Heuscheuer," he said, "are mean and ungrateful."

Shy and distrustful at home, even toward Frederick, who had treated him
for his last knife wound on his neck, his manner here, with the other
passengers crossing the great waters, was frank and trustful. He was like
a well-behaved child chattering freely.

"You didn't get the thanks you deserved, either, Doctor von Kammacher,"
he said in his broad dialect, rich in vowel sounds, and recounted a
number of cases, of which Frederick had not known, in which good had been
repaid by evil tattle. "The people around Plassenberg are not fit for men
like you and me. Men like you and me belong in America, the land of
liberty."

Elsewhere, Frederick would have resented being placed in the same
category as this rowdy, for whom, he recalled, the police were searching.
But here he felt no indignation. On the contrary, he was pleasantly
surprised, as if by an unexpected meeting with a good friend.

"The world's a small place," said Frederick, passing over the theme of
ingratitude and the land of liberty, "the world's a small place. Yet I am
surprised to see you here. But I'm wet to the skin, and have to go change
my clothes."

On his way to the cabin, on the promenade deck, he encountered the blond
captain of the _Roland_, Von Kessel, who presented himself to Frederick.

"The weather is not quite up to mark," he said by way of excuse for the
little mishap on the lower bridge. "If you enjoy standing in front there,
you'd better put on one of our oilskins."

Now that the vessel's movement was more accentuated, the cabin, in which
Frederick changed his clothes, was a problematical place of abode. The
light came from a round port-hole of heavy glass. When the wall with the
port-hole in it rose and turned inward like a slanting roof, the sunlight
from a rift between the clouds in the sky fell upon the mahogany berth
opposite. Sitting on the edge of the lower berth, Frederick tried to
steady himself, holding his head bent to keep from striking against his
upper berth, and frantically endeavouring not to follow the receding
movement of the wall behind. The cabin was rolling in unison with the
vessel's movement. Sometimes it seemed to Frederick as if the port-hole
wall were the ceiling, and the ceiling the right wall; then again as if
the right wall were the ceiling, and the ceiling the port-hole wall,
while the actual port-hole wall, as if inviting him to jump, shoved
itself at right an