“Our old omnibus is jolting a bit,” he said.  “If our boilers are good, there is nothing to fear.  But there’s this much about it.  If it is not a cyclone yet, it may still turn into one.  I don’t care.  It looks more discouraging than it really is.  What a man will do!  To show the people in Cape Town, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, San Francisco and Mexico what a man with a firm, energetic will can accomplish, even if nature has not favoured him, he will plow through all the cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons of all the waters of the globe.  Your business man sitting in the Winter Garden in Berlin, or the Alhambra in London, never dreams of all the things the performer giving his number must go through before he can merely stand where he is standing.  He can’t ever take it easy and let himself get rusty.”

Frederick was feeling miserable.  Although his dreams were still haunting his brain, and Ingigerd, or his sick wife, or the Russian Jewess was still present in his soul, he nevertheless felt that all sensations were becoming more and more submerged in the one sensation, that on all sides there was distinct menace of a brutal danger.

Hans Fuellenberg entered.  His face was lifeless.

“There is a corpse on board,” he said, in a tone implying a causal relation between the dead stoker and the raging storm.  It was very evident that the spice had been taken out of Hans Fuellenberg’s life.

“I heard the same thing,” Stoss said.  “My man, Bulke, told me a stoker died.”

Frederick simulated ignorance of the event.  Accustomed to observe himself honestly, he realized that though the fact was not new to him, Fuellenberg’s statement of it had made him shudder.

“The dead man is dead,” said Stoss, now attacking his roast with appetite.  “We won’t be wrecked on the dead stoker’s corpse.  But last night a derelict was sighted.  Those corpses, the corpses of vessels, are dangerous.  When the sea is rough, they can’t be sighted.”

Frederick asked for more information about derelicts.

“About nine hundred and seventy-five drifting derelicts,” Stoss explained, “have been sighted in five years here in the northern part of the Atlantic.  It is certain that the actual number is twice as great.  One of the most dangerous of such tramps is the iron four-masted schooner, Houresfeld.  On its way from Liverpool to San Francisco, fire broke out in its hold, and the crew abandoned it.  If we were to collide with anything of that sort, there wouldn’t be a soul left to tell the tale.”

“You can’t pass through the gangways,” said Fuellenberg, “the bulkheads are closed down.”

The siren began to roar again.  Frederick still heard defiance and triumph in the cry, and yet something recalling the broken horn of the hero Roland in Roncesvalles.

“There is no danger yet,” said Stoss to calm him.

XXXVII