Atlantis — Section 2

II

After lying in bed about an hour, Frederick arose, knocked a hole in the ice crust in the pitcher, washed himself, and in a fever of restlessness descended again to the lower rooms of the little hotel.

In the reading-room sat a pretty young Englishwoman and a German Jewish merchant, not so pretty and not so young.

The dreariness of waiting produced sociability.

Frederick and the German entered into a conversation.

The German informed Frederick that he had lived in the United States and was returning by the _Roland_.

The air was grey, the room cold, the young lady impatiently paced up and down in front of the fireplace, where there was no fire, and the conversation of the new acquaintances dwindled into monosyllables.

The condition of the unhappy lover, as a rule, is concealed from the persons he meets, or unintelligible to them.

In either case it is ridiculous.

A man in love is alternately transported and tormented by brilliant and gloomy illusions.

In spite of the cold, cutting wind, the young fool of love was driven restlessly out to roam the streets and alleys of the port.

He thought of what an embarrassing position he had been in when the Jewish merchant had insinuatingly inquired for the purpose of his journey.

In his effort not to reveal the secret motive of his ocean crossing, Frederick had stammered and stuttered and given some sort of a vague reply.

He decided that from now on, in answer to intrusive questioners, he would say he was going to America to see Niagara Falls, Yellowstone Park, and visit an old collegemate of his, also a physician.

During the silent meal in the hotel, the news came that the _Roland_ probably would reach the Needles at five o'clock, two hours earlier than was expected.

Frederick took his coffee and smoked some Simon Arzt cigarettes with the German, who at the same time tried to do some business in his trade, which was ready-made clothing.

The two men, carrying their luggage, then went to the tender together.

Here they had an uncomfortable hour's wait, while the low smoke-stack belched black vapours into the dirty drab mist that lay oppressively upon everything about the harbour.

From time to time the sound of the shovelling of coal arose from the engine-room.

One at a time five or six passengers came on board, porters carrying their luggage.

The saloon was nothing more than a glass case on deck, inside of which, below the windows, a bench upholstered in red plush ran around the sides.

At irregular intervals the bench was heaped with disorderly piles of luggage.

Everybody was taciturn.

No one felt reposeful enough to settle in any one place for a length of time.

What conversation there was, was conducted in a subdued, frightened sort of whisper.

Three young ladies, one of whom was the Englishwoman of the reading-room, unwearyingly paced up and down the full length of the saloon.

Their faces were unnaturally pale.

"This is the eighteenth time I have made the round trip," suddenly declared the clothing manufacturer, unsolicited.

"Do you suffer from seasickness?"

somebody asked in reply.

"I scarcely set foot on the steamer when I turn into a corpse.

That happens each time.

I don't come back to life until shortly before we reach Hoboken or, at the other end, Bremerhaven or Cuxhaven."

Finally, after a long, apparently vain wait, something seemed to be preparing in the bowels of the tender and at the wheel.

The three ladies embraced and kissed, and an abundance of tears were shed.

The prettiest one, the lady of the reading-room, remained on the tender; the others returned to the pier.

Still the little boat refused to move.

Finally, however, at nightfall, amid pitch-black darkness, the hawsers were loosened from the iron rings of the dock, a piercing whistle burst from the tender, and the screw began to churn the water slowly, as if merely to test itself.

At the last moment three telegrams were handed to Frederick, one from his old parents and his brother, who wished him a happy voyage, one from his banker, and one from his attorney.

Though Frederick had left neither friend nor relative nor even an acquaintance on the quay, yet, the instant he perceived the tender in motion, a storm assailed him, whether a storm of woe, misery, despair, or a storm of hope in endless happiness, he could not tell.

All he felt was that something burst convulsively from his breast and throat, and seethed up, boiling hot, into his eyes.

The lives of unusual men from decade to decade, it seems, enter dangerous crises, in which one of two things takes place; either the morbid matter that has been accumulating is thrown off, or the organism succumbs to it in actual material death, or in spiritual death.

One of the most important and, to the observer, most remarkable of these crises occurs in the early thirties or forties, rarely before thirty; in fact, more frequently not until thirty-five and later.

It is the great trial balance of life, which one would rather defer as long as is expedient than make prematurely.

It was in such a crisis that Goethe went on his Italian journey, that Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg, that Ignatius Loyola hung his weapons in front of an image of the Virgin, never to take them down again, and that Jesus was nailed to the cross.

As for the young physician, Frederick von Kammacher, he was neither a Goethe nor a Luther nor a Loyola; but he was akin to them not only in culture, but also in many a trait of genius.

