the stupid, lazy thing
wasn't worth the price of her second-class cabin."

Several times Frederick had heard the sound of quarrelling mingled with
children's crying in the cabin opposite his. Once he had even distinctly
caught the slapping sound of what must have been a box over somebody's
ear.

"Does she hit Rosa?" he asked the barber.

"Yes."

Clearly, then, it was his neighbour of the opposite cabin in whose
service the girl was.

Frederick enjoyed listening to the lively barber retail gossip, while
he lay stretched out in his patented chair. It diverted his mind from
troublesome thoughts. The barber, who had been sailing the seas for many
years, was by no means of the ordinary type of his class. He delivered a
short discourse on modern shipbuilding, the moral of which was, not to
construct light steamers for speed.

"Altogether," he observed, "it's a pity to lay so much stress on
record-making. How is a great big body with walls like a wafer to resist
heavy seas for any length of time? And see what tremendous engines it
has to carry and what an enormous amount of coal it consumes. But the
_Roland's_ a good boat. It was built in Glasgow in the yards of John
Elder and Company. It has been running since June, 1881. The engines are
compound steam-engines with three cylinders and 5800 horse power. They
require one hundred and fifteen tons of coal every day. The boat makes
sixteen knots an hour, and has a tonnage of 4510. There are one hundred
and sixty-eight men in the crew."

The barber had all these details at his fingers' ends. In a tone of
annoyance, as if the thing caused him personally a lot of trouble, he
told that the _Roland_ on each trip to or from New York dragged one
thousand and three hundred tons of anthracite coal in its coal-bunkers.
A slow trip, he insisted, was safe and comfortable, while a quick trip
was dangerous and expensive.

The little saloon with its electric lighting would have been a very
comfortable place to be in, had it only stood at rest. But unfortunately
its walls were quivering to the pulse of the engines and the floor was
rising and sagging to the swell and fall of the waves, which every now
and then leapt against the port-hole with tiger-like fury. The flasks in
the closets rattled.

"A heavier ship," said the barber, "built to go more slowly, wouldn't be
pitching like this."

Next he spoke of a little person, who dyed her hair, a dancer. She had
spent more than an hour