Ship of Fools
by
Katherine Porter


FLOWERING JUDAS

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER'S LENCtI SON(I BOOK

PALE HORSE PALE RIDER

THE LEANING TOWER

THE DAYS BEFOB.E

SHIP OF FOOLS

THE NEVER-ENDING WRONG

Katherine Anne Porter

Little, Brown and Company Boston Toronto London

COPY WRIGHT 1945, 1946, 1947, 195o 1956, 1958, 1959, 1962,

BY KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

COPYRIGHTS RENEWED BY KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO PART OF THIS BOOK I.AY BE REPRODUCED

IN ANY FoRM WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE

PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES

IN A REVIEW TO BE PRINTED IN A MAGAZINE OR NEWSPAPER.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO.  62-9557

Earlier versions of some scenes from this novel have been published in
Accent, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Mademoiselle, Partisan Review,
SewvneeReview and Texas Quarterly.

BP

Published simultaneously in Canada by Little, Brown & Company (Canada)
Limited

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FOR BARa^Ka WSCOTT

Paris, Rambouillet, Davosplatz, Salzburg, Munich, New York, Mulhocaway,
F{osemont : 96

The title of this book is a translation from the German of Das
Narrenschiff, a moral allegory by Sebastian Brant (1458?-52) first
published in Latin as Stultifera Naris in x494.  I read it in Basel in
the summer of 193z when I had still vividly in mind the impressions of
my first voyage to Europe.  When I began thinking about my novel, I
took for my own this simple almost universal image of the ship of this
world on its voyage to eternity.  It is by no means new -it was very
old and durable and dearly familiar when Brant used it; and it suits my
purpose exactly.  I am a passenger on that ship.

K. A. P.

Contents

EMBARKATION 1

Quand artons-nous vers le bonheur?

(Baudelaire)

HIGH SEA

Kein Haas, Keine Helmat... (song by Brahms)

THE HARBORS 361

For here have ave no continuing city... (Saint Paul)

Characters.

On board the North German Lloyd S.A."  Vera, between Veracruz, Mexico,
and Bremerhaven, Germany, August 22-September 17, 1931.

Ship's Captain Thiele.

Dr.  Schumann, ship's doctor.

The purser, and a half dozen young ship's officers.

Frau Rittersdorf, who keeps a notebook.

Frau Otto Schmitt, recently widowed in Mexico.

Herr Siegfried Rieber, publisher of a ladies' garment trade magazine.

Fraulein Lizzi Spockenkieker, in the ladies' garment business; from
Hanover.

Herr Professor Hutten and Frau Professor Hutten, Former head of a
German school in Mexico, and his wife; traveling with them is their
white bulldog Bebe.  Herr Karl Baumgartner, Frau Baumgartner and Hans
Baumgartner, Lawyer from Mexico City- hopeless drunkard; his wife
Greta, and their eight-year-old son.

Herr Karl Glocken, a hunchback, who has sold out his little tobacco and
newspaper stand in Mexico, and is returning to Germany.

Herr Wilibald Graf, a dying religious enthusiast who believes he has
the power of healing.

Johann, his nephew and attendant.

Herr Wilhelm Freytag, "connected with" an oil company in Mexico,
returning to Germany to fetch his wife and her mother.

Herr Julius Lowenthal, Jewish manufacturer and salesman of Catholic
Church furnishings, returning to his home in Dusseldorf for a visit
with his cousin Sarah.

Herr Heinrich Lutz, Frau Lutz and Elsa Lutz, A hotel keeper from
Mexico, returning to Switzerland after fifteen years, with his wife and
their daughter, eighteen years old.

Spanish.

A zarzuela company, singers and dancers who call themselves gsies,
returning to Spain after being stranded in Mexico.

Women: Amparo, Loin, Concha, Pastora.

Men: Pepe, Tito, Manolo, Pancho.

Children: Ric and Rac, Lola's twins, boy and girl, six years old.

La Condesa, a declasse noblewoman who has lived many years in Cuba;

political exile being deported from Cuba to Tenerife.

Cuban.

Six Cuban medical students on their way to Montpellier.

Mexican.

The bride and groom from Guadalajara, Mexico, on a honeymoon trip to

Spain.

Senora Esperrn y Chavez de Ortega, wife of attache of the Mexican
Legation in Paris, traveling with her newly born son and Indian
nursemaid Nicolasa.

Father Garza and Father Carillo, Mexican Catholic priests on a journey
to Spain.  Political agitator: Fat man in cherry-colored shirt, who
sings.

Swedish.

Arne Hansen, at feud with Herr Rieber.

American.  William Denny, from Texas, a young chemical engineer going
to Berlin.

Mary Treadwell, a woman of forty-five, divorced, returning to Paris.

David Scott and Jenny Brown, Two young painters living together, on
their first voyage to Europe.

In Steerage.

Eight hundred and seventy-six souls: Spaniards, men, women, children,
workers in the sugar fields of Cuba, being deported back to the
Canaries and to various parts of Spain (wherever they came from) after
the failure of the sugar market.

Cabin Mates.

Frau Rittersdorf

Frau Schmitt

Mrs.  Treadwell

Fraulein Spockenkieker Jenny Brown (Jenny angel)

Elsa Lutz

Father Garza

Father Carillo

Wilhelm Freytag Ame Hansen David Scott (David darling)

William Denny

Karl Glocken

Wilibald Graf

Johann, his nephew Herr Rieber

Herr Lowenthal

Senora Ortega

Nurse and baby

La Condesa (alone) Bride and groom

Herr Lutz

Frau Lutz

Professor Hutten

Frau Hutten

Bebe the bulldog

Herr Baumgartner

Frau Baumgartner

Hans Baumgartner

The six Cuban students occupy two adjoining cabins.

The zarzuela company:

Manolo and Concha

Tito and Lola, with

Ric and Rac

Pepe and Amparo

Paneho and Pastor

PART I.

Embarkation

Quand partons-nous vers le bonheur?

BAUDELAIRE

August, 1931--The port town of Veracruz is a little purgatory between
land and sea for the traveler, but the people who live there are very
fond of themselves and the town they have helped to make.  They live as
initiates in local custom reflecting their own history and temperament,
and they carry on their lives of alternate violence and lethargy with a
pleasurable contempt for outside opinion, founded on the charmed notion
that their ways and feelings are above and beyond criticism.

When they entertain themselves at their numerous private and public
feasts, the newspapers publish lyric prose saying how gay an occasion
it was; in what lavish and aristocratic--the terms are synonymous, they
believe--taste the decorations and refreshments; and they cannot praise
too much the skill with which the members of good society maintain in
their deportment the delicate balance between high courtesy and easy
merriment, a secret of the Veracruz world bitterly envied and
unsuccessfully imitated by the provincial inland society of the
Capital.  "Only our people know how to enjoy themselves with civilized
freedom," they write.  "We are generous, warmhearted, hospitable,
sensitive," they go on, and they mean it to be read not only by
themselves but by the polyglot barbarians of the upper plateau who
obstinately go on regarding Veracruz as merely a pestilential jumping
off place into the sea.

There is maybe a small sign of uneasiness in this pugnacious assertion
of high breeding; in this and in the methodical brutality of their
common behavior towards the travelers who must pass through their hands
to reach the temporary haven of some ship in harbor.  The travelers
wish only to be carried away from the place, and the Vera cruzanos wish
only to see the last of them; but not until every possible toll, fee,
extortion, and bribe due to the town and its citizens has been

extracted.  It is in fact to the passing eye a typical port town,
cynical by nature, shameless by experience, hardened to showing its
seamiest side to strangers: ten to one this stranger passing through is
a sheep bleating for their shears, and one in ten is a scoundrel it
would be a pity not to outwit.  In any case, there is only so much
money to be got out of each one, and the time is always short.

In the white heat of an early August morning a few placid citizens of
the white-linen class strolled across the hard-baked surface of the
public square under the dusty shade of the sweet-by-night trees, and
seated themselves at leisure on the terrace of the Palacio Hotel.  They
stretched out their feet to cool their shoe soles, greeted the soggy
little waiter by name, and called for iced limeades.  They had all
grown up together in the several generations, married each other's
cousins or sisters or aunts, knew each other's business, told all the
gossip they heard, and heard all they had told repeated to them; had
assisted indeed with the intimacy of midwives at the making of each
other's histories: and still they met here almost every morning on the
way to their shops or offices for a last hour of repose and to catch up
on the news before beginning the serious day's work.

The square was deserted except for a small, emaciated Indian sitting on
a bench under a tree, a country Indian wearing weathered white cotton
drawers and a long shirt, a widely curved old straw hat over his eyes.
His feet with their ragged toenails and cracked heels, in sandals
fastened with leather thongs broken and knotted together again, lay
meekly together on the gray earth.  He seemed to sleep, sitting
upright, arms folded.  With a drowsy motion he pushed back his hat,
took out of his twisted blue cotton belt a roll of cold tortillas and
ate, eyes roving or fixed on distance, setting his square teeth into
the tough bread resolutely, chewing and swallowing without enjoyment.
The men at leisure on the terrace did not notice him except as a part
of the scene, and he seemed unaware of them.

The beggar who came to the terrace every morning in time for the early
traffic appeared around the corner shambling and crawling, the stumps
of his four limbs bound in leather and twine.  He had been in early
life so intricately maimed and deformed by a master of the art, in
preparation for his calling, he had little resemblance to any human
being.  Dumb, half blind, he approached with nose almost to sidewalk as
if he followed the trail of a smell, stopping now and then to rest,
wagging his hideous shock head from side to side slowly in unbearable

suffering.  The men at the table glanced at him as if he were a dog
too repulsive even to kick, and he waited patiently beside each one for
the sound of the small copper coins dropped into the gaping leather bag
around his neck.  When one of the men held out to him the half of a
squeezed lime, he sat back on his haunches, opened his dreadful mouth
to receive the fruit, and dropped down again, his jaws working.  He
crawled then across the street to the square, and lay down under the
trees behind the little Indian, who did not turn his head.

The men watched his progress idly without expression as they might a
piece of rubbish rolling before the wind; their gaze then roved still
idly but with expert observation to the working girls walking in groups
to their jobs, all dressed in flimsy light-colored cotton dresses, with
bright pink or blue celluloid combs in their black hair; and to the
upper-class girts in formal church attire, black gauzy dresses and fine
black lace mantillas over high tortoise-shell combs, going slowly,
already opening their wide black fans, into the church across the
square.

When the last girl had disappeared, the eyes of the lolling men
wandered then to the familiar antics of creatures inhabiting the
windowsills and balconies nearest them.  A long gray cat huddled
watchfully in the window of his own house, staring at his enemy the
parrot, that interloper with the human voice who had deceived him again
and again with an invitation to come and get food.  The parrot cocked
his bronze-agate eye towards the monkey who began leering at him every
morning at sunrise, and leered at him all day long in a language he
could not understand.  The monkey, from his neighboring balcony rail,
leaped the length of his chain at the parrot, who screamed and
fluttered, tugging at his leg-leash.  Bored with this, the monkey
sidled away, and the parrot settled down to cursing monotonously and
shaking his feathers.  The smell of cracked coconuts in the vendor's
basket on the sidewalk below tempted the monkey.  He leaped downwards
towards them, dangled in frenzy by his delicate waist, and climbed
again up his own chain to safety.

A woman reached her bare arm out of the window to the parrot and gave
him a rotten-ripe banana.  The parrot, with a little croak of thanks,
took it in one claw and ate, fixing a hard dangerous eye on the monkey,
who chattered with greed and fear.  The cat, who despised them both and
feared neither because he was free to fight or run as he chose, was
roused by the smell of the raw, tainted meat hanging

in chunks in the small butcher's stand below him.  Presently he slid
over the sill and dropped in silence upon the offal at the butcher's
feet.  A mangy dog leaped snarling at the cat, and there was a fine,
yelping, hissing race between them to the nearest tree in the square,
where the cat clawed his way out of danger and the dog, in his
blindness of fury, stumbled across the abused feet of the Indian on the
bench.  The Indian seemed hardly to move, yet with perfect swiftness
and economy swung his leg from the knee and planted a kick with the
hard edge of his sandal in the dog's lean ribs.  The dog, howling all
the way, rushed back to the butcher's stand.

One of the men yawned freely, shaking out the newspaper lying rumpled
before him, and examined again the page-sized photograph of the
shattered, disemboweled corpse lying near a small crater made by the
exploding bomb, in the patio of the Swedish Consulate, against a
background of potted plants and wicker bird cages.  It had been a young
Indian servant boy, the only person killed, after all.  The face had
not been damaged and the wide-open eyes were peacefully melancholy; one
hand lay spread delicately upon a lump of clotted entrails beside him.
A man at a near table got up and leaned over to look also at the
photograph, and shook his head.  He was an older man with an oily dark
face, his white linen clothes and soft collar were sweated limp.

"A bad business, though," he said rather loudly, "a mistake, as usual!"
"Of course, and the newspaper says so, in so many words," said the
younger man, agreeing with both.  They began reading the editorial
notice.  The editor was quite certain that no one in all Mexico, and
least of all in Veracruz, could wish to harm a hair of the Swedish
Consul, who had proved himself a firm friend of the city, the most
civilized and respectable of all its foreign residents.  The bomb in
fact had been intended for a rich, unscrupulous landlord who lived next
door; by some fatal error never to be too severely reprobated, the
explosion had taken place in the wrong house.  By such mischances, the
editor was well aware, international incidents of the utmost gravity
might be brought about.  The city of?  Veracruz therefore hastened to
offer its most profound and heartfelt apologies to the Consul, to the
great and peaceful nation which he represented, and indeed, was
prepared to make any and all reparations required by civility between
governments in such cases.  Most fortunately, the Consul himself had
been absent at the time, enjoying his afternoon aquavit and lime juice
with members of his household at the home of a friend.  It was the

hope of every citizen of Veracruz that the Swedish Consul would
consent to overlook and forgive the tragic error, since these were
stern days, with danger lurking everywhere for all.  In the meantime,
the lamentable incident might even so have its good uses if it should
serve as a warning to the heartless, shameless exploiters of honest
Veracruz tenants that the Revolution had indeed arrived in its power,
that the workers were adamant in their determination to put an end to
social and economic wrongs, as well as to avenge themselves fully for
wrongs already done them.

The younger man turned the page, and the two read on together.  The
editor wished to explain a further circumstance.  It was clearly the
fault of no one that the festival planned in celebration of the bombing
had taken place after all, in spite of the awkward failure of aim in
those dedicated to the work of destruction.  The preparations had been
made at some expense and trouble, the fireworks had been ordered and
paid for eight days before, the spirit of triumph was in the air.  It
would have been inglorious to the last degree to have disappointed the
merrymaking workers of Veracruz, their charming ladies, and their
children growing up in the new world of freedom for all.  That the life
of an honest young boy, a humble member of the downtrodden proletariat,
had been extinguished so prematurely was of course a cause for public
mourning.  An immense, honorable funeral was being planned for his
remains, as a martyr to the great cause of liberty and justice; ample
material compensation as well would be extended to his grieving family.
Already two truckloads of floral offerings had been provided by
voluntary contributions from every labor union in the city; there would
be five bands to play funeral marches and revolutionary songs from the
Cathedral door to the graveside, and it was expected that every working
man and woman able to walk would be in the great procession.

WV hew it's getting hot around here," said the younger man, running his
handkerchief into the back of his collar.  The older man said, lowering
his voice almost to a whisper, speaking with very little movement of
his lips, "These swine are going the whole way, that's plain.  I
haven't collected a peso of rent from any of them for more than a year,
I may never collect another.  They sit there in that block of
thirty-five houses in the Soledad section scratching their lice at my
expense---" The two looked each other quietly in the eye.  "They don't
seem to realize that this kind of thing can be made to work both
ways."

