p from the four quarters of the globe.

In the midst of these meditations, his chair slipped, and Frederick, in
company with the electrical engineer, the dozing manufacturer, a lady
physician, and a lady artist, was hurled against the banister, while the
opposite row of passengers, including the _Geheimrat_ and the professor,
was hurled on top of them. It was a ridiculous incident, but Frederick
observed that no one seemed to find it so.

They tried to arrange themselves in order again. One of the
ever-industrious stewards appeared, and, as if to comfort them for their
overthrow, passed about Malaga grapes from the ship's inexhaustible
store.

"When shall we reach New York?" somebody asked. The eyes of all the
others instantly turned upon the questioner in amazement and alarm. The
steward, usually so polite merely smiled an embarrassed smile and gave no
reply. In his opinion an answer, one way or the other, would have been to
challenge fate. The passengers felt much the same. Indeed, the idea that
their feet would actually ever tread solid land again seemed in their
present condition almost like an extravagant fairy tale.

The short, stout man, to whom the electrical engineer was chiefly
directing his discourse, was conducting himself peculiarly. At short
intervals he would look out anxiously into the uproar, turning his small,
watchful eyes searchingly up to the tops of the masts, which never ceased
to describe great arcs in the air (starboard to port, port to
starboard!), and out into the monotonous rolling of the waves, swelling
into ever higher and larger masses. His face was full of concern.
Frederick was on the point of inwardly ridiculing the pitiful
landlubber's cowardice, when he heard him say that scarcely three weeks
before he had brought his schooner safely to New York from a three years'
trip around the world, and intended to start out from New York on the
same trip to last the same length of time. The little gentleman was the
experienced captain of a sailing vessel. In the course of his fifty
years, he had spent more than thirty on all the waters of the globe.

XXII

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.

Th