The hours passed. The grey day went down into still greyer twilight. The
ear-splitting tumult of the sea never ceased. Frederick, like everybody
else, had in vain awaited the moment when the engines would be working
again, and the helpless ship would resume its course. Everybody, with the
anxiety of despair, watched whether the intervals between the great
swells would lengthen or shorten. Sometimes a superstitious illusion that
he was being persecuted would take hold of Frederick. Particularly awful
were the cries of the emigrants penned in the steerage, which at short
intervals penetrated above on deck. They wept and wailed and shrieked to
heaven for help. They were like men driven mad by fear, fury and physical
pain.
Yet, as if nothing had happened, the call for dinner was trumpeted at the
regular time through the gangways of the drifting vessel, through that
majestic, helpless ark, lighted by electricity, which, shining through
the port-holes, turned the _Roland_ with its crust of ice into a fairy
palace, a mournful plaything of the waves.
Frederick wondered who would have the phlegm or the courage or the desire
to go to dinner. But Wilhelm cried, "Come, gentlemen," and since Rosa
appeared, wet and courageous, to attend to the children, it was out of
place for him to remain in the cabin, and there was nothing for him to do
but join Doctor Wilhelm and Hahlström. The cockatoo was screeching and
Ella was crying. The child was refractory. Ingigerd was trying to console
her, while Rosa reprimanded her rather energetically.
"Would you like me to stay near here?" Frederick asked before leaving.
"It would mean a great deal to me if you would let me be entirely at your
disposal, Miss Ingigerd."
"Thank you, Doctor von Kammacher, you will be coming again."
Frederick marvelled at the naturalness with which he had made the offer
and she had accepted.
Now an unexpected change set in, which allayed everybody's excitement and
went through Frederick's muscles and nerves like a soothing stream. The
walls and floors of the _Roland_ began to quiver faintly, a sign that her
heart and pulse were beating again. It was the rhythm of its strength,
the rhythm of its race to its goal. Ingigerd shouted with joy, like a
child, and Frederick set his teeth. Renewed life, renewed prospects and
hopes, the reassumption of system, the relaxation of his nerves made him
so weak that the tears almost started to his eyes. Choking down his
emotion, he stepped out on deck.
Here the scene had changed. Blithely, in all its might, the _Roland_ was
leaping forward again into the roaring darkness. That monstrous, seething
witch's cauldron of the boiling waters was now welcome to him. Again the
_Roland_ was tearing breaches in dark mountains, was rising to mountain
heights, and madly plunging into deep valleys; during which, for many
seconds at a time, the screw would whirl wildly in the turbulent air.
Mr. Rinck was sitting on the threshold of his cabin, which was brightly
lighted, smoking and petting his spotted cat.
"It's good we're under way again," Frederick could not refrain from
saying as he walked past.
"Why?" said Rinck phlegmatically.
"I for one," said Frederick, "would rather be running under full steam
than drifting helplessly."
"Why?" said Mr. Rinck again.
In the gangways below, even though the ship was pitching, the atmosphere
was fairly pleasant and lively. Everybody seemed to have forgotten his
fear. The passengers, cracking jokes and clinging to the nearest
stationary thing, reeled and stumbled into the dining-room. The rattle
of china near the kitchen was deafening, especially when, as frequently
happened, some of the plates broke.
Frederick's clothes were pretty well soaked, and he mustered up the
courage to go to his cabin to dress. Adolph, his steward, came to help
him, and told Frederick of a panic that had broken out in the steerage
when the engines stopped. Some of the women with their babies on their
arms had wanted to jump right into the water. It was with difficulty that
the other emigrants had restrained them. One of the stewards and a sailor
had clutched a Polish woman by her feet just as she was taking the
downward plunge.
"You can't blame these people for acting like cowards in this situation,"
said Frederick. "It would be strange if they didn't. Who will insist that
he can stand upright when the ground beneath his feet is giving away? If
a man were to say so, either he would be lying, or his lack of feeling
would be so great as to degrade him below an animal."
"Yes," said the steward, "but what would _we_ do if _we_ were so
cowardly?"
Frederick now began to deliver one of those fiery dissertations that had
won him a number of youthful auditors when he was a _Privatdozent_.
"With you it is different," he said. "You are upheld, and at the same
time rewarded, by the feeling that you are doing your duty. While we
passengers are living in terror, the cooks have been boiling soup,
cleaning fish, preparing vegetables, roasting and carving, larding
venison and so on." The steward laughed! "But I assure you, at times it
is easier to roast a roast than to eat it." And Frederick continued in
a solemn, but for that very reason, roguish manner to philosophise on
courage and cowardice.