Atlantis — Section 11

XXV

The two physicians paced the full length of the promenade deck.

The air was mild.

The ship was moving quietly, as if its great body took delight in pushing onward through none but low waves.

It was surprising to see how gay the life on deck was.

They were constantly raising their hats and making way for somebody.

The stewards had carried the news of the good weather down to the passengers in their stuffy cabins, and all the seasick travellers had come crawling on deck.

There was much talking and laughing.

Each moment brought fresh surprise over the galaxy of merry women that had kept themselves stowed away in the _Roland's_ interior.

It was just an ordinary Saturday afternoon in January; yet suddenly an atmosphere of festivity prevailed not to be outdone by a Christmas eve.

Hans Füllenberg passed by.

He was cracking jokes for everybody's benefit and flirting desperately with his Englishwoman, who had recovered from her seasickness.

She had found a friend, a woman in a fur cap and coat, with a magnificent crown of light hair, like a Swedish woman's. She seemed to be greatly amused by Füllenberg's poor jokes and poor English.

He had abstracted her muff and was alternately conveying it to his stomach, his heart, and--this very passionately--his mouth.

The young American jackanapes was promenading with his Canadian, who looked very haughty and blasé, yet much fresher.

The delicate creature seemed to be shivering with cold, though she was wearing an elegant coat of Canadian sable, which reached to her knees.

Frederick greeted the clothing manufacturer, whom his steward had helped up on deck.

He had been lying in his cabin more dead than alive, and his steward had been feeding him on nothing but Malaga grapes.

Ingigerd was holding court on the port side in front of her cabin, the door to which stood open, it flattering her vanity to have the many promenaders see and envy the privilege she was enjoying.

"If it is agreeable to you, Doctor Wilhelm, let us remain this side of the Rubicon.

That little girl slightly bores me.

By the way, can you tell me how I came to bring down on myself that shout when I entered the smoking-room and that man's vulgar remark?

To be sure, as a physician and free-thinker it's a matter of indifference to me."

"Oh," said Wilhelm, trying by an air of lightness to appease Frederick, "this is all it was.

Füllenberg probably saw you coming out of Miss Hahlström's cabin, and said something in the smoking-room.

You know his mischievous way."

"I'll box his ears," said Frederick.

"The trouble is, the little girl is making herself generally conspicuous.

The worst rumours are afloat about her.

All men seem alike to her, whether stewards, firemen, sailors, or cabin-boys.

And that greasy Achleitner!

I assure you, all over the ship, in the forecastle, among the stewards when they polish the silver, and in the officers' cabins, they do nothing but titter and laugh at her and Achleitner and anybody falling under suspicion on her account."

"Don't you think that's slander?"

"Why, you and I are physicians.

I don't care a fig one way or the other."

Frederick laughed.

"I have set my all on nothing."

Suddenly he said: "You're right.

I'm of the same opinion.

I must really throw overboard that old idealistic German Adam sticking in me like a Sunday afternoon preacher."

The two men laughed.

Their mood turned merrier, chiming in with the general atmosphere of hilarity.

One reason for this predominating sense of happiness was the fact that all the passengers, after struggling with nausea and sleeplessness during those miserable, crawling, endless hours in the doleful grave of their cabins, had learned to appreciate the value of mere healthy existence.

Merely to live, merely to live!

That was the cry that rang in every step, every laugh, every word, drowning all care.

None of those concerns which each of them had dragged on board, whether from Europe or America, now had the least might.

Merely to live was to win in the great lottery.

They knew sunshine follows rain, and they said to themselves, "If worse comes to worst, you will willingly put up with bread and salt and a hoe and a vegetable garden, and no one in the world will be a happier mortal than you."

Those promenading men and women were each glad of the other's existence.

They loved one another and were ready without hesitation to commit all sorts of follies, deeming them mere bagatelles, which on solid land they would never have condoned in themselves.

Their rejoicing was a crucible melting together all the barriers by which convention divides man from man.

They experienced a sense of relief and liberation, and drew in deep breaths of this atmosphere of freedom.

At the captain's order, the band set up its music stands and instruments on deck amidships; and when the blithe strains resounded through the whole of the _Roland_, that was the climax of festivity.

For half an hour it seemed as if the few clouds floating in the blue sky, the steamer, the people on the steamer, and the ocean had agreed to dance a quadrille.

For moments at a time the waves would form the droll, chubby-cheeked face of a jolly old man.

All at once the dreadful old man of the sea had turned good-humoured.

He even seemed to be in a jocular mood and displayed a certain clumsy vanity in letting his puppets, swarms of flying fish, dance their dance, too, in a circle about the _Roland_.

Perhaps, at his bidding, a whale would soon be spouting.

