Atlantis. Gerhart Hauptmann

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 the way to a cabin with two berths, which he was to have to himself. Soon after, he was sitting at one end of a horseshoe-shaped table in the dining-room. The service was excellent, and the few passengers from the tender ate and drank; but it was not very lively. The main dinner was over, and the little company from the tender in the great, low-ceiled, empty saloon, were each too tired and too engrossed in self to talk.

      During the meal Frederick was not aware whether the mammoth body was moving or standing still. The faint, scarcely perceptible quiver seemed too slight to be a sign of the motion of so huge a mass. Frederick had made his first sea voyage when a lad of eighteen as the only passenger on a merchantman going from Hamburg to Naples. The thirteen years since had considerably weakened the impressions of that trip. Moreover, the luxury of this ocean liner into which he had strayed was something so new to him, that all he could do at first was scrutinize everything in astonishment.

      When he had drunk his customary few glasses of wine, a sense of peace and comfort stole over him. After their long irritation and tension his nerves succumbed to a pleasant tiredness, which pressed upon him so healthily and imperatively that he felt almost sure of a refreshing night's sleep. He even made the firm resolution—in his condition scarcely necessary—that for this night bygones should be bygones, the future the future, and the present, without regard for past or future, should belong unqualifiedly to rest and sleep.

      When he went to bed, he actually did sleep for ten hours, heavily, without stirring. At breakfast in the dining-room, he asked for the passenger list, and with a wild leap of his heart read the names for which he had been looking, Eugen Hahlström and Miss Ingigerd Hahlström.

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      He folded up the list and glanced about. There were about fifteen to twenty men and women in the saloon, all engaged in breakfasting or giving their orders to the stewards. To Frederick it seemed they were there for no other purpose than to spy upon his emotions.

      The steamer had already been travelling for an hour on the ocean. The dining-room took up the full width of the vessel, and from time to time its port-holes were darkened by the waves dashing against them. Opposite Frederick sat a gentleman in uniform, who introduced himself as Doctor Wilhelm, the ship's physician. Straightway a very lively medical discussion began, though Frederick's thoughts were far away. He was debating with himself how he should act at his first meeting with the Hahlströms.

      He tried to find support in self-deception, telling himself he had boarded the Roland, not for the sake of little Ingigerd Hahlström, but because he wanted to see New York, Chicago, Washington, Boston, Yellowstone Park, and Niagara Falls. That is what he would tell the Hahlströms—that a mere chance had brought them together on the Roland.

      He observed that he was gaining in poise. Sometimes, when the adorer is at a distance from the object of his devotion, the idolatry of love assumes fateful proportions. During his stay in Paris, Frederick had lived in a state of constant fever, and his yearning for his idol had risen to an unendurable degree. About the image of little Ingigerd Hahlström, a heavenly aureole had laid itself, so compelling in its attraction that Frederick's mental vision was literally blinded to everything else. That illusion had suddenly vanished. He felt ashamed of himself. "I'm a ridiculous fool," he thought, and when he arose to go on deck, he felt as if he had shaken off oppressive fetters. The salt sea air blowing vigorously across the deck heightened his sense of emancipation and convalescence and refreshed him to his inner being.

      Men and women lay stretched out on steamer chairs with that green expression of profound indifference which marks the dreaded seasickness. To Frederick's astonishment, he himself felt not the least trace of nausea, and only the sight of his fellow-passengers' misery caused him to realise that the Roland was not gliding through smooth waters, but was distinctly pitching and rolling.

      He walked around the ladies' parlour, past the entrance of an extra cabin, and took his stand under the bridge, breasting the steely, salt sea wind. On the deck below, the steerage passengers had settled themselves as far as the bow. Though the Roland was running under full steam, it was not making its maximum speed, prevented by the long, heavy swells that the wind raised and hurled against the bow. Across the forward lower deck there was a second bridge, probably for emergency. Frederick felt strongly tempted to stand up there on that empty bridge.

      It aroused some attention, of course, when he descended down among the steerage passengers and then crawled up the iron rungs of the ladder to the windy height. But that did not trouble him. All at once such a madcap spirit had come over him, he felt so happy and refreshed; as if he had never had to suffer dull cares, or put up with the whims of a hysterical wife, or practise medicine in a musty, out-of-the-way corner of the country. Never, it seemed to him, had he studied bacteriology, still less, suffered a fiasco. Never had he been so in love as he appeared to have been only a short time before.

      He laughed, bending his head before the gale, filled his lungs with the salty air, and felt better and stronger.

      A burst of laughter from the steerage passengers mounted to his ears. At the same instant something lashed him in the face, something that he had seen rearing, white and tremendous, before the bow. It almost blinded him, and he felt the wet penetrate to his skin. The first wave had swept overboard.

      Who would not find it humiliating to have his sublime meditations interrupted in such a tricky, brutal way? A moment before, he felt as if to be a Viking were his real calling, and now, inwardly shaking and shivering, amid general ridicule, he crawled ignominiously down the iron ladder.

      He was wearing a round grey СКАЧАТЬ