The younger one nodded.  They moved away together out of earshot of
the waiters.  "My shoemakers have struck four times in seven months,"
said the younger man.  "They talk almost in my face about taking over
the factory.  On the day they try it, the whole plant will burn down, i
promise you.  Everything is well insured."

"Why do we wait?"  asked the older man, a compulsive violence bursting
suddenly through his guarded tone.  "Why hadn't we got fifty machine
guns to turn on that celebration last night?  They don't own the army
yet- why didn't we send for troops?  Fifty machine guns?  Why not five
thousand?  Why not a carload of hand grenades?  What is the matter with
us?  Are we losing our senses?"

The younger man stared before him intently as if some exciting
spectacle were taking place in his mind.  "It's just begun," he said
with a smile of relish.  "Let it work up a little more to something
worth doing.  Don't worry, we'll smash them to pulp.  They never win.
They're such cattle they don't even know they are just fighting for a
change of masters.  Well, I'm going to be master for a while yet." "Not
if we just sit and let them swarm over us, said the older man. "They
never win, said the younger man.  They walked on.

Those left behind began to drift slowly away from the terrace, leaving
their newspapers on the tables.  The streets, they observed with
distaste, were again beginning to crawl with the latest lot of people
in town for the next boat, birds of passage from God knew where,
chattering their ungainly tongues.  Even the Spanish was not the
Spanish of Mexico.  As for the women among them, except for the
occasional soft beauty of some real Mexican girl, they were always the
same, no matter of what freakish nationality: middle-aged painted
scarecrows too fat or too thin: and young flat-chested loud-voiced
things with cropped hair striding around in low-heeled shoes, their
skirts shortened to show legs never meant to be seen by any eye but
God's.  If any exceptions to these rules occurred, they were quite
simply ignored; all strangers as such were odious and absurd.  The
people of Veracruz never tired of the pastime of ridiculing the looks
of the foreign women, their costumes, their voices, their wild
unwomanly ways- the North American ones more especially.  Rich and
important persons sometimes arrived and departed by those boats; but
being rich and important, they hardly showed themselves except in
swiftly moving motors, or in lordly pauses among their clutter of
expensive luggage

on dock or platform.  Their looks did not so much matter, anyway; they
were ridiculed on other and higher grounds.  They all unconscious and
at ease as they seemed, surveying a world made for them and giving
orders to everybody in sight without turning a hand themselves--they
were marked for destruction, so the labor leaders told their followers,
and could already be regarded with some curiosity as a disappearing
race.  The new crowd, the watchers decided, was regular --no better, no
worse, but there were always a few amusing variations.

The clerk of the hotel came out for a glimpse of daylight, and the
waiters in their stained rumpled white jackets began slapping dust and
crumbs off the tablecloths in preparation for lunch.  They observed
with contempt that their particular share of the day's travelers was
straggling in again for a rest after swarming all over the town all
morning.

Certainly the travelers were not looking their best.  They had crept
off the train which brought them from the interior, stiff from trying
to sleep fully clothed in their chairs, sore in their minds from the
recent tearing up of their lives by the roots, a little gloomy with
some mysterious sense of failure, of forced farewell, of homelessness
no matter how temporary.  Imperfectly washed, untidy and dusty, vaguely
not-present in eyes dark-circled by fatigue and anxiety, each one
carried signed, stamped papers as proof that he had been born in a
certain time and place, had a name of his own, a foothold of some kind
in this world, a journey in view for good and sufficient reasons, and
possessions worth looking into at international frontiers.

Each hoped that these papers might establish for him at least a
momentary immunity from the hazards of his enterprise, and the first
thought of each was that he must go instantly, before the rest of that
crowd could arrive, and get his own precious business settled first at
the various bureaus, consulates, departments of this and that; it was
beginning to resemble not so much a voyage as an obstacle race.

So far they were all alike, and they shared a common hope.  They lived
individually and in mass for the sole purpose of getting safely that
same day on board a German ship then standing in dock.  She had come
from South America the long way round and she was going to Bremerhaven.
Alarming rumors had sped to meet the travelers even before they left
Mexico City.  There were serious hurricanes all along the coast.  A
revolution or a general strike, time must decide which, was going on at
top speed in Veracruz itself.  A light epidemic

of smallpox had broken out in several coastal towns.  At this piece of
news, the travelers had all rushed to be vaccinated, and all alike were
feverish, with a crusted, festering little sore above the knee or
elbow.  It had been said also that the German ship might be delayed in
sailing, for she had lost time getting stuck for three days on a sand
bar off Tampico; but the latest word was that she was in harbor and
would sail on time.

They were to travel, it appeared, more than ordinarily at their own
risk, and their presence in Veracruz proved that necessity and not the
caprices of a pleasure voyage drove them to carry out their intentions
in face of such discouragements.  They were all of them obviously in
circumstances ranging from modestly comfortable to uncomfortably poor,
but each suffered from insufficiency in his own degree.  Poverty was
instantly to be deduced by a common anxiety about fees, a careful
opening of wallets and handbags, a minute counting of change with wrung
brows and precise fingers; a start of terror by a man who put his hand
into his inside coat pocket and feared, for one shattering instant,
that his money was gone.

All believed they were bound for a place for some reason more desirable
than the place they were leaving, but it was necessary to make the
change with the least possible delay and expense.  Delay and expense
had been their common portion at the hands of an army of professional
tip seekers, fee collectors, half-asleep consular clerks and bored
Migrations officials who were not in the least concerned whether the
travelers gained their ship or dropped dead in their tracks.  They saw
too many of the kind all day, every day, with that disturbing miasma of
financial and domestic worry rising steamily from their
respectable-looking clothes.  The officials did not care for the breed;
they had enough such troubles of their own.

For almost twenty-four hours the anonymous, faceless travelers, their
humanity nearly exhausted, their separate sufferings, memories,
intentions and baffled wills locked within them, ran doggedly (for
there was a taxicab drivers' strike), sweating, despairing, famished
(there was a bakers' strike, and an icemen's strike), from hotel to
Migrations to Customs to Consulate to the ship's side and so once more
back to the railway station, in a final series of attempts to gather up
the ragged edges of their lives and belongings.  Each one had his
luggage seized by a porter at the station, who took charge at once with
a high hand, laying down the grimly one-sided laws of the situation;

these fellows all then disappeared with the property into thin air,
and where had they gone?  When would they come back?  Everybody began
to miss his hairbrush, clean shirts, blouses, pocket handkerchiefs; all
day grubbily they ran, unrefreshed even by clean water.

So the travelers fretted, meeting up with each other again and again in
all the uncomfortable places where they were all fated to be, sharing
the same miseries: almost unbearable heat, a stony white rage of
vengeful sunlight; vile food, vile beyond belief, slapped down before
their sunken faces by insolent waiters.  All of them at least once had
pushed back a plate of some greasy substance with a fly or a cockroach
in it, and had paid for it without complaint and tipped the waiter
besides because the very smell of violence was in the air, at once
crazed and stupefied.  One could easily be murdered for an irrelevant
word or gesture, and it would be a silly end.  All had taken to a diet
of black coffee, lukewarm beer, bottled synthetic lemonade, damp salted
biscuits in tin boxes, coconut milk drunk directly from the shell.
Their porters came back at unexpected times to heckle them, giving
wrong advice and demanding more tips for correcting their own errors.
The steady trivial drain upon their purses and spirits went on like a
nightmare, with no visible advance in their pressing affairs.  Women
gave way to fits of weeping, men to fits of temper, which got them
nowhere; and they all had reddened eyelids and badly swollen feet.

This common predicament did not by any means make of them fellow
sufferers.  On the contrary, each chose to maintain his pride and
separateness within himself.  After ignoring each other during the
first feverish hours, there crept into eyes meeting unwillingly, for
the twentieth time, a look of unacknowledged, hostile recognition.  "So
there you are again, I never saw you before in my life," the eyes said,
flickering away and settling stubbornly upon their own matters.  The
travelers witnessed each other's humiliations, rehearsed their private
business in everybody's hearing, answered embarrassing questions again
and again for some sticky little clerk to write down once more.  They
paused in small groups before the same sights, read signs aloud in
chorus, asked questions of the same passers-by, but no bond was
established between them.  It was as if, looking forward to the long
voyage before them, they had come to the common decision that one
cannot be too careful of chance-met, haphazard acquaintances.

"Well," said the desk clerk to the waiters nearest him, "here come our
burros again!"  The waiters, dangling their greasy rags, aimed
spiteful

stares meant to be noticed at the badly assorted lot of human beings
who took silent possession of the terrace, slumping about the tables
and sitting there aimlessly as if they were already shipwrecked. There,
again, was the unreasonably fat woman with legs like tree trunks, her
fat husband in the dusty black suit and their fat white bulldog.  "No,
Senora," the clerk had told her with dignity the day before, "even if
this is only Mexico still we do not allow dogs in our rooms."  The
ridiculous woman had kissed the beast on his wet nose before turning
him over to the boy who tied him up in the kitchen patio for the night.
Bebe the bulldog had borne his ordeal with the mournful silence of his
heroic breed, and held no grudges against anybody.  His owners now
began at once to explore the depths of the large food basket they
carried everywhere with them.

A tall thin young woman- a leggy "girl" with a tiny, close-cropped head
waving on her long neck, a limp green frock flapping about her
calves--strode in screaming like a peahen in German at her companion, a
little dumpling of a man, pink and pig-shouted.  A tall loose boned man
with unusually large hands and feet, with white-blond hair clipped in a
brush over his intensely knotted forehead, wandered by as if he did not
recognize the place, turned back and sat by himself, relapsed into a
trance.  A delicate-looking red-haired boy of perhaps eight years was
heaving and sweating in a Mexican riding costume of orange-colored
leather, his brassy freckles standing out in the greenish pallor of his
skin.  His sick-looking German father and sad, exasperated German
mother urged him along before them.  The little boy was saying
monotonously, "I want to go, mother--I want to go," and he wriggled all
over.

"Go where?"  asked his mother, shrilly.  "What do you want?  Speak
clearly.  We are going to Germany, isn't that enough for you?"  "I want
to go," said the little boy dismally, appealing to his father.  The
parents exchanged a glance, the mother said, "My God, my brain is
giving way!"  The father took the boy's hand and hurried him through
the cavern of the lobby.

"Figure these tourists," said the clerk to a waiter, "dressing a child
in leather in August, making a monkey of him!"  The mother turned her
head away at these words, flushed, bit her lips, then quietly hid her
face in her hands and sat there, perfectly still for a moment.

"Speaking of monkeys, what do you call that?"  asked the waiter, with a
barely perceptible flip of his rag towards a young woman, an

American, who wore dark blue cotton trousers and a light blue cotton
shirt: a wide leather belt and a blue figured bandanna around her neck
completed her outfit, which she had lifted without leave from the
workday costume of the town-dwelling Mexican Indian.  Her head was
bare.  Her black hair was parted in the middle and twisted into a bun
at the nape of her neck, rather old-fashioned looking in New York, but
very appropriate still in Mexico.  The young man with her wore a
proper-looking white linen suit and an ordinary Panama hat.

The clerk dropped his voice, but not quite enough, and spoke the
deadliest insult he knew.  "It's a mule, perhaps," he ventured.  As he
moved away he observed with satisfied spite that the Americans
understood Spanish also.  The young woman stiffened, the young man's
handsome nose turned white and pinched, and they stared at each other
like enemies.  "I told you to put on a skirt here," said the young man.
"You do know better."

"Hush," said the young woman, in a weary, expressionless voice, "simply
hush.  I can't change now until we get to the boat."

Four pretty Spanish girls, dark-skinned, long-necked, with an air of
professional impudence, their sleazy black skirts too tight around
their slender hips, their colored petticoat rues showing shabbily over
their graceful legs, had been all over the square, back and forth, up
and down and sideways in the narrow streets between the low soiled
white plaster walls pocked with bullet holes.  They had rushed in and
out of shops, they sat on the terrace in a huddle eating fruit and
scattering the rinds, their urgent Spanish chatter going on noisy as a
flock of quarreling birds.  They were accompanied by an equal number of
dark slim young men with silky black hair oiled to their narrow skulls,
wide belts cinched to their tapering waists; and a pair of sallow
precocious children, male and female, twins, perhaps six years old.
They were the only travelers who had come out and taken part in the
show of fireworks and dancing the evening before.  They cheered when
the rockets went up, they danced with each other in the crowd, and then
had gone off a little way by themselves and danced again, the jota, the
malaguefia, the bolero, playing their castanets.  A crowd had gathered
round them, and at the end one of the girls had gone among them
collecting money, holding her skirt before her to catch the coins, and
swishing her petticoat ruffles.

The affairs of this company had required an inordinate amount of
arranging.  They ran in a loose imperfectly domesticated group,
calling

to the young, who disobeyed them all impartially and were equally
slapped about and dragged along by all.  Distracted with shapeless,
loosely wrapped parcels, their eyes flashing and their hips waving in
all directions, they grew more disheveled by the moment, but their
spirits never flagged.  Finally, rushing upon the terrace, they
clustered tightly around one table, beat their fists upon it and
shouted at the waiter, all screaming their orders at once, the children
joining in fearlessly.

An inconspicuous slender woman in early middle age, conventionally
dressed in dark blue linen, with a wide blue hat shading her black hair
and small, rather pretty face and intent dark blue eyes, regarded the
Spaniards with some distaste while raising the short sleeve over her
right arm, to glance again at the place where the beggar woman had
pinched her.  A hard knot had formed in the soft arm muscle, already
blotchy with purple and blue.  The woman felt a wish to show this
painful bruise to someone, to say lightly as if she were talking about
someone else, This is surely not a thing that really happens, is itP
But there was no one, and she smoothed down the rumpled linen.  That
morning she had set out from the hotel after a cold bath, and plenty of
hot coffee beastly as it was, feeling a little less ghastly after
sleep, for another visit to the Migrations Bureau.  The beggar woman
was sitting, back to the wall, knees drawn up in a profusion of ragged
skirts, eating a hot green pepper rolled in a tortilla.  She stopped
eating when she saw the American woman, transferred her food to her
left hand, scrambled up and came towards her prey with lean shanks
flying, her yellow eyes aimed like a weapon in her leather-colored
face.

"Give me a little charity at once in God's name," the beggar woman said
threateningly, rapping the foreign woman sharply on the elbow; who
remembered the pleasant, clear little thrill of righteous anger with
which she had answered in her best Spanish that she would certainly do
nothing of the sort.  It was then that the beggar woman, fiercely as a
pouncing hawk, had darted out her long hard claws, seized a fold of
flesh near the shoulder and wrung it, wrung it bitterly, her nails
biting into the skin; and instantly had fled, her bare feet spanking on
the pavement.  Well, it had been like a bad dream.  Naturally things
like that can't happen, said the woman in the blue dress, or at least,
not to me.  She drooped, rubbed her handkerchief over her face, and
looked at her watch.

The fat German in dusty black and his fat wife leaned their heads

together and spoke secretly, nodding in agreement.  They then crossed
the square with their lunch basket and their dog, and seated themselves
on the end of the bench opposite the motionless Indian.  They ate
slowly, taking glazed white paper off huge white sandwiches, drinking
turn about from the cover of a large thermos bottle.  The fat white dog
sat at their feet with his trusting mouth turned up, opening and
closing with a Flop over the morsels they gave him.  Solidly, gravely,
with dignity, they ate and ate, while the little Indian sitting near
them gave no sign; his shrunlen stomach barely moved with his light
breathing.  The German woman wrapped up what was left of the broken
food with housewifely fingers and left it lying on the bench near the
Indian.  He glanced at it once, quickly, and turned his head again.

