer tossing so violently, and the deck was lively with people sitting in chairs or promenading up and down. Some of the passengers had got over their seasickness, and there was a general air of revived animation and talkativeness.

Mara's appearance was somewhat conspicuous. She wore her very long, light hair flowing, and was playing with a small doll, a fact of which every passerby turned about to assure himself.

When Frederick saw this girl, who for weeks had been hovering in his soul, in his dreams, in his waking hours, who, as it were, had covered the rest of the world from his sight, or, at least, had cast a veil over it, his excitement was so intense and his heart beat so violently against his ribs that he had to turn away to keep his countenance. Even after the lapse of several seconds, it was difficult for him to believe that the enthralled, enslaved condition of his being was not noticeable to the people about him. But his excitement was by no means due solely to the fear of self-betrayal. It sprang from his passion, which, he suddenly realised, dominated him with undiminished strength.

"Papa told me you were here," the little miss said to him, adjusting the blue silk cap on her doll's head. "Won't you sit down with us? Mr. Achleitner, please go and get a chair for Doctor von Kammacher." She turned to Doctor Wilhelm. "Your treatment was summary, but I am grateful to you. I feel very well sitting here, watching the sun set. You're fond of nature, aren't you, Doctor von Kammacher?"

"Nur für Natur hegte sie Sympathie," trolled Doctor Wilhelm, swaying on tip-toe.

"Oh, you are impudent," Ingigerd reproved him. "Doctor Wilhelm is impudent, you know," she added to Frederick. "I saw he was the very instant he looked at me and the way he took hold of me."

"But, my dear young lady, so far as I know, I never took hold of you."

"If you please, you did—going up the stairs. I have blue marks as the result."

The chatter ran on for a while in a similar strain. Frederick, without betraying it, was on the alert for every word she uttered, noted every play of feature, watched for her glances, for the rise and fall of her lashes. He jealously studied the others, too, and caught every expression, every movement, every glance that was meant for her. He even noticed how Max Pander, the handsome cabin-boy, still standing at his post, held his eyes fixed upon her, a broad smile on his lips.

Ingigerd's pleasure in receiving the homage of three men and being the centre of general interest was evident. She plucked at her little doll and her odd, checked jacket, and gave herself up to coquettish whimsies. Her affected voice filled Frederick with the delight of a long, cool drink to a thirsty man. At the same time, his whole being was inflamed with jealousy. The first mate, Von Halm, a magnificent young man of twenty-eight, a perfect tower of a man, joined the group and was favoured by Ingigerd with looks and pointed remarks, which indicated to her admirers that this weather-tanned officer was not an object of indifference to her.

"How many miles, Lieutenant, since we left the Needles?" asked Achleitner, who was pale and evidently chilly.

"We're making better time now," Von Halm replied; "but for the last twenty-two or twenty-three hours, we haven't made more than two hundred miles."

"At that rate it will take two weeks to reach New York," cried Hans Füllenberg, somewhat too forwardly, from where he was sitting a little distance away. He was still flirting with the English lady from Southampton; but now, irresistibly drawn to Mara's sphere, he jumped up and left her, bringing the tone that was agreeable to Mara and all her admirers, except Frederick von Kammacher. The jolliness of the little group communicated itself to the rest of the promenade deck.

Disgusted with the orgy of banality, Frederick moved off to be alone with his thoughts. The deck, which in the middle of the day had been dripping with water, was now quite dry. He walked to the stern and looked out over the broad, foaming wake. He heaved a deep breath of joy at the thought that he was no longer in the narrow spell of the little female demon. Suddenly the long tension of his soul relaxed. Though he might have suffered a profound disenchantment, yet he felt as if he had taken a sobering bath, which left him a free agent, alone with his own soul. He felt ashamed of his instability. His passion for that little person seemed ridiculous, and he covertly beat his breast and rapped his forehead with his knuckles as if to awaken himself from a dream.

But, finally, the great cosmic moment of the slowly setting sun cast its spell over the young German adventurer.

A fresh wind was still blowing from the southeast, slanting the vessel slightly to the side where the sun hung over the horizon, turning the heavens in the west into a great, dusky conflagration. That sun, beneath which a slate-coloured sea was rolling in waves gently tossing foam—that sea, slate-coloured in the east and a cold, darkening blue in the west and south—that sky above, with great masses of clouds—these were to Frederick like the three mighty motives of a world symphony.

"Any one who is susceptible to them," he thought, "has no real cause to feel small, for all their awful majesty."

He was standing near the log, the long line of which was trailing in the ocean. The great ship was quivering under his feet. From the two smoke-stacks the wind was pressing the smoke down over the waves, and a melancholy procession of figures, widows in long crêpe veils, wringing their hands in mute grief, drifted away backward, as if into the twilight gloom of eternal damnation. He heard the talking of the passengers, and represented to himself all that was united within the walls of that immense house, hurrying forward restlessly—how much hunting, fleeing, hoping, fearing. And in his soul, responding to the universal miracle, arose the great unanswered questions that seek to penetrate to the dark meaning of existence: "Why?" "What for?"

He began to pace the deck again without noticing that he drew near Ingigerd Hahlström.

"You are wanted," a voice behind him suddenly announced. Seeing how he started, Doctor Wilhelm excused himself.

"You were dreaming; you are a dreamer," Mara called. "Come over here. I don't like these stupid men."

The six or eight gentlemen in attendance, with the exception of Achleitner, laughed and withdrew with a humorous show of great obedience.

"Why do you stay here, Achleitner?" Thus the faithful canine received his dismissal.

Frederick saw how the men withdrew together in groups at a little distance, whispering as they usually do when having sport with a pretty woman who is not exactly a prude; and it was with some shame, at any rate, with expressed repugnance that he took the stool still warm from Achleitner's body. Mara began to rhapsodise about nature.

"Isn't everything prettiest when the sun goes down? I think it's fun—at least I like it," she quickly substituted, when Frederick made a wry face at the remark. She spoke in sentences that all began with "I don't like," or "I despise," or "I do detest." In the face of that vast cosmic drama unfolding itself before her senses, she sat wholly unmoved and unsympathetic, displaying the overweening arrogance of a spoiled child. Frederick wanted to jump up, but remained where he was, pulling nervously at the end of his moustache, while his face assumed a stiff, mocking expression. Mara noticed it, and was visibly upset by this unusual form of homage.

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 Hahlström, 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 Laïs 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!

"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 pâté 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 Hahlström 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.

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."

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.

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.