Dense darkness closed in around the tender. The lights of the harbour
disappeared completely, and the little cockle-shell with the glass
pavilion began to roll considerably. The wind whistled and howled.
Sometimes it blew so hard that it seemed to be bringing the tender to a
standstill. The screw actually did rise out of the water. Suddenly the
whistle screeched several times, and again the steamer made its way
through the darkness.
The rattling of the windows, the quivering of the ship's body, the
gurgling whirr-whirr of the propeller, the whistling, squalling and
howling of the wind, which laid the vessel on her side, all this combined
to produce extreme discomfort in the travellers. Again and again, as if
uncertain what course to pursue, the boat stopped and emitted its shrill
whistle, which was so stifled in the wild commotion of the waters that it
seemed nothing but the helpless breathing of a hoarse throat--stopped
and went backwards--stopped and went forwards, until again it came to an
uncertain halt, twisting and turning in the whirling waters, carried
aloft, plunged down, apparently lost and submerged in the darkness.
To be exposed to impressions of this sort for only an hour and a half is
enough gradually to reduce a traveller's nerves to a state of torture.
The proximity of that awful element the surface of which marks the limits
of the one element in which man is capable of living, forces upon the
mind thoughts of death and destruction; all the more so since the water's
tricks seem so incalculable to the landman that he sees danger where
there actually is none. Another thing hard for the man accustomed to
unhampered movement to bear is the close confinement. All at once he
loses his illusion of freedom of will. Activity, the thing that in the
eyes of the European endows life with its sublimest charm, cannot in
the twinkling of an eye turn into absolute passivity. Nevertheless,
despite these novel, distressing experiences, despite throbbing pulses,
over-stimulated senses, and nerves tautened to the snapping point, the
situation is by no means lacking in fascination.
Thus, Frederick von Kammacher felt a flush of exaltation. Life was
straining him to her breast more closely, wildly, passionately than she
had for a long time.
"Either life has again become the one tremendous adventure, or life is
nothing," a voice within him said.
Again the tender lay still. Suddenly it groaned, churned the water, sent
out huge puffs of hissing steam, whistled as if in great fear, once,
twice--Frederick counted seven times--and started off at its utmost
speed, as if to escape Satan's clutches. And now, all at once, it turned,
swept into a region of light, and faced a mighty vision.
The _Roland_ had reached the Needles and was lying tide rode. In the
protection of its vast broadside the little tender seemed to be in a
brilliantly lighted harbour. The impression that the surprising presence
of the ocean greyhound made upon Frederick was in a fortissimo scale.
He had always belonged to that class of men--a class which is not
small--whose senses are open to life's varied abundance. Only on the
rarest occasions he found a thing commonplace or ordinary, and was never
blasé in meeting a novelty. But, after all, there are very few persons
who would be dull to the impressions of an embarkation by night, outside
a harbour in the open waters.
Never before had Frederick been inspired with equal respect for the might
of human ingenuity, for the genuine spirit of his times, as at the sight
of that gigantic black wall rising from the black waters, that tremendous
façade, with its endless rows of round port-holes streaming out light
upon a foaming field of waves protected from the wind. In comparison with
this product, this creation, this triumph of the divine intellect in
man, what were undertakings like the Tower of Babel, allowing that they
were not isolated instances and had actually been completed.
Sailors were busy letting the gangway-ladder down the flank of the
_Roland_. Frederick could see that up on deck, at the point where the
ladder was being suspended, a rather numerous group of uniformed men
had gathered, probably to receive the new passengers. His state of
exaltation continued, even while everybody in the tender's saloon,
including himself, suddenly seized with haste, grasped his or her hand
luggage and stood in readiness. In the presence of that improbability,
that Titan of venturesomeness, that floating fairy palace, it was
impossible to cling to the conviction that modern civilisation is all
prose. The most prosaic of mortals here had forced upon him a piece of
foolhardy romance compared with which the dreams of the poets lose colour
and turn pale.
While the tender, dancing coquettishly on the swelling foam, was warping
to the gangway-ladder, high overhead, on the deck of the _Roland_, the
band struck up a lively, resolute march in a martial yet resigned strain,
such as leads soldiers to battle--to victory or to death. An orchestra
like this, of wind instruments, drums and cymbals was all that lacked to
set the young physician's nerves a-quiver, as in a dance of fire and
flame.
The music ringing from aloft out into the night and descending to the
little tender manoeuvring in the water, was designed to inspire timid
souls with courage and tide them over certain horrors attendant upon the
moment. Beyond lay the infinite ocean. In the situation, one could not
help representing it to oneself as black, gloomy, forbidding, a fearful,
demoniac power, hostile to man and the works of man.
Now, from the breast of the _Roland_, tore a cry rising higher and
louder, upward from a deep bass, a monstrous call, a roar, a thunder,
of a fearfulness and strength that congealed the blood in one's heart.
"Well, my dear friend _Roland_," flashed through Frederick's mind,
"you're a fellow that's a match for the ocean." With that he set foot on
the gangway-ladder. He completely forgot his previous identity and the
reason of his being here.
When, to the wild tune of the brass band, he stepped from the upper rung
upon the roomy deck, and stood in the garish sheen of an arc-light, he
found himself between two rows of men, the officers and some of the
ship's crew. It was the group of uniformed men he had noticed from below.
He was astonished and delighted to behold so many confidence-inspiring
masculine figures. It was an assemblage of magnificent specimens of
manhood, all, from the first mate down to the stewards, tall, picked men,
with bold, simple, intelligent, honest features. Moved by a sense at once
of pride and of complete trust and security, Frederick said to himself
that after all there was still a German nation left; and the singular
thought flashed through his mind that God would never decide to take such
a selection of noble, faithful men and drown them in the sea like blind
puppies.
A steward picked up his luggage and led the way to a cabin with two
berths, which he was to have to himself. Soon after, he was sitting at
one end of a horseshoe-shaped table in the dining-room. The service was
excellent, and the few passengers from the tender ate and drank; but it
was not very lively. The main dinner was over, and the little company
from the tender in the great, low-ceiled, empty saloon, were each too
tired and too engrossed in self to talk.
During the meal Frederick was not aware whether the mammoth body was
moving or standing still. The faint, scarcely perceptible quiver seemed
too slight to be a sign of the motion of so huge a mass. Frederick had
made his first sea voyage when a lad of eighteen as the only passenger on
a merchantman going from Hamburg to Naples. The thirteen years since had
considerably weakened the impressions of that trip. Moreover, the luxury
of this ocean liner into which he had strayed was something so new to
him, that all he could do at first was scrutinize everything in
astonishment.
When he had drunk his customary few glasses of wine, a sense of peace and
comfort stole over him. After their long irritation and tension his
nerves succumbed to a pleasant tiredness, which pressed upon him so
healthily and imperatively that he felt almost sure of a refreshing
night's sleep. He even made the firm resolution--in his condition
scarcely necessary--that for this night bygones should be bygones, the
future the future, and the present, without regard for past or future,
should belong unqualifiedly to rest and sleep.
When he went to bed, he actually did sleep for ten hours, heavily,
without stirring. At breakfast in the dining-room, he asked for the
passenger list, and with a wild leap of his heart read the names for
which he had been looking, Eugen Hahlström and Miss Ingigerd Hahlström.