eady berth! The
man possessing these things seldom knows how rich he is," said Frederick,
in a voice raised to a shout to make himself heard above the noise of the
sea without and the music within. The men laughed, and the ocean, to add
to their amusement, raised them up in the fog, the tempest, and the snow
to the top of a wave ninety feet high. Everybody was instantly silenced.
Even the orchestra played a frightened pause not indicated in the score.

On ascending the companionway after lunch, Frederick saw Arthur Stoss in
the unfrequented smoking-room eating his meal in perfect equanimity and
cheerfulness undisturbed by the weather. Frederick went in for a chat
with the original, witty monstrosity. He was cutting his fish with a
knife and fork held between the great toe and the second toe.

"Our old omnibus is jolting a bit," he said. "If our boilers are good,
there is nothing to fear. But there's this much about it. If it is not
a cyclone yet, it may still turn into one. I don't care. It looks more
discouraging than it really is. What a man will do! To show the people
in Cape Town, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, San Francisco and Mexico what a
man with a firm, energetic will can accomplish, even if nature has not
favoured him, he will plow through all the cyclones, hurricanes and
typhoons of all the waters of the globe. Your business man sitting in the
Winter Garden in Berlin, or the Alhambra in London, never dreams of all
the things the performer giving his number must go through before he can
merely stand where he is standing. He can't ever take it easy and let
himself get rusty."

Frederick was feeling miserable. Although his dreams were still haunting
his brain, and Ingigerd, or his sick wife, or the Russian Jewess was
still present in his soul, he nevertheless felt that all sensations were
becoming more and more submerged in the one sensation, that on all sides
there was distinct menace of a brutal danger.

Hans Fuellenberg entered. His face was lifeless.

"There is a corpse on board," he said, in a tone implying a causal
relation between the dead stoker and the raging storm. It was very
evident that the spice had been taken out of Hans Fuellenberg's life.

"I heard the same thing," Stoss said. "My man, Bulke, told me a stoker
died."

Frederick simulated ignorance of the event. Accustomed to observe himself
honestly, he realized that though the fact was not new to him,
Fuellenberg's statement of it had made him