The Germans with their dog and their basket came back to their table
and asked for one bottle of beer with two glasses.  The maimed beggar
rose from under the tree sniffing, and crawled towards the smell of
food.  Rising a little, he embraced the bundle with his leather covered
stumps and brought it down.  Leaning against the bench, he hunched over
and ate from the ground, gobbling and gulping.  The Indian sat
motionless, looking away.

The girl in the blue trousers reached out and patted the white bulldog
on the head and stroked him.  "That's a sweet dog," she said to the
German woman, who answered kindly but vaguely, not meeting the
stranger's eyes, "Oh, my poor Bebe, he is so good," and her English was
almost without accent, "and so patient, and I am only afraid sometimes
he may think he is being punished, with all this."  She poured a little
beer on her handkerchief and wiped his big face, tenderly, and almost
tenderly she ignored the unsightly, improperly dressed American girl.

The crop-haired young woman in the green gown startled everyone by
leaping to her feet screaming in German, "Oh, look what is happening!
Oh, what are they doing to him)" Her long arms flurried and pointed
towards the great tree in the square.

A half dozen small Indian men came padding across from out the shadow
of the church.  They carried light rifles under their arms, and they
moved with short light steps, not hurrying, towards the Indian sitting
on the bench.  He watched them approach with no change of expression;
their faces were without severity, impersonal, secret.  They stopped
before him, surrounded him; without a word or a glance or

pause he rose and went away with them, all noiseless in their ragged
sandals and white cotton drawers flapping around their ankles.

The travelers watched the scene with apathy as if sparing themselves a
curiosity that would never be satisfied.  Besides, what happened to
anyone in this place, yes, even to themselves, was no concern of
theirs.  "Don't trouble your head," said the pig-snouted man to the
green-clad girl, "that is nothing unusual here.  They're only going to
shoot him, after all!  Could be he stole a handful of chilis!  Or it
might be just a little question of village politics."

This remark roused the gaunt blond man with the huge hands and feet. He
unfolded his long body, uncrossed his legs and ranged his fixed scowl
upon the pudgy man.  "Yes," he said in German with a foreign accent,
his big voice rolling, "politics it may well be.  There is nothing else
here.  Politics and strikes and bombs.  Look how they must even bomb
the Swedish Consulate.  Even by accident as they say- a lie! Why the
Swedish Consulate of all places, may I ask?"

The pig-snouted man flew into a rage and answered in a loud common
voice, "Why not the Swedish Consulate, for a change?  Why should not
other people sometimes have a little trouble, too?  Why must it be
always the Germans who suffer in these damned foreign countries?"

The long rawboned man ignored the question.  He sank back, his white
eyelashes closed over his pale eyes, he drew the limeade before him
through the straw in a steady stream.  The Germans about stirred
uneasily, their features set hard in disapproval.  Untimely, unseemly,
their faces said prudishly; that is the kind of German who gives us all
bad reputations in strange lands.  The little man was flushed and
swollen, he seemed to be resenting some deep personal wrong.  There
followed a long, hot sweaty sun stricken silence; then movement, a
rising and pushing.  back of chairs, a gathering up of parcels, a slow
drift towards dispersal.  The ship was to sail at four, it was time to
go.

D'r.  Schumann crossed the deck with the ordered step of an old
military man and stood firmly planted near the rail, relaxed without
slackness, hands at his side, watching the straggling procession of
passengers ascending the gangplank.  He had a fine aquiline nose, a
serious well-shaped head, and two crookedly healed dark dueling scars
on his left cheek.  One of these was a "beauty," as the Germans call
it, the enviable slash from ear to mouth perfectly placed that must
once

have laid the side teeth bare.  Healed all these years, the scar still
had a knotty surface, a wide seam.  Dr.  Schumann carried it well, as
he carried his sixty years: both were becoming to him.  His light brown
eyes, leveled calmly upon a given point where the people approached and
passed, were without speculation or curiosity, but with an abstract
goodness and even sweetness in them.  He appeared to be amiable, well
bred and in perfect possession of himself, standing against a
background of light-haired, very young, rather undersized ship's
officers in white, and a crew of big solid blunt-faced sailors moving
about their duties, each man with the expressionless face and intent
manner of a thoroughly disciplined subordinate.

The passengers, emerging from the mildewed dimness of the customs
sheds, blinking their eyes against the blinding sunlight, all had the
look of invalids crawling into hospital on their last legs.  Dr.
Schumann observed one of the most extreme forms of hunchback he had
ever seen, a dwarf who, from above, appeared to have legs attached to
his shoulder blades, the steep chest cradled on the rocking pelvis, the
head with its long dry patient suffering face lying back against the
hump.  Just behind him a tall boy with glittering golden hair and a
sulky mouth pushed and jostled a light wheel chair along, in which sat
a small weary dying man with weak dark whiskers flecked with gray, his
spread hands limp on the brown rug over his knees, eyes closed.  His
head rolled gently with the movement of the chair, otherwise he gave no
sign of life.

A young Mexican woman, softened and dispirited by recent childbirth,
dressed in the elegant, perpetual mourning of her caste, came up
slowly, leaning on the arm of the Indian nurse who carried the baby,
his long embroidered robe streaming over her arm almost to the ground.
The Indian woman wore brightly jeweled earrings, and beneath her full,
gaily embroidered Pueblo skirt her small bare feet advanced and
retreated modestly.  A nondescript pair followed, no-colored parents of
the big girl walking between them, taller and heavier than either of
them, the three looking about with dull, confused faces.  Two Mexican
priests, much alike in their grim eyes and blue-black jaws, walked
briskly around the slow procession and gained the head of it.  "Bad
luck for dais voyage," said one young officer to another, and they both
looked discreetly away.  "Not as bad as nuns, though," said the second,
"it takes nuns to sink a ship!"

The four pretty, slatternly Spanish girls, their dark hair sleeked

down over their ears, thin-soled black slippers too short in the toes
and badly run over at high heels, took leisurely leave, with kisses all
around, of a half dozen local young men, who had brought flowers and
baskets of fruit.  Their own set of four wasp-wasted young men then
joined them, and they strolled up together, the girls casting glances
full of speculation at the row of fair-haired young officers.  The
twins, smeary in the face, eating steadily from untidy paper sacks of
sweets, followed them in a detached way.  An assortment of North
Americans, with almost no distinguishing features that Dr.  Schumann
could see, except that they obviously could not be other than
Americans, came next.  They were generally thinner and lighter-boned
than the Germans, but not so graceful as the Spaniards and Mexicans. He
also found it impossible to place them by class, as he could the
others; they all had curiously tense, preoccupied faces, yet almost
nothing of their characters was revealed in expressions.  A
middle-aged, prettyish woman in dark blue seemed very respectable, but
a large irregular bruise on her arm below her short sleeve, most likely
the result of an amorous pinch, gave her a slightly ribald look, most
unbecoming.  The girl in blue trousers had fine eyes, but her bold,
airy manner spoiled her looks for Dr.  Schumann, who believed that
modesty was the most beautiful feature a young girl could have.  The
young man beside her presented a stubborn, Roman-nosed profile, like a
willful, cold-blooded horse, his blue eyes withdrawn and secretive.  A
tall shambling dark young fellow, whom Dr.  Schumann remembered as
having embarked at some port in Texas, had gone ashore and was now
returning; he lounged along in the wake of the Spanish girls, regarding
them with what could only be described as a leer.

The crowd was still struggling upward when Dr.  Schumann lost interest
and moved away, the officers dispersed, and the dock workers who had
been loading the ship without haste began to shout and run back and
forth.  There remained luggage, children and adults not yet on board,
and those on board wandered about in confusion with the air of persons
who have abandoned something of great importance on shore, though they
cannot think what it is.  In straying groups, mute, unrelated, they
returned to the docks and stood about idly watching the longshoremen
hauling on the ropes of the loading cranes.  Shapeless bundles and
bales, badly packed bedsprings and mattresses, cheap looking sofas and
kitchen stoves, lightly crated pianos and old leather trunks were being
swung into the hold, along with a carload of Pueblo

tile and a few thousand bars of silver for England; a ton of raw
chicle, bundles of hemp, and sugar for Europe.  The ship was none of
those specialized carriers of rare goods, much less an elegant pleasure
craft coming down from New York, all fresh paint and interior
decoration, bringing crowds of prosperous dressed-up tourists with
money in their pockets.  No, the Vera was a mixed freighter and
passenger ship, very steady and broad-bottomed in her style, walloping
from one remote port to another, year in year out, honest, reliable and
homely as a German housewife.

The passengers examined their ship with the interest and the strange
dawning of affection even the ugliest ship can inspire, feeling that
whatever business they had was now transferred finally to her hold and
cabins.  They began to move back towards the gangplank: the screaming
girl in green, the fat pair with the bulldog, a small round German
woman in black with sleek brown braids and a heavy gold chain necklace,
and a short, worriedqooking German Jew lugging a heavy sample case.

At the latest possible moment, a bridal party appeared in a festival
flurry at the foot of the gangplank: a profusion of lace hats and
tender colored gauzy frocks for the women, immaculate white linen and
carnation buttonholes for the men.  It was a Mexican wedding party with
several North American girls among the bridesmaids.  The bride and
groom were young and beautiful, though at that moment they were worn
fine and thin and their faces were exhausted with their long ordeal,
which even yet was not quite ended.  The bridegroom's mother clung to
her son, weeping softly and deeply, kissing his cheek and murmuring
like a mourning dove, "O joy of my life, little son of my heart, can it
be true I have lost you?"

While his father supported her on his arm, she embraced her son, the
bridegroom kissed her, patted her heavily rouged and powdered cheeks
and whispered dutifully, "No, no, dear sweet little Mama, we shall be
back in three months."  The bridegroom's mother shrank at this, moaned
as if her child had struck her a mortal blow, and sobbing fell back
into the arms of: her husband.

The bride, in her bride like traveling dress, surrounded by her maids,
stood between her parents, each of them holding her by a hand, and
their three faces were calm, grave, and much alike.  They waited with
patience and a touch of severity as if for some tiresome but
indispensable ceremony to end; at last the bridesmaids, recalled to a
sense of duty,

rather shyly produced each a little fancy sort of basket of rice, and
began to scatter it about, fixed smiles on their lips only, eyes
nervous and watchful, feeling as they did that the moment for merriment
in this affair seemed rather to have passed.  At last the bride and
groom walked swiftly up the gangplank; almost at once it began to rise,
and the families and friends below formed a close group, waving.  The
bride and groom turned and waved once, a trifle wildly, to their
tormentors, then holding hands, almost running, they went straight
through the ship to the farther deck.  They arrived at the rail as if
it were a provided refuge, and stood leaning together, looking towards
the sea.

The ship shuddered, rocked and heaved, rolled slowly as the pulse of
the engines rose to a steady beat; the barking sputtering tugs nosed
and pushed at her sides and there appeared a slowly widening space of
dirty water between the ship and the heaving collision mats.  All at
once by a common movement as if the land they were leaving was dear to
them, the passengers crowded upon deck, lined along the rail, stared in
surprise at the retreating shore, waved and called and blew kisses to
the small lonely-looking clusters on the dock, who shouted and waved
back.  All the ships in harbor dipped their flags, the small band on
deck spanked into a few bars of "Adieu, mein kleiner Garde-Offizier,
adieu, adieu--" then folded up indifferently and disappeared without a
backward glance at Veracruz.

There emerged from the bar an inhumanly fat Mexican in a cherry colored
cotton shirt and sagging blue denim trousers, waving an immense stein
of beer.  He strode to the rail, elbowed his way between yielding
bodies, and burst into a bull bellow of song.  "Adios, Mexico, mi
tierra adorada!"  he roared, tunelessly, his swollen face a deeper red
than his shirt, the thick purple veins standing out on his great
sweating neck, his forehead and throat straining.  He waved the stein
and frowned sternly; his collar button flew off into the water, and he
tore open his shirt further to free his laboring breath.  "Adios, adios
vara stem pre he bawled urgently, and faintly over the oily-looking
waves came a small chorused echo, "Adios, adios!"  From the very center
of the ship rose a vast deep hollow moo, like the answer of a
melancholy sea cow.  One of the young officers came up quietly behind
the fat man and said in a low voice, in stiff Spanish, his schoolboy
face very firm, "Go below please where you belong.  Do you not see that
the ship has

sailed?  Third-class passengers are not allowed on the upper decks."

The bull-voiced man wheeled about and glared blindly at the stripling
for an instant.  Without answering he threw back his head and drained
his beer, and with a wide-armed sweep tossed the stein overboard. "When
I please," he shouted into the air, but he lumbered away at once,
scowling fiercely.  The young officer walked on as if he had not seen
or heard the fat man.  One of the Spanish girls, directly in his path,
smiled at him intensely, with glittering teeth and eyes.  He returned
her a mild glance and stepped aside to let her pass, blushing slightly.
A plain red-gold engagement ring shone on his left hand, the hand he
raised almost instinctively as if to ward her off.

The passengers, investigating the cramped airless quarters with their
old-fashioned double tiers of bunks and a narrow hard couch along the
opposite wall for the unlucky third corner, read the names on the door
plates- most of them German- eyed with suspicion and quick distaste
strange luggage piled beside their own in their cabins, and each
discovered again what it was he had believed lost for a while though he
could not name it--his identity  Bit by bit it emerged, travel-worn,
halfhearted but still breathing, from a piece of luggage or some
familiar possession in which he had once invested his pride of
ownership, and which, seen again in strange, perhaps unfriendly
surroundings, assured the owner that he had not always been a harassed
stranger, a number, an unknown name and a caricature on a passport.
Soothed by this restoration of their self-esteem, the passengers looked
at themselves in mirrors with dawning recognition, washed their faces
and combed their hair, put themselves to rights and wandered out again
to locate the Ladies' (or Gentlemen's) toilets; the bar and smoking
room; the barber and hairdresser; the bathrooms, very few.  Most of the
passengers concluded that, considering the price of the tickets, the
ship was no better than she ought to be- rather a poor, shabby affair,
in fact.

All around the deck the stewards were setting out the reclining chairs,
lashing them to the bar along the wall, slipping name cards into the
metal slots on the headrests.  The tall girl in the green dress found
hers almost at once and dropped into it limply.  The big-boned man with
the frowning brow who had been angry about the bombing of the Swedish
Consulate already sprawled in the chair beside her.  She waved her
little head about, cackled with laughter at him and said shrilly,
"Since we are going to sit together, I may as well tell you

at once my name.  I am Fraulein Lizzi Spockenkieker, and I live in
Hanover.  I have been visiting with my aunt and uncle in Mexico City
and oh, with what delight I find myself on this good German boat going
back to Hanover again!"

The bony man without moving seemed to shrink down into his loose, light
clothes.  "Arne Hansen, at your service, my dear Fraulein,"

he said, as if the words were being extracted from him with pincers.
"Oh, Danish" she shrieked in delight.  "Swedish," he said, flinching
visibly.

"What is the difference?"  screamed Lizzi, tears rising mysteriously to
her eyes, and she laughed as if she were in pain.  Hansen uncrossed his
long legs, braced his hands upon his chair arms as though he would
rise, then fell back in despair, his eyes almost disappearing in his
knotted frown.  "It is not a good ship," he said glumly, as if talking
to himself.

