“Altogether,” he observed, “it’s a pity to lay so much stress on record-making.  How is a great big body with walls like a wafer to resist heavy seas for any length of time?  And see what tremendous engines it has to carry and what an enormous amount of coal it consumes.  But the Roland’s a good boat.  It was built in Glasgow in the yards of John Elder and Company.  It has been running since June, 1881.  The engines are compound steam-engines with three cylinders and 5800 horse power.  They require one hundred and fifteen tons of coal every day.  The boat makes sixteen knots an hour, and has a tonnage of 4510.  There are one hundred and sixty-eight men in the crew.”

The barber had all these details at his fingers’ ends.  In a tone of annoyance, as if the thing caused him personally a lot of trouble, he told that the Roland on each trip to or from New York dragged one thousand and three hundred tons of anthracite coal in its coal-bunkers.  A slow trip, he insisted, was safe and comfortable, while a quick trip was dangerous and expensive.

The little saloon with its electric lighting would have been a very comfortable place to be in, had it only stood at rest.  But unfortunately its walls were quivering to the pulse of the engines and the floor was rising and sagging to the swell and fall of the waves, which every now and then leapt against the port-hole with tiger-like fury.  The flasks in the closets rattled.

“A heavier ship,” said the barber, “built to go more slowly, wouldn’t be pitching like this.”

Next he spoke of a little person, who dyed her hair, a dancer.  She had spent more than an hour in his chair, having him show her rouge and face powders, until finally he had displayed his entire stock of Pinaud and Roger et Gallet.  The barber chuckled.

“On sea trips,” he said, “a man has a chance of getting to know the queerest women.”  And he proceeded to recount a number of incidents, which, on his own word, he himself had witnessed.  The heroine in each case was an erotomanic woman.

“Just ask our doctor,” he said.  He was of the old-fashioned sort of barber-surgeon, and in the capacity of surgeon had gathered the most scandalous portion of his experiences.  “One of the worst cases,” he went on, “was that of an American girl, who was found lying unconscious in one of the life-boats swinging from the davits.  She was hideously abused by all the crew, one at a time, but they fixed it so that the whole blame could be laid on her.”

Frederick knew that none other than Ingigerd Hahlstroem was responsible for the direction the barber’s thoughts had taken.  She had been sitting in the very chair in which he was now reclining.  A current streamed from its upholstery into his body.  His heart began to beat irregularly, ceasing for an instant, then leaping wildly.  To his horror, he observed that Mara’s power over him was not yet broken.

He jumped up and shook himself.  He felt as if he must plunge into a hot and cold bath and let stinging douches run down his spine to wash him outwardly and inwardly clean and expel that foul poison from his blood.