ry palace, it was
impossible to cling to the conviction that modern civilisation is all
prose. The most prosaic of mortals here had forced upon him a piece of
foolhardy romance compared with which the dreams of the poets lose colour
and turn pale.

While the tender, dancing coquettishly on the swelling foam, was warping
to the gangway-ladder, high overhead, on the deck of the _Roland_, the
band struck up a lively, resolute march in a martial yet resigned strain,
such as leads soldiers to battle--to victory or to death. An orchestra
like this, of wind instruments, drums and cymbals was all that lacked to
set the young physician's nerves a-quiver, as in a dance of fire and
flame.

The music ringing from aloft out into the night and descending to the
little tender manoeuvring in the water, was designed to inspire timid
souls with courage and tide them over certain horrors attendant upon the
moment. Beyond lay the infinite ocean. In the situation, one could not
help representing it to oneself as black, gloomy, forbidding, a fearful,
demoniac power, hostile to man and the works of man.

Now, from the breast of the _Roland_, tore a cry rising higher and
louder, upward from a deep bass, a monstrous call, a roar, a thunder,
of a fearfulness and strength that congealed the blood in one's heart.

"Well, my dear friend _Roland_," flashed through Frederick's mind,
"you're a fellow that's a match for the ocean." With that he set foot on
the gangway-ladder. He completely forgot his previous identity and the
reason of his being here.

When, to the wild tune of the brass band, he stepped from the upper rung
upon the roomy deck, and stood in the garish sheen of an arc-light, he
found himself between two rows of men, the officers and some of the
ship's crew. It was the group of uniformed men he had noticed from below.
He was astonished and delighted to behold so many confidence-inspiring
masculine figures. It was an assemblage of magnificent specimens of
manhood, all, from the first mate down to the stewards, tall, picked men,
with bold, simple, intelligent, honest features. Moved by a sense at once
of pride and of complete trust and security, Frederick said to himself
that after all there was still a German nation left; and the singular
thought flashed through his mind that God would never decide to take such
a selection of noble, faithful men and drown them in the sea like blind
puppies.

A steward picked up his luggage and led