Notwithstanding all these impressions, Frederick fell asleep again. He dreamed that he and Rosa, the maid, and little Siegfried Liebling were in a life-boat, rocking on a calm, shimmering green sea. Strangely enough, there was a mass of gold ingots in the bottom of the boat, probably the gold ingots that the Roland was supposed to be carrying to the mint in Washington. Frederick was at the helm, and after cruising about a while, they reached a bright, cheery port. It may have been a port in the Azores, or the Madeira Islands, or the Canary Islands. At a short distance from the quay, Rosa jumped overboard and reached land holding Siegfried clear of the water. People received them, and they disappeared in one of the snowy white buildings at the harbour front. When Frederick landed, to his joy he was greeted on the marble steps of the quay by his old friend, Peter Schmidt, the physician he intended to visit in America. In response to curious questions, he always said that this was his main purpose in crossing the ocean. His delight at seeing him in a dream, in the setting of the white tropical town, after a separation of eight or nine years, was a surprise to himself. How was it possible that he had only occasionally and superficially remembered so magnificent a man, so dear a youthful companion?
Peter Schmidt was a Friesian. He and Frederick had sat together on the same school bench; later, they had spent two years together in the gymnasium at St. Magdalene at Breslau and several semesters in the universities of Greifswald, Breslau, and Zürich. Owing to a combination of common sense, many-sided knowledge, and humanitarian enthusiasm, Peter Schmidt had exerted great influence on his friends. There was also an adventurous streak in his nature, inherited from his father, a Friesian colonist, who lay buried in a churchyard in Meriden, Connecticut.
"It is good that you have come," said Peter Schmidt. Frederick felt as if he had been long expecting him. "Your wife, Angèle, just arrived in a skiff."
His friend silently led him to an inn near the harbour. A sense of security such as he had never before felt came over him. While he took a little luncheon in the dining-room, where the host, a German, stood opposite, twirling his thumbs, Peter Schmidt explained:
"The town is not large, but it will give you an idea of the country. You will find people here that are contented and have made their last landing."
It was taken as a matter of course that there, in that strange, silent city in the dazzling sunlight, the fewest possible words were to be spoken. Some new, mute inner sense appeared to make meanings clear. Nevertheless, Frederick said:
"I've always taken you for the mentor in unknown depths of our predestination." By which he meant to express his awe at his friend's mysterious being.
"Yes," said Peter Schmidt, "but this is only a small beginning, though enough to indicate what is hidden under the surface here."
Peter Schmidt, born in Tondern, now led Frederick out to the harbour. It was a very small harbour. There were a number of ancient vessels lying half-sunk in the water.
"Fourteen-ninety-two," said Peter Schmidt. That was the year the four hundredth anniversary of which was being much discussed by the Americans on board the Roland. The Friesian pointed to both the half-submerged caravels and explained that one of them was the Santa Maria, Christopher Columbus's flag-ship. "I came over with Christopher Columbus," he said.
All this was unqualifiedly enlightening to Frederick. Nor was there anything enigmatic in Peter Schmidt's explanation that the wood of those slowly decaying caravels was called legno santo and was used for fuel, because it contained the spirit of knowledge. Farther out to sea lay a third vessel, with a great, black breach forward on the port side.
"It sank," said the Friesian. "It brought in a great lot of people."
Frederick looked at the vessel. He was dissatisfied. He would have liked to ask questions about the unfamiliar, yet curiously familiar ship out there at sea; but the Friesian left the harbour and turned into a narrow, crooked street with a steep flight of stairs.
Here an old uncle of Frederick, who had been dead more than fifteen years, came toward him comfortably puffing at a pipe. He had just arisen, it seemed, from a bench by the open entrance to his house.
"How do you do?" he said. "We are all here, my boy." Frederick knew whom the old man meant when he said, "We are all here." "We fare very well," the old man, who in his lifetime had not been exactly favoured by fortune, continued, grinning. "I didn't get along so well when I was up with you in the dismal air. In the first place, my boy, we have the legno santo." With his pipe he pointed to the dark interior of his house, where blue tongues of flame were leaping on the hearth. "And besides, we have the Toilers of the Light. But I am detaining you. We have time, but you must hurry." Frederick said good-bye. "Fiddlesticks!" exclaimed his uncle. "Do you people down there still keep up that tiresome business of 'how-do-you-do' and 'good-bye'?"
Climbing higher up the street, Peter Schmidt led Frederick through a number of houses and inside courtyards. In one of the courtyards with many corners, reminding Frederick of certain ancient sections of Hamburg and Nuremberg, was a ship-chandlery bearing the sign, "The Seagoing Ship."
"Everything here looks quite ordinary," said Peter Schmidt, "but here we have all the ancient models." He pointed to the small model of an ancient vessel standing in the little window of the chandlery, among packages of chewing tobacco and leather whips.
Ships, ships, nothing but ships! The sight of this last vessel seemed to produce the beginning of a slight gnawing resistance in Frederick's brain. He knew he was looking upon an all-embracing symbol, which he had never before seen. With a new sense organ, with centralised clarity of thought, he realised that here, in this little model, was comprehended all the wandering and adventuring of the human soul.
