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."