"Oh, how can you say that?"  cried Lizzi.  "It is a beautiful,
beautiful --oh, here again is Herr Rieber, look!"  and she leaned far
out and flung both arms above her head as signal to the advancing
pig-snouted little man.  Herr Rieber returned the salute gallantly, his
eyes mischievously twinkling.  He speeded up at sight of her, his
trousers stretched tight over his backsides hard and round as apples,
and over his hard high belly.  His pace was triumphant, he was a little
short legged strutting cock.  The afternoon light shone on the stubby
light bristles of his shaven skull full of ridges.  He carried a dirty
raincoat, with a folded newspaper in one pocket.

Herr Rieber, giving no sign that he had ever seen Hansen before,
choosing to ignore the little scene on the terrace at Veracruz, stopped
and peered at the card above Hansen's head and spoke, first in French,
then in Russian, then in Spanish and at last in German, saying the same
thing in each language: "I am sorry to trouble you, but this is my
chair."

Hansen raised one eyebrow, wrinkled his nose as if Herr Rieber smelled
badly or worse than badly.  He unfolded himself and rose, saying in
English, "I am a Swede," and walked away.

Herr Rieber, very pink in the face, his snout quivering, shouted after
him valiantly, "So, a Swede?  Is that a reason why you should take my
chair?  Well, in such things, I can be a Swede too."

Lizzi cocked her head at him and almost sang: "He did not mean you any
harm.  You were not sitting in your chair, after all."

Herr Rieber said fondly, "Since it is next to yours, I want it always
to be free for me."  Grunting a little, he eased himself down, took the
old copy of the Frankfurter Zeitung out of the raincoat pocket and
shuffled it about restlessly, his underlip pursed.  Lizzi said, "It is
not a nice way to begin a long voyage, quarreling."

Herr Rieber put down his paper, shoved the raincoat away.  He eyed her
sweetly, roguishly.  "It was not, and you well know it, about the chair
that I quarrel with that big ugly fellow," he told her.  Lizzi
instantly grew more roguish than he.

"Ah, you men," she screamed joyously, "you are all alike!"  She leaned
over and whacked him three times on the skull with a folded paper fan.
Herr Rieber was all ready for a good frolic.  How he admired and
followed the tall thin girls with long scissor-legs like storks
striding under their fluttering skirts, with long narrow feet on the
ends of them.  He tapped her gently on the back of her hand with his
forefinger, invitingly and with such insinuation she whacked him harder
and faster, her teeth gleaming with pleasure, until the top of his head
went florid.

"Ah, what a wicked girl," he said, dodging punishment at last but still
beaming at her, unvanquished- indeed, quite stimulated.  She rose and
pranced along the deck.  He rolled out of his chair and bounced after
her.  "Let's have coffee and cake," he cried eagerly, "they are serving
it in the bar now."  He licked his lips.

Two inordinately dressed-up young Cuban women, frankly ladies of trade,
had been playing cards together in the bar for an hour before the ship
sailed.  They sat with crossed legs in rolled-top gauzy stockings to
show their powdered knees.  Red-stained cigarettes sagged from their
scarier full mouths, smoke curled towards their narrowed eyes and
heavily beaded lashes.  The elder was a commanding beauty; the younger
was smaller, thinner, apparently in frail health.  She observed the
other attentively and played her cards as if she hardly dared to win.
The tall shambling young Texan, whose name was William Denny, came in
and sat in a corner of the bar and watched them with a wary, knowing
eye.  The ladies ignored him; though they paused in their game now and
then to sip their pousse-cafts and glance haughtily about the
comfortably crowded bar, they never once glanced at Denny, who felt it
as a personal slight.  He rapped sharply on the bar as if calling the
barman, still staring at them, a mean cold little

smile starting in his face.  Chili Queens.  He knew their kind.  He
had not lived most of his life in Brownsville, Texas, for nothing. They
were no treat to him.  He rapped again, noisily.

"You have your beer, sir," said the barman.  "Anything else, please?"
The ladies glanced at him then, their contemptuous eyes fixed upon him
as if he were a drunken hoodlum making trouble in a bar.  His gaze
quivered, his smile vanished; he dived into his mug of beer, drank,
lighted a cigarette, leaned over and examined his own shoes intently,
fumbled for his handkerchief, which wasn't there, and at last he gave
up and broke for the open air, like a man on urgent business.  There
seemed nowhere to go, though, and nothing much to do, unless he went
back to his cabin to start unpacking a few things.  Might as well try
to settle down.

Already he was beginning to feel exhausted from his efforts to maintain
his identity among strange languages and strange lands.  Challenged as
he felt himself to be, to prove his own importance in every separate
encounter, he was badly confused as to what appearance that importance
should assume.  The question presented itself not for the first time
but most sharply when he reached Veracruz.  In the small town on the
border where his father was a prominent citizen, mayor for many years
and rich from local real estate, the lower classes consisted of
Mexicans and Negroes, that is, greasers and niggers, with a few polacks
and wops but not enough to notice; and he had always relied simply on
his natural superiority of race and class, backed by law and custom. In
Veracruz, surrounded by a coastal race of NegroIndianSpanish,
yellow-eyed, pugnacious people, whose language he had never troubled to
learn though he had heard it all his life, he had taken the proper
white man's attitude towards them and they had responded with downright
insolence.  He had begun by feeling broad minded after all, this was
their country, dirt and all, and they could have it- he intended to
treat them right while he was there.  He had been made to realize his
mistake almost at once: when he was polite to them, they thought he was
patronizing them; when he was giving a perfectly legitimate order, they
let him see he was trying to treat them like slaves; if he was
indifferent and let things go, they despised him and played tricks on
him.  Well, damn it all, they are inferior-just look at them, that is
all you need.  And it won't do to let the bars down for a minute.  At
the Migrations, he had called the little

clerk Pancho, just as back home he would have called a taxi driver Mac
or a railway porter George, by way of showing good will.  The little
nigger- all those coast Mexicans had nigger blood, somebody had told
him- stiffened as if he had been goosed, his face turned purple and his
eyes red.  He had stared at Denny and said something very short and
quick in his own lingo, then in good English had asked Denny to sit
down, kindly, for a few minutes until the papers could be filled out.
Denny, like a fool, had sat there streaming with sweat and the flies
buzzing in his face, while the clerk looked after a whole line of
people who had come in later than he.  It came over him slowly that he
was being given the hot-foot.  That taught him something though.  He
had got up and gone to the head of the line and shouldered in towards
the clerk and said very distinctly and slowly, I'll take those papers
now," and the clerk instantly produced and stamped them and handed them
over without even a glance at Denny.  That was what he should have done
in the first place and the next time he'd know.

Opening the door of his cabin, he noted three names instead of two.
Herr David Scott, said the sign, Herr Wilhelm Denny, and surprise Herr
Karl Glocken.  He looked in upon a crowded scene.  The tight faced
medium-sized young man he had seen running around Veracruz with that
bitchy-looking girl in the blue pants was cleaning the wash hand basin
with something that smelled like carbolic acid.  There were two strange
suitcases and a battered leather bag on Denny's berth, the lower.  His
ticket called for the lower, and he was going to have it; no use
starting out letting himself get gypped.  The young man raised his eyes
briefly, said, "How do you do?"

"Fairly," said Denny, moving inside one step.  The young man went on
washing the basin.  Seated upon a footstool, Herr Glocken was fumbling
among the contents of a clumsy duffel bag.  He was the most terribly
deformed human being Denny had ever seen, except perhaps the maimed
beggar in the square at Veracruz.  Bending over as he was, his body was
so close to the floor his long arms could stretch further than his
out-spread legs.  He got up with an apologetic air, and stood almost
four feet tall, his long sad face cradled in a hunch high as his head,
and backed into that end of the lower berth not occupied by the
luggage.  "Hi be out of here in just a minute," he said, with a pained
smile.  He then eased himself down upon the edge of the mattress among
the luggage and appeared to faint.  David Scott

and William Denny exchanged unwilling looks of understanding; they
were obviously stuck with this fellow, and there was nothing to be done
about it that either could see at the moment.

"We'd better call the steward," said David Scott.

Herr Glocken opened his eyes and shook his head, waving one long hand
limply.  "No, no," he said, in a dry flat voice, "don't trouble
yourselves.  It is nothing.  I am only resting a little."

"Well, so long," said Denny, backing away, "I'll be in later."

"Here, let me move these," said David, laying hold of the suitcases.
There was no place for them under the berth.  Denny's luggage was
already there.  The closet was too small to hold them.  He put them on
the divan bed for the present.

Herr Glocken said, "I have no right here, I belong in the upper berth,
but how am I to get there?"

David said, "You take the divan and I'll take the upper."

"I don't know how I'll sleep there, it's so narrow," said Herr Glocken,
and David, measuring the curve of the monstrous body by the width of
the couch, saw painfully what he meant.  He looked away from both and
said, "Better stay where you are, then- don't you think?"  he said to
Denny.

There was silence while David looked for a glass to hold his
toothbrushes.

Though his ticket called for berth number one, plainly, Denny, with a
decency that surprised David, offered the lower berth to Herr Glocken,
and Herr Glocken accepted with eager thanks.

Herr Glocken fell asleep almost at once.  He lay on his side, facing
the light, knees drawn up to chin, near the edge of the bed to make
room for the curved spine.  His thin dry hair was rumpled like
sunburned corn silk, the great misshapen face closed in deathly
melancholy.  The toes of his shoes turned up, there were patches in the
soles.

David observed the clutter of small articles belonging to Denny that
already took up most of the small shelf above the washbasin.  Denny had
hastened to wash and comb on coming aboard, and had left as much
disorder as if he were at home.  "Eats yeast," said David silently, and
disgust was added to his deep sense of wrong.  He had been assured by
the ticket clerk in Mexico there would be only two passengers to a
cabin.  "Smokes a pipe, and reads improving literature."  He removed
from the couch a fully illustrated clothbound book entitled

Recreational Aspects of Sex as Mental Prophylaxis, with a subhead, A
Guide to True Happiness in Life.  "Jesus," said David.

The smell of disinfectant could not down the other fetid smells of
unclean human garments, the rancid smell of Herr Glocken's shoes, the
old mildewed smell of the cabin itself.  The ship rolled a little as
she met the first waves of the sea outside the harbor.  David saw his
face in the mirror.  He looked greenish, he felt qualmy, the floor
visibly upended under him and his gorge heaved spontaneously.  He
rushed for the door, almost falling over Herr Glocken's duffel bag, and
made for the upper deck.  Another outrage: he had been promised a cabin
on the promenade deck, but he was actually on Deck C, with a porthole
instead of a window.

The warm slow winds were clean and sweet and so moist they blew like
soft steam against his face.  The deeply slanted late afternoon sun
cast long shafts of light into the sea, dark blue in the depths, clear
green fluted with white at the surface.  David saw Jenny Brown
strolling towards him, the first time since they had separated to find
their cabins.  She had changed from the blue trousers to a white linen
dress and.  white leather sandals, with no stockings; she was walking
with a man, a strange man--David had never seen him before--as if he
were an old friend.  He noted with a pang that the man was good looking
in a detestable sort of way, like a sports jacket or whiskey
advertisement, with a typically smug, conceited German face.  Where and
how had Jenny picked him up in this short time?  He stood at the rail
and pretended not to see them, then turned casually, he hoped, as they
drew near.

"Why hello- David?"  said Jenny absent-mindedly with a vague air of
imperfect recognition.  "Are you all right?"  and they moved by without
pausing.

Her wide light hazel eyes had the look of blind diffused excitement he
knew best; she was probably talking already about the most personal
things, telling her thoughts such as they were: for even when Jenny
seemed intelligent, or sincere, he still distrusted her female mind,
crooked and cloudy by nature: she was no doubt asking questions
designed to lead the man to talk about himself, meaning to trap him
into small confidences and confessions that later she could use as a
weapon against him when needed.  Already David felt she was building up
a case against this famous foreigner which she would have well
prepared

when the time came to quarrel.  He watched her small, neat figure,
harmonious as a little classic statue; the round head with the knot of
black hair, the rather stiff, modest walk, which managed to conceal or
misrepresent everything he believed he knew about Jenny.  She might, by
that walk, be a prim little schoolteacher who kept in mind that she
must carry her shoulders straight and her hips smoothly.

David looked at his watch and decided it was time for the first drink
of the day, the hour towards which he lived of late, and went in the
bar, feeling all at once surrounded and smothered by the sea, which he
hated, and which now filled him with a quiet deep horror.  There was no
place, no place at all to go.

This whole wild escapade to Europe was Jenny'sidea; he had never
intended to leave Mexico at all, but he had let her lead him by the
nose, as usual.  Still, not altogether, he reflected, when the first
slug of whiskey had begun to take hold.  She planned, taking his assent
for granted, to go first to France; he at once determined, if he went
anywhere at all, to go to Spain.  They had two or three violent
quarrels about it, and then compromised on Germany, which neither of
them wanted to see.  That is, they drew one from three named straws of
different lengths N he held the straws and Jenny drew one--and the
shortest straw, named Germany, came out.  They were both so bitterly
disappointed they quarreled again, and then drank a little too much,
and then made love fiercely half the night as if in a revengeful rage
against whatever it was that kept them apart; and all of it had settled
nothing.  They both stuck obstinately to the chance decision, so here
they were--yet even so, Jenny had her plans.  She came in one afternoon
announcing gaily that in case they changed their minds, they could
still get visas for France from the French Consul at Vigo.  The German
ship's agent at North German Lloyd's had sworn to her that this was a
fact.

"What about just being allowed to get off at Vigo for Spain?"  asked
David.

"I'm not going to Spain, remember?"  said Jenny.

Well, if she felt better with an ace up her sleeve, let her.  She might
go to France if she liked.  He would go to Spain.  She'd find out in
time whether she was going to have it all her own way.

"Bitte," said Mrs.  Treadwell, timidly, thinking she might as well
begin brushing up on her German, to the small round woman with

the glossy braids and the gold necklace who was having tea at a small
table by herself.  Opposite her was the only empty chair.  The bar was
crowded, it looked festival enough, but the silence was rather odd Even
those persons obviously related in whatever way sat mute as if with
strangers.

An amiable but vacant little smile spread over the plump fresh face
with its soft features.  A competent white hand was lifted, palm out,
gently.  "No, no," she said, "don't trouble yourself.  I speak English
for years now.  I taught Englisheven- do sit down please- in the German
school in Guadalajara.  My husband taught there also.  But
mathematics."

"Tea, please," said Mrs.  Treadwell to the steward.  She had changed
from dark blue to pale gray linen, with still shorter sleeves, and the
disgraceful-looking big blotch on her arm was quite livid.

"I am Frau Otto Schmitt," said the round woman, stirring her tea and
dropping more sugar in it.  "I was from Nurnberg in my youth and I am
returning there at last.  It was to have been my great happiness, my
husband's long-looked-for joy, but now it is only grief and
disappointment after all; and I am tempted though I know it is a sin
sometimes to ask myself--what is life but that, after all?"  She spoke
in a low voice without complaint, but as if she wished even the merest
chance acquaintance to identify her at once with her grief as the only
fact of any importance to be known about her.  Her pale blue eyes asked
frankly for pity.

Mrs.  Treadwell shuddered with a painful twinge of foreboding.  "Even
here," she thought.  "How inevitable.  I shall spend this voyage
listening to someone's sorrows, I shall sit down and have a good cry
with somebody, no doubt, before this trip is over.  Well, this is a
fine beginning."

"Where are you going?"  asked Frau Schmitt, after a sufficient pause in
which the expected question leading to the story of her afflictions had
not been asked.

"To Paris," said Mrs.  Treadwell, "back to Paris."

