Atlantis

Long after Stoss had been led away by his valet and tucked in bed for his afternoon nap, Frederick still remained in the unfrequented smoking-room. The place made an uncanny impression. Yet its very gloominess insured privacy; and in the gravity of the situation he had need to be by himself. He began, perhaps prematurely, to consider the worst eventuality. He thought it might be well to stand in readiness. Around the walls ran a bench upholstered in leather. Kneeling on it, he could look through the port-holes out upon the mighty uproar of the waters. In that position, watching the waves beat with inconceivable persistency against the desperately struggling vessel, he let his life pass in review before his mind's eye.

Grey gloom was closing down on him. After all, he felt that he yearned for life and was far from being as ready to die as he had occasionally supposed. Something akin to regret came over him. "Why am I here? Why did I not stop to consider and summon all my rational will power to keep me from this senseless trip? For all I care, let me die; but not here, not in a desert of water far from mother earth, immeasurably far from the great community of men. This seems to me a particularly awful curse. Men on solid land, in their own homes, men among men, have not the least notion of it." What was Ingigerd to him now? A matter of indifference. Shaking his head, he admitted that he now had only the narrowest concern for himself. What a beautiful hope to escape that brutal fate and land on some shore! Any fragment of land, any island, any city, any snow-clad village was a garden of Eden, an improbable dream of happiness. How extravagantly grateful he would be in the future merely to tread dry land, merely to draw breath, merely to see a lively street! He gnashed his teeth. Of what avail a cry for help here? How could a man find God's ear here? If the extreme thing were to happen, and the Roland with its mass of human beings were to founder, one would see things that would prevent the man that had seen them, even if he escaped, from ever being happy again.

"I would not witness it," thought Frederick. "I would jump overboard to avoid the sight of it. And while that would be happening, none of my friends and relatives would be thinking of me at all. 'The steamship Roland sunk' appears as a head-line in the newspapers. 'Oh!' says the reader in Berlin, the reader in Hamburg, and Amsterdam. He takes a sip of coffee, puffs at his cigar, and comfortably settles back to a taste of more details of the catastrophe, whether observed or fabricated. What a hurrah for the newspaper publishers! A sensation! More readers! That is the Medusa into whose eyes we look, and who tells us what the genuine value of a cargo of human lives is in the world."

Frederick attempted in vain to battle against a still-life picture, which the Roland, valiantly struggling onward, with its siren almost stifled in the storm, showed him at the bottom of the sea. He saw the majestic vessel in a coffin of glass. Across its decks swarms of fish swam hither and thither. Its cabins were all filled with water. The large dining-room, with its panels of walnut, its tables, and leather-upholstered revolving chairs, was filled with water. A big polyp, jelly-fish, and red, mushroom-like sea-anemones had penetrated into the very gangways along which the passengers were now walking. And to Frederick's horror, the liveried corpses of Pfundner, the head-steward, and his assistant stewards were slowly floating about in a circle. The picture would have been almost ridiculous, had it not been so gruesome and had it not so certainly lain in the realm of the possible. Think of all the things divers report! All the things they have seen in the cabins and gangways of submerged steamers; inextricably knotted masses of human beings, passengers or sailors coming toward them with outstretched arms, upright, as if alive and as if awaiting them. A closer examination of the clothes of those guardians and administrators of a lost estate at the bottom of the sea, those strange ship-owners, business men, captains, pursers, those fortune-seekers, money-seekers, embezzlers, adventurers, or whatever they might be, showed that they were filled with polyps, crustaceans, and all sorts of ocean worms, enjoying their stay there as long as something remained beneath their shredded garments except gnawed-off bones.

Frederick beheld himself down there, too, one of those decaying phantoms, months old, wandering about in the ghastly abode of the sunken Roland, in that horrible Vineta, where each man passed his neighbour mutely with a frightened gesture, each seeming to carry in his breast a congealed cry of anguish, which he expressed with bowed head and outstretched arms, or head thrown back and open mouth. Or else he was hideously crawling on his hands, or wringing his hands, or folding them, or spreading out his fingers. The engineers in the boiler-room seemed still slowly, slowly to be controlling the cylinder and driving-wheel; yet differently than before, since the law of gravity seemed no longer to be in force. One of the engineers was doing his work in a peculiarly twisted way, like a man asleep caught between the rim of the wheel and the piston-rod covered with verdigris. Frederick descended on his ghastly tour down to the stokers, whom the catastrophe had surprised in the midst of their occupation. Some were still holding their shovels in their hands, though unable to lift them. They themselves were floating, while the shovels to which they clung did not stir from the bottom. All was over. They could not kindle the fire into a white glow, and so could not keep the mighty steamer in its course. In the steerage the sight was so horrible to behold, with men, women and children of all nationalities huddled and tossed in thick, dark heaps, that even a cat-shark, which had made its way through the chimney of the stoke-hole and then through the engine, did not feel sufficiently courageous or hungry to mingle in the gathering. Noli turbare circulos meos, these people, too, seemed to be saying. All were thinking strenuously, absorbed in the profoundest meditation—they had plenty of time for profound meditation—upon the riddle of life.

In fact, they seemed to be placed there merely for the purpose of reflecting. Those men and women wringing their hands or spreading their fingers, or walking on their hands, or even standing on the tip of a single finger, while grazing the ceiling with their feet, were all thinking. Professor Toussaint alone, who came floating toward Frederick in the gangway, seemed to be acting differently. With his right hand raised, he seemed to be saying: "An artist may not rust. He must air himself. He must seek new conditions of life. If he doesn't receive the honour he should in Italy, he should simply go to France, like Leonardo da Vinci, or even emigrate to the land of liberty."

"I want to live, live, nothing else," thought Frederick. "In the future, like Cato the Elder, I would rather walk a year on foot along a way that I could cover in three days on a steamer."

To avoid the hideous companionship of the blue, swollen thinkers, he left the gloomy, funereal smoking-room, and, with aching head and leaden limbs, dragged himself on deck, where the wild scurrying of the storm and the chaos of snow, rain and salty clouds of foam tore the weight away from his soul.

In the space at the head of the companionway Frederick came upon the same company as the day before, sitting close together in steamer chairs—Toussaint, the timid skipper of the sailing vessel, the woman artist, the woman physician, the tall electrical engineer, and a man who had not been there the day before, an American colonel. He was a handsome specimen of the highest type of his widely spread species. He was engaged in a conversation on the number of miles covered by all the railroads in the United States, and his statements concerning their extent set fire to the European chauvinism of the electrical engineer. They forgot the weather in their debate. Each party to the dispute named an incredible number of miles and vaunted the advantages of the railroads in his native country.

