Great waves had already swept overboard.  The salt water was trickling and flowing over the deck.  As if that were not enough, the heavens were driving down rain and snow.  The rigging was howling, groaning, booming, and whistling in every pitch and key.  That severity, that awfulness of the elements, that eternal rushing and roaring and seething of great masses of water, through which the steamer was staggering forward as if in mad, blind intoxication, that mournful, raging tumult kept up hour after hour.  By noon it had even grown worse.

Very few responded to the trumpet-call for luncheon.  There were about ten men beside the woman physician and the woman painter.  Hahlstroem seated himself at Frederick’s and Wilhelm’s empty table.  The ladies’ places were not far away.

“No wonder,” said Frederick, “that sailors are superstitious.  The way this awful weather dropped out of a clear sky is enough to make a man believe in magic.”

“It may even grow worse,” Wilhelm observed.

The women heard his remark, looked up, and made horrified eyes.

“Do you think there is danger?” one of them asked.

“Danger is always imminent in life,” he replied, and added with a smile:  “It is merely a question of not being frightened.”

Incredible to relate, the band began to play as usual, and, what is more, played a piece entitled Marche triomphale.  The effect on all was at first a slight shudder; then nobody could resist a smile at the apparent irony of it.

“The musicians are heroes,” said Frederick.

“In general,” remarked Hahlstroem, “our grim humour nowadays is a great asset.  If those musicians were to receive the order, they would play ’A Country Girl,’ and ‘My Hannah Lady,’ in the jaws or the belly of a whale.  If they didn’t, they’d fare just as badly.”

“O Lord, anything for a steady table, a steady seat, a steady berth!  The man possessing these things seldom knows how rich he is,” said Frederick, in a voice raised to a shout to make himself heard above the noise of the sea without and the music within.  The men laughed, and the ocean, to add to their amusement, raised them up in the fog, the tempest, and the snow to the top of a wave ninety feet high.  Everybody was instantly silenced.  Even the orchestra played a frightened pause not indicated in the score.

On ascending the companionway after lunch, Frederick saw Arthur Stoss in the unfrequented smoking-room eating his meal in perfect equanimity and cheerfulness undisturbed by the weather.  Frederick went in for a chat with the original, witty monstrosity.  He was cutting his fish with a knife and fork held between the great toe and the second toe.