Indeed, within a few minutes, the immigrants on the fore-deck were shouting, "Dolphins!"

The gentlemen could not for any length of time avoid Ingigerd.

"Theridium triste, the gallows spider, you know," said Wilhelm, as they approached her.

"How so?"

said Frederick, slightly startled.

"You know what a gallows spider does near an ant nest.

It sits on the top of its blade of grass, and when a myrmidon passes below, it throws a little skein of cobweb at its head.

The ant does the rest.

It gets tangled up until it is absolutely helpless, and then the tiny little spider comfortably eats it up."

"If you had seen her dance," said Frederick, "you would be more inclined to assign her the rôle of the ant throttled by the spider."

"I don't know who," said Wilhelm, "but some poet says, the sex is strongest when it is weak."

Ingigerd was able to boast a new sensation, which she owed to Mr. Rinck, the officer in charge of the mail, a pretty little dog, a ball of white wool, scarcely larger than a man's two fists put together.

The polar bear in miniature was barking wildly in its ridiculous thin falsetto at the great ship's cat, which Mr. Rinck was holding to its nose.

"With your permission, Mr. Rinck, we shall sleep well to-night," said Wilhelm.

"I always sleep well," replied the other phlegmatically.

Close to the cat's soft, heavy, hanging body, his cigarette, as always, was burning between the fingers of his right hand.

The cat spat, the dog barked.

The piping sound drilled Frederick's ears like needle pricks.

Ingigerd laughed and kissed the little yelper.

Wilhelm began a conversation by telling of the tremendous amount of work Mr. Rinck had to do between Cuxhaven and New York.

"Just take a look here, Doctor von Kammacher," he said, opening a door nearby, through which one could look into a deep, square pit filled half way up to the top with thousands of packages of all sizes.

"Mr. Rinck has to arrange all of these."

"Exclusive of the letters," Mr. Rinck supplemented phlegmatically.

"Theridium triste," thought Frederick.

He seemed to himself like an ant trying head over heels to escape the spell of the little spider, whose golden cobweb in long, open strands was luring on its victims.

"That Rinck," said Wilhelm, as they resumed their promenading, "is a peculiar sort of chap.

It is worth the while to get to know him.

Twenty years ago he suffered hard luck from a woman of the same type as little Miss Hahlström. Men should never marry women of that type.

Ever since, he has been indifferently facing every sort of death on all the waters of the globe, not to mention an attempt at suicide.

You ought to hear him talk.

It is very difficult to get him to do it, because he doesn't drink.

You can't succeed until you have been on four or five trips with him.

People speak a great deal of fatalism, but to most of them the idea is merely a paper idea.

To Rinck it is not a paper idea."

The life on deck kept assuming a more and more unconcerned, mundane aspect.

Frederick was astonished to see so many persons from Berlin whom he knew by sight.

Professor Toussaint introduced himself, and led Frederick to his wife, who was lying stretched out in a steamer chair.

Their attempt at what is called conversation resulted in a few sickly sprouts.

"I am making this trip at the invitation of an American friend," Toussaint explained somewhat condescendingly, and mentioned the name of a well-known millionaire.

"Even if I receive orders over there, I will not allow myself to be persuaded into making America my home.

Interest in art should be elevated--" The pale, aristocratic man with the care-worn expression went on to expatiate upon his hopes and troubles, while his wife, who was still beautiful, looked on with a blasé expression of irony.

Probably without being conscious of it, Professor Toussaint too frequently referred to the United States as the dollar land.

On the after-deck the passengers in unrestrained jollity, had begun to dance.

It was Hans Füllenberg, the ever vivacious Berlinese, who had taken the lead.

Inspired by the Strauss waltz that the band was playing he had engaged the lady in the fur coat.

A number of other couples followed their example, and there, under the bright sky, an informal ball was opened, which did not end until sundown.

When the musicians with their shining brass instruments were about to make their way inconspicuously below deck, the passengers detained them, and in the twinkling of an eye, a large collection was taken up.

Thereupon the dance music began again, even blither than before.

XXVI

Doctor Wilhelm was summoned away, and after a while Frederick succeeded in taking leave of Toussaint and his wife.

He remained alone.

The clear heavens, the deep blue sea, smooth as glass, calmed as if by a miracle, the music, the dancing, the sunlight, and the dear, sweet, pacifying, all-forgiving letter of his mother--it was in his pocket--awakened in him a fresh, pleasant sense of vitality.

"Life," he said to himself, "is always this way or that, a moment filled with pain or pleasure, with darkness or brightness, with sunlight or heavy, black clouds; and according to the moment in which we view our past and future, these will darken or brighten.

Should existence in the shining light possess lesser reality than existence in the dark?"

"No, it should not," was the answer that came from everything within and about him, filling him with youthful, almost childlike joy.

