awaiting him, were to
give him the vouchers he needed for his brief report to be submitted to
his company's agent in New York in regard to the picking up of the
castaways. A sort of audience was held, during which nothing new
concerning the tremendous disaster was revealed.

Pander showed the scrap of paper with the pencilled message that
Captain von Kessel had asked him to take to his sisters. All were greatly
moved on reading the few hastily scrawled words. The incident revealed
what a wrench the hearts and nerves of even the seamen had undergone. At
the mention of this or that person or incident, Pander and the three
sailors burst into hysterical tears. When asked whether they thought the
_Roland_ would remain above water over the day, all said "No." One of the
sailors, who from the first warning of danger to the boarding of the
_Hamburg_, had gone about his heavy duty with the same grit, the same
matter-of-course manner, scarcely uttering a word, concluded each of his
statements with: "Captain, it was like on Judgment Day."

At the conclusion of the audience, Frederick felt a great need to be
alone for a while. "It was like on Judgment Day," followed him. Yes, it
was like on Judgment Day! The horrors of the cruellest judgment could not
exceed those amid which the victims of the shipwreck had perished.
Strange, the evening before, Frederick had still been able to laugh;
to-day he felt as if the gravity of his being were turned to brass and
had laid itself about him, not like an iron mask, not like a leaden
cloak, but rather like a heavy metal sarcophagus.

He knew a man, an architect verging on middle age, who had been on the
island of Ischia during the last great earthquake there. The architect
and some very dear friends were sitting together over a bottle of wine
when the calamity was ushered in by the roll of subterranean thunder. A
moment later the ceiling and floors burst, and an abyss swallowed up
five or six persons, men and women, full of hope and joy in life. He
himself remained on the brink of the abyss unscathed. Though years
intervened, there was still not a clod of earth, not a rock, no matter
how adamantine, on which he could set foot with his old confidence; there
was no wall or ceiling that he did not seem to see falling on his head
and crushing him. Groping along the walls of houses on the street, terror
would seize him. Open places made him dizzy, and not infrequently a
passerby seeing his helple