e cabins
and gangways of submerged steamers; inextricably knotted masses of human
beings, passengers or sailors coming toward them with outstretched arms,
upright, as if alive and as if awaiting them. A closer examination of the
clothes of those guardians and administrators of a lost estate at the
bottom of the sea, those strange ship-owners, business men, captains,
pursers, those fortune-seekers, money-seekers, embezzlers, adventurers,
or whatever they might be, showed that they were filled with polyps,
crustaceans, and all sorts of ocean worms, enjoying their stay there
as long as something remained beneath their shredded garments except
gnawed-off bones.

Frederick beheld himself down there, too, one of those decaying phantoms,
months old, wandering about in the ghastly abode of the sunken _Roland_,
in that horrible Vineta, where each man passed his neighbour mutely with
a frightened gesture, each seeming to carry in his breast a congealed cry
of anguish, which he expressed with bowed head and outstretched arms, or
head thrown back and open mouth. Or else he was hideously crawling on his
hands, or wringing his hands, or folding them, or spreading out his
fingers. The engineers in the boiler-room seemed still slowly, slowly
to be controlling the cylinder and driving-wheel; yet differently than
before, since the law of gravity seemed no longer to be in force. One of
the engineers was doing his work in a peculiarly twisted way, like a man
asleep caught between the rim of the wheel and the piston-rod covered
with verdigris. Frederick descended on his ghastly tour down to the
stokers, whom the catastrophe had surprised in the midst of their
occupation. Some were still holding their shovels in their hands, though
unable to lift them. They themselves were floating, while the shovels to
which they clung did not stir from the bottom. All was over. They could
not kindle the fire into a white glow, and so could not keep the mighty
steamer in its course. In the steerage the sight was so horrible to
behold, with men, women and children of all nationalities huddled and
tossed in thick, dark heaps, that even a cat-shark, which had made its
way through the chimney of the stoke-hole and then through the engine,
did not feel sufficiently courageous or hungry to mingle in the
gathering. _Noli turbare circulos meos_, these people, too, seemed to
be saying. All were thinking strenuously, absorbed in the profoundest
meditation--they had p