Frederick had pushed back his slouched hat, had unbuttoned his light overcoat, and was standing with his arms crooked over the railing.

He looked out upon the sea.

He felt the pulse beats of the engines, his ears were filled with the pliant, melodious chords of the Viennese waltz; the whole world had turned into a brilliant, lively, sparkling ballroom.

He had suffered and caused others to suffer.

Now he embraced all those through whom he had suffered and who had suffered through him, and seemed to wed them in blissful intoxication.

At this point Ingigerd Hahlström passed by with the giant Von Halm.

Frederick heard her say she did not dance, that dancing was an insipid pleasure.

With that, he started away from the railing, went up to the Canadian, and in a peculiar, fiery German manner ruthlessly drew her away from the young American, who was completely taken aback.

It was evident that the delicate, exotic woman, whose breast rose and fell convulsively, took pleasure in that strong conqueror's arm as they circled about in the dance.

At the conclusion of the dance, he found himself under the necessity of murdering French and English with her for a time and was very glad when he could gracefully deliver her over again to the jealous young American.

Stoss was being transported across the deck by his valet, who, as always, held him by his coat collar.

"My private overland and oversea express," he called to Frederick.

Frederick pulled up a steamer chair for him in a sudden impulse to chat with Stoss.

"If the weather remains like this," said Stoss, after his valet had carefully and skilfully seated him in the chair, "we can reach Hoboken some time on Tuesday.

But only if the weather does remain like this.

The captain tells me that when we are running under full steam, as now, we make sixteen knots an hour."

Frederick started.

So Tuesday this life under the same roof with Ingigerd was to end.

Frederick had been profoundly humiliated by the coarse insult offered him in the smoking-room.

He knew of no other way to escape the impression of it except by a sort of ostrich policy.

For that reason he had passed over the incident lightly when speaking to Doctor Wilhelm.

Once his feeling of delicacy, smarting like a sensitive nerve, had ceased to ache so intensely, he looked upon the scandal much as a somnambulist would look upon the thing that has awakened him and guarded him against a humiliating fall.

For more than half an hour his passion for the little devil of a dancer had turned into disgust and repugnance, until now he suddenly had to admit once again that separation from her was inconceivable.

"That little dancer is a piquant wench," said Stoss, as if he had divined Frederick's thoughts.

"It would not seem at all strange to me if an inexperienced man were to fall into her toils.

I think she resembles one of the younger Barrison sisters, who sing 'Linger Longer Lucy, Linger Longer Loo.'

A man must certainly don armour in dealing with her."

"I am completely at a loss to understand," lied Frederick, "how I ever came to fall under suspicion with that creature.

She is of absolutely no interest to me."

"Good Lord, Doctor von Kammacher!

Who doesn't fall under suspicion with her?"

He laughed unblushingly.

"I myself did."

Frederick suffered.

He looked sidewise at the armless trunk, and his soul writhed in humiliation at the thought of his own ridiculousness.

Stoss went on to philosophise on erotics in general.

He, the Don Juan without arms, read Frederick a lecture on the art of handling women.

This led to his boasting, which detracted markedly from his quality of fineness.

His intellect also shrank in direct proportion to the increase of his vanity.

Something seemed to be working in him impelling him to impress people at all costs with his successes as a man.

A servant-girl led two children by.

Frederick drew a breath of relief, for she diverted Stoss from his unsavoury theme.

"Well, Rosa," he called, "how is Mrs. Liebling?"

It was his habit to obtrude himself upon everybody.

From the gossip of Bulke, his valet, he had learned of Rosa and her cross.

The difficult lady she served was the excitable person of whom the barber had told Frederick and with whom he was acquainted from certain impressions of his hearing.

Rosa, who was carrying Ella Liebling, a girl of five years, on her crimson arm, looked pleased and laughed.

"She is not coming on deck.

She's taken up with fortune-telling and table-turning."

Bulke, in whose eyes Rosa seemed to have found unqualified favour, took Siegfried Liebling, a boy of seven, from her hand and helped her place both children safely in steamer chairs.

"There is nothing to beat a crazy woman," Stoss declared.

"That Mrs. Liebling actually called in Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward, to help her with Rosa"--the very Rosa, who unwearyingly and self-sacrificingly worked for her day and night, in good weather and bad.

The worst to be said against her was that at utmost she was a little too ready with her tongue.

XXVII

The music was still playing, the sun was still shining from a slightly clouded sky.

On the dry deck the travelling city, in the gayest, most superficial mood, was still dancing in the face of the infiniteness of heaven and sea.

A steward came up to Frederick and presented the second engineer, who brought a message from Doctor Wilhelm asking Frederick to come to him immediately.

