was so horrible to behold, with men, women and children of all nationalities huddled and tossed in thick, dark heaps, that even a cat-shark, which had made its way through the chimney of the stoke-hole and then through the engine, did not feel sufficiently courageous or hungry to mingle in the gathering. Noli turbare circulos meos, these people, too, seemed to be saying.  All were thinking strenuously, absorbed in the profoundest meditation—­they had plenty of time for profound meditation—­upon the riddle of life.

In fact, they seemed to be placed there merely for the purpose of reflecting.  Those men and women wringing their hands or spreading their fingers, or walking on their hands, or even standing on the tip of a single finger, while grazing the ceiling with their feet, were all thinking.  Professor Toussaint alone, who came floating toward Frederick in the gangway, seemed to be acting differently.  With his right hand raised, he seemed to be saying:  “An artist may not rust.  He must air himself.  He must seek new conditions of life.  If he doesn’t receive the honour he should in Italy, he should simply go to France, like Leonardo da Vinci, or even emigrate to the land of liberty.”

“I want to live, live, nothing else,” thought Frederick.  “In the future, like Cato the Elder, I would rather walk a year on foot along a way that I could cover in three days on a steamer.”

To avoid the hideous companionship of the blue, swollen thinkers, he left the gloomy, funereal smoking-room, and, with aching head and leaden limbs, dragged himself on deck, where the wild scurrying of the storm and the chaos of snow, rain and salty clouds of foam tore the weight away from his soul.

XXXVIII

In the space at the head of the companionway Frederick came upon the same company as the day before, sitting close together in steamer chairs—­Toussaint, the timid skipper of the sailing vessel, the woman artist, the woman physician, the tall electrical engineer, and a man who had not been there the day before, an American colonel.  He was a handsome specimen of the highest type of his widely spread species.  He was engaged in a conversation on the number of miles covered by all the railroads in the United States, and his statements concerning their extent set fire to the European chauvinism of the electrical engineer.  They forgot the weather in their debate.  Each party to the dispute named an incredible number of miles and vaunted the advantages of the railroads in his native country.

“We are running at only half speed,” said Toussaint to Frederick.  “Isn’t it strange how suddenly the weather changed?”

“Very,” answered Frederick.

“Of course,” Toussaint continued with a pale grimace intended for a smile, “I don’t understand anything about cyclones, but the seamen say this storm is cyclonic.”