It is impossible to express in words the extent in which his whole previous existence passed in review before Frederick's mental vision as the little tender sped beyond the harbour lights of Southampton, carrying him away from Europe and his home.

He seemed to be parting with a whole continent in his soul, upon which he would never set foot again.

It was a farewell forever.

No wonder if in that moment his whole being was shaken and could not regain its balance.

Loyola had not been a good soldier.

Else, how could he have discarded his arms?

Luther had not been a good Dominican.

Else, how could he have discarded his monk's robes?

Goethe had not been a good barrister or bureaucrat.

A mighty, irresistible wave had swept over those three men and also, for all the disparity between them, over Frederick von Kammacher, washing the uniform away from their souls.

Frederick was not one of those who enter this crisis unconsciously.

He had been feeling its approach for years, and it was characteristic of him that he reflected upon its nature.

Sometimes he was of the opinion that it marked the termination of youth and the beginning, therefore, of real maturity.

It seemed to him as if hitherto he had worked with other people's hands, according to other people's will, guided rather than guiding.

His thinking appeared to him to have been no thinking, but an operating with transmitted ideas.

He put it to himself that he had been standing in a hothouse, and his head, like the top of a young tree reaching upward to the light, had broken through the glass roof and made its way into the open.

"Now I will walk with my own feet, look with my own eyes, think my own thoughts, and act from the plenary power of my own will."

In his valise, Frederick carried Stirner's "The Individual and his Own."

Man living in society is never wholly independent.

There is no intellect that does not look about for other intellects, if for no other object than to seek confirmation, that is, reinforcement or guidance, at all events, companionship.

That Frederick von Kammacher's new intellectual companion was Max Stirner, was the result of a profound disillusionment.

He had been disillusioned in his deep-seated altruism, which until now had completely dominated him.

III

Dense darkness closed in around the tender.

The lights of the harbour disappeared completely, and the little cockle-shell with the glass pavilion began to roll considerably.

The wind whistled and howled.

Sometimes it blew so hard that it seemed to be bringing the tender to a standstill.

The screw actually did rise out of the water.

Suddenly the whistle screeched several times, and again the steamer made its way through the darkness.

The rattling of the windows, the quivering of the ship's body, the gurgling whirr-whirr of the propeller, the whistling, squalling and howling of the wind, which laid the vessel on her side, all this combined to produce extreme discomfort in the travellers.

Again and again, as if uncertain what course to pursue, the boat stopped and emitted its shrill whistle, which was so stifled in the wild commotion of the waters that it seemed nothing but the helpless breathing of a hoarse throat--stopped and went backwards--stopped and went forwards, until again it came to an uncertain halt, twisting and turning in the whirling waters, carried aloft, plunged down, apparently lost and submerged in the darkness.

To be exposed to impressions of this sort for only an hour and a half is enough gradually to reduce a traveller's nerves to a state of torture.

The proximity of that awful element the surface of which marks the limits of the one element in which man is capable of living, forces upon the mind thoughts of death and destruction; all the more so since the water's tricks seem so incalculable to the landman that he sees danger where there actually is none.

Another thing hard for the man accustomed to unhampered movement to bear is the close confinement.

All at once he loses his illusion of freedom of will.

Activity, the thing that in the eyes of the European endows life with its sublimest charm, cannot in the twinkling of an eye turn into absolute passivity.

Nevertheless, despite these novel, distressing experiences, despite throbbing pulses, over-stimulated senses, and nerves tautened to the snapping point, the situation is by no means lacking in fascination.

Thus, Frederick von Kammacher felt a flush of exaltation.

Life was straining him to her breast more closely, wildly, passionately than she had for a long time.

"Either life has again become the one tremendous adventure, or life is nothing," a voice within him said.

Again the tender lay still.

Suddenly it groaned, churned the water, sent out huge puffs of hissing steam, whistled as if in great fear, once, twice--Frederick counted seven times--and started off at its utmost speed, as if to escape Satan's clutches.

And now, all at once, it turned, swept into a region of light, and faced a mighty vision.

The _Roland_ had reached the Needles and was lying tide rode.

In the protection of its vast broadside the little tender seemed to be in a brilliantly lighted harbour.

The impression that the surprising presence of the ocean greyhound made upon Frederick was in a fortissimo scale.

He had always belonged to that class of men--a class which is not small--whose senses are open to life's varied abundance.

Only on the rarest occasions he found a thing commonplace or ordinary, and was never blasé in meeting a novelty.