"We are running at only half speed," said Toussaint to Frederick. "Isn't it strange how suddenly the weather changed?"

"Very," answered Frederick.

"Of course," Toussaint continued with a pale grimace intended for a smile, "I don't understand anything about cyclones, but the seamen say this storm is cyclonic."

"It may be called a cyclone," said the timid little skipper of the sailing vessel. "If it were striking us astern instead of ahead, it would not be so bad. As it is, the Roland at the utmost cannot make more than three miles an hour. Were I on my schooner and had the same storm blown up so suddenly, we should not have had time to furl a sail. We should have been lost. Thank the Lord, it is better on modern steamers. Nevertheless, I feel more comfortable on my four-master, and the devil knows, I'd like to be on it now."

Frederick could not help laughing.

"As for the Roland," he said, "I would rather be, let us say, in the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. Your four-master has no greater charms for me than a cabin on the Roland."

Hans Füllenberg came lounging in and told them a wave had swept away one of the life-boats on the after quarter. At the very same instant an arched mass of water came flying slantwise over the port bow.

"Oh!" everybody cried.

"Magnificent, beautiful," said Frederick.

"That's cyclonic," the woman artist repeated.

"Believe me," they heard the colonel say again, "the stretch from New York to Chicago alone"—

"That was a Niagara Falls," said Toussaint.

The wave, dropping into the ventilators and chimneys, had fairly bathed the vessel. It was cold, too, and the Roland was continuing its obstinate, praiseworthy trip under a crust of ice and snow. Icicles were hanging from the rigging. Glassy stalactites formed about the chart-room and everywhere on the railings and edges of things. The deck was slippery, and it was a perilous venture to attempt to make one's way forward. But when Ingigerd's cabin door opened and her long light hair rumpled by the wind appeared in the slit, Frederick instantly made the venture. She drew him into her cabin, where he found two children keeping her company.

"I invited them to stay with me because it's fairly comfortable in this cabin."

The seriousness of the situation had extinguished in the girl all coquetry and capriciousness. Frederick almost forgot what he had suffered on her account and in what fatal dependence he had been upon this creature only a short time before.

"Tell me, is there danger, Doctor von Kammacher?" she asked.

His evasive answer seemed to make no impression upon her. He was astonished to see how energetic and resolute she was, in contrast with her behaviour of yesterday, when she played the spoiled, suffering, helpless child. She begged him to go try to find her father.

"In case anything happens, you know, it would be well not to be so far away from him."

"What do you suppose will happen?"

Without answering this, she asked him to stop at cabin 49 on the way and tell Rosa to come up.

"My little guests keep clamouring for her. If she doesn't come up for a while, I can't keep them quiet. Then she can serenely go back again to her silly, sentimental mistress. What do you think of a man like Achleitner?" she continued. "He is lying on all fours in his cabin, crying and groaning, 'Oh, my poor mother! Oh, my poor sister! Why didn't I obey you, mamma!' and so on. Just fancy, a man! Poor fellow!" she added, her tone changing. "It's enough to move a heart of stone." She held fast to the bedstead, not to be thrown into a corner like a splinter, and shook with laughter.

The mountain of stones under which Frederick had buried the little sinner, Ingigerd, was at that moment removed, and love stood there with unparalleled might. Such genuine bravery and genuine humour, combined with so much tenderness, he had never credited her with. Nervous and tired as he was, he felt irresistibly drawn to her, felt his will slipping from him. But a little, and he would have thrown himself to the floor and kissed the small feet in slippers.

Frederick's amazement waxed when all of a sudden she wanted to cross the deck and go below to comfort that donkey Achleitner. Frederick would not allow her. He was ashamed of his previous attack of fright, called himself a miserable coward, and got himself under perfect control. In this attitude he played the rôle of a severe mentor, Ingigerd's responsible guardian and protector, strict, but fatherly and good-natured. Though she laughed at him, it by no means displeased her to let him have his way.

Frederick's kindliness to Ingigerd's little wards made it unnecessary to summon Rosa. He asked the children their names, and they were soon chattering confidingly with their new uncle. Ella Liebling, a girl of five, to whom Ingigerd had given her doll, was sitting at one end of the couch, a cover wrapped about her legs, while Siegfried had established himself comfortably on the bed. With a spiritless expression for a child, he was playing a rather monotonous game of cards with an imaginary partner.

"Mamma is divorced," Ella explained. "Papa was always quarrelling with her."

"Yes," said Siegfried, pushing his cards aside, as if waking up from a trance, and bending over to Frederick, who was sitting beside Ella, "mamma once threw a boot at papa."

"But papa is strong," said Ella. "He once picked up a chair and knocked it down and smashed it to pieces."

Though Ingigerd was suffering from nausea, she had to laugh.

"Those children are great sport," she said.

"Papa once threw a bottle against the wall," Siegfried went on, "because Uncle Bolle was always coming to see us."

And so the children continued, like little wiseacres, to discuss in detail the theme of "happy marriages."

"Rosa says mamma is to blame because papa left us," observed Siegfried.

"I think so, too," said Ella. "I think mamma's to blame."

"Rosa said mamma doesn't do anything but read novels."

"Rosa says," Ella chimed in, "that if mamma were not always lying in bed, she would feel much better."

And "Rosa says," "Rosa says," went on for a long while. The former non-commissioned officer and lackey of the vaudeville star, Bulke, came towing Rosa across the deck in the same way as he did his master. Both looked red and contented. Frederick asked what the prospects were for the Roland.

"Oh, everything's all right," Bulke laughed, "if only something else doesn't turn up."

"Bulke," said Rosa, "take Siegfried on your back."

Bulke proceeded to do so, while Rosa lifted Ella to her crimson arm.

Now the children begged to remain where they were, although before they had been annoying Ingigerd by constantly crying for Rosa.

"Let them stay," said Ingigerd.

Rosa thanked her. "They are really best off here," she said. "All they take for supper is some milk and a roll. I will bring it right away."

"What is that on your arm?" asked Frederick. It looked as if a beast had been clawing at her.

"Oh, nothing," she said. "My mistress doesn't know what she is doing. She's out of her senses from seasickness and fright."

