t to taste to the dregs even the bitterest
impressions of this detached, jogged and jolted fragment of a human
world.

XLIV

The physicians arrived when they were sewing the stoker, Zickelmann, into
sail-cloth. The bare cabin was not very brilliantly lighted by a single
electric bulb. Frederick recalled his dream--how the dead stoker had been
standing under the vines with the cords in his hand and had then led
Peter Schmidt and himself to the Toilers of the Light. A great change had
taken place in his appearance. His face was no longer of flesh, but
seemed to be chiselled out of yellow wax, to which his hair, his eyebrows
and beard were pasted. A faint, cunning smile seemed to be curving his
mouth; and when Frederick with odd interest and curiosity scrutinised him
closely, it seemed to him he was saying, "_Legno santo!_ Toilers of the
Light!"

When the dead man's face was covered up and his whole body had been sewed
into the cloth in coarse stitches, the sailors bound the puppet, with
difficulty keeping it in position, on a smoothly planed board, weighted
with iron.

"Will such a chrysalis ever really turn into a butterfly?" Frederick
wondered.

The procedure, a piece of reeling, staggering acrobatics, was less
gruesome than ridiculous. Yet, though this long package might be only the
mortal shell of an immortal soul, one had a sense of infinite sadness in
entrusting it to the fearful solitudes of the ocean.

Since in the stormy weather it was no easy matter to throw the corpse
overboard and since it was impossible to conduct ceremonies on a rolling
deck constantly washed by the waves, the purser asked the few persons
present--Captain von Kessel could not leave the bridge--to say a silent
prayer for the soul of the dead man. They did so, and four of the
stoker's mates, staggering, stopping, lurching and panting, carried the
long package on deck to the railing, where at the word of command they
let it slide into the sea.

When Doctor Wilhelm bade Frederick good-night, he added:

"You ought to try to go to sleep."

They parted, and Frederick hunted for a sheltered spot on deck, where he
could spend the night. He wanted to look the wind and weather straight in
the face, there in the glacial air, in the gloom under the pale sheen of
the arc-lights fastened to the mast. He shuddered at the thought of a
night in the oppressive confines of his cabin, with the closed port-hole
and the hot, stale air. But that