By the time Frederick was taking his real breakfast with Doctor Wilhelm
in the dining-room, at about eight o'clock, the whole mass of the vessel
was again quivering and at short intervals again seemed to be running
hard against walls of rock. The low-ceiled room in dismal gloom, dotted
here and there by electric lights, was leaping in a mad dance, one moment
riding high on the crest of a wave, the next moment plunging deep into an
eddying trough. The few men that had ventured to table tried to laugh and
joke away the situation, which by no means offered a rosy outlook.
"In the pit of my stomach I have the feeling I used to get as a child
when I swung too high."
"Kammacher, we're in the devil's cauldron. There'll be things doing
compared with which the things we've gone through aren't a circumstance,"
said Wilhelm.
From somewhere came the word, "Cyclone," a dreadful word, though it
seemed to make no impression upon the steamer _Roland_, a model of
determination, steadfastly cleaving the waves and tearing breaches in
the mountains of water. New York was its goal, and it was hastening
onward.
Frederick wanted to go on deck, but it looked bad there, and he remained
on the upper step under the protection of the companionway penthouse. The
level of the sea seemed to have risen, so that the warrior _Roland_
appeared to be making his obstinate way through a deep defile. One could
not help succumbing to the impression that each instant the defile would
close overhead and settle the faithful vessel's fate forever. Sailors in
oilskins were climbing about to make fast every loose thing. Great waves
had already swept overboard. The salt water was trickling and flowing
over the deck. As if that were not enough, the heavens were driving down
rain and snow. The rigging was howling, groaning, booming, and whistling
in every pitch and key. That severity, that awfulness of the elements,
that eternal rushing and roaring and seething of great masses of water,
through which the steamer was staggering forward as if in mad, blind
intoxication, that mournful, raging tumult kept up hour after hour. By
noon it had even grown worse.
Very few responded to the trumpet-call for luncheon. There were about ten
men beside the woman physician and the woman painter. Hahlström seated
himself at Frederick's and Wilhelm's empty table. The ladies' places were
not far away.
"No wonder," said Frederick, "that sailors are superstitious. The way
this awful weather dropped out of a clear sky is enough to make a man
believe in magic."
"It may even grow worse," Wilhelm observed.
The women heard his remark, looked up, and made horrified eyes.
"Do you think there is danger?" one of them asked.
"Danger is always imminent in life," he replied, and added with a smile:
"It is merely a question of not being frightened."
Incredible to relate, the band began to play as usual, and, what is more,
played a piece entitled _Marche triomphale_. The effect on all was at
first a slight shudder; then nobody could resist a smile at the apparent
irony of it.
"The musicians are heroes," said Frederick.
"In general," remarked Hahlström, "our grim humour nowadays is a great
asset. If those musicians were to receive the order, they would play 'A
Country Girl,' and 'My Hannah Lady,' in the jaws or the belly of a whale.
If they didn't, they'd fare just as badly."
"O Lord, anything for a steady table, a steady seat, a steady berth! The
man possessing these things seldom knows how rich he is," said Frederick,
in a voice raised to a shout to make himself heard above the noise of the
sea without and the music within. The men laughed, and the ocean, to add
to their amusement, raised them up in the fog, the tempest, and the snow
to the top of a wave ninety feet high. Everybody was instantly silenced.
Even the orchestra played a frightened pause not indicated in the score.
On ascending the companionway after lunch, Frederick saw Arthur Stoss in
the unfrequented smoking-room eating his meal in perfect equanimity and
cheerfulness undisturbed by the weather. Frederick went in for a chat
with the original, witty monstrosity. He was cutting his fish with a
knife and fork held between the great toe and the second toe.
"Our old omnibus is jolting a bit," he said. "If our boilers are good,
there is nothing to fear. But there's this much about it. If it is not
a cyclone yet, it may still turn into one. I don't care. It looks more
discouraging than it really is. What a man will do! To show the people
in Cape Town, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, San Francisco and Mexico what a
man with a firm, energetic will can accomplish, even if nature has not
favoured him, he will plow through all the cyclones, hurricanes and
typhoons of all the waters of the globe. Your business man sitting in the
Winter Garden in Berlin, or the Alhambra in London, never dreams of all
the things the performer giving his number must go through before he can
merely stand where he is standing. He can't ever take it easy and let
himself get rusty."
Frederick was feeling miserable. Although his dreams were still haunting
his brain, and Ingigerd, or his sick wife, or the Russian Jewess was
still present in his soul, he nevertheless felt that all sensations were
becoming more and more submerged in the one sensation, that on all sides
there was distinct menace of a brutal danger.
Hans Füllenberg entered. His face was lifeless.
"There is a corpse on board," he said, in a tone implying a causal
relation between the dead stoker and the raging storm. It was very
evident that the spice had been taken out of Hans Füllenberg's life.
"I heard the same thing," Stoss said. "My man, Bulke, told me a stoker
died."
Frederick simulated ignorance of the event. Accustomed to observe himself
honestly, he realized that though the fact was not new to him,
Füllenberg's statement of it had made him shudder.
"The dead man is dead," said Stoss, now attacking his roast with
appetite. "We won't be wrecked on the dead stoker's corpse. But last
night a derelict was sighted. Those corpses, the corpses of vessels, are
dangerous. When the sea is rough, they can't be sighted."
Frederick asked for more information about derelicts.
"About nine hundred and seventy-five drifting derelicts," Stoss
explained, "have been sighted in five years here in the northern part of
the Atlantic. It is certain that the actual number is twice as great. One
of the most dangerous of such tramps is the iron four-masted schooner,
_Houresfeld_. On its way from Liverpool to San Francisco, fire broke out
in its hold, and the crew abandoned it. If we were to collide with
anything of that sort, there wouldn't be a soul left to tell the tale."
"You can't pass through the gangways," said Füllenberg, "the bulkheads
are closed down."
The siren began to roar again. Frederick still heard defiance and triumph
in the cry, and yet something recalling the broken horn of the hero
Roland in Roncesvalles.
"There is no danger yet," said Stoss to calm him.