Notwithstanding all these impressions, Frederick fell asleep again. He
dreamed that he and Rosa, the maid, and little Siegfried Liebling were in
a life-boat, rocking on a calm, shimmering green sea. Strangely enough,
there was a mass of gold ingots in the bottom of the boat, probably the
gold ingots that the _Roland_ was supposed to be carrying to the mint in
Washington. Frederick was at the helm, and after cruising about a while,
they reached a bright, cheery port. It may have been a port in the
Azores, or the Madeira Islands, or the Canary Islands. At a short
distance from the quay, Rosa jumped overboard and reached land holding
Siegfried clear of the water. People received them, and they disappeared
in one of the snowy white buildings at the harbour front. When Frederick
landed, to his joy he was greeted on the marble steps of the quay by his
old friend, Peter Schmidt, the physician he intended to visit in America.
In response to curious questions, he always said that this was his main
purpose in crossing the ocean. His delight at seeing him in a dream, in
the setting of the white tropical town, after a separation of eight or
nine years, was a surprise to himself. How was it possible that he had
only occasionally and superficially remembered so magnificent a man, so
dear a youthful companion?
Peter Schmidt was a Friesian. He and Frederick had sat together on the
same school bench; later, they had spent two years together in the
gymnasium at St. Magdalene at Breslau and several semesters in the
universities of Greifswald, Breslau, and Zürich. Owing to a combination
of common sense, many-sided knowledge, and humanitarian enthusiasm, Peter
Schmidt had exerted great influence on his friends. There was also an
adventurous streak in his nature, inherited from his father, a Friesian
colonist, who lay buried in a churchyard in Meriden, Connecticut.
"It is good that you have come," said Peter Schmidt. Frederick felt as
if he had been long expecting him. "Your wife, Angèle, just arrived in
a skiff."
His friend silently led him to an inn near the harbour. A sense of
security such as he had never before felt came over him. While he took
a little luncheon in the dining-room, where the host, a German, stood
opposite, twirling his thumbs, Peter Schmidt explained:
"The town is not large, but it will give you an idea of the country.
You will find people here that are contented and have made their last
landing."
It was taken as a matter of course that there, in that strange, silent
city in the dazzling sunlight, the fewest possible words were to be
spoken. Some new, mute inner sense appeared to make meanings clear.
Nevertheless, Frederick said:
"I've always taken you for the mentor in unknown depths of our
predestination." By which he meant to express his awe at his friend's
mysterious being.
"Yes," said Peter Schmidt, "but this is only a small beginning, though
enough to indicate what is hidden under the surface here."
Peter Schmidt, born in Tondern, now led Frederick out to the harbour. It
was a very small harbour. There were a number of ancient vessels lying
half-sunk in the water.
"Fourteen-ninety-two," said Peter Schmidt. That was the year the four
hundredth anniversary of which was being much discussed by the Americans
on board the _Roland_. The Friesian pointed to both the half-submerged
caravels and explained that one of them was the _Santa Maria_,
Christopher Columbus's flag-ship. "I came over with Christopher
Columbus," he said.
All this was unqualifiedly enlightening to Frederick. Nor was there
anything enigmatic in Peter Schmidt's explanation that the wood of those
slowly decaying caravels was called _legno santo_ and was used for fuel,
because it contained the spirit of knowledge. Farther out to sea lay a
third vessel, with a great, black breach forward on the port side.
"It sank," said the Friesian. "It brought in a great lot of people."
Frederick looked at the vessel. He was dissatisfied. He would have liked
to ask questions about the unfamiliar, yet curiously familiar ship out
there at sea; but the Friesian left the harbour and turned into a narrow,
crooked street with a steep flight of stairs.
Here an old uncle of Frederick, who had been dead more than fifteen
years, came toward him comfortably puffing at a pipe. He had just arisen,
it seemed, from a bench by the open entrance to his house.
"How do you do?" he said. "We are all here, my boy." Frederick knew whom
the old man meant when he said, "We are all here." "We fare very well,"
the old man, who in his lifetime had not been exactly favoured by
fortune, continued, grinning. "I didn't get along so well when I was up
with you in the dismal air. In the first place, my boy, we have the
_legno santo_." With his pipe he pointed to the dark interior of his
house, where blue tongues of flame were leaping on the hearth. "And
besides, we have the Toilers of the Light. But I am detaining you. _We_
have time, but _you_ must hurry." Frederick said good-bye.
"Fiddlesticks!" exclaimed his uncle. "Do you people down there still keep
up that tiresome business of 'how-do-you-do' and 'good-bye'?"
Climbing higher up the street, Peter Schmidt led Frederick through a
number of houses and inside courtyards. In one of the courtyards with
many corners, reminding Frederick of certain ancient sections of Hamburg
and Nuremberg, was a ship-chandlery bearing the sign, "The Seagoing
Ship."
"Everything here looks quite ordinary," said Peter Schmidt, "but here we
have all the ancient models." He pointed to the small model of an ancient
vessel standing in the little window of the chandlery, among packages
of chewing tobacco and leather whips.
Ships, ships, nothing but ships! The sight of this last vessel seemed
to produce the beginning of a slight gnawing resistance in Frederick's
brain. He knew he was looking upon an all-embracing symbol, which he had
never before seen. With a new sense organ, with centralised clarity of
thought, he realised that here, in this little model, was comprehended
all the wandering and adventuring of the human soul.
