Frederick reflected upon the timid skipper, whose characteristics seemed to harmonise so poorly with the demands, active and passive, of his rigorous calling. He wondered what it is that permanently holds a man like that to his marriage ties and all the duties of his life. Then he arose to wander about the Roland vaguely. The enforced idleness of a sea trip, especially in bad weather, induces passengers, when they have made the complete round of the vessel, to begin over again and go through the same circle. Thus, Frederick, after descending the companionway, ascending it, and descending again, found himself on the leather-seated bench in the smoking-room avoided by most of the smokers, in which the armless man had taken his meal the day before. Hans Fuellenberg entered, asked whether he was not permitted to smoke a cigarette in the room, and began to grumble about the weather. "Who knows how this thing is going to end?" he complained dismally. "Perhaps, instead of reaching New York, we'll have to be towed into port somewhere in Newfoundland." Frederick was indifferent to the prospect. He noticed that young Fuellenberg cared for nothing except to produce an impression; and young Fuellenberg noticed that Frederick von Kammacher was not susceptible to the impression he tried to produce. He cast about for another theme of conversation. "Do you know there are two priests on board? You should have been at Cuxhaven when they got on. The sailors were beside themselves. I hunted up the fellows, the sailors I mean, in the forecastle. How they did curse! It was fearful. The stoker told all the men of the engine-room. They said you could not get genuine seamen to think any differently--with priests on board something is bound to go wrong." "How is your lady?" asked Frederick. "My lady is retching her soul away, if she has such a thing as a soul. Two hours ago I helped her to bed. That Englishwoman is already a full-blooded American. Shameless, I tell you! Something tremendous. I rubbed her forehead with brandy. She partook of a goodly quantity, and then I unbuttoned her waist. She seems to take me for a masseur chartered extra by her munificent husband. The thing became boresome. And besides, in that pitching boudoir, my own soul began to rise up through my stomach, and the poetry went to the devil. She showed me the photograph of her devoted husband in New York. I think she has another in London." He was interrupted by the first call for dinner, which the trumpeter announced at the bottom of the companionway. The trumpet blast was lost without resonance in the heavy air and the bluster of the waves. "What's more," he concluded, "she sent for Doctor Wilhelm." The dining-room presented a very dreary appearance. Neither the captain nor any of the officers of the Roland were present, the demands upon them in such bad weather being too severe to permit them to leave their posts. The tables had been provided with a wooden apparatus dividing them into small compartments, which prevented the plates, glasses and bottles from slipping any distance. Nevertheless, there was much breaking of crockery, and it required all the skill of the stewards to serve the dishes, especially the soup. From the kitchen and the china room every now and then came the sound of a tremendous crash. There were scarcely twelve people at table, among them Hahlstroem and Doctor Wilhelm. After a time the skat players, as usual, came bursting in, talking noisily and red of face. Their winnings were immediately transmuted into Pommery. Notwithstanding the fearful weather, the band was playing. There seemed to be something frivolous, almost challenging, in the playing of music when, at short intervals, the Roland would come to a quivering standstill, as if it had run upon a reef. Once the illusion was so strong that a panic arose in the steerage. Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward, brought this explanation of the horrified shrieks that had penetrated the dining-room above the noise of the raging waters, the rattling of the plates and the blare of the band. At dessert Hahlstroem left his place at the other end of the room and, balancing himself with difficulty, came over to Frederick and Doctor Wilhelm, and asked permission to seat himself beside them. He seemed to have been drinking whisky, as he had dropped his natural shell of reticence. He spoke of hydrotherapy and gymnastic exercises, and called himself a quack. It was the gymnastics, he said, that had given his daughter the idea of taking up dancing. As if to challenge the others, he elaborated bold philosophic theories, dealing out one wild statement after the other, each of which would have been a trump sufficient to end the game for ten German Philistines. To believe his own word, he was a terroristic Anarchist, a white-slave trafficker, an adventurer always. At any rate, he espoused the cause of all who were Anarchists, procurers, or adventurers. He argued in all superiority, upon egotistic grounds, calling these the intellectuals, and all others, creatures without brains; in which his philosophy showed some similarity to Frederick von Kammacher's new philosophy, now that Frederick had entered upon a new phase of his life. "America," said Hahlstroem, "is known to have been settled by rogues. Were you to spread a tent over America, you would have the most beautiful, the most comfortable penitentiary in the world. The natural form that survives and triumphs in America is the great rascal, the great Renaissance idiot. In fact, it is the one form that will triumph throughout the world. You'll see some day how the great American rascal will get the whole of Europe, including England, into his clutches. Europe is also dabbling a little in Renaissance ideals and Renaissance beasts. It is busily working away, so to speak, on its own rascalization. But America is in advance by ten horse lengths. Europe's Cesare Borgias sit in the cafes with Glockenroecken a la Biedermaier and give voice to their criminal genius in fairly innocent verses. They all look sickly, as if a barber had cupped all the blood out of their veins. If Europe wants to save herself, she has only one hope--to make a law by which it will be a crime to surrender an adventurer, an embezzler, a fraudulent bankrupt, the keeper of a disorderly house, a thief, or a murderer to America. On German, English and French vessels in American ports, such people have already been placed under the special protection of Europe. Then you will see how soon Europe will outdistance Uncle Sam." The physicians burst out laughing. "When did geniuses ever do anything morally? Even the creator of heaven and earth did not know how to. He produced an immoral world. Every high form of human intellectual activity has thrown ethics overboard. What would a historian be who, instead of making researches, would moralise? What would a physician be who would stop to moralise? Or a great statesman, who would toe the chalk-line of your middle-class ten commandments? As for an artist, when he moralises, he is a fool and a knave. And please tell me, what sort of a business would the church do if all of us were moral? There would be no church." There was a cold gleam of audaciousness in the Swede's eyes. His utterances produced a strange impression. Even if he had pronounced fewer wild paradoxes, Frederick von Kammacher would have succumbed to his spell. He eagerly sought for resemblances between father and daughter, or, more accurately, he observed them without seeking. They were very evident to one who, alas, to his own torture, was carrying the daughter's picture alive in his soul. As long as the Swede spoke, he could not help wavering between repugnance and admiration, and he kept asking himself whether this man was really the sort of person that Arthur Stoss had described him to be, no gentleman, a weakling, an idle ragamuffin.