"Ah, you were only visiting in Mexico'

"You have friends there?"

"No."

Frau Schmitt's water-blue gaze transferred itself to Mrs.  Treadwell's
arm.  "You have bruised yourself badly," she said, with mild
interest.

Mrs.  Treadwell said, "The astonishing fact is, a beggar woman pinched
me."

"Why?"

"Because I would not give her an alms," said Mrs.  Treadwell, thinking
for the first time how unusually selfish and stupid that refusal
sounded, just told flatly.  No decent person refused a beggar in
Mexico; like everyone she knew, she carried by habit a handful of
copper coins meant only for them.  This was no beggar, but an impudent
gypsy- the rap on the elbow!  Still, the whole thing was somehow
shameful to her; how could she have let a low creature like that
stupefy her so?  The thing was not to be explained, even to herself.
"Naturally I don't expect anyone to believe it," she said, selecting a
thin dry wafer with her tea.

"Why not?"  asked Frau Schmitt, childishly.

"Well, anything can happen, I know that," said Mrs.  Treadwell, "but I
always find myself thinking, not to me."  Now why had she said that? It
gave such an opening for more whys and why-nots.  Uneasily she glanced
about, and saw instantly that, on the other side of the bar, with
cocktails before them, the American girl Jane Brown was already seated
with the only presentable-looking man on the boat.  She turned back to
the dull little thing across from her, accepting this voyage and this
society as a long boredom like any other, not to be denied, posed or
ignored, but to be fled from, lightly from point to point; moment by
moment she would find a split second of relief from boredom in the very
act of flight which gave her the fleeting illusion of invisibility.

"Anything at all can happen to any of us at any time," said Frau
Schmitt with easy certainty.  "My husband- how long has it been that we
have hoped to go back to Ntirnberg together?  But now I am going alone,
though his coffin is in the hold of this ship.  Oh it smothers me to
think of it!  My husband died six weeks and two days ago today at seven
o'clock this morning..."

It is always death, thought Mrs.  Treadwell, for this sentimental kind
it can never be less than death.  Nothing else could pierce through
that fat to a living nerve.  Still I must say something.  "Fhat is a
very terrible thing," she said, and was dismayed to find that in spite
of her unfriendly thought, she really meant it, she pitied this woman's
sorrow; and that death, there beside them at the table, death was what
they had in common.

Frau Schmitt's soft mouth turned down at the corners.  She stirred her
tea and said nothing.  Her eyelids turned pink.  She was quite alone
all at once in her own private luxury of grief, once she had devoured
the pink-iced tea cake of sympathy.  Mrs.  Treadwell, leaving half her
tea, quietly made her first escape of the voyage.

On her way to her cabin she spoke and smiled, in the same tone and the
same smile for each, to the ship's doctor, noting his fine old Mensur
scar; to the taffy-haired young officer whose name or rank she did not
know and would never trouble to learn (though before the voyage was
over, she would be kissed, seriously, by that very young man); to an
earnest-faced, stiMy laced stewardess; and to a browbeaten little cabin
boy, who stared back in silence with offended eyes.  The name below
hers on her cabin door smack her as too funny not to be unlucky:
Fraulein Lizzi Spockenkieker: Spookpeeper?and she wondered rather
lightly which of the numerous unpromising-looking females on board she
might be.

Presently as she was arranging her things on the narrow shelf of her
small closet, smoothing multicolored tissue paper over
perishable-looking wear, shaking out pleated silks and setting gold and
silver and satin slippers in a row, she smiled again into the garments
and said "Griiss Gott" without turning when she heard someone come in.
it was the tall girl with the shrill voice- playmate of that dreadful
little fat man.  Mrs.  Treadwell had a thin tremor of nerves all over,
a slight cold shudder from head to foot.  She smiled even more amiably,
unseen, and became very absorbed in her occupation.

After a brief whirl about the room, during which a cloud of musky
cologne water mingled with the thick air, Fritilein Speckenkieker took
herself away, leaving the door open.  Mrs.  Treadwell closed it,
shutting out the sound of voices in the cabin just off hers at an
angle, where the name plate read Baumgartner.

The woman Baumgartner was scolding vigorously a complaining,
weak-voiced little boy.  Ah, family life, good wholesome German family
life, thought Mrs.  Treadwell cheerfully.  The very notion was so
suffocating Mrs.  Treadwell put her head out of the porthole and
breathed deeply.

"Mother," said Hans again, as soon as he dared, sitting on the edge of
the divan trying to keep out of her way, "Mother, may I take off my
clothes?"

Frau Baumgarmer closed both hands into fists and shook them above her
head.  "Have I not told you," she said, in fresh exasperation "that you
cannot take off your clothes until I give you something else to put on?
 And I have not time now.  Don't ask me again."

The child in his prison of stitched and embroidered buckskin, a Mexican
riding dress meant for the cold mountain country, writhed with the
itching of heat rash and salt sweat.  "You may keep on what you've got
until I open your luggage," she told him, stubbornly, going on with her
search for her husband's shirts.  "I have everything to do and I cannot
do everything at once."  She loosed her wrath upon him.  "Be quiet, or
I'll punish you!"  She raised her hand, flat and threatening.

He collapsed sobbing, streaming; there were dark wet streaks in the
wrinkles of his leather trousers.  "I'm dying," he told her, in a
fainting voice, his freckles looking like spots of iodine on his pale
skin.

"Dying!"  said his mother contemptuously.  "A big boy like you talking
such nonsense.  Wait till your father sees you like this."  She
rummaged, orderly even in her haste and discomfort, through the layers
of folded things, stopping to push her damp hair off her forehead.  She
was pale too, flabby and wet down the spine and in the armpits; she
could feel the sweat running down her legs, her arms shone wetly
through the thin dark stuff of her dress.  "I suppose you think your
mother is not tired and suffering too?  Do you think you are the only
one?  Instead of whining and complaining and making my troubles worse,
get up from there and stop sniveling and help me with these
suitcases."

"Mayn't I just take off my jacket?"  he persisted hopelessly, wiping
his nose on the back of his hand, shedding tears again in spite of
himself.

"So- take it off then," she said.  "I see you are still just a baby and
I shall give you a bottle to nurse- a bottle with a rubber nipple,
with- ilk and sugar, and you shall have nothing else for your supper,"
she went on, beginning to enjoy her cruelty, the pleasant feeling that
she could hurt his pride even if he had won in the matter of the
jacket.  He had no pride whatever he stripped off the jacket instantly,
the air from the porthole blew over him and the gooseflesh rose all
over him deliciously.  His face cleared, and he gazed at his mother
grate fully with a deep sigh of bliss.

Wait till I tell your father how you worry me," she said, but in a

softer voice, "and if I see you being a crybaby again, you know what
you will get."

He waited timidly in the corner at the head of the divan, yearning for
kindness, hoping his beautiful good mother would come back soon.  She
vanished in this frowning scolding stranger, who blazed out at him when
he least expected it, struck him on the hands, threatened him, seemed
to hate him.  His head drooped, his hands hung beside him, he gazed
from under his scanty light brows, not afraid, but waiting.  She got
up, pulled her skirts straight, saw him clearly, and was filled with
pity and remorse.

"Well, my little one, my Hans," she said tenderly, and kissing her
finger she laid it gently on his forehead.  "Now wash your face and
hands, wash well, wrists and neck too!  and put on your knit jumper and
shorts and we will go and have some cold raspberry juice.  But hurry. I
will wait outside."  As if she had never been cross, she smiled upon
him most lovingly.  In the confusion of his feelings, Hans could have
wept again, but the cold water on his face stopped his tears.

Frau Rittersdorf, on Deck A, took advantage of the absence of her cab
inmate to establish her prior rights and privileges as to space and
choice of bed.  Her ticket specified the upper berth, but Frau
Rittersdorf had taken a good look at little Frau Otto Schmitt, and saw
at once that the situation would be easy to control.  She called for
vases and set out carefully the two enormous floral offerings she had
sent herself, one of pale pink roses, one of gardenias, bought in
Veracruz, wrapped in wet cotton, and carrying cards attached by silver
ribbons: "To my dearest Nannerl, from her Johann."  "To the gnadige
Frau Rittersdorf with greetings.  Karl von Ettler."

They looked well, and it was not really a deception as those
interesting friends would have been happy to send her flowers on this
as on many another occasion, except for the lamentable circumstance
that they were both dead--yet again, so recently departed both of them,
she still could not quite realize their loss, and these flowers did
almost give her the feeling that they were still alive.  In the old
days they had sent more than flowers, God remember them both.  She
crossed herself several times although she was a Lutheran.  It was a
gesture she felt becoming to her, and it warded off bad luck.

She set out two silver and cut-crystal bottles of perfume, "Garden of
Araby" and "Souvenir d'Amour," and fastened a quilted silk contrivance
for containing her silver-backed brushes and mirror, comb, nail file
and shoehorn on the right hand side of the washbasin, the most
convenient spot.  She did her hair well, and dressed slowly.  She had
come on board early to avoid the nuisance of mingling with the crowd,
which appeared to be rather inferior in tonic.  Taking her mirror, she
regarded her profile with approval.  She had many times been called a
beauty and she deserved it.  She was beautiful now, say what you like.
Sitting a moment, she opened a large notebook of red and gilt
Florentine stamped leather with a gold pencil attached and began to
write:

"So in a way, let me admit, this adventure- for is not all life an
adventure?--has not ended as I hoped, yet nothing is changed for the
worse.  Indeed I may yet see the all-guiding Will of my race in it.  A
German woman should not marry into a dark race, even if the candidate
is of: high Spanish blood, of the ruling caste, of sufficient wealth
There are those fatal centuries in Spain when all too insidiously
Jewish and Moorish blood must certainly have crept in- who knows what
else?  That I entertained the notion for a moment is no doubt a
weakness of which I should be ashamed.  Yet, surrounded as I was by
foreign influences, soft persuasions of friends, good Germans whose
counsels I respected, alone as I am in the world and somewhat reduced
in means, perhaps I should not be too severely censured.  After all, I
am a woman, I need the firm but tender guidance of a husband, whose
authority shall sustain me, whose principles shall be my--"

Frau Rittersdorf paused.  Inspiration had ceased, the next word would
not come.  She knew well there is ever and always only one true way of
looking at any question, and she had always looked at everything
exactly as she should, as she had been taught.  She had said and
thought all this so many times, why say and think it again?  She closed
her eyes and fell into a daydream of the long, dark, severe yet benign
face of Don Pedro, with its air of remote nobility; hair graying
slightly at the temples; around his presence the aura of Spanish wealth
and Spanish pride, based soundly on a large Mexican brewery--oh why
should this all rise again to plague her?  Why had it seemed so likely
at one time that he would ask her hand in marriage?  Her dead husband's
cousins in Mexico City, also brewers, had believed that he would; her
dear friend Herr Stumpfen the Consul had been certain of it', she
herself had gone so far as to choose- in her mind- the style of her
announcement cards... She clenched her teeth slightly, opened her

eyes, closed the book.  The dinner bugle sounded with a fine martial
clamor as if calling heroes to the battlefield.  Frau Rittersdorf rose
instantly, a girlish eager light in her eyes.  She would of course be
seated at the Captain's table.

"Ah, my God, there goes the bugle, we shall be late," said Frau
Professor Hutten to her husband, but she continued to hold a bath towel
under Be-B-e's chin.  Herr Professor Hutten with torn newspapers was
wiping up a mess in the near corner rather ineffectually.  Be-Be, his
big white bulldog face the very picture of humiliation, rolled his eyes
and heaved again into the towel.

"My God, my God," said Frau Hutten in patient despair, "seasick
already, what shall we do?"

"He was seasick before, when we went to Yucatin, nearly all the way,
and from the first moment, if you remember," said the Professor,
rolling up the soiled newspapers and standing there before her in
majestic benevolence, as if he were getting ready to address his
classes.  "We need not look for any radical change in his organic
constitution as time goes on.  As a puppy, if you recall, he was easily
upset, he could not keep his bottle down if he was in the least
agitated; and so he is now, and so," concluded the Professor, "no doubt
he will continue with perhaps some increasing synptoms of the sort, to
the end."

His wife's distress was if anything increased by this prospect.  "But
how can I leave him in this condition?"  she inquired.  She was sitting
on the floor, a solid mound of flesh, Bebe sprawled beside her, and
they were both equally helpless.  "I cannot get up until you come back,
either," she reminded him, "my knee-"

"You are in no circumstances to forgo your dinner," the Professor told
her, firmly.  "I will take your place at his side, and you are to have
your food, which otherwise you will miss greatly later in the
evening."

"But my dear, you will starve instead, think of that," said Frau Hut
ten, gazing up at him gratefully.

"A small matter," said her husband.  "In fact, I shall not in the least
starve, dear Kathe; one does not starve for missing only a meal; one
merely goes a bit hungry, which is not always the greatest misfortune.
In fact it is possible for man to go without nourishment for forty
days; we now have scientific confirmation of the word of Holy Writ.
More especially so, I dare say, if the subject has flesh to spare,
plenty of water, and perhaps a little stimulant of some kind at
intervals.... However, none of this will be necessary.  At the worst,
you might have them send me a little something on a tray.  Better, if
we should fold a fresh towel under Bebee's head, with plenty of
newspapers underneath, he will do very well by himself for let us say
an hour."

Frau Hutten nodded.  She lifted Bebe's head and examined him.  He
seemed more at ease.  "Don't think your little Vati and Mutti are
deserting you, my precious one," she told him in round maternal tones. 
"We are only going for a little while."  The Professor hooked both his
forearms under her armpits, from the back, hauled her up with the
expertness of long practice, steadied her while she got her balance,
and then carried out his own proposed measures for the care of Bebe,
who seemed very little interested in them or in his surroundings.

"Ah," sighed his wife, leaning her head briefly on his bowed shoulder,
"it is all very difficult."

"We will find ways and means," said the Professor, reassuringly.  Bebe
was going to be a problem, though, if not a complete nuisance, as
always, he could see that.  A hard thought which the Professor rebuked
himself for innerly, but could not deny.  "Away with us before the soup
is cold," he exclaimed with the false gaiety of a guilty conscience.

The big girl Elsa Lutz and her parents Herr and Frau Heinrich Lutz were
taking their first stroll in dull leisure around the deck.  Elsa
towered over her rather weedy elders, but walked between them, their
obedient child, holding each by a hand.  They stopped and peered
downward through an iron grating which rewarded them with a sight of
the steerage feeding quarters.  There were rows of narrow trestles
loaded with food, and long benches ranged beside them.  Cooking smells
rose warmly, the people were coming in slowly and seating themselves.
They recognized the billowing back and bowed head of the fat man in the
cherry-colored shirt, already deep in his dinner, helping himself
freely from large platters of substantial food in a half circle round
his plate.

"Well, God bless us," said Herr Lutz in some surprise, and he put on
his spectacles for a closer look.  "Why, how can they make any profit
if they set a table like that?"  He was a Swiss, descendant of a long
line of hotel keepers and he had run a hotel of his own in Mexico; his
interest was entirely professional.

"Fried potatoes," he murmured, "there must be a pound of them

on his plate.  A whole braised pig's knuckle, with fried onions, red
sweet-sour cabbage and split-pea puree- well, true it's none of it on
the expensive side, yet it all costs something.  And coffee.  Fruit
besides, and Appelstrudel no, they can't keep it up and break even.
Look how that fellow eats!  It makes me hungry to watch him."

