He fell asleep immediately, but when he awoke, it was only two o'clock. The ship was still moving easily, and he could hear the screw working regularly under the water. Life in times of great physical crises is a fever, which travelling and sleeplessness enhance. Frederick well knew his own nature, and was alarmed when he saw himself robbed of the peace of sleep after so short a time.
But had his sleep actually meant peace? Lying on his back with wide, staring eyes, he saw vast nocturnal spaces of his soul opened up, where in bottomless depths another chaotic life had been born—a multitude of tormenting visions, in which things and persons most familiar had arisen in combination with things and persons entirely strange. He tried to recall his dreams.
He had dreamed he was wandering hand in hand with Achleitner among the dark smoke widows trailing backward over the ocean from the funnels of the Roland, far, far away. He and the Russian Jewess together with great difficulty dragged the dead stoker, Zickelmann, up into the blue ladies' parlour; and by means of a serum, which he himself had discovered, he brought him back to life. He smoothed over a quarrel between the Russian Jewess and Ingigerd Hahlström, who fought and called each other abusive names. He was sitting with Doctor Wilhelm in his cabin, and, as Wagner once had done, was observing a homunculus still undergoing embryonic development in a glass sphere on which light was shining. At the same time Ingigerd's cockatoo was squawking in Arthur Stoss's voice and continually asseverating:
"I am already a man of absolutely independent fortune. I am touring simply to bring my fortune up to a certain amount."
Under the impression that he was recalling these things to his memory, Frederick was really dreaming again. Suddenly he started up, cuffing Hans Füllenberg furiously and saying: "I'll box your ears." Shortly afterward he was in the smoking-room delivering a crushing sermon for the third or fourth time, morally felling to the ground the man who had desecrated his sacred relation to Ingigerd. But the captain came in, and said they had to bury the stoker. There was a dead man on board. When Frederick stepped from the smoking-room, he saw the corpse lying in the coffin. It was not Zickelmann, the stoker, but Angèle, his suffering, neglected wife, in one of her hysterical attacks in which she lay in a trance. And it was not at the entrance to the smoking-room, but in Plassenberg in the Heuscheuer, in front of his comfortable house. Captain von Kessel was standing in the garden clipping a privet hedge. It was at night, but a full moon was shining bright as day over the lonely valley meadows in front of his house. Angèle arose and Frederick went to lead her into the house. She resisted. Now the consciousness of his spiritual separation from her filled him with infinite sadness, a sadness more bitter and profound than any that had ever inspired him in his waking moments.
"I am a mother," said Angèle, "but not by you."
He embraced her, weeping, and wanted to draw her into his house. She resisted gently, but firmly, and declared she was forbidden to enter. He saw her wandering across the meadows in the moonshine, slowly and wearily.
"Angèle!" he cried. He ran after her.
"It is so hard for me," she said, "because life and not death has robbed me of you."
Frederick groaned aloud. A great stone seemed to be lying on his breast. He heard the rushing of waters. He saw the flood come leaping through all the valleys, over the tops of all the hills, wave upon wave, from all sides. The moon was shining. He saw Angèle climb to a little skiff lying moored somewhere; and the tide carried away the skiff with her in it. The waters overwhelmed his house.
Again the wandering began, hand in hand with Achleitner and the smoke widows across the ocean desert. Again began that difficult dragging up-stairs and down-stairs of the naked, dead stoker, with the help of the young admirer of Kropotkin. The dispute between Ingigerd and Deborah, his sermonising of Füllenberg and the man in the smoking-room repeated themselves, each repetition intensifying his torment. The homunculus in the glass sphere in Doctor Wilhelm's cabin appeared again. It developed with light thrown on it. In his anguish, in his impotence against that martyrising chase of visions, Frederick's persecuted soul, gasping for peace, suddenly rose in revolt, and he said aloud:
"Kindle the light of reason, kindle the light of reason, O God in heaven!"
He rose in his berth, and saw that Rosa, the servant-girl, was in reality holding a burning candle over him. She bent down slightly, and said:
"You are dreaming hard. Aren't you feeling well, Doctor von Kammacher?"
The door creaked. The servant-girl Rosa had left. The ship was moving quietly. Or was he mistaken? Was the Roland no longer proceeding so calmly and steadily as before? He listened intently, and heard the screw whirring regularly under the water. Monotonous calls penetrated from the deck. Then came the loud rattling of the cinders pouring overboard. Frederick looked at his watch. It was five o'clock. So three hours had passed since he had first awakened! Again, with a clatter and a thunder, a load of ashes slid into the Atlantic Ocean. Was it not the mates of the dead stoker, Zickelmann, who were throwing it overboard? Frederick heard the crying of children, thereupon the sobbing and whimpering of his hysterical neighbour, and finally Rosa's voice, trying to quiet Siegfried and Ella, who was a talkative little girl. Siegfried was fretfully begging to be taken back to his grandmother in Luckenwalde. Mrs. Liebling was scolding Rosa, telling her she was responsible for the children's behaviour. Frederick heard her say:
"You all trample about on my nerves. I wish the three of you were at the bottom of the sea. For heaven's sake, let me sleep!"