autened to the snapping point, the
situation is by no means lacking in fascination.

Thus, Frederick von Kammacher felt a flush of exaltation. Life was
straining him to her breast more closely, wildly, passionately than she
had for a long time.

"Either life has again become the one tremendous adventure, or life is
nothing," a voice within him said.

Again the tender lay still. Suddenly it groaned, churned the water, sent
out huge puffs of hissing steam, whistled as if in great fear, once,
twice--Frederick counted seven times--and started off at its utmost
speed, as if to escape Satan's clutches. And now, all at once, it turned,
swept into a region of light, and faced a mighty vision.

The _Roland_ had reached the Needles and was lying tide rode. In the
protection of its vast broadside the little tender seemed to be in a
brilliantly lighted harbour. The impression that the surprising presence
of the ocean greyhound made upon Frederick was in a fortissimo scale.
He had always belonged to that class of men--a class which is not
small--whose senses are open to life's varied abundance. Only on the
rarest occasions he found a thing commonplace or ordinary, and was never
blase in meeting a novelty. But, after all, there are very few persons
who would be dull to the impressions of an embarkation by night, outside
a harbour in the open waters.

Never before had Frederick been inspired with equal respect for the might
of human ingenuity, for the genuine spirit of his times, as at the sight
of that gigantic black wall rising from the black waters, that tremendous
facade, with its endless rows of round port-holes streaming out light
upon a foaming field of waves protected from the wind. In comparison with
this product, this creation, this triumph of the divine intellect in
man, what were undertakings like the Tower of Babel, allowing that they
were not isolated instances and had actually been completed.

Sailors were busy letting the gangway-ladder down the flank of the
_Roland_. Frederick could see that up on deck, at the point where the
ladder was being suspended, a rather numerous group of uniformed men
had gathered, probably to receive the new passengers. His state of
exaltation continued, even while everybody in the tender's saloon,
including himself, suddenly seized with haste, grasped his or her hand
luggage and stood in readiness. In the presence of that improbability,
that Titan of venturesomeness, that floating fai