For five hours the cyclone raged unmercifully. At ever shorter intervals, gust on gust in increasing fury hurled itself against the vessel.

With great difficulty Frederick made his way down to the barber, who, though the ship's movement was a fearful combination of rolling and pitching, actually performed the miracle of shaving him.

"One has to keep going," said the barber. "If you don't work, you're lost."

He spoke and suddenly stopped, removed the razor from Frederick's throat and turned pale, if his dirty grey colour could turn a shade lighter. Frederick's face, too, still partly covered with lather, showed signs of surprise and alarm. In the engine-room the signal bell had rung loud, as a sign that the captain was sending an order down from the bridge through the speaking-tube. Thereupon the revolution of the engines had slowed down and within a few moments had ceased entirely. This event, simple enough in itself, had in this weather, about fifteen hundred miles from land, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the effect of a catastrophe, not only on Frederick and the barber, but on every passenger still capable of reasoning, and even on the whole crew. One instantly observed the excitement that seized upon all at the cessation of the engines, which seemed to turn the vessel into a torpid, powerless thing. Voices cried, women shrieked, steps hurried up and down the gangways. A man tore the door open and indignantly cried, as if imputing to the poor barber the responsibility of a captain:

"Why are we standing still?"

Frederick wiped the lather from his face and, along with a multitude of questioning, groping, staggering persons, thrown now against one wall of the gangway, now against the other, hastened to make his way on deck.

"We are drifting," everybody said.

"The screw is broken."

"Cyclone!"

"Oh," said a young girl, who had dragged herself up in a dressing-gown, to Frederick, "I don't care about myself, not a bit, but my poor mother, my poor mother in Stuttgart."

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" twenty voices at the same time demanded of a steward, who was attending to his duties. He ran away, shrugging his shoulders.

Since the passengers, huddled like sheep, blocked the way to the deck at the head of the companionway, Frederick tried to get out by another way, leading a long distance through the after part of the vessel and then through a narrow corridor forward again. He walked rapidly and seemed outwardly composed, though in a state of unusual tensity, even fear.

In the second cabin Frederick's way was barred by a good-looking young man standing in front of his cabin barefoot, in his shirt sleeves and trousers. He was attempting to button his collar; but in his excitement was not succeeding.

"What's the matter?" he shouted to Frederick. "Is everybody in this cursed hole crazy? The first thing you know a stoker dies, and now there is a leak, or the screw is broken. What's the matter with the captain? I am an officer. I must be in San Francisco on the twenty-fifth of February, without fail. If it keeps on this way, I'll be in a fix."

Frederick wanted to hurry by, but the man got in his way.

"I am an officer," he said. "My name is Von Klinkhammer." Frederick also gave his name. "That's what comes of having priests on board," the young man continued, twirling the end of his moustache upward, Prussian fashion. "If there's no help for it, then the fellows ought simply to be chucked overboard. What is the captain thinking of?" he kept shouting, while an unexpected lurch of the vessel sent him plunging against the wall almost back into his cabin. "I didn't leave the service and give up a career and board this damned—"

But Frederick had run away. Now deep, intense silence prevailed throughout the vessel, which was like a dead thing; a silence, in which every now and then a step or a hasty tread on the heavy carpet in the gangway was audible. Through the thin walls came the dull, confused murmur of many voices. Doors banged, and when they opened, brief, broken sounds penetrated from the cabins, evidence of the bewilderment and alarm of their tenants. The thing that was particularly weird to Frederick in that swaying corridor, creaking like a new boot and lighted by electricity, was the incessant ringing of electric bells. In a hundred cabins at the same time, frightened persons, who had paid dear for their passage and were entitled to excellent service, were pressing the buttons. None of them was inclined to recognise the force majeure of the Atlantic Ocean, the cyclone, the breaking of the screw, or any other possible accident. They thought that by ringing the bells they would be giving expression to the irresistible demand for a responsible rescuer to bring them safely to dry land.

"Who knows," thought Frederick, "while they are ringing the bells down here, perhaps the life-belts are being handed out on deck, the boats are being swung out on the water and over-loaded with passengers to the sinking point."

But, thank the Lord, by the time he had finally fought his way to Ingigerd's cabin on deck, it had not yet reached that point. It was to Ingigerd Hahlström that an impulse had been driving him. Beside the children, for whom in a motherly way she was trying constantly to devise a new occupation, he found her father and Doctor Wilhelm.

"People's cowardice is something fearful," said Doctor Wilhelm.

"Easily said; but what's the matter?" asked Frederick.

"One of the bearings got too hot. It takes time for it to cool off."

The passengers crowded on the companionway kept calling for the captain.

"The captain has other things to do than answer silly questions," said Wilhelm.

"I think the people should be quieted and given an explanation," Frederick declared. "To me a certain amount of fear seems justifiable in the landlubber, who doesn't know anything of nautical matters and hasn't the least notion of what is happening."

"Why should they be told anything?" rejoined Wilhelm. "Even if matters are very bad, it is advisable to deceive them."

"Well, then," said Hahlström, "deceive them. Send stewards around to tell them everything is all right and we'll have to drown."

Shortly afterward, the captain actually did send the little army of stewards through the vessel to inform the passengers that, as Doctor Wilhelm had said, one of the bearings had got too hot, and in a short while the engines would be working again.

"Is there danger?" the stewards were asked a thousand times.

"No," was the decided answer.

To keep the air in her cabin pure, Ingigerd left the door slightly ajar; and the sight of the colossal Roland, as seen from her cabin, helplessly drifting in the ocean, by no means seemed to bear out the stewards' declaration.

"There is no use concealing the fact that we are scudding under bare poles," said Hahlström.

"We are dripping oil on the water," said Wilhelm, pointing through the opening of the door to where Pander and a sailor were lowering a bag of sail-cloth filled with oil. With the heavy seas that kept sweeping down like great mountains in motion and the fearfully boiling waves accompanying the swells, the measure seemed almost ridiculous. Each instant the dead Roland, constantly sending out its long-drawn signal, which sounded more like a call for help than a warning, was raised up on a plunging mountain of water, where there seemed as little prospect of safety as when it sank into the valleys. The great steamer seemed not to know where to turn. The raging waters twisted it over now on its starboard side, now on its port side. Of its herculean might, nothing remained but its unwieldy, helpless bulk. It turned about slowly, and turned back again, and all of a sudden a fearful sea, like a thousand hissing white panthers leaping from a dark green mountain ridge, dashed over the railing.