His wife, a dumpy plain woman with a roll of faded dry hair bristling
with wire hairpins, observed the scene with her habitual expression,
long ago settled into a blend of constant disapproval and righteous
ill-humor.  "It is only to make a show in the beginning," she remarked.
"They will begin to economize on all of us before the trip is over.  A
new broom," she said, "sweeps clean."

"Ha, ha," laughed her husband, "you mean a new customer eats clean."
His daughter joined his laughter dutifully but a little uneasily; his
wife treated the joke with the contempt it merited, keeping her face
still long enough for him to see exactly what she thought of his
nonsense.  He continued his laughter long enough to let her see that he
could enjoy his little joke without her.

"But Papa," said Elsa, leaning again over the grating, "hadn't you
noticed another thing?  The third class is empty, almost, only a dozen
passengers, and yet they would not sell us third-class tickets.  Don't
you think it was very wrong of the clerk in Mexico City to tell us
there was no room in third class for us?"

"Well, yes," admitted her father, "in one way.  In another, very good
business.  Here we are, first-class tickets and all, they have made
already more than three hundred fifty dollars on us; you turn that into
reichs marks now and you have some real money.... "

"But there must be some other reason besides," said Elsa.

"Oh yes, there are always a lot of good reasons and they know them all,
for cheating us," said Frau Lutz.  "I wish you might have learned some
of those reasons for your own use," she told her husband, and long
years of deeply cherished, never-to-be-settled grudges lay in her tone.
The three walked on, a family clumsiness in their movements, eyes
straight ahead and dull with small anxieties.

"Answer me one thing, my poor wife," said Herr Lutz in a mild,
reasoning voice which he knew exasperated his wife more than anything
else.  "Did we do so badly in Mexico after all?  In any sense of the
word?  Did we by any stretch of your imagination fail?  I think not."

"I no longer care what you think," said Frau Lutz.

"Even for you, that is going a little far," said Herr Lutz.  "And just
the same it doesn't keep me from thinking.  And sometime maybe when you
happen to be thinking you might think about how we're going home, all
in good health, with enough money, honestly earned, to start our own
little hotel in St.  Gallen."

"Yes, after all these years," said his wife, drearily.  "Yes, now when
it is too late, when nothing will be the same, when Elsa is grown up
and a stranger to her own people--oh think what trouble we had to keep
her from speaking Spanish first, before her mother tongue!  Yes, now of
course, we can go back in style, and set up in business and feel
important.  What for?"

"As for feeling important," said Herr Lutz, "let us wait and see."
"Mama," said Elsa timidly, trying to change the subject, "my cabin mate
is that American girl who came on board with that light-haired young
man.  I thought they were married, didn't you?  But he is in one cabin
and she another."

"I am sorry to hear all this," said her mother, severely.  "I had hoped
you might be with an older woman, somebody respectable.  That girl, I
don't like her looks or her ways.  Pantaloons in the street, imagine!
And is she really traveling with a man who is not her husband?"

"Well," said Elsa, uncertainly, seeing that this topic was a failure
also, "I suppose so.  But she is in a separate cabin, after all."

"I hardly see the difference," said her mother.  "I am very sorry.  Now
listen carefully to me.  You are to be always very reserved with that
girl.  Do not take her advice or follow her example in the smallest
thing.  Treat her with perfect coldness, don't take up with her at all.
Never be seen on deck with her.  Don't talk to her or listen when she
talks.  You are in very bad company, and I shall try to have your cabin
changed."

"But who would I be with then?"  asked Elsa.  "Another stranger."  "Ah,
yes," sighed her mother, looking about her at various women passing
them or walking near them.  "Ah, yes, who knows?  One may be worse than
the other!  Just you obey me, that is all!"

"Yes Mama," said Elsa, attentively and submissively.  Her father smiled
at her and said, "That is our good little girl.  You must always do as
your mama says."

"But Papa, when she changed to a skirt, she looked like anyone else,
she looked very well, not like an American at all."

"Let her alone, just the same," said Frau Lutz, shaking her head. 
"She is an American, don't forget that.  No matter how she looks."

The bugler stepped out on deck sounding his merry call for dinner.
Instantly the Lutz family faced inward and hastened their steps.  At
the top of the stairs they were almost overwhelmed from the back by the
troupe of Spanish dancers, who simply went through, ove rand around
them like a wave, a wave with elbows.  The Lutzes were so outdistanced
the Spaniards were already seated at a good-sized round table near the
Captain's and the six-year-old twins were tearing at a dish of celery
before a waiter could find the small table set for three -against the
wall, to be sure, but happily near a porthole.

"I am glad to see they have washed their faces," said Frau Lutz,
beginning to read her dinner card with an eye of foregone disillusion,
"but it would look better all around if they washed their necks, too. I
saw very distinctly: their necks are gray and stiff with old dirty
powder.  Elsa, you wonder why I always say to you, wash your neck.  And
your wrists, too, and as for powder--I hope you will never be so
foolish."

Elsa glanced down her own nose, where the shininess was refracted into
her eyes.  She rubbed her nose with her handkerchief, carefully
refrained from sighing and said nothing.

The dining room was clean and well polished.  There were flowers on the
tables and an adequate display of fresh white napery and tableware. 
The waiters seemed refreshed and stimulated by the beginning of another
voyage, and the famished faces of the new set of passengers wore a
mollified, expectant air.  The Captain was absent, but at his table Dr.
Schumann greeted the Captain's guests, and explained to them that it
was the Captain's custom to dine on the bridge during the serious first
hours of voyage.

The guests all nodded in generous agreement and acknowledgment of the
Captain's heavy task of getting them safely to sea; and all was sedate
remark and easy understanding among the chosen ones: Herr Professor and
Frau Hutten, Herr Rieber, Fraulein Lizzi Spsckenkieker, Frau
Rittersdorf, Frau Otto Schmitt, and the "presentable" young man whom
Mrs.  Treadwell had seen sitting with Jenny Brown.  His name was
Wilhelm Freytag, he said several times over in the round of exchange of
names when the company had sat down.  Within three minutes Frau
Rittersdorf had ascertained that he was "connected" with a German oil
company in Mexico, was married (a pity, rather) and was

even then in that moment on his way to Mannheim to bring back his
young wife and her mother.  Frau Rittersdorff also decided instantly
that Herr Rieber bounced and chuckled rather vulgarly and was hardly up
to the rest of the Captain's table.  Frau Schmitt and the Huttens were
at once well disposed to each other when it came out that they were all
former teachers in German schools, the Huttens in Mexico City.

Herr Rieber, in top spirits, twinkling irrepressibly at Lizzi, but
decently subdued by the society in which he found himself, proposed by
way of a good beginning that he might be allowed to offer wine to the
whole table.  This was received with the best of good will by the
others.  The wine was brought, real Niersteiner Domtal of the finest
label, so hard to find in Mexico, so expensive when found, so missed by
them all, so loved, the beautiful good sound white wine of Germany,
fresh as flowers.  They sniffed their chilled goblets, their eyes
moistened and they beamed at each other.  They touched brims lightly,
clinking all about, spoke the kind round words of health and good
fortune to each other, and drank.

Nothing, they felt, could have been more correct, more charming, more
amiable than that moment.  They fell upon their splendid full bodied
German food with hot appetites.  They were all going home, home at
last, and in this ship they had in common for the first time the
feeling that they had already set foot upon a mystic Fatherland.
Restored, fortified, they paused now and again to wipe their teeming
mouths, nodding at each other in silence.  Dr.  Schumann ate with the
moderation of an abstemious man who could hardly remember when last he
had been really hungry.  The guests gave him admiring glances as they
ate and drank.  The highest kind of German good breeding, they could
see, with the dignity of his humane profession adding still more
luster; and his fine scar, showing that he had gone to a great
university, that he was brave and cool headed so great a scar so
perfecly placed proved that he had known the meaning of the Mensur,
that measure of a true German.  If he seemed a little absent,
thoughtfully silent, that was his right; it belonged to the importance
of his duties as ship's doctor.

"Pig's knuckles, David darling," said jenny Brown, restoring his
private particular name to David Scott for the first time in three
days.

His own mood was not so easy- he reflected that she probably would not
become Jenny angel to him for several days more- if ever.  How much
simple fraying of the nervous system can love survive?  How many
scenes?

"I'm boning up on German from the water taps and all the little signs
about, but nearly all these people speak English or French or both.  Do
you see that fellow i was walking with?  Over there- the Captain's
table.  The one with the invincible haircut.  I didn't even know he was
German until he told me "With that face?"  asked David.  "What's wrong
with his face?"  "It looks German."

"David darling, shame on you!  Well, I wanted to practice my German on
him, but after the first sentence he simply couldn't bear it, and I
must say, he speaks better English than I do--awfully English, in fact.
I thought maybe he had been brought up in England, but no, he learned
it in school in Berlin.... Well, my Swiss girl B did I tell you I'm
stuck in the same cabin with that big Swiss girl?  She wears a white
linen corset cover with tatting around the edges.  I'll bet you never
saw one..

"My mother used to wear them," said David.

David!  You mean you peeped while your mother was dressing?"  "No, I
used to sit in the middle of the bed and watch her."

"Well," said Jenny, "my Swiss girl speaks Spanish and French and
English and a kind of dialect she calls Romansh -besides German- and
she's barely eighteen.  And she will speak only English to me, though I
certainly do as well at Spanish as she does.  I don't see an earthly
chance to pick up any language, if this is the way it's going to be."

"These people aren't typical," said David, "and neither are we.  Just
roaming around foreign countries, changing money and language at every
border.  We do the same.  Look at me, even learning Russian--"

"Yes, look at you," said Jenny, admiringly.  "But you even learn the
grammar, from the book, a thing that would never occur to me.  I can't
learn grammar, that's flat, but then, I don't feel the need of it."

"If you could hear yourself sometimes," said David, "you'd feel the
need.  You say some really appalling things, in Spanish I mean."  "You
look pretty as a picture in that blue shirt, darling," said Jenny.

"I hope that doesn't appall you.  My God, I'm starving!  Wasn't
Veracruz deadly this time?  What came over that town?  I had the tender
est memories of the place and now I hope I never see it again."

"It seemed to me as usual," said David, "heat, cockroaches,
Veracruzanos and all."

"Ah no," said Jenny, "I used to walk about there at night, after a
rain, with everything washed clean, and the sweet-by-night and jasmine
in full bloom and the colors of the plaster walls very pure.  I would
come on those unexpected squares and corners and fountains, all of them
composed, just waiting to be painted, and none of them looking the way
they did in daylight.  All the windows would be open and pale yellow
light streaming out, with clouds of white mosquito netting over the big
beds, and half-dressed half-asleep people moving about already in a
dream; or sitting out on the little balconies just for the pleasure of
breathing.  It was lovely, David, and I loved it.  The people seemed so
friendly and easy--everybody.  And once there was a terrible glorious
thunderstorm and lightning hit the elevator shaft in my hotel about
twenty feet from my room and knocked me out, almost.  It was fun!  It
was real danger and yet I was alive."

David protested this memory coldly, doubtfully.  "You never told me
this before," he said.

"I hope not," she said.  "Wouldn't that be dull?  But you never believe
any memory that is pleasant, I wonder why?  You must let me remember it
in my own way, as beautiful at least once."  After a light pause she
added, "I am sure that if you had been there it would all have looked
very different."  She watched with clinical attention his smooth,
tight-skinned face that gave absolutely no sign when he was hit.

"Who was with you then, that it was all so delightful?"

"Nobody," she said softly.  "I was there by myself and I saw it in my
own way with no one to spoil it for me."

"And no boat to catch."

"No, I had come off a boat from New York.  Nine lovely days when I
didn't know a soul on board, and spoke only to my waiter and my
stewardess."

"They should have been flattered," said David darling, meanly.  But it
gave him no satisfaction.

Jenny straightened her knife and fork and took a sip of water.  "I
don't know," she told him gravely as if she were considering deeply
an

important question.  "I really don't know whether I am going to be
able to sit at this table with you the whole voyage or not.  At least I
am glad we have separate cabins."

"So am I," said David, instantly, a cold fire in his eyes.

They both fell silent then, dismayed at how suddenly things could get
out of hand; knowing as always there was no end to it, because there
was no real beginning.  The quarrel between them was a terrible
treadmill they mounted together and tramped round and round until they
were wearied out or in despair.  He went on doggedly with his food, and
she took up her fork again.  "I'll stop if you will," she said at last.
"How does it begin?  Why?  I never know."

David knew that her yielding was half fatigue, half boredom, but he was
grateful for the reprieve.  Besides, she had got in a good blow at him,
and must be feeling easier.

He did not forgive her; he would take her by surprise someday in turn,
as he had done often before, and watch her face turn pale; she always
recognized revenge for what it was, yet admitted its barbarous justice.
At least she had some little sense of turn and turn about, she didn't
expect always to be allowed to get away with murder, and he would make
it part of his business to see that she did not.  Feeling within him
his coldness of heart as a real power in reserve, he smiled at her with
that sweetness which always charmed her, reached out and laid his hand
over hers warmly.

"Jenny angel," he said.  Instantly she felt her heart--she believed
firmly that her heart could feel- melting just a little, timidly and
distrustfully: she knew what David could and would do to her if she let
herself be "caught soft" as he described it.  Yet she could not stop
herself.  She leaned forward and said, "You old thing, you!  Oh, let's
try to be happy.  Let's not spoil our first voyage together, it could
be so gay.  I'll try.  really David darling, I promise- let's try.
Don't you know I love you?"

"I wonder," said David with the most insidious gentleness. Mysteriously
she seemed on the verge of tears, which she controlled, knowing that
David regarded her weeping as simply another female trick shaken out of
her sleeve at the useful moment.  He watched with a reserved little
smile to see if she would give way; she had never made a scene in
public yet.  She smiled back at him, instead, took up her glass of wine
and held it out to touch his.  "Salud," she said. "Salud," said David,
and they emptied their glasses in one breath.

They were both ashamed of the evil natures they exposed in each other;
each in the first days of their love had hoped to be the ideal image of
the other, for they were desperately romantic, and their fear of
exposing themselves, of showing and learning unlovely things about each
other, made them dishonest and cruel.  In their moments of truce both
believed that the love between them was very pure and generous, as they
wished it to be; there needed only to be... needed only to be what,
exactly, they both wondered, secretly and separately, and found no
answer.  Only in such short moments as this, when they drank the wine
of peace together, their bodies grew limp and calm, they breathed
easily in the air of reconciliation, and made vague vows to themselves
and to each other, to keep faith--faith with what?  to love each other,
to try- But David at least still knew that for himself, trying to be
happy was perhaps half their trouble, or the cause of half of it.  And
the other half?

"To happiness then," he said, touching her glass again.

Though it was still broad daylight, the August sun, dipping into the
far horizon, threw a burning track over the waters which ran like oil
in the wake of the ship.  The ladies of trade appeared on deck in
identical black lace evening gowns, their fine smooth backs gleaming to
the belt, their ieweled sandals flashing.  They paced about slowly and
came face to face with the two priests, who were pacing slowly also,
their dark trap mouths locked, their relentless eyes fixed on their
breviaries.  The ladies bowed respectfully, the fathers ignored or
perhaps did not see them.  William Denny followed them at a safe
distance once around, pausing now and then to appear interested in
something in the depths of the sea, his Adam's apple bobbing ever so
slightly.  The bride and groom sat together in their extended chairs,
watching the sunset in silence, their eyes tranced and mystified, their
hands clasped lightly.

