“Were you making deep-sea researches?” Von Halm asked.

“Yes,” said Frederick with a laugh, “I was about to make a sounding for the submerged Atlantis.  What do you think of the weather?”

The giant was wearing his sou’wester and oilskin.  He pointed to the barometer.  Frederick saw it had dropped considerably.  Adolph, the steward, came in search of Frederick.  Having failed to find him in his cabin, he was bringing him his zwieback and large peasant cup of tea on deck.  Frederick seated himself on the same bench as the day before, opposite the companionway.  He sipped the cordial drink and warmed his hands on the cup.

Before he had finished, the wind was again beginning to boom in the rigging of the four masts, and a stiff, obstinate wind was heeling the vessel to starboard.  Frederick set to bargaining inwardly, as if he had to reckon with the powers on account of the new hardships to be gone through.  He suddenly longed to be with Peter Schmidt in America.  Since his dream, it seemed more and more important for him to see, and associate with, his old comrade again.  He thought he was rid of Ingigerd, the more surely as she had played no part at all in the momentous Atlantis dream.  The sooner the voyage with her ended the better.

XXXVI

By the time Frederick was taking his real breakfast with Doctor Wilhelm in the dining-room, at about eight o’clock, the whole mass of the vessel was again quivering and at short intervals again seemed to be running hard against walls of rock.  The low-ceiled room in dismal gloom, dotted here and there by electric lights, was leaping in a mad dance, one moment riding high on the crest of a wave, the next moment plunging deep into an eddying trough.  The few men that had ventured to table tried to laugh and joke away the situation, which by no means offered a rosy outlook.

“In the pit of my stomach I have the feeling I used to get as a child when I swung too high.”

“Kammacher, we’re in the devil’s cauldron.  There’ll be things doing compared with which the things we’ve gone through aren’t a circumstance,” said Wilhelm.

From somewhere came the word, “Cyclone,” a dreadful word, though it seemed to make no impression upon the steamer Roland, a model of determination, steadfastly cleaving the waves and tearing breaches in the mountains of water.  New York was its goal, and it was hastening onward.

Frederick wanted to go on deck, but it looked bad there, and he remained on the upper step under the protection of the companionway penthouse.  The level of the sea seemed to have risen, so that the warrior Roland appeared to be making his obstinate way through a deep defile.  One could not help succumbing to the impression that each instant the defile would close overhead and settle the faithful vessel’s fate forever.  Sailors in oilskins were climbing about to make fast every loose thing.