"That was bad," said Wilhelm, slamming the door shut in the nick of time. Frederick's nerves were in a state of tension, not in a mere metaphoric sense. They produced a purely physical sensation, as of violin strings too tightly drawn.

"Is it making you nervous?" asked Hahlström.

"Somewhat," said Frederick. "I don't deny it. A man has strength and intelligence, but can't exercise either, even when danger is imminent."

"Immediate danger?" asked Wilhelm. "No, we are not there yet. In the first place, the engines will be working again pretty soon; and secondly, even if we should really have to drift and had to resort to the sails, we could count on being perfectly easy in our minds a week from now."

"What do you mean by being easy in our minds?" demanded Hahlström.

"The storm is blowing from north-northwest. A ship like this never capsizes. So, in all probability, we should be carried to the Azores, where a steamer would tow us into port. Or, perhaps, we should be driven even further south, and in a week we should be anchoring in view of the glorious Peak of Teneriffe."

"Many thanks for your Peak of Teneriffe. I have to be in New York. My daughter has an engagement there. We are under obligations to be there."

"A week of uncertainty would be ruin to my nervous system," said Frederick. "I am not suited for this passive heroism. I might do more if I could be active."

"You've read the 'Leather-stocking Tales,'" said Wilhelm, ironically. "You know that the American Indians have greater respect for passive heroism. Think of the stakes on which they burn their captives to death."

"Never mind," said Frederick. "No martyr stakes for me. Were I to hear that the screw is broken and we should have to drift, my nerves couldn't stand it. I would jump into the water. That is why I am against life-preservers. I wouldn't accept one if it were offered to me ten times over. Why prolong the death agony?"

The hours passed. The grey day went down into still greyer twilight. The ear-splitting tumult of the sea never ceased. Frederick, like everybody else, had in vain awaited the moment when the engines would be working again, and the helpless ship would resume its course. Everybody, with the anxiety of despair, watched whether the intervals between the great swells would lengthen or shorten. Sometimes a superstitious illusion that he was being persecuted would take hold of Frederick. Particularly awful were the cries of the emigrants penned in the steerage, which at short intervals penetrated above on deck. They wept and wailed and shrieked to heaven for help. They were like men driven mad by fear, fury and physical pain.

Yet, as if nothing had happened, the call for dinner was trumpeted at the regular time through the gangways of the drifting vessel, through that majestic, helpless ark, lighted by electricity, which, shining through the port-holes, turned the Roland with its crust of ice into a fairy palace, a mournful plaything of the waves.

Frederick wondered who would have the phlegm or the courage or the desire to go to dinner. But Wilhelm cried, "Come, gentlemen," and since Rosa appeared, wet and courageous, to attend to the children, it was out of place for him to remain in the cabin, and there was nothing for him to do but join Doctor Wilhelm and Hahlström. The cockatoo was screeching and Ella was crying. The child was refractory. Ingigerd was trying to console her, while Rosa reprimanded her rather energetically.

"Would you like me to stay near here?" Frederick asked before leaving. "It would mean a great deal to me if you would let me be entirely at your disposal, Miss Ingigerd."

"Thank you, Doctor von Kammacher, you will be coming again."

Frederick marvelled at the naturalness with which he had made the offer and she had accepted.

Now an unexpected change set in, which allayed everybody's excitement and went through Frederick's muscles and nerves like a soothing stream. The walls and floors of the Roland began to quiver faintly, a sign that her heart and pulse were beating again. It was the rhythm of its strength, the rhythm of its race to its goal. Ingigerd shouted with joy, like a child, and Frederick set his teeth. Renewed life, renewed prospects and hopes, the reassumption of system, the relaxation of his nerves made him so weak that the tears almost started to his eyes. Choking down his emotion, he stepped out on deck.

Here the scene had changed. Blithely, in all its might, the Roland was leaping forward again into the roaring darkness. That monstrous, seething witch's cauldron of the boiling waters was now welcome to him. Again the Roland was tearing breaches in dark mountains, was rising to mountain heights, and madly plunging into deep valleys; during which, for many seconds at a time, the screw would whirl wildly in the turbulent air.

Mr. Rinck was sitting on the threshold of his cabin, which was brightly lighted, smoking and petting his spotted cat.

"It's good we're under way again," Frederick could not refrain from saying as he walked past.

"Why?" said Rinck phlegmatically.

"I for one," said Frederick, "would rather be running under full steam than drifting helplessly."

"Why?" said Mr. Rinck again.

In the gangways below, even though the ship was pitching, the atmosphere was fairly pleasant and lively. Everybody seemed to have forgotten his fear. The passengers, cracking jokes and clinging to the nearest stationary thing, reeled and stumbled into the dining-room. The rattle of china near the kitchen was deafening, especially when, as frequently happened, some of the plates broke.

Frederick's clothes were pretty well soaked, and he mustered up the courage to go to his cabin to dress. Adolph, his steward, came to help him, and told Frederick of a panic that had broken out in the steerage when the engines stopped. Some of the women with their babies on their arms had wanted to jump right into the water. It was with difficulty that the other emigrants had restrained them. One of the stewards and a sailor had clutched a Polish woman by her feet just as she was taking the downward plunge.

"You can't blame these people for acting like cowards in this situation," said Frederick. "It would be strange if they didn't. Who will insist that he can stand upright when the ground beneath his feet is giving away? If a man were to say so, either he would be lying, or his lack of feeling would be so great as to degrade him below an animal."

"Yes," said the steward, "but what would we do if we were so cowardly?"

Frederick now began to deliver one of those fiery dissertations that had won him a number of youthful auditors when he was a Privatdozent.

"With you it is different," he said. "You are upheld, and at the same time rewarded, by the feeling that you are doing your duty. While we passengers are living in terror, the cooks have been boiling soup, cleaning fish, preparing vegetables, roasting and carving, larding venison and so on." The steward laughed! "But I assure you, at times it is easier to roast a roast than to eat it." And Frederick continued in a solemn, but for that very reason, roguish manner to philosophise on courage and cowardice.

Dinner began, and, though the weather had by no means improved, a comparatively large number of passengers had gathered in the dining-room. Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward, with his white hair curled and arranged by the barber, if not in a braid at the back of his head, yet like a wig of the rococo period, stood, as usual, in majestic pose, before the false mantelpiece between the two entrance doors. It was the place from which he could best supervise the waiters and keep his eye on the whole dining-room.

