“I think so, too,” said Ella.  “I think mamma’s to blame.”

“Rosa said mamma doesn’t do anything but read novels.”

“Rosa says,” Ella chimed in, “that if mamma were not always lying in bed, she would feel much better.”

And “Rosa says,” “Rosa says,” went on for a long while.  The former non-commissioned officer and lackey of the vaudeville star, Bulke, came towing Rosa across the deck in the same way as he did his master.  Both looked red and contented.  Frederick asked what the prospects were for the Roland.

“Oh, everything’s all right,” Bulke laughed, “if only something else doesn’t turn up.”

“Bulke,” said Rosa, “take Siegfried on your back.”

Bulke proceeded to do so, while Rosa lifted Ella to her crimson arm.

Now the children begged to remain where they were, although before they had been annoying Ingigerd by constantly crying for Rosa.

“Let them stay,” said Ingigerd.

Rosa thanked her.  “They are really best off here,” she said.  “All they take for supper is some milk and a roll.  I will bring it right away.”

“What is that on your arm?” asked Frederick.  It looked as if a beast had been clawing at her.

“Oh, nothing,” she said.  “My mistress doesn’t know what she is doing.  She’s out of her senses from seasickness and fright.”

XL

For five hours the cyclone raged unmercifully.  At ever shorter intervals, gust on gust in increasing fury hurled itself against the vessel.

With great difficulty Frederick made his way down to the barber, who, though the ship’s movement was a fearful combination of rolling and pitching, actually performed the miracle of shaving him.

“One has to keep going,” said the barber.  “If you don’t work, you’re lost.”

He spoke and suddenly stopped, removed the razor from Frederick’s throat and turned pale, if his dirty grey colour could turn a shade lighter.  Frederick’s face, too, still partly covered with lather, showed signs of surprise and alarm.  In the engine-room the signal bell had rung loud, as a sign that the captain was sending an order down from the bridge through the speaking-tube.  Thereupon the revolution of the engines had slowed down and within a few moments had ceased entirely.  This event, simple enough in itself, had in this weather, about fifteen hundred miles from land, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the effect of a catastrophe, not only on Frederick and the barber, but on every passenger still capable of reasoning, and even on the whole crew.  One instantly observed the excitement that seized upon all at the cessation of the engines, which seemed to turn the vessel into a torpid, powerless thing.  Voices cried, women shrieked, steps hurried up and down the gangways.  A man tore the door open and indignantly cried, as if imputing to the poor barber the responsibility of a captain: