IX

"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."

X

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."