Dinner began, and, though the weather had by no means improved, a comparatively large number of passengers had gathered in the dining-room. Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward, with his white hair curled and arranged by the barber, if not in a braid at the back of his head, yet like a wig of the rococo period, stood, as usual, in majestic pose, before the false mantelpiece between the two entrance doors. It was the place from which he could best supervise the waiters and keep his eye on the whole dining-room.
The band was playing Le Père la Victoire by Ganne. This was followed by Gillet's Loin du Bal. At Suppé's overture from Banditenstreiche, the eternal skat players came tramping into the saloon, having delayed, as usual, to finish their game. At all the tables much wine was being drunk, because it strengthened one's courage and dulled one's nerves. The passengers toasted the Roland. It amused them. They were all conscious of the pleasant rhythm of the great engine, to which no music in the world was comparable. Over Vollstedt's waltz, Lustige Brüder, the company with a sense of relief was still discussing the danger they had safely escaped.
"We hoisted distress signals."
"Rockets were shot off."
"They were already getting the life-belts and life-boats ready."
"Why, they were even dripping oil on the water."
The remarks flew about with the less restraint as neither the captain nor any of his officers were at table.
"The captain," they said, "has never left the bridge since morning."
Suddenly the port-holes were illuminated from outside. Everybody, with an "Oh!" of astonishment, let his knife and fork fall and jumped up from his seat. "A ship!" "A steamer!" all exclaimed, and crowded on deck. There, in overawing majesty, in the gleam of its thousand lights, one of the mightiest ocean liners of the time was rolling and pounding at a distance of not more than fifty yards. "The Prince Bismarck, the Prince Bismarck!" the people cried, having heard the name from the officers and crew, who had recognised the vessel. "Hurrah!" went up the full-throated cry. "Hurrah!" Frederick shouted, and so did Wilhelm and so did Professor Toussaint. Everybody who could shouted "Hurrah!"—Ingigerd and the woman physician and the woman artist. They all waved their napkins or handkerchiefs. The same shout of joy went up from the steerage, and by way of greeting the two vessels let their steam whistles thunder. They could see the passengers on the various decks of the Prince Bismarck waving to them, and, in spite of the noise of the tempest, could hear their faint hurrah.
The Prince Bismarck, a twin-screw steamer, one of the first models of its kind, had just made its record-breaking trip, in which it had crossed the Atlantic Ocean in six days, eleven hours, and twenty-four minutes. About two thousand people were now making the trip from New York to Europe. Two thousand people! That means twice as many as can fill a Berlin theatre from the orchestra to the top gallery.
The Roland and the Bismarck exchanged lively flag signals. Yet the whole grandiose vision, from the moment of its appearance to its disappearance, lasted only three minutes. In that time the seething ocean was flooded with light. It was not until nothing remained of the Bismarck but a dancing mist of light that its band came on deck and played. On the Roland they caught two or three trembling, fading measures of the national hymn, Heil dir im Siegerkranz. Within a few moments the Roland was again alone on the ocean, in the night, the tempest, and the snowstorm.
With twice as much fire, the band now played a quadrille by Karl, Festklänge, and a galop by Kiesler, Jahrmarktskandal; and with twice as much appetite and twice as much liveliness the passengers seated themselves at dinner again. "Fairylike!" they cried. "Glorious!" "Tremendous!" "Colossal!"—this last a favourite expression of the Germans.
Even Frederick had a sense of pride and tranquillisation. He felt a vital breath of that atmosphere which is no less necessary to the mind of the modern man than air is to his lungs.
"No matter how much we resist the thought," he said to Wilhelm, "and no matter how much I railed yesterday evening against modern culture, a sight like that must impress a man. It must go to the very marrow of his bones. It is simply absurd that such a marvellous product of secret natural forces, joined together by man's brains and hands, such a creation over creation, such a miracle has become even possible." They touched glasses. The sound of clinking glasses could be heard all over the room. "And what courage, what boldness has been built into that great living organism, what a degree of fearlessness in opposing those natural forces which man has been standing in awe of for thousands of years! What an audacious world of genius, from its keel to the top of its mast, from its bowsprit to its screw!"
"And all this," responded Wilhelm, "has been attained in scarcely a hundred years. So it signifies only the beginning of a development. Object as much as you will, science, or rather technical progress, is eternal revolution and the only genuine reform of human conditions. Nothing can hinder this development that has begun. It is constant, eternal progress, yes, progress itself."
"It is the human intellect," said Frederick, "which throughout the centuries has been lying passive and has suddenly turned active. Undoubtedly man's brains and, at the same time, social industry have entered a new phase."
"Yes," said Wilhelm, "in a certain way the human intellect was already active in ancient times, but it fought too long with the man in the mirror."
"Then, let us hope," said Frederick in confirmation, "that the last hour of the men that fight images, the swindlers, the South Sea Island medicine-men and magicians, is not far off; that all filibusters and cynical freebooters, who for thousands of years have been living by the capture of souls, will strike sail before the fast, safe ocean-going steamer of civilisation, whose captain is intellect and whose sole steward is humanity."
After dinner, Frederick and Wilhelm climbed up to the smoking-room on deck.
"It is difficult to comprehend," said Frederick, when they reached the smoky little saloon, "how a vessel can keep its course in such a stormy, pitch-black night."
At the skat table, the players were sitting, smoking, drinking whisky and coffee, and tossing the cards on the table. Everything else seemed to be a matter of indifference to them. Frederick ordered wine and continued to goad his mind into activity. His head ached. He could scarcely hold it upright on his aching neck. His eyelids ached with weariness; but when they drooped, his eyes seemed to radiate a painful light shining from within. Every nerve, every muscle, every cell in him was alert. He could not hope for sleep. How weeks in his life, months, years had passed as in the twinkling of an eye! And this evening only three and a half days had elapsed since he boarded the Roland at Southampton, a period with the content of years, in which seconds were eternities. Its beginning lay in the remote distance, at the conclusion of a life lived long before, on an earth from which he had parted long before.
"You're tired, Doctor von Kammacher," said Wilhelm. "So I won't invite you to the stoker's funeral on the after-deck."
"Oh, I'll come," said Frederick. He was obsessed by a stinging rage not to spare himself anything, but to taste to the dregs even the bitterest impressions of this detached, jogged and jolted fragment of a human world.