“Whether that is true,” Frederick concluded, “remains to be proved.  So much is certain—­if there is anything about this dream that isn’t the illusory work of my imagination—­my soul grazed the boundaries of the world beyond, and I received a hint of the catastrophe to come.  As to the Roland, my friend, Peter Schmidt, showed me a ship in the harbour with a tremendous hole in its side and said it had brought in a great many people,—­which would mean, it had transferred them to the world beyond.  In regard to my rescue, my disguised friend, Rasmussen, said I should soon celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of 1492 with Peter Schmidt in New York.  But dreams are froth and foam.  I fancy it would not be difficult to explain all this rationalistically, from psycho-physiologic causes.”

Before the little family circle of the Hamburg broke up for the night, they touched glasses again with great gravity, even solemnity.

LII

Frederick awoke the next morning from an eleven hours’ sleep, for which he was indebted chiefly to a dose of veronal.  Doctor Wilhelm had undertaken to do whatever was necessary during the night for the sick passengers of the Roland and had persuaded Frederick, whose more delicate constitution was in the utmost need of rest, to take the drug.  The sun was shining brightly into his tiny cabin.  Through the slat door, he heard the sound of voices speaking calmly and the cheerful clatter of plates and dishes.  At first he recalled nothing of the previous day’s events, and thought he was on the fast mail steamer, Roland.  But he could not reconcile the change in his cabin with the idea he had formed of his room on the Roland.  In his bewilderment he reached out from bed and knocked on the mahogany slats of the door.  The next moment Doctor Wilhelm’s face, lively and refreshed, was bending over him.

“With the exception of the woman from the steerage, all our patients had a good night,” the Roland’s doctor said, and went on to give a report of each case.  It was not until he had nearly ended his account that he noticed the difficulty Frederick was having to explain his surroundings.  Wilhelm laughed and recalled some incidents.  Frederick started up and clapped his hands to his temples.

“A void,” he exclaimed.  “A whirl of impossible things is going round in my brain.”

Shortly after, he was sitting at breakfast with Doctor Wilhelm, eating and drinking.  And yet not a word was said of the sinking of the Roland.

Ingigerd Hahlstroem had awakened and fallen asleep again.  The barber and sailor-nurse, Flitte by name, had locked her door.  Arthur Stoss was still lying abed with his door open and was cracking jokes in the best of spirits, while his trusty valet, Bulke, fed him or handed him food to take with his feet.  From the ring of his falsetto voice one would have judged that the horrors he had survived were nothing but a series of comic situations.