It aroused some attention, of course, when he descended down among the steerage passengers and then crawled up the iron rungs of the ladder to the windy height.  But that did not trouble him.  All at once such a madcap spirit had come over him, he felt so happy and refreshed; as if he had never had to suffer dull cares, or put up with the whims of a hysterical wife, or practise medicine in a musty, out-of-the-way corner of the country.  Never, it seemed to him, had he studied bacteriology, still less, suffered a fiasco.  Never had he been so in love as he appeared to have been only a short time before.

He laughed, bending his head before the gale, filled his lungs with the salty air, and felt better and stronger.

A burst of laughter from the steerage passengers mounted to his ears.  At the same instant something lashed him in the face, something that he had seen rearing, white and tremendous, before the bow.  It almost blinded him, and he felt the wet penetrate to his skin.  The first wave had swept overboard.

Who would not find it humiliating to have his sublime meditations interrupted in such a tricky, brutal way?  A moment before, he felt as if to be a Viking were his real calling, and now, inwardly shaking and shivering, amid general ridicule, he crawled ignominiously down the iron ladder.

He was wearing a round grey hat.  His overcoat was padded and lined with silk.  His gloves were of dressed kid, his buttoned boots of thin leather.  All these garments were now drenched with a cold, salty wash.  Leaving a damp trail behind, he made his way, not exactly a glorious way, through the steerage passengers, who rolled with laughter.  In the midst of his annoyance Frederick heard a voice calling his name.  He looked up and scarcely trusted his eyes on seeing a large fellow in whom he thought he recognised a peasant from the Heuscheuer Mountains, a peasant with an evil reputation for drunkenness and all sorts of misdeeds.

“Wilke, is that you?”

“Yes, Doctor, I’m Wilke.”

The little town in which Frederick had practised was called Plassenberg an der Heuscheuer, that is, Plassenberg by the Heuscheuer Mountains, a range in the county of Glatz where excellent sandstone is quarried.  The people of the district loved Frederick both as a man and a physician.  He was the wonder-worker who had performed a number of splendid cures and he was the human being, without pride of caste, whose heart beat warmly for the good of the lowliest of his fellow-men.  They loved his natural way with them, always cordial, always outspoken, and sometimes harsh.

Wilke was bound for New England to join his brother.

“The people in the Heuscheuer,” he said, “are mean and ungrateful.”

Shy and distrustful at home, even toward Frederick, who had treated him for his last knife wound on his neck, his manner here, with the other passengers crossing the great waters, was frank and trustful.  He was like a well-behaved child chattering freely.