The Mexican Indian nurse brought the newly born baby to his mother, who
received him rather helplessly in her inexperienced arms.  Frau
Rittersdorf, passing, took the liberty of a true woman who, though
childless herself and never ceasing to be thankful for it, still
appreciated instinctively the glorious martyrdom of motherhood as
enjoyed by others.  With a smile of intimate sympathy for the mother,
she dropped silently on her knees to adore the divine mystery of life
for a few seconds, admiring his feathery eyebrows and tender mouth,
the

complexion to the last degree enviable.  His mother looked on with a
formal, unwilling smile, thinking her son was spoiled enough already,
she wished people would let him alone; remembering how he woke and
yelled in the night and pulled on her like a pig when she was fired to
tears and wanted only to sleep.

"Such a splendid man-child," said Frau Rittersdorf.  "Is he your
first?"

"Ah, yes," said the mother, and there was a shade of terror in her
face.

"A new beginning," said Frau Rittersdorf, "a perfect little general. 
El Generalissimo, in fact!"  She had been told by her German friends
that every second male Mexican was a general, or intended to be one, or
called himself one, at least.

The mother could not after all quite resist the flattery, however
crude, however German in its style.  El Generalissimo indeed!  How
vulgar; still, she knew her child was superb, she loved to hear him
praised, even in Spanish with such an atrocious accent.  Somehow Frau
Rittersdorf led the talk from infant to mother; began to speak pretty
passable French, which delighted the Mexican woman, who prided herself
on her command of that language.  Frau Rittersdorf learned with great
satisfaction that Madame was the wife of an attach in the Mexican
Legation in Paris, she was even now on her way there to join her
husband; it had been impossible" Well you can see why," said the
mother- for her to accompany him.  Frau Rittersdorf was soothed in her
highest social sense to find a lady in diplomatic circles among the
passengers; there would be someone to associate with, after all. Senora
Esperon y Chavez de Ortega for her part seemed to sink rapidly in mood,
to become a touch distrait, perhaps only natural in her new situation. 
El Generalissimo opened his eyes, waved his fists and yawned divinely
in Frau Rittersdorf's face.  His mother frowned just perceptibly and
pleaded, "Oh, please don't wake him.  He has only just got to sleep. 
If you could imagine the trouble we have with him --colic and all!"

Feeling rebuffed, Frau Rittersdorf rose instantly and took her leave
with such exaggerated politeness it hardly stopped short of rudeness.
The little Mexican woman was after all probably not particularly
intelligent, perhaps not even particularly well bred.  It was rather
difficult to judge of the standards of the dark races, though no doubt
they had them; even Don Pedro in Mexico, whose failure to ask for her
hand in

marriage after what had seemed irreversible overtures- was there not
something sinister in his nature?  And yet n could it have Been the
fact of his owning a great brewery?--he had at times seemed to her so
human, so Germanized, she had been quite lulled and led astray.  She
walked on faster, in a small chill of fright, shaking her head.

After dinner all the desks in the small rooms off the bar were occupied
by absorbed letter writers, last words to Mexico to Be mailed at
Havana.  Only the Spanish dancing women patrolled the deck, living in
the moment.  They had no friends in Mexico and very few in Spain, and
this did not trouble them in the least.  It was fairly noticeable that
romance of a sort seemed to be simmering around them.  Their skins
breathing forth musk and amber, wearing fresh flowers in their hair,
they were to be seen about in shadowy spots, each involved more or less
with one of the blond young ship's officers.

The officers were all poor, perfectly disciplined, dedicated to their
calling, saving up their scanty earnings to be married: they all wore
plain red-gold engagement rings on their left hands, and, bound to
their narrow world always in motion, never set foot in any port.  It
was expensive, it could lead to international complications, and
besides there were too many ports.  They had clearly defined and not
always onerous duties towards female passengers, such as dancing with
them in the evenings if they seemed to lack partners, slighting no one,
making themselves agreeable in a decorous way.  They had no privileges,
such as carrying an affair too far, but it was not to be supposed that
any one of them should not avail himself of opportunities freely
offered so long as appearances were preserved.  In this particular case
of the Spanish ladies, appearances obviously could not be preserved but
must be disguised if possible.

Their experiences with many female passengers on many voyages to
out-of-the-way ports had intimidated most of them to a certain extent.
$o, warily one by one the young officers in immaculate white, with gold
or silver insignia at their collars and shoulders, found themselves on
the first evening, in instructed gallantry But with also a good deal of
pleasant excitement, each with an arm around a surprisingly muscular
but slender Spanish waist, looking with mild expectation into the
burning depths of eyes that meant business and nothing else.

Something always occurred to throw them off; mysteriously the
combinations separated, re-formed with different partners, until at
last,

early in the evening, all seemed to be over--a question of money no
doubt, decided Wilhelm Freytag, who had got into talk over beer with
Ame Hansen.  They had been watching the little cenes here and

"What else could it be," asked Arne Hansen, and he watched one of Uhe
girls especially, his choleric blue eyes softened to simple admiration.
She was indeed very beautiful, and though of a type with the others,
Hansen could see a difference in her, even if he could not point it out
to another eye.  They all had fine dark eyes, shining black hair
smoothed over their ears, their round small hips swayed as they walked
in a self-conscious me neo their narrow, high-arched feet were stuffed
without mercy into thin black pumps.  They all painted, with dark red
grease paint, large square brutal mouths over their natural lips, which
were thin and hard: but the one he preferred was called Amparo, he had
found that out.  Already he faced in his thoughts the first obstacle:
he spoke very little Spanish and Amparo, so far as he knew, spoke
nothing else.

"I can't imagine what they do," said Wilhelm Freytag, '%esides of
course what they are doing now.  They look like a set of gypsies.  I
saw them dancing and collecting money in the streets at Veracruz."

Hansen could tell him about that.  They were a zarzuela company from
Granada, gypsies maybe, or pretending to be.  They had got stranded in
Mexico as such outfits always did, the great Pastora Imperio herself
had just barely got out with the clothes on her back, he had heard--and
the Mexican government was sending them home, as usual, at its own
expense.  Freytag considered they looked a tough lot, the four men
especially, oblique-looking characters with their narrow skulls and
thugs' eyes- a combination of table-top dancer, pimp, and
knife-thrower.

Hansen studied them.  "I think not dangerous," he judged, "unless it
was fairly safe."  He settled back comfortably in his powerful frame
and stretched his long legs under the table.

The men of the dancers' troupe were sitting in the bar with the
children, obviously keeping out of the way while their ladies practiced
their arts.  They were silent, entirely too graceful in their few
movements, and watchful as cats.  Sitting over a series of cups of
coffee, they smoked constantly; and the children, who were subdued in a
way they were not when the women were present, finally leaned their
heads and arms on the table and went to sleep.

Frau Baumgartner sat head on hand wearily at a small table with her
husband, who had begun his long evening of methodical drinking to ease
his constant pain.  His hair already was damp and plastered to his
temples.  For just a short time after taking food, he felt relief in
his stomach, but he could not face the beginning of pain again, and
hurried to his first glass of brandy and water.  These pains had begun
about two years before, when Herr Baumgartner lost three important
cases in the Mexican courts.  His wife knew why he had lost them: he
was drinking so steadily he could not properly prepare his arguments,
he could not make a good impression in court.  Back of that was the sad
mystery- why had he begun to drink?  He could not explain and he could
not resist his longing for brandy.  From hour to hour throughout the
day and into the evening, he drank- without pleasure, without any
lightening of spirit, without relief, without will, in helpless
suffering of conscience, his hand still stole out to the bottle and he
poured into his glass quite literally in fear and trembling.

On those few days at long intervals when his wife persuaded him not to
drink, he would take to his bed with frightful pains in his stomach,
writhing, groaning, until the family doctor was called to give him an
opiate.  They called in specialists, each of whom made his own guess
corresponding to his field of interest: ulcers, mysterious
entanglements of his intestines, acute (or chronic) infections of one
kind and another: one had even hinted at cancer: but none had been able
to bring him any ease.  He seemed to grow no worse, but he never
improved, either.  Frau Baumgartner to her own constant self reproach
no longer believed that her husband's illness was real.  She did not
know what she believed, indeed she believed nothing: and her unbelief
was formless, a darkly moving cloud of suspicion that her husband's
trouble, once known, would prove to be some kind of terrible reproach
upon her.  Whenever a marriage was unhappy, or the husband failed in
his business, everybody knew it was the wife's fault.  She would have
to blame herself, too, for as she often said, her husband was the best
and kindest of men.  He had given her love of the kind she understood
as love: faithful and pleasant every day, every day in the year, and
thoughtful.  Until he began to spend his money recklessly on drink,
they kept a good comfortable house and saved money; and the savings
were, she thanked God, safely invested in Germany since the mark was
restored and business was flourishing and all promised well in that
country.  Her husband had fought all through

the war, and had come out without a scratch- a miracle in itself for
which he should be grateful, but no- he never spoke but with bitterness
of his sufferings in that time.  They were married after the war and
went to Mexico, a new land of promise for Germans... Oh, what could
have happened, what did she do, that their lives had come to this All
had seemed to go so well.... "Oh, Karl, don't take another, that will
be four already and it is not two hours after dinner."

"I can't bear it, Gretel, I can't bear it, you cannot understand what
this pain is like!"

The same old cry.  His face drew together, his mouth twisted and
trembled; his bright empty blue eyes grew fierce with suffering.

"Karl, how can it help?  Tomorrow it will be the same thing."

"Please, Gretel, be patient a little longer.  With one more, I promise
to get through the night."  He bowed over in grief, in shame.  "Forgive
me," he said and his humility made her blush for him.

"Don't, my dear," she said.  "Go on and take it, if it will make you
feel better."  She leaned over and gazed at the tablecloth to avoid
seeing his face knotted in the expression of pain he made no attempt to
conceal or control.  The doctors had said he must go home, it might
work a cure.  She had hoped that the peaceful long voyage, the easy
safe life of the ship, away from the false friends who drank with him,
away from the place where he had failed, would be a good beginning.  It
was not going to happen.  Herr Baumgartner drained the last drop from
his tall glass.

"Now, my dear," he said, in a tearful voice, "now, if you will help
me."  He rose wavering and she stood close beside him.  He leaned upon
her heavily as they moved away through the crowded bar, and Frau
Baumgartner, her eyes fixed straight ahead, felt sure that everybody
was staring with contempt at her drunken husband who was pretending to
be an invalid.

Herr Lowenthal, who had been put at a small table by himself, studied
the dinner card, with its list of unclean foods, and asked for a soft
omelette with fresh green peas.  He drank half a bottle of good white
wine to comfort himself (the one hardship of travel was this question
of finding something he could eat in a world almost altogether run by
the heathen) and ate the small basket of fruit brought him for dessert.
Afterward he hung around searchingly for a while, first in

the salon, then in the bar, then out on the decks, wandering and
disturbed; but no one spoke to him and he therefore spoke to nobody. 
He peered here and there, at every face he saw, a quick glance and
away, trying to pass unobserved himself, yet hoping to see one of his
own people.  It was hardly to be believed.  In all his life it had
never happened to him, but here it was, the thing he feared most was
upon him: there was not another Jew on the whole ship.  Not one.  A
German ship, going back to Germany, and not a Jew on board besides
himself. Instantly his pangs of instinctive uneasiness mounted to posi
-tire fright, his natural hostility to the whole alien enemy world of
the Coyim, so deep and pervasive it was like a movement of his blood,
flooded his soul.  His courage came back on this tide, incomplete,
wavering, but bringing its own sense of restored good health of the
mind.  He made the rounds once more, this time with a bolder eye and a
well-composed air which concealed his worry--but no, of course, why
look any longer?  If there had been another, they would have seated him
at the same table.  Two Jews would have recognized each other before
now.  Well, there would be nobody to talk to, hut just the same, it
wouldn't cost him anything to be friendly with these people; he
intended to get along as well as possible on the voyage, there was no
percentage in asking for trouble.  He sat down in the bar near a rather
decent-looking pair of middle-aged fat Gentiles with a white bulldog at
their feet, thinking that if they spoke to him he might pass a half
hour in some sort of sociability--better than nothing, and that was
barely all it could be.  But he never liked to speak to Gentiles first,
you might run into anything, and they did not turn their heads his way.
After two beers he decided he was tired, ready for bed.

The cabin was empty except for the other passenger's luggage.  Herr
Lowenthal put his sample case out of the way, laid out his modest
toilet articles, got into the lower berth and said his prayers,
wondering what sort of cabin mate he had drawn.  Perhaps the fellow
would be quite pleasant.  After all, in a business way at least he had
known some very decent Gentiles.  Maybe this would be one.  He lay
there with the light on, unable to settle down, waiting and watching
for what kind of man would open the door.  At last, at the sound of
entry, he lifted his head eagerly.  "Gruss Gott," he said, almost
before he got a glimpse of the fellow.

Herr Rieber stopped short.  Almost instantly a deep look of repulsion

set itself upon his snub by features; he drew his brows down and
pursed his lips.

"Good evening," he said, with immense, cold finality of dismissal. 
Herr Ltwenthal fell back upon his pillow, knowing the worst as if he
had always known it.  "My God, the luck!  and for such a long voyage,"
he mourned.  "And yes, there is no doubt, he looks like a pig even
rather than a Gentile."  But he would be careful, he could look out for
himself, he would see that that fellow did not get the advantage of
him.  "Let's just see what he does next, after this start.  Now I know
what to expect, I should be ready for him.  I know most of their
tricks... he can't surprise me."

So he worried and fretted, turning over and over, suppressing sighs;
yet he slept after a while, his brows still knitted, but very deeply
and restfully in spite of Herr Pfieber's snores.

By nine o'clock the lighted decks were empty, the bar and writing rooms
nearly deserted.  No life was apparent except some movement on the
Captain's bridge and a few calm-faced sailors going about their routine
duties.  In the depths of the ship, the bakers began setting, kneading,
rolling and baking the breakfast bread; and still lower, in the engine
room, stout fellows labored and sweated freely all night keeping the
ship to her regular speed of twelve knots.  She would do a little
better when the Gulf Stream got behind her.

Life on shipboard in only two days had begun to arrange itself with
pleasant enough monotony, but on the third there was repeated the
excitement of being in port again, in Havana.  This time, the travelers
had nothing to worry about, nothing to do for once but to enjoy the
scene so far as they were able.  Fresh hot-weather dress appeared on
all shapes and sizes, and there was a rush for the gangplank before it
had fairly settled.

Even Herr Glocken went ambling down the dock by himself, wearing a gay
necktie frayed at the knot, smiling like a gargoyle as he dodged with
practiced quickness a bold young woman who darted forward to touch his
hump for luck.

The ladies of trade, arriving at home from their business trip to
Mexico as casually as though returning from a day's shopping in town,
walked away together in white linen backless dresses and fine wide
brimmed Panama hats.  William Denny, a discreet distance behind,

followed them determinedly, to find out if possible what sort of roof
sheltered these haughty creatures on their native heath.  He was soured
and baffled by their resolutely unbusinesslike behavior towards him.

"Women peddling tail don't usually carry it so high, where I come
from," he remarked to David Scott.  "It's just cash on the barrelhead
and no hurt feelings."

David merely remarked that he thought that could easily be a bore.  So
Denny set out by himself, resolved to track them down to their lair and
boldly invite himself inside.  Along a narrow street shops one of them
turned about unexpectedly to look into a window, saw Denny, nudged the
other.  They both looked back then, and breaking into high girlish
screams of derisive laughter, they darted through a narrow shop doorway
and disappeared once for all.  Denny, scalded bitterly, let a pale
sneer cover his face for the benefit of some possible witness, and an
ugly short epithet form in his mouth for his own satisfaction; then,
like a man who had plans of his own, he took a small map meant for
tourists out of his pocket and began a search for Sloppy Joe's.