The engineer led Frederick to the engine-room and down a perpendicular iron ladder.

The warm, heavy smell of oil almost robbed Frederick of his breath.

The downward climb seemed endless.

On all sides the engines were working.

Frederick glanced at the gigantic cylinders, in which the compressed steam was moving pistons up and down like pump handles.

The pistons communicated their motion to the big shaft running aft along the keel to the stern, and the revolutions of the shaft in turn produced the revolutions of the screw propelling the vessel across the Atlantic.

Oilers holding oil cans and waste clambered in and out of the rotating masses of iron with astounding sureness and boldness.

To graze one of the fly-wheels, or to step one inch within the unguarded circle of their revolution, was to receive a deadly blow.

Here was the heart and soul of the vessel, the real modern miracle of strength, the like of which no age in the past has been able to produce.

An iron soul, a steely heart.

It was as if one were descending below earth into the glowing workshop of Vulcan of old, the lame god, who did not demonstrate the full skill of his divinity until our times.

Still deeper down went the descent, to where, from numerous shovels handled by almost naked helots, coal was flying into the white heat under the boilers, into a row of gaping jaws of fire.

Frederick felt as if he had reached the heart of a crater.

It was a black shaft smelling of coal, slag, and burning things.

Apparently it was lighted only by the constant opening of the furnace doors, spitting white heat.

How was it possible for such a conflagration to be contained in the _Roland's_ interior without reducing the whole to ashes?

What a conquest to fight such a sea of fire, to keep it in check, and carry it through sea and storm; to manage that it should carry itself three or six thousand miles in the ocean in fair weather or foul, hidden away and absolutely innocuous.

Frederick panted for breath.

The glowing heat of the abyss instantly brought the perspiration pouring out on his face and neck.

He was so absorbed in the novelty of the impressions that he completely forgot he was surrounded by water about twenty feet under the surface of the sea.

Suddenly, he became aware of Doctor Wilhelm's presence, and in the same instant saw a man entirely naked stretched out like a corpse, a white body on the black coal dust.

The man had ceased to breathe.

In a second Frederick, now wholly the physician, had Doctor Wilhelm's stethoscope in his hand and was listening to the man's heart.

His mates, blackened with coal from head to foot, were ceaselessly at work in the engine's unremitting service, shovelling coal, opening the furnace doors, and slamming them shut.

They scarcely cast a glance at their fallen comrade, and that only when they stopped to gulp a glass of beer or water.

"It was hardly three minutes ago," said Doctor Wilhelm, "that he broke down.

That man over there, the one who has just washed himself, is his successor."

"He was just about to throw coal into the furnace," explained the engineer who had called for Frederick, shouting at the top of his voice to make himself heard above the clanging of the shovels and the banging of the iron doors, "when his shovel flew out of his hand about twelve feet away and almost struck a coal-trimmer.

He was hired in Hamburg.

The moment he set foot on board, I thought, 'If only you pull through, my boy.'

He joked about himself.

He said, 'If my heart is good.'

I was sorry for him.

He wanted to cross the great pond, and that was his only way of getting over.

He wanted, no matter how, to see his brother again, his only living relative, or somebody else.

They hadn't seen each other for fourteen years."

"_Exitus_," said Frederick, after a prolonged investigation of the man's heart.

Even a few moments after the stethoscope had been removed, one could see the ring it made on his bluish, waxen skin.

His chin dropped.

They put it back in place, and Frederick bound his jaws with his white handkerchief.

"He had a bad fall," Frederick remarked.

It may actually have been the unfortunate fall to which the helot owed his death.

There was a deep bleeding gash in his temple from the edge of a large nut.

"Probably a heart stroke," Frederick added, "the result of the heat and over-exertion."

He looked at the dead man, then at his mates, naked, blackened, illuminated by the jaws of the glowing furnaces, and thought of the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."

If we were to take the commandment literally, how far should we get?

The physicians mounted on deck, and several of the men picked up the victim of civilisation, the modern galley-slave, still covered with the sweat of his fearful occupation.

With the handkerchief about his head, he looked as if he were suffering from toothache.

They carried him up out of the glowing pit to the cabin set aside for dead bodies.

Doctor Wilhelm had to notify the captain.

Nobody on deck, where the band was playing the last measures, was to suspect that a stoker had died.

With the help of the Red Cross sister, they stretched him on a mattress, and within a short time a circle of the higher officials of the vessel, at their head the captain, and among them the purser and the physicians, were gathered about the corpse.

Captain von Kessel ordered the stoker's death to be kept secret, particularly requesting the two physicians not to mention it.

Formalities had to be gone through, documents had to be drawn up and signed.

This kept them busy until dark, when the first call for dinner was trumpeted across the deck and through the gangways of the first-class section.