But, after all, there are very few persons who would be dull to the impressions of an embarkation by night, outside a harbour in the open waters.

Never before had Frederick been inspired with equal respect for the might of human ingenuity, for the genuine spirit of his times, as at the sight of that gigantic black wall rising from the black waters, that tremendous façade, with its endless rows of round port-holes streaming out light upon a foaming field of waves protected from the wind.

In comparison with this product, this creation, this triumph of the divine intellect in man, what were undertakings like the Tower of Babel, allowing that they were not isolated instances and had actually been completed.

Sailors were busy letting the gangway-ladder down the flank of the _Roland_.

Frederick could see that up on deck, at the point where the ladder was being suspended, a rather numerous group of uniformed men had gathered, probably to receive the new passengers.

His state of exaltation continued, even while everybody in the tender's saloon, including himself, suddenly seized with haste, grasped his or her hand luggage and stood in readiness.

In the presence of that improbability, that Titan of venturesomeness, that floating fairy palace, it was impossible to cling to the conviction that modern civilisation is all prose.

The most prosaic of mortals here had forced upon him a piece of foolhardy romance compared with which the dreams of the poets lose colour and turn pale.

While the tender, dancing coquettishly on the swelling foam, was warping to the gangway-ladder, high overhead, on the deck of the _Roland_, the band struck up a lively, resolute march in a martial yet resigned strain, such as leads soldiers to battle--to victory or to death.

An orchestra like this, of wind instruments, drums and cymbals was all that lacked to set the young physician's nerves a-quiver, as in a dance of fire and flame.

The music ringing from aloft out into the night and descending to the little tender manoeuvring in the water, was designed to inspire timid souls with courage and tide them over certain horrors attendant upon the moment.

Beyond lay the infinite ocean.

In the situation, one could not help representing it to oneself as black, gloomy, forbidding, a fearful, demoniac power, hostile to man and the works of man.

Now, from the breast of the _Roland_, tore a cry rising higher and louder, upward from a deep bass, a monstrous call, a roar, a thunder, of a fearfulness and strength that congealed the blood in one's heart.

"Well, my dear friend _Roland_," flashed through Frederick's mind, "you're a fellow that's a match for the ocean."

With that he set foot on the gangway-ladder.

He completely forgot his previous identity and the reason of his being here.

When, to the wild tune of the brass band, he stepped from the upper rung upon the roomy deck, and stood in the garish sheen of an arc-light, he found himself between two rows of men, the officers and some of the ship's crew.

It was the group of uniformed men he had noticed from below.

He was astonished and delighted to behold so many confidence-inspiring masculine figures.

It was an assemblage of magnificent specimens of manhood, all, from the first mate down to the stewards, tall, picked men, with bold, simple, intelligent, honest features.

Moved by a sense at once of pride and of complete trust and security, Frederick said to himself that after all there was still a German nation left; and the singular thought flashed through his mind that God would never decide to take such a selection of noble, faithful men and drown them in the sea like blind puppies.

A steward picked up his luggage and led the way to a cabin with two berths, which he was to have to himself.

Soon after, he was sitting at one end of a horseshoe-shaped table in the dining-room.

The service was excellent, and the few passengers from the tender ate and drank; but it was not very lively.

The main dinner was over, and the little company from the tender in the great, low-ceiled, empty saloon, were each too tired and too engrossed in self to talk.

During the meal Frederick was not aware whether the mammoth body was moving or standing still.

The faint, scarcely perceptible quiver seemed too slight to be a sign of the motion of so huge a mass.

Frederick had made his first sea voyage when a lad of eighteen as the only passenger on a merchantman going from Hamburg to Naples.

The thirteen years since had considerably weakened the impressions of that trip.

Moreover, the luxury of this ocean liner into which he had strayed was something so new to him, that all he could do at first was scrutinize everything in astonishment.

When he had drunk his customary few glasses of wine, a sense of peace and comfort stole over him.

After their long irritation and tension his nerves succumbed to a pleasant tiredness, which pressed upon him so healthily and imperatively that he felt almost sure of a refreshing night's sleep.

He even made the firm resolution--in his condition scarcely necessary--that for this night bygones should be bygones, the future the future, and the present, without regard for past or future, should belong unqualifiedly to rest and sleep.

When he went to bed, he actually did sleep for ten hours, heavily, without stirring.

At breakfast in the dining-room, he asked for the passenger list, and with a wild leap of his heart read the names for which he had been looking, Eugen Hahlström and Miss Ingigerd Hahlström.