"Oh," said the chandler, opening the glass door of the little shop, at
which all sorts of wares hanging on the door swung to and fro with a
clatter, "Oh, you here, Frederick? I thought you were still at sea."
Frederick recognised the chandler as George Rasmussen, whose farewell
letter he had received in Southampton. He was dressed in a shabby cap and
dressing-gown belonging to a confectioner long dead, whom he had known
when a boy. Mysterious as it all was, there was yet something natural in
this meeting with his friend. The little shop was alive with goldfinches.
"They are the goldfinches," Rasmussen explained, "that settled in the
Heuscheuer Mountains last winter, you know, and were fatal to me."
"Yes, I remember," said Frederick. "We would approach a bare branch or
tree, and suddenly it would seem to shake itself and scatter thousands of
gold leaves. We interpreted it as auguring mountains of money."
"Well," said the chandler, "it was precisely thirteen minutes past one
on the twenty-fourth of January when I drew my last breath. I had just
received your telegram from Paris absolving me from my debt. Back there
in the shop, among other things, is my predecessor's fur coat, which--I
am by no means complaining--infected me. I wrote you that if I could, I
would make myself noticeable from the Beyond. Well, here I am. But even
here everything isn't perfectly clear and plain, though I am feeling
better, and we all rest in a pleasant sense of basic security. I'm glad
you and Peter Schmidt have met. He counts for a lot here in this country.
You will meet each other above again, in New York, at the celebration of
the four hundredth anniversary of 1492. Good Lord! Of what significance
after all, is that little discovery of America?" Rasmussen in his strange
disguise removed the miniature vessel from the show window. It, too, was
called the _Santa Maria_. "Now, please be careful," he said. Frederick
noticed that the old confectioner took one vessel after another of the
same sort, but diminishing in size, from the first one. "Patience," he
said, while still pulling more and more vessels from the entrails of the
_Santa Maria_. The procedure caused Frederick no slight astonishment.
"Patience. The smaller are always the better ones. If I had time, we
should reach the smallest, the final, the most glorious work of
Providence. Each one of these ships carries us not only beyond the
boundaries of our planet, but even beyond the limited barriers of our
senses. Each of them is adapted to carry us across the border. If you are
interested," he continued, "I have other wares in my shop. Here are the
captain's hedge-scissors, here is a plummet with which one can sound the
lowest depths of the firmament and the Milky Way. Here are the tropics of
Cancer and Capricorn. But you have no time, and I won't detain you."
The chandler closed the glass door on them; but they saw him with his
nose flattened against the pane, mysteriously, as if he still had
something to sell, holding his finger to his mouth, shaped like a carp's.
His lips seemed to be framing certain words. Frederick understood _legno
santo_, Toilers of the Light, and even what his uncle had said about "up
with you in the dismal air." But Peter Schmidt thrust his fist through
the glass door, pulled Rasmussen's embroidered cap off his head, took
from it a little key, and beckoned Frederick to come away with him. They
left the houses behind and stepped out into the open rolling country.
"The thing is," said Peter, "it will mean a lot of trouble."
And they ran and climbed for hours. Evening fell. They lit a fire, and
slept in a tree rocking in the wind. Morning came. They took to wandering
again, until the sun lay low on the horizon. Finally, Peter opened a
small gate in a low wall. On the other side of the wall was a garden.
A gardener was tying vines.
"How do you do, Doctor?" he said. "The sun is setting, but we know why we
die."
On looking at him more closely, Frederick recognised the dead stoker in
the man, whose face was illuminated by the rosy flush of the setting sun
and wore a friendly smile, as he stood there in what was a strange
garden, or vineyard, or fairy-land.
"I'd rather be doing this than shovelling coal," said the stoker,
pointing to the cords hanging in his hands, with which he had been tying
up the vines.
The three of them together now walked a rather long distance to a wild
section of the garden, where it had turned completely dark. The wind
began to rush, and the shrubs, trees and bushes of the garden swished
like breakers on the shore. The stoker beckoned to them, and they
squatted on the ground in a circle. It seemed as if the stoker with his
bare hand had taken a bit of burning wood from his pocket. He held it
close to the ground, to illuminate a round opening, something like the
burrow of a marmot or a rabbit.
"_Legno santo_," said Peter Schmidt, pointing to the glowing piece of
charcoal. "Now, Frederick, you will get to see those ant-like little
elves that are called _noctiluci_ or night-lights. They pompously call
themselves Toilers of the Light. But whatever their name, it must be
admitted that they are the ones that take the light hidden in the
entrails of the earth, store it up, and sow it in fields, the soil of
which has been especially prepared; and when it has grown to its full
size and has borne fruit a hundredfold in the shape of gold sheaves or
nuggets, they harvest it and save it for the darkest of dark times."
And, actually, looking through a crevice, Frederick saw something like
another world, with a subterranean sun shining on it. A multitude of
little elves, the Toilers of the Light, were mowing with scythes, cutting
stalks, binding sheaves, loading carts, and storing in barns. Many cut
the light out of the ground, like nuggets of gold. Undoubtedly it was the
gold meant for the mint in Washington that was haunting Frederick's
dreams.
"These Toilers of the Light," said the Friesian, Peter Schmidt, "are the
most stimulating to my ideas."
At this point Frederick awoke, while the voice of the stoker close beside
him was saying:
"Many will soon be following me."