The band was playing Le Père la Victoire by Ganne. This was followed by Gillet's Loin du Bal. At Suppé's overture from Banditenstreiche, the eternal skat players came tramping into the saloon, having delayed, as usual, to finish their game. At all the tables much wine was being drunk, because it strengthened one's courage and dulled one's nerves. The passengers toasted the Roland. It amused them. They were all conscious of the pleasant rhythm of the great engine, to which no music in the world was comparable. Over Vollstedt's waltz, Lustige Brüder, the company with a sense of relief was still discussing the danger they had safely escaped.

"We hoisted distress signals."

"Rockets were shot off."

"They were already getting the life-belts and life-boats ready."

"Why, they were even dripping oil on the water."

The remarks flew about with the less restraint as neither the captain nor any of his officers were at table.

"The captain," they said, "has never left the bridge since morning."

Suddenly the port-holes were illuminated from outside. Everybody, with an "Oh!" of astonishment, let his knife and fork fall and jumped up from his seat. "A ship!" "A steamer!" all exclaimed, and crowded on deck. There, in overawing majesty, in the gleam of its thousand lights, one of the mightiest ocean liners of the time was rolling and pounding at a distance of not more than fifty yards. "The Prince Bismarck, the Prince Bismarck!" the people cried, having heard the name from the officers and crew, who had recognised the vessel. "Hurrah!" went up the full-throated cry. "Hurrah!" Frederick shouted, and so did Wilhelm and so did Professor Toussaint. Everybody who could shouted "Hurrah!"—Ingigerd and the woman physician and the woman artist. They all waved their napkins or handkerchiefs. The same shout of joy went up from the steerage, and by way of greeting the two vessels let their steam whistles thunder. They could see the passengers on the various decks of the Prince Bismarck waving to them, and, in spite of the noise of the tempest, could hear their faint hurrah.

The Prince Bismarck, a twin-screw steamer, one of the first models of its kind, had just made its record-breaking trip, in which it had crossed the Atlantic Ocean in six days, eleven hours, and twenty-four minutes. About two thousand people were now making the trip from New York to Europe. Two thousand people! That means twice as many as can fill a Berlin theatre from the orchestra to the top gallery.

The Roland and the Bismarck exchanged lively flag signals. Yet the whole grandiose vision, from the moment of its appearance to its disappearance, lasted only three minutes. In that time the seething ocean was flooded with light. It was not until nothing remained of the Bismarck but a dancing mist of light that its band came on deck and played. On the Roland they caught two or three trembling, fading measures of the national hymn, Heil dir im Siegerkranz. Within a few moments the Roland was again alone on the ocean, in the night, the tempest, and the snowstorm.

With twice as much fire, the band now played a quadrille by Karl, Festklänge, and a galop by Kiesler, Jahrmarktskandal; and with twice as much appetite and twice as much liveliness the passengers seated themselves at dinner again. "Fairylike!" they cried. "Glorious!" "Tremendous!" "Colossal!"—this last a favourite expression of the Germans.

Even Frederick had a sense of pride and tranquillisation. He felt a vital breath of that atmosphere which is no less necessary to the mind of the modern man than air is to his lungs.

"No matter how much we resist the thought," he said to Wilhelm, "and no matter how much I railed yesterday evening against modern culture, a sight like that must impress a man. It must go to the very marrow of his bones. It is simply absurd that such a marvellous product of secret natural forces, joined together by man's brains and hands, such a creation over creation, such a miracle has become even possible." They touched glasses. The sound of clinking glasses could be heard all over the room. "And what courage, what boldness has been built into that great living organism, what a degree of fearlessness in opposing those natural forces which man has been standing in awe of for thousands of years! What an audacious world of genius, from its keel to the top of its mast, from its bowsprit to its screw!"

"And all this," responded Wilhelm, "has been attained in scarcely a hundred years. So it signifies only the beginning of a development. Object as much as you will, science, or rather technical progress, is eternal revolution and the only genuine reform of human conditions. Nothing can hinder this development that has begun. It is constant, eternal progress, yes, progress itself."

"It is the human intellect," said Frederick, "which throughout the centuries has been lying passive and has suddenly turned active. Undoubtedly man's brains and, at the same time, social industry have entered a new phase."

"Yes," said Wilhelm, "in a certain way the human intellect was already active in ancient times, but it fought too long with the man in the mirror."

"Then, let us hope," said Frederick in confirmation, "that the last hour of the men that fight images, the swindlers, the South Sea Island medicine-men and magicians, is not far off; that all filibusters and cynical freebooters, who for thousands of years have been living by the capture of souls, will strike sail before the fast, safe ocean-going steamer of civilisation, whose captain is intellect and whose sole steward is humanity."

After dinner, Frederick and Wilhelm climbed up to the smoking-room on deck.

"It is difficult to comprehend," said Frederick, when they reached the smoky little saloon, "how a vessel can keep its course in such a stormy, pitch-black night."

At the skat table, the players were sitting, smoking, drinking whisky and coffee, and tossing the cards on the table. Everything else seemed to be a matter of indifference to them. Frederick ordered wine and continued to goad his mind into activity. His head ached. He could scarcely hold it upright on his aching neck. His eyelids ached with weariness; but when they drooped, his eyes seemed to radiate a painful light shining from within. Every nerve, every muscle, every cell in him was alert. He could not hope for sleep. How weeks in his life, months, years had passed as in the twinkling of an eye! And this evening only three and a half days had elapsed since he boarded the Roland at Southampton, a period with the content of years, in which seconds were eternities. Its beginning lay in the remote distance, at the conclusion of a life lived long before, on an earth from which he had parted long before.

"You're tired, Doctor von Kammacher," said Wilhelm. "So I won't invite you to the stoker's funeral on the after-deck."

"Oh, I'll come," said Frederick. He was obsessed by a stinging rage not to spare himself anything, but to taste to the dregs even the bitterest impressions of this detached, jogged and jolted fragment of a human world.

The physicians arrived when they were sewing the stoker, Zickelmann, into sail-cloth. The bare cabin was not very brilliantly lighted by a single electric bulb. Frederick recalled his dream—how the dead stoker had been standing under the vines with the cords in his hand and had then led Peter Schmidt and himself to the Toilers of the Light. A great change had taken place in his appearance. His face was no longer of flesh, but seemed to be chiselled out of yellow wax, to which his hair, his eyebrows and beard were pasted. A faint, cunning smile seemed to be curving his mouth; and when Frederick with odd interest and curiosity scrutinised him closely, it seemed to him he was saying, "Legno santo! Toilers of the Light!"

