ered with lather, showed signs of
surprise and alarm. In the engine-room the signal bell had rung loud, as
a sign that the captain was sending an order down from the bridge through
the speaking-tube. Thereupon the revolution of the engines had slowed
down and within a few moments had ceased entirely. This event, simple
enough in itself, had in this weather, about fifteen hundred miles from
land, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the effect of a catastrophe,
not only on Frederick and the barber, but on every passenger still
capable of reasoning, and even on the whole crew. One instantly observed
the excitement that seized upon all at the cessation of the engines,
which seemed to turn the vessel into a torpid, powerless thing. Voices
cried, women shrieked, steps hurried up and down the gangways. A man tore
the door open and indignantly cried, as if imputing to the poor barber
the responsibility of a captain:

"Why are we standing still?"

Frederick wiped the lather from his face and, along with a multitude of
questioning, groping, staggering persons, thrown now against one wall of
the gangway, now against the other, hastened to make his way on deck.

"We are drifting," everybody said.

"The screw is broken."

"Cyclone!"

"Oh," said a young girl, who had dragged herself up in a dressing-gown,
to Frederick, "I don't care about myself, not a bit, but my poor mother,
my poor mother in Stuttgart."

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" twenty voices at the same time
demanded of a steward, who was attending to his duties. He ran away,
shrugging his shoulders.

Since the passengers, huddled like sheep, blocked the way to the deck at
the head of the companionway, Frederick tried to get out by another way,
leading a long distance through the after part of the vessel and then
through a narrow corridor forward again. He walked rapidly and seemed
outwardly composed, though in a state of unusual tensity, even fear.

In the second cabin Frederick's way was barred by a good-looking young
man standing in front of his cabin barefoot, in his shirt sleeves and
trousers. He was attempting to button his collar; but in his excitement
was not succeeding.

"What's the matter?" he shouted to Frederick. "Is everybody in this
cursed hole crazy? The first thing you know a stoker dies, and now there
is a leak, or the screw is broken. What's the matter with the captain? I
am an officer. I must be in San Francisco on the twenty-fifth o