d petting his spotted cat.

"It's good we're under way again," Frederick could not refrain from
saying as he walked past.

"Why?" said Rinck phlegmatically.

"I for one," said Frederick, "would rather be running under full steam
than drifting helplessly."

"Why?" said Mr. Rinck again.

In the gangways below, even though the ship was pitching, the atmosphere
was fairly pleasant and lively. Everybody seemed to have forgotten his
fear. The passengers, cracking jokes and clinging to the nearest
stationary thing, reeled and stumbled into the dining-room. The rattle
of china near the kitchen was deafening, especially when, as frequently
happened, some of the plates broke.

Frederick's clothes were pretty well soaked, and he mustered up the
courage to go to his cabin to dress. Adolph, his steward, came to help
him, and told Frederick of a panic that had broken out in the steerage
when the engines stopped. Some of the women with their babies on their
arms had wanted to jump right into the water. It was with difficulty that
the other emigrants had restrained them. One of the stewards and a sailor
had clutched a Polish woman by her feet just as she was taking the
downward plunge.

"You can't blame these people for acting like cowards in this situation,"
said Frederick. "It would be strange if they didn't. Who will insist that
he can stand upright when the ground beneath his feet is giving away? If
a man were to say so, either he would be lying, or his lack of feeling
would be so great as to degrade him below an animal."

"Yes," said the steward, "but what would _we_ do if _we_ were so
cowardly?"

Frederick now began to deliver one of those fiery dissertations that had
won him a number of youthful auditors when he was a _Privatdozent_.

"With you it is different," he said. "You are upheld, and at the same
time rewarded, by the feeling that you are doing your duty. While we
passengers are living in terror, the cooks have been boiling soup,
cleaning fish, preparing vegetables, roasting and carving, larding
venison and so on." The steward laughed! "But I assure you, at times it
is easier to roast a roast than to eat it." And Frederick continued in
a solemn, but for that very reason, roguish manner to philosophise on
courage and cowardice.

XLIII

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-ste