When the dead man's face was covered up and his whole body had been sewed into the cloth in coarse stitches, the sailors bound the puppet, with difficulty keeping it in position, on a smoothly planed board, weighted with iron.

"Will such a chrysalis ever really turn into a butterfly?" Frederick wondered.

The procedure, a piece of reeling, staggering acrobatics, was less gruesome than ridiculous. Yet, though this long package might be only the mortal shell of an immortal soul, one had a sense of infinite sadness in entrusting it to the fearful solitudes of the ocean.

Since in the stormy weather it was no easy matter to throw the corpse overboard and since it was impossible to conduct ceremonies on a rolling deck constantly washed by the waves, the purser asked the few persons present—Captain von Kessel could not leave the bridge—to say a silent prayer for the soul of the dead man. They did so, and four of the stoker's mates, staggering, stopping, lurching and panting, carried the long package on deck to the railing, where at the word of command they let it slide into the sea.

When Doctor Wilhelm bade Frederick good-night, he added:

"You ought to try to go to sleep."

They parted, and Frederick hunted for a sheltered spot on deck, where he could spend the night. He wanted to look the wind and weather straight in the face, there in the glacial air, in the gloom under the pale sheen of the arc-lights fastened to the mast. He shuddered at the thought of a night in the oppressive confines of his cabin, with the closed port-hole and the hot, stale air. But that alone was not the reason which kept him chained to the deck. It was the urge, in case of danger, to be near Ingigerd Hahlström. And when he seated himself near the smoke-stack, with his back against the heated wall, his hat drawn low over his face, his chin in his coat collar, he suddenly laughed to himself bitterly. It was in the same position and on the selfsame spot that he had found Achleitner the night before.

There was a rushing in Frederick's ears. He observed the huge arcs that the lights on the mast described. He observed the regular onslaught of the waves, and above the seething and foaming of the water, he heard the miauing of the wind in the rigging, a wicked obstinate miauing, accompanied by the sudden spitting and leaping of a tiger. Then the sounds seemed to Frederick to be more like the pitiful whimpering of strayed children, a troop of children whom he could now distinctly discern weeping over the bier of the dead stoker. And there were the Toilers of the Light again. He immediately snatched for one to carry it to Ingigerd Hahlström in her cabin; but Ingigerd was dressing for her famous dance. The great spider was already hanging on the flower, weaving the cobweb in which Mara was later to entangle herself. Frederick asked for a broom. He wanted to prevent the dance by sweeping the spider away. A broom came, but in the form of a serving man, who was carrying water and pouring it out. Another man followed and a third and a fourth, until everything was flooded with rushing waters. Frederick awoke from a dream in which he was learning sorcery. The momentous word that chains the floods was still on his lips. The waves rushed. He fell asleep again. Now it was the rushing of a stream at his feet. The sun was shining. It was a clear morning. From the other shore came his wife, young, beautiful, in a dress of flowered goods, rowing her skiff. Her full, gentle figure had the charm of the vestal virgin and the wife. From woods nearby, Ingigerd appeared in the delicacy and the adornment of her light hair and naked body. The sunny landscape, of which her pure nudity was a part, seemed to belong to the time before Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise. Frederick took his wife's hand—she was smiling on him graciously—took Ingigerd Hahlström's hand—she seemed to be gentle and pure and obedient—and joined them. He said to Ingigerd:

But the heavens darkened, the woods blackened, and the light of a ghostly moon rose over the trees, rushing fearfully like great waters. Frederick ran along the edge of gloomy fields, when suddenly the cry "Moira! Moira!" resounded, and a piece of the darkness severed itself from the edge of the woods and soared heavily, as if borne by mighty black pinions. It was a gigantic bird, crying, "Moira, Moira!" Frederick fled. He was struck by hideous fear, as if the fearful roc were after him. "Moira, Moira!" He drew his penknife to defend himself.

He awoke to find himself lying undressed in his berth. Someone had discovered him, as he had discovered Achleitner the night before, and had led him down to his cabin. But the cry "Moira!" which reminded him of the Moeræ, the ancient goddesses of fate, still rang fearfully in his ears.

It was still long before daylight, and he fell asleep again. This time on awaking he found himself in the corridor speaking to some stewards, already at work. It slowly dawned upon him that he was clad in nothing but his night-shirt and must have been walking in his sleep. What, had he turned into a somnambulist! He was utterly disconcerted and ashamed and had to let one of the stewards help him back to his cabin.

He found his cabin covered with about three inches of water, from a leaky pipe. Crawling into bed, he squeezed himself, to keep from being tossed out, into a hollow between the boards, a method he himself had devised.

Shortly after six, he was on deck sitting on his bench, warming his hands on his hot tea-cup. The weather was frightful. The morning was of an icy dreariness unsurpassed. The fury of the sea had waxed. The falling twilight was a new sort of darkness. The roaring of the waters and the raging of the winds were deafening. Frederick's ear-drums ached. But the ship struggled on, managing to pursue its course, though slowly.

And suddenly—Frederick did not know whether to trust his hearing—above the noise of the sea rose Ariel strains, beginning solemnly and swelling serenely. It was the chords and melodies of a church choral. He was moved almost to tears. He recollected that this dreary morning was a Sunday morning, and the orchestra, even in the midst of the cyclone, was carrying out its instructions to begin the day with devotional music. It was playing in the unused smoking-room half way up the companionway, whence the strains ascended faintly to the deck. Everything lying heavily upon Frederick's soul in chaos and struggle melted away before the seriousness, the simplicity, the innocence of this music. It brought back memories of his boyhood, of many a morning full of innocence, expectation, and anticipations of great happiness; Sundays, holidays, his father's and his mother's birthdays, when the chorus of a regimental song woke him up in the morning. What was to-day compared with that past? What lay in between! What a sum of useless work, disenchantment, recognition bitterly paid for, possession snatched after passionately and then lost, love trickled away, passion trickled away; how many meetings and hard partings; what an amount of wrestling with everything in general and in particular; how much purity of purpose dragged in the mud; how much striving for freedom and self-determination, resulting only in impotent, blind imprisonment.

Was he really a person of so much importance before God that He visited him with such bitter, refined chastisements?