"Oh," said the chandler, opening the glass door of the little shop, at which all sorts of wares hanging on the door swung to and fro with a clatter, "Oh, you here, Frederick? I thought you were still at sea."
Frederick recognised the chandler as George Rasmussen, whose farewell letter he had received in Southampton. He was dressed in a shabby cap and dressing-gown belonging to a confectioner long dead, whom he had known when a boy. Mysterious as it all was, there was yet something natural in this meeting with his friend. The little shop was alive with goldfinches. "They are the goldfinches," Rasmussen explained, "that settled in the Heuscheuer Mountains last winter, you know, and were fatal to me."
"Yes, I remember," said Frederick. "We would approach a bare branch or tree, and suddenly it would seem to shake itself and scatter thousands of gold leaves. We interpreted it as auguring mountains of money."
"Well," said the chandler, "it was precisely thirteen minutes past one on the twenty-fourth of January when I drew my last breath. I had just received your telegram from Paris absolving me from my debt. Back there in the shop, among other things, is my predecessor's fur coat, which—I am by no means complaining—infected me. I wrote you that if I could, I would make myself noticeable from the Beyond. Well, here I am. But even here everything isn't perfectly clear and plain, though I am feeling better, and we all rest in a pleasant sense of basic security. I'm glad you and Peter Schmidt have met. He counts for a lot here in this country. You will meet each other above again, in New York, at the celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of 1492. Good Lord! Of what significance after all, is that little discovery of America?" Rasmussen in his strange disguise removed the miniature vessel from the show window. It, too, was called the Santa Maria. "Now, please be careful," he said. Frederick noticed that the old confectioner took one vessel after another of the same sort, but diminishing in size, from the first one. "Patience," he said, while still pulling more and more vessels from the entrails of the Santa Maria. The procedure caused Frederick no slight astonishment. "Patience. The smaller are always the better ones. If I had time, we should reach the smallest, the final, the most glorious work of Providence. Each one of these ships carries us not only beyond the boundaries of our planet, but even beyond the limited barriers of our senses. Each of them is adapted to carry us across the border. If you are interested," he continued, "I have other wares in my shop. Here are the captain's hedge-scissors, here is a plummet with which one can sound the lowest depths of the firmament and the Milky Way. Here are the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. But you have no time, and I won't detain you."
The chandler closed the glass door on them; but they saw him with his nose flattened against the pane, mysteriously, as if he still had something to sell, holding his finger to his mouth, shaped like a carp's. His lips seemed to be framing certain words. Frederick understood legno santo, Toilers of the Light, and even what his uncle had said about "up with you in the dismal air." But Peter Schmidt thrust his fist through the glass door, pulled Rasmussen's embroidered cap off his head, took from it a little key, and beckoned Frederick to come away with him. They left the houses behind and stepped out into the open rolling country.
"The thing is," said Peter, "it will mean a lot of trouble."
And they ran and climbed for hours. Evening fell. They lit a fire, and slept in a tree rocking in the wind. Morning came. They took to wandering again, until the sun lay low on the horizon. Finally, Peter opened a small gate in a low wall. On the other side of the wall was a garden. A gardener was tying vines.
"How do you do, Doctor?" he said. "The sun is setting, but we know why we die."
On looking at him more closely, Frederick recognised the dead stoker in the man, whose face was illuminated by the rosy flush of the setting sun and wore a friendly smile, as he stood there in what was a strange garden, or vineyard, or fairy-land.
"I'd rather be doing this than shovelling coal," said the stoker, pointing to the cords hanging in his hands, with which he had been tying up the vines.
The three of them together now walked a rather long distance to a wild section of the garden, where it had turned completely dark. The wind began to rush, and the shrubs, trees and bushes of the garden swished like breakers on the shore. The stoker beckoned to them, and they squatted on the ground in a circle. It seemed as if the stoker with his bare hand had taken a bit of burning wood from his pocket. He held it close to the ground, to illuminate a round opening, something like the burrow of a marmot or a rabbit.
"Legno santo," said Peter Schmidt, pointing to the glowing piece of charcoal. "Now, Frederick, you will get to see those ant-like little elves that are called noctiluci or night-lights. They pompously call themselves Toilers of the Light. But whatever their name, it must be admitted that they are the ones that take the light hidden in the entrails of the earth, store it up, and sow it in fields, the soil of which has been especially prepared; and when it has grown to its full size and has borne fruit a hundredfold in the shape of gold sheaves or nuggets, they harvest it and save it for the darkest of dark times."
And, actually, looking through a crevice, Frederick saw something like another world, with a subterranean sun shining on it. A multitude of little elves, the Toilers of the Light, were mowing with scythes, cutting stalks, binding sheaves, loading carts, and storing in barns. Many cut the light out of the ground, like nuggets of gold. Undoubtedly it was the gold meant for the mint in Washington that was haunting Frederick's dreams.
"These Toilers of the Light," said the Friesian, Peter Schmidt, "are the most stimulating to my ideas."
At this point Frederick awoke, while the voice of the stoker close beside him was saying:
"Many will soon be following me."