“You can’t blame these people for acting like cowards in this situation,” said Frederick.  “It would be strange if they didn’t.  Who will insist that he can stand upright when the ground beneath his feet is giving away?  If a man were to say so, either he would be lying, or his lack of feeling would be so great as to degrade him below an animal.”

“Yes,” said the steward, “but what would we do if we were so cowardly?”

Frederick now began to deliver one of those fiery dissertations that had won him a number of youthful auditors when he was a Privatdozent.

“With you it is different,” he said.  “You are upheld, and at the same time rewarded, by the feeling that you are doing your duty.  While we passengers are living in terror, the cooks have been boiling soup, cleaning fish, preparing vegetables, roasting and carving, larding venison and so on.”  The steward laughed!  “But I assure you, at times it is easier to roast a roast than to eat it.”  And Frederick continued in a solemn, but for that very reason, roguish manner to philosophise on courage and cowardice.

XLIII

Dinner began, and, though the weather had by no means improved, a comparatively large number of passengers had gathered in the dining-room.  Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward, with his white hair curled and arranged by the barber, if not in a braid at the back of his head, yet like a wig of the rococo period, stood, as usual, in majestic pose, before the false mantelpiece between the two entrance doors.  It was the place from which he could best supervise the waiters and keep his eye on the whole dining-room.

The band was playing Le Pere la Victoire by Ganne.  This was followed by Gillet’s Loin du Bal.  At Suppe’s overture from Banditenstreiche, the eternal skat players came tramping into the saloon, having delayed, as usual, to finish their game.  At all the tables much wine was being drunk, because it strengthened one’s courage and dulled one’s nerves.  The passengers toasted the Roland.  It amused them.  They were all conscious of the pleasant rhythm of the great engine, to which no music in the world was comparable.  Over Vollstedt’s waltz, Lustige Brueder, the company with a sense of relief was still discussing the danger they had safely escaped.

“We hoisted distress signals.”

“Rockets were shot off.”

“They were already getting the life-belts and life-boats ready.”

“Why, they were even dripping oil on the water.”

The remarks flew about with the less restraint as neither the captain nor any of his officers were at table.

“The captain,” they said, “has never left the bridge since morning.”