"I'm wild!" screamed Hans Füllenberg, who appeared at the entrance to the companionway. "I won't put up with it, or else I'll go insane."

Nevertheless, Hans Füllenberg and Frederick and all the other passengers, though in the last degree exhausted, terrorized, desperate, expecting each moment to be their last, lived through the same awful strain, from hour to hour, from morning till evening, and from evening till morning again.

To most of them it seemed impossible to hold out an hour longer. Yet there were to be three days more of it, they were told, before the Roland reached New York.

Monday brought some sunshine, but no diminution of the tempest. It was fearful. Everything on deck not nailed or riveted was removed. The cries at regular intervals piercing the struggling vessel from the steerage more resembled the bellowing of beasts under the knife of the slaughterer than human sounds. Monday night was one prolonged agony. Nobody, unless unconscious from weakness or the tortures of seasickness, closed an eye.

At dawn Tuesday morning, each first-class passenger was startled by the word, "Danger!" quietly uttered at his cabin door by a steward.

Frederick had been lying a while on his bed dressed, when his steward opened the door and according to instructions gravely pronounced the one word, "Danger." At the same time the herald of this message, as fraught with large significance as it was laconic, turned on the electric light. Frederick jumped to a sitting posture, and was annoyed by the water from the leaky pipe, which ran now from one side of the room to the other, as the vessel lurched. At first he was uncertain whether the word he had heard had really been pronounced, or whether it was an illusion of his unstrung nerves. Every night he had been torn with a jerk of his nerves from his restless dozing, only to find that the cause had been a delusive fall or a delusive cry. But now, when he distinctly heard the stewards rapping at the other cabin doors, heard the doors open, and heard the word, "Danger," repeated several times, a sensation came over him that produced a most remarkable change in his condition.

"Very well," he said softly; and, as if he had been summoned to a game that did not concern him, he carefully put on his heavy overcoat, and stepped out into the gangway.

Here there was not a soul.

"Very well," he had been thinking, "the invisible powers, whose playthings we human beings are, will now completely expose their supreme brutality."

He had not been awakened from sleep; he had been awakened and brought to his sober reason from beneath a hundred strata of dreams and sleep. Now, in that empty corridor, it again seemed to him to be a fantastic illusion of his disordered brain; and he was about to return to his cabin, when he noticed for the first time that the rhythm of the engines and the churning of the screw were neither to be heard nor felt. Suddenly he thought the great vessel was drifting in the ocean abandoned by passengers and crew, and he alone had been left behind from the general rescue. But a passenger in a silk dressing-gown reeled by, whom Frederick could question.

"What's the matter, do you know?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," said the man. "I've only been looking for my steward. I'm thirsty. I want a glass of lemonade." He staggered past Frederick into his cabin.

"Ass!" Frederick mentally exclaimed, disgusted with himself for what he again believed was his illusion. Yet the silence weighed upon him dreadfully. Seized by a wild instinct, he could not help but suddenly rush forward, merely to be on deck.

Somebody came toward him from the opposite direction, and asked him where he was going.

"Get out of my way," said Frederick. "It's none of your business."

But the hideous, half-dressed, corpse-like creature, besmirched by the traces of seasickness, would not make way.

"Are the stewards here all crazy?" he cried.

Hard by Frederick's ear an electric bell began to hammer noisily, and the next moment the tottering phantom that barred his way was multiplied by ten, twenty, a host of similar phantoms.

"What's the matter! What's the matter! We're sinking!"

"Steward! Steward!" a voice commanded; and another, "Captain! Captain!"

"Wretched service!" a man scolded in a voice that broke. "No stewards about. What do they mean by it?" The call bells began to rage.

Frederick turned, and ran down the endless corridor to the after part of the vessel. Nobody intercepted him. He passed the windows of the engine-room. The cylinders and pistons were not stirring. From the depths of the ship, from the boilers and furnaces, a sound of rushing, splashing water penetrated above the creaking and grinding of the walls.

"Did a boiler burst?" Frederick thought, forgetting that there would have been the report of an explosion and the hiss of escaping steam.

But he hastened on without stopping, past the post office, on his way through the second cabin to the stern. In his flight it occurred to him how happy he had been in Paris when at Cook's office they had told him that by great haste he could still make the Roland at Southampton. Why had he been in such a fever of impatience, in such dread of missing the boat and rushing into the open arms of doom? For there was no veiling the fact that something fearful had happened to the Roland.

At the door of the second cabin, he encountered the barber.

"The fires are out," said the barber. "A collision. The water is pouring into the hold below my shop."

The hammering of the bells never ceased. The barber was dragging two life-preservers.

"What do you need two for?" Frederick asked, and took one and sped on.

He reached the door leading to the after deck, but could not open it. From the position of the ship, he realized that something irretrievable had happened. On the port side, the steamer was lying high, on the starboard side, it was only ten or twelve feet above the level. As the stern was also much lower than the bow, it would have been a practically hopeless venture to clamber forward across the deck, especially with the heavy seas that were constantly sweeping it.

Willy-nilly, he must return through the mole's gallery he had traversed to the forward part of the boat.

Scarcely fifteen seconds later, when he had reached the forward entrance to the deck, at the head of the companionway leading up from the dining-room, he could not have told how he succeeded in making his way through the corridor jammed with panicky passengers without having been beaten to death, strangled, or trodden underfoot. His hands and forehead were bruised, and he was clinging to the door-post with all his might, parleying violently with Doctor Wilhelm. Doctor Wilhelm clutched him, and the two physicians, in defiance of death, climbed up to the bridge, where they huddled in the shelter of the deck-house on the port side. They saw something huge rise high up in the morning twilight and fly madly above their heads. The next instant they were drenched up to their waists, and would have been washed overboard, had they not clung to the railing with all their strength.

On the bridge it looked pretty much as usual. Captain von Kessel, apparently quite composed, was leaning forward, and the giant Von Halm was searching the ever-thickening fog with spy-glasses. The siren was howling, and rockets were being shot off from the bow. On the captain's right stood the second mate. The third mate had just received the order:

"Cut the falls. Get the boats away."

"Cut the falls. Get the boats away," he repeated and disappeared to execute the order.

To Frederick, it all seemed unreal. Moments such as this, to be sure, had entered his imagination as within the realm of the possible; but now he realised that he had never reckoned with them seriously. He knew the fact confronting him stood there inexorable; nevertheless, he was unable to grasp it in convincing reality. He was telling himself he ought to try to get into a boat, when the captain's blue eyes glanced at him, but apparently with no recognition in them. The captain's commands were uttered in his beautiful voice, remotely suggesting the clinking sound of colliding billiard balls.

"Women and children starboard."

"Women and children starboard," came like a near, word-for-word echo.

Now Max Pander stepped up to the captain. He had the noble idea of proffering him a life-belt. Von Kessel's hand found its way for an instant to his cap.

"No, thank you, my boy, I don't need it. But here—" he took a pencil from his pocket, wrote a hasty line on a piece of paper, and handed it to Pander. "Jump in a boat and, if you can, bring this greeting to my sisters."

A heavy sea swept over the port side, and a tremendous swell raised and turned and twisted the colossal vessel. Frederick in vain tried to rouse himself from the leaden indifference that had come upon him in view of the incomprehensible drama. Suddenly, he was seized with horror, but he fought it down. At no cost was he to show cowardice either to himself or to others. Nevertheless, he followed Doctor Wilhelm, who stuck close to Max Pander's heels.

"We must get into one of the boats," said Doctor Wilhelm. "There's no doubt we are sinking."

The next moment Frederick found himself in Ingigerd's cabin.

"Hurry!" he cried. "The people are already jumping into the boats."

He had left the cabin door open, and close by they could see Pander and two sailors hacking away with axes at the frozen tackles by which a life-boat was suspended.

Ingigerd asked for her father. She asked for Achleitner.

"There's no time now for you to think of anybody but yourself. It's impossible to go below deck. It would mean sure death," Frederick explained. "Get dressed! Get dressed!"

Ingigerd mutely hastened to carry out his orders. It was not until then that one of the stewards passing her cabin called in his brief message, "Danger!"

"Danger! What's the matter? Are we sinking?" she cried.

But Frederick had already picked her up and carried her over to the boat, which the next instant gave way under the axe and fell into the misty turmoil below.

"Women and children on the other side!" the third mate shouted commandingly.

His order referred not only to Ingigerd, but also to the maid Rosa, who, fiery-red with her exertions, appeared on deck dragging her mistress and both the children, with the air of a housewife loaded with purchases, afraid of missing a street car.

"Women and children on the other side!" the third mate repeated in somewhat too Prussian a manner. Fortunately his presence was now required for the next boat, over which the struggles were already commencing.

There was no time to be lost, and despite the determined resistance of two sailors, Frederick, Pander, and Doctor Wilhelm let Ingigerd safely down into the boat. In doing so, Frederick also turned somewhat too loud-voiced and Prussian. Through his iron energy, which hewed down resistance as the sailors had hewed at the life-boat tackles, he succeeded in having the children, Mrs. Liebling, and finally Rosa lowered into the boat. It was no easy matter. Frederick heard himself shouted at, roared at, and commanded, and he, in turn, shouted at the sailors, commanded, and roared. He fought, he worked, though without a gleam of hope and with the positive consciousness that the situation was beyond salvation. All was over, all was lost. If he had not thought so before, the next occurrence would have convinced him.

A second boat had been lowered, and three sailors had jumped in. It rolled from side to side and rose on a wave. About eight or nine other persons leapt for it—Frederick thought he recognised familiar figures. It filled and disappeared. As if by sleight-of-hand, the spot where the boat with the dozen people in it had been dancing turned into empty sea with mist and spray driving over it.

Slowly the dark grey of the early dawn turned into the lighter grey of the day, approaching coldly and indifferently. When the fog lifted a little, Frederick for seconds at a time had a dismaying illusion that he was in a green valley with glorious, flowery meadows, through which a snowstorm of blossoms was sweeping. But then the mountains came, driven by the ferocious spirits of the hurricane, and closed down on the valley. The heavy, glassy heights broke, and with the weight of their fluid masses, snapped away two of the Roland's masts like reeds.

With its boilers quenched, the poor wreck could no longer send up a cry for help. Its sad body was still towering upward at the bow in colossal majesty. Rockets flew, signals of distress fluttered briskly from the foremast; a futile language in that merciless raging of the elements.

In the steerage it had grown still. But from the port side came a peculiar, persistent, unbroken sound, resembling the shouting and screaming of a crowd on toboggan-slides and merry-go-rounds at a village fair. A buzzing as of swarming bees pierced distinctly through the roaring of the tempest, while above it rose the shrieking of infuriated, frenzied women. Frederick thought of his dark-eyed Deborah. She, too, was doomed. He thought of Wilke.

Bulke, the faithful valet, appeared, leading Arthur Stoss by his coat collar. Within the next few moments, Wilke also appeared. He had been drinking, and was shouting as if the whole thing were a frolic; but he was half dragging, half carrying on deck an old, wheezing working woman. Thrusting Stoss and Bulke aside, he landed her safely in the boat.

Ingigerd was clamouring incessantly for her father and Achleitner. Instead of either of these, Stoss, whom Bulke and Wilke had lowered by a rope, dropped down beside her.

About thirty feet from Frederick, a man was standing in a cabin door, carefully hooked back. With incredible calm he was smoking a cigarette and inhaling, and stroking a yellow cat on his arm.

"It looks pretty bad, doesn't it, Mr. Rinck?" Frederick said, going up to him.

"Why?"

"Well, don't you think we're lost?"

Mr. Rinck shrugged his shoulders without answering.

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" somebody bellowed in his ear.

"Nothing," he said, stroking his cat.

In the meantime Bulke and Wilke had lowered Doctor Wilhelm into the boat.

"That girl down there is giving herself a sore throat screaming for her father," said Bulke.

Frederick decided, cost what it might, to take a look around below deck. Perhaps fortune might favour him; he might discover Hahlström and perhaps Achleitner, too, and help one or both into the boat. There was danger, to be sure, that the boat would put off before he returned.

He had worked his way as far as the unused smoking-room. It was empty. Suddenly Wilke was standing beside him.

"If you're looking for somebody, I'll help," the peasant declared.

The two together descended the rest of the companionway. The space in front of the dining-room was empty and so was the dining-room. It was tilted at an acute angle. A heap of dishes and silverware blocked the doorway.

"Hahlström! Achleitner!" Frederick shouted again and again.

Wilke pushed a short way down the long corridor, on which the cabins gave. But the spot closed off by the rising waters was only too clearly distinguishable.

"Come away, come away!" Frederick cried, and ran. He ran for his life. He ran in wild fear of missing the boat.