XXII

Frederick reflected upon the timid skipper, whose characteristics seemed to harmonise so poorly with the demands, active and passive, of his rigorous calling.  He wondered what it is that permanently holds a man like that to his marriage ties and all the duties of his life.  Then he arose to wander about the Roland vaguely.

The enforced idleness of a sea trip, especially in bad weather, induces passengers, when they have made the complete round of the vessel, to begin over again and go through the same circle.  Thus, Frederick, after descending the companionway, ascending it, and descending again, found himself on the leather-seated bench in the smoking-room avoided by most of the smokers, in which the armless man had taken his meal the day before.

Hans Fuellenberg entered, asked whether he was not permitted to smoke a cigarette in the room, and began to grumble about the weather.

“Who knows how this thing is going to end?” he complained dismally.  “Perhaps, instead of reaching New York, we’ll have to be towed into port somewhere in Newfoundland.”

Frederick was indifferent to the prospect.  He noticed that young Fuellenberg cared for nothing except to produce an impression; and young Fuellenberg noticed that Frederick von Kammacher was not susceptible to the impression he tried to produce.  He cast about for another theme of conversation.

“Do you know there are two priests on board?  You should have been at Cuxhaven when they got on.  The sailors were beside themselves.  I hunted up the fellows, the sailors I mean, in the forecastle.  How they did curse!  It was fearful.  The stoker told all the men of the engine-room.  They said you could not get genuine seamen to think any differently—­with priests on board something is bound to go wrong.”

“How is your lady?” asked Frederick.

“My lady is retching her soul away, if she has such a thing as a soul.  Two hours ago I helped her to bed.  That Englishwoman is already a full-blooded American.  Shameless, I tell you!  Something tremendous.  I rubbed her forehead with brandy.  She partook of a goodly quantity, and then I unbuttoned her waist.  She seems to take me for a masseur chartered extra by her munificent husband.  The thing became boresome.  And besides, in that pitching boudoir, my own soul began to rise up through my stomach, and the poetry went to the devil.  She showed me the photograph of her devoted husband in New York.  I think she has another in London.”  He was interrupted by the first call for dinner, which the trumpeter announced at the bottom of the companionway.  The trumpet blast was lost without resonance in the heavy air and the bluster of the waves.  “What’s more,” he concluded, “she sent for Doctor Wilhelm.”