f
February, without fail. If it keeps on this way, I'll be in a fix."

Frederick wanted to hurry by, but the man got in his way.

"I am an officer," he said. "My name is Von Klinkhammer." Frederick also
gave his name. "That's what comes of having priests on board," the young
man continued, twirling the end of his moustache upward, Prussian
fashion. "If there's no help for it, then the fellows ought simply to be
chucked overboard. What is the captain thinking of?" he kept shouting,
while an unexpected lurch of the vessel sent him plunging against the
wall almost back into his cabin. "I didn't leave the service and give up
a career and board this damned--"

But Frederick had run away. Now deep, intense silence prevailed
throughout the vessel, which was like a dead thing; a silence, in which
every now and then a step or a hasty tread on the heavy carpet in the
gangway was audible. Through the thin walls came the dull, confused
murmur of many voices. Doors banged, and when they opened, brief, broken
sounds penetrated from the cabins, evidence of the bewilderment and alarm
of their tenants. The thing that was particularly weird to Frederick in
that swaying corridor, creaking like a new boot and lighted by
electricity, was the incessant ringing of electric bells. In a hundred
cabins at the same time, frightened persons, who had paid dear for their
passage and were entitled to excellent service, were pressing the
buttons. None of them was inclined to recognise the _force majeure_ of
the Atlantic Ocean, the cyclone, the breaking of the screw, or any other
possible accident. They thought that by ringing the bells they would be
giving expression to the irresistible demand for a responsible rescuer to
bring them safely to dry land.

"Who knows," thought Frederick, "while they are ringing the bells down
here, perhaps the life-belts are being handed out on deck, the boats are
being swung out on the water and over-loaded with passengers to the
sinking point."

XLI

But, thank the Lord, by the time he had finally fought his way to
Ingigerd's cabin on deck, it had not yet reached that point. It was to
Ingigerd Hahlstroem that an impulse had been driving him. Beside the
children, for whom in a motherly way she was trying constantly to devise
a new occupation, he found her father and Doctor Wilhelm.

"People's cowardice is something fearful," said Doctor Wilhelm.

"Easily said; but what's the matter?" asked Frederick.