Though it was only four o'clock in the afternoon, the troupe of Spanish
dancers appeared dressed for the evening, in serviceable black of
daring cut, the gentlemen wearing wide pleated red silk belts under
their short jackets, the ladies gallantly exposed as to breast and
shoulder.  Amparo's ear lobes were half again their natural length,
trailing the weight of immense imitation rubies.  They all limped a
little in their cruel footgear as they set out stubbornly in discomfort
and bitter bad temper for an evening of professional gaiety.  The
twins, left on the ship, at once began to shriek and hoot and run
circles in a kind of demon dance around the wheel chair of the small
sick man, until the golden-hal red boy pushing the chair drove them
away with loud curses in German.  They then ran to the rail, climbed up
and leaned out and screamed desperately, "Jai alai, Mama!  Mama, jai
alai!" A good distance away, at the sound all four of the women whirled
about, and the one they called Lola shouted harshly, "Shutup."

"Let's be real tourists this once," said Jenny angel to David darling,
for so they were feeling towards each other for the moment.  "I have no
prejudice against tourists- I consider that a low form of snobbism.  I
envy them savagely, lucky dogs with money to spend and time on

their hands, all dressed up and on their way!  I always have to work.
If I wasn't on a job I wouldn't be there, wherever I am: I'm doing a
job or running an errand for some editor... even in Paris if I ever get
there, I'll still have to do those silly drawings for somebody's foul
little stories.  Now David darling, don't tell me I'm riddled with self
pity..."

"You always say that, I never have said it."

"All right, you liar," said Jenny, tenderly, 'but just the same never
in my whole life since I was a child have I ever gone anywhere merely
to look at the scenery.  Now is the moment; let's take a Fordito and
see the sights, such as they may be.  I've passed through Havana this
is the fourth time and it may be the last, and I've never seen the
beach and that famous Drive, what's its name?"

David lapsed into what Jenny called his speaking silence; she saw by
the expression drifting over his face that the notion appealed to him.
They had not far to seek, for there on the first corner was an aged
Negro with a crippled Ford car--"a real Fotingo if there ever was one!"
said Jenny fondly--it was a Mexican popular name for such a vehicle-
and he was waiting and hoping for just such as they.  The Negro's skin
was the color of brown sugar; he had one light gray eye and one pale
tan eye, he believed that he spoke English, and he had a high-flown
speech of solicitation made up and learned by heart.  They waited
politely to the end before nodding their heads; he settled them at once
in the back seat where the door rattled on its hinges and the stuffing
was coming out in lumps.  Setting off Instantly with an impressive roar
and clatter of mechanical locomotion, he gained an appalling speed
almost at once, and began another set speech which flew back to them in
fragments of loud croaks and low mutters as they whirled along the
splendid white road beside the sea.

"We are passing... Monument," he shouted, as they rushed by an
incoherent mass of bronze, "WHICH COMMEMORATES..."  he pronounced
largely and carefully, then fell to a mutter.  Then, "This," his voice
rose again, "... the war of... year of Our Lord... and afterwards," he
said clearly, "the Sons of Cuban Independence erected this noble
monument for the view of strangers."  Mutter.  mutter, mutter.  "We are
now passing..."  and they spun perilousl?  around a long curve, "the
building called... erected for the view of strangers... TO YOUR LEFT!"
he called warningly, and Jenny

and David craned to the left instantly, but the spectacle was already
far behind, "you see a tragic Memorial erected by the Sons of... for
the view of strangers."

They slowed down with dizzying suddenness, stopped with a hard jolt.
Their guide pushed back his cap and pointed to a vast, nondescript
edifice shining through tall palms and heavy treetops in a small park.
"And there," he said, in rather smugly censorious tones, "is the famous
Casino, where rich North Americans gamble away, before the eyes of the
starving poor, hundreds of thousands of dollars every night."

His passengers gawked as they were expected to; then David said to
Jenny in an aside, "I don't think so much of our touring, do you?"  and
in Spanish to the guide, who seemed to be regarding them with a certain
possessiveness, "Now let's just drive back the same way, very
slowly."

"I understand English perfectly," said the guide in Spanish.  "Tour
touring is not a success yet because you have not seen all.  There are
monuments of the utmost grandeur and sentiment the whole length of this
noble Carrera, some of them more expensive and important than those you
have seen.  You are paying to see them all," he said virtuously, "I do
not wish to defraud you."

"I think our touring is perfect," said Jenny.  "It is just what I
expected.  Let's see them all!"  They leaped away like a kangaroo in
flight, saw all the monuments in shapeless flashes, and were set down
again, wind-blown and flushed with sunburn, under palms on a fine
terrace freshly washed and steaming, with great wicker bird cages along
the wall and a banana tree in the patio.  The waiter brought tall
glasses of iced tea with rum in it.

"More and more," said David, feeling again for a few moments that
repose of pure sympathy and well-being he had with Jenny now and then-
not long enough or often enough for any continuous illusion, but good
when it happened" more and more I am convinced it is a great mistake to
do anything or make anything for the view of strangers."  "Let's not
ever," said Jenny, in a glow still from their foolish escapade along
the beach.  "Let's have a wonderful private life that begins in our
bones, or our souls even maybe, and works out."

She hesitated and then spoke the word "soul" very tentatively, for it

was one of David's tab us along with God, spirit, spiritual, virtue-
especially that one!  -and love.  None of these words flowered
particularly in Jenny's daily speech, though now and then in some stray
warmth of feeling she seemed to need one or the other; but David could
not endure the sound of any of them, and she saw now the stiff,
embarrassed, almost offended look which she had learned to expect if
she spoke one of them.  He could translate them into obscene terms and
pronounce them with a sexual fervor of enjoyment; and Jenny, who
blasphemed as harmlessly as a well-taught parrot, was in turn offended
by what she prudishly described as "David's dirty mind."  They were in
fact at a dead end on this subject.

After a dismal pause, David said carefully, "Yes, of course; always
that precious private life which winds up in galleries and magazines
and art books if we have any luck at all- should we go on trying to
fool ourselves?  Look, we live on handouts, don't we?  from one job to
the next, so maybe we should look at all this monument stuff like this-
every one of them meant a commission and a chance to work for some
sculptor."

"But what sculptors," said Jenny in tolerantly "such godforsaken awful
stuff.  No, I'll do all the chores I can get, but there is something
you can't sell, even if you want to, and I'm glad of it!  I am going to
paint for myself."

"I know, I know," said David, "and hope that somebody else likes it
too, likes it well enough to buy it and take it home to live with.
There's simply something wrong with our theory of a private life so far
as work is concerned."

"You are talking about public life," said Jenny.  "You're talking about
the thing on the wall, not when it's still in your mind, aren't you? --
I want good simple people who don't know a thing about art to like my
work, to come for miles to look at it, the way the Indians do the
murals in Mexico City."

"That was a great piece of publicity all right," said David, "you good
simple girl.  These good simple Indians were laughing their heads off
and making gorgeously dirty remarks; then they went out in the Alameda
and scrawled pubic hair on the copy of Canova's Pauline Bonaparte- that
elegant marble dream!  Didn't you ever notice any of this?  Where were
you?"

"I was there," said Jenny, without resentment.  "I expect I was
looking

and listening for something else- I saw and heard a lot of other
things, too.  I don't blame the Indians really.  They have something
better of their own, after all."

"Better than what?  Canova?  All right.  But better than Giotto let's
say or Leorardo?  It's not better than a lot of things, even things
they've done there selves  It's debased all to hell now--after all,
they find their really good stuff in buried cities.  But I do like it,
too, and it's plain they preer it to anything else.  But look, Jenny
angel, what good does all this do us We are on our own; let's not go
fake primitive, we couldn't fool even ourselves..."

"David, just because I don't do any under drawing is no sign I'm trying
to be Primitive... Now don't say that again!  I love the Indians, I've
got a weakness for them," said Jenny.  "I feel certain I learned
something from them, even if I don't know yet what it is."

"But they didn't love you," said David, "and you know it.  We keep on
liking them one by one, as we do each other, but they hate us in a
bunch simply as members of the other-colored, oppressor race.  I get
damn sick of it.  And the only thing in this world they wanted from you
was your broken-down old Fotingo, last year; and my cigarette lighter;
and the rtable phonograph.  We love their beautiful straw mats because
we don't have to sleep on them, and they want our spring mattresses.
There's nothing to blame them for, but I'm sick of this sentimental yap
about them."

Jenny laughed because she felt very melancholy and baed.  wasn't
looking for a new religion, either," she said.  "I suppose you're right
so far as you go, but there is something else... I know I'm much too
simple to be a good primitive."

"I don't think they are any more complicated than we are," said

David.  "They tie a different set of knots, that's all."

"That isn't all, by any means," said Jenny.  "That is too simple."

David, hearing the thin edge in her voice, said no more, but reflected
that no matter how he tried to explain his point of view to

Jenny, about anything at all, he seemed always to go off at a
tangent,

or in a circle, or to get bogged down in a spot he had never meant to
be in, as if Jenny's mind refracted his thought instead of absorbing
his meaning, or even his feelings about certain things--Indians, for
example.  He would give up from now on talking to Jenny about Indians,
or about her painting, either; she was sentimental about the one,

and obstinate about the other; let it go.

They finished their second tea and rum in a comfortable-looking
silence, wondered what time it was, had to ask the waiter because they
complicated their lives on principle by refusing to wear watches; and
strolled back toward the harbor.

The heat was overwhelming, the life of the streets wandered torpidly in
a sluggish dream, the charge of daylight was almost staggering, and
sweat broke from every pore of every human being; the tongues of dogs
streamed, and Jenny and David, in their cool-looking linen, were wet
and streaked and almost gasping by the time they reached the dock.  At
the entrance to the long shed through which they must pass to the ship,
they saw first a large thick cluster of people with frowzy dark heads
and ragged clothing.  There was no space to pass among them, for their
bundles wrapped in hemp fiber sacks tied with rope lay on the ground,
filled their arms and bulged from their shoulders.  There were men and
women of all ages, in every state of decay, children of all sizes and
babies in arms.  They were all unbelievably ragged and dirty, hunched
over, silent, miserable.  Several of them, seeing the two strangers,
quietly pushed and nudged at each other and at their bundles in signal,
until a narrow way was cleared.

"Pass if you please," they murmured in Spanish, and 'thank you, thank
you," said Jenny and David, edging through carefully.  The crowd
thinned a little then, but the whole huge shed was filled with them.
They sat huddled on the ground, they stood formlessly bowed, they
leaned in tired arcs against the walls.

The air was not air any more, but a hot, clinging vapor of: sweat, of
dirt, of stale food and befouled litter, of rags and excrement: the
reek of poverty.  The people were not faceless: they were all Spanish,
their heads had shape and meaning and breeding, their eyes looked out
of beings who knew they were alive.  Their skins were the skins of the
starved who are also overworked, a dark dirty pallor, with green copper
overtones, as if their blood had not been sufficiently renewed for
generations.  Their bare feet were bruised, hardened, cracked, knotted
in the joints, and their hands were swollen fists.  It was plain they
were there by no will or plan of their own, and in the helpless
humility of complete enslavement they were waiting for whatever would
be done to them next.  Women nursed their starveling infants; men sat
fumbling among their wretched possessions, tying them up more firmly;
they picked at their feet or scratched in their hair; or they sat
suspended in uneasy idleness, simply staring.  Pale anxious children,

miserable, uncomplaining, sat near their mothers and gazed at them,
but asked for nothing.

Several officious-looking men were moving among them, counting them
with pointing fingers, writing down something over each one, consulting
with each other and steadying themselves as they felt their way between
bodies by laying a hand upon the nearest he'd as if it were a newel or
a doorknob.  The strangest silence was over the whole scene--strange,
thought Jenny, because the misery is so great and something so terrible
is happening to them, you might think they would all be howling and
crying and fighting to escape.  "David, what can it be?"  she asked,
but he shook his head.  They came out into the open air, and there was
the ship looming up, the gangplank ready.

Almost everyone on shipboard forgot his reserve for the moment, and
strangers were asking each other questions and getting answers full of
rumor and conflicting theories.  The young ocers found themselves under
a rapid fire of curiosity about the beggars on the dock who now seemed
to be coming on board the Vera.  The ocers could only shake their
heads.  They were sorry, but they had no idea who the steerage
passengers were, nor why there were so many, nor what their situation
was precisely, except that anyone could see they were of the lowest
class.  No doubt everything would be known in time.

This answer raised greater curiosity all around.  Professor and Frau
Hutten, who had persuaded their seasick bulldog Bebe out for a breath
of air on solid earth, had been told by someone in town that the
strange people were political malcontents and were being deported as
dangerous and subversive elements.  Professor Hutten, observing them
carefully, remarked that they seemed to be quite harmless though
unfortunate people.  Herr Lutz, the Swiss hotel keeper told the
Professor that he had heard that the people were returning to Spain
because of a new sudden demand for labor in that country: since the
Spanish had thrown the king out, Spain, it was said, was lining up for
progress, catching up with the modern world.  "Same old story," said
Herr Lutz, "the grass looks greener in the next pasture until you get
there.  It is the first I have heard of prosperity in Spain."

Herr Rieber and Lizzi Sptickenkieker pranced onto the deck, and Lizzi
screamed out to little Frau Otto Schmitt, whose tender heart was
plainly to be surmised in her soft pink face: "Oh, what do you think of
this dreadful fellow?  Can you guess what he just said?  I was saying,
"Oh, these poor people, what can be done for them?"  and this
monster--" she gave a kind of whinny between hysteria and
indignation-"he said, "I would do this for them: I would put them all
in a big oven and turn on the gas."  Oh," she said weakly, doubling
over with laughter, "isn't that the most original idea you ever
heard?"

Herr Rieber stood by smiling broadly, quite pleased with himself.

Frau Schmitt went a little pale, and said in a motherly, severe tone,
"There may be such a thing as too much originality- for shame, I don't
think that is funny!"  Herr Rieber's face fell, he pouted.

Lizzi said, "Oh, he did not mean any harm, of course; only to fumigate
them, isn't it so?"

"No, I did not mean fumigate," said Herr lie her stubbornly.

"Well, then, you are not very nice," said Lizzi, in a tone so
indulgent, indeed more than forgiving, he braced up again at once; she
smiled at him and he smiled back, and they left the atmosphere of Frau
Schmitt's moral disapproval for the freedom of the bar.

At last the afternoon papers appeared on deck, and there was the whole
story, quite straight, and nothing so unusual after all.  It had
something to do with the price of sugar in the world market.  The
bottom had fallen out, it seemed.  Cuban sugar, because of
international competition, had fallen in price until the sugar planters
could no longer afford to gather and market their crops.  There had
been strikes and riots too, and demands for higher wages at the very
moment of crisis as always, due to the presence of foreign labor
agitators among the workers.  The planters were burning their crops in
the fields, and naturally this had thrown thousands of sugar workers in
the fields and refineries out of employment.  A great number of these
were Spanish, mostly from the Canaries, Andalusia, the Asturias, who
had been imported during the great days of Cuban sugar.

This policy of importation, to which there had been in the beginning
some local opposition, had turned out to be a farsighted one, for if
these laborers had been Cubans, what could have been their fate except
reliance on charity, beggary, or a temporary haven in the public jails
and hospitals?  As it was, the government had acted with speed and good
judgment to forestall the inconvenience of so many idle foreigners on
the island.  Arrangements had been made to send them back to their
native land, their fares had been raised by public subscription,
everything was being done for their comfort, and the first lot,
consisting of exactly eight hundred and seventy-six souls, were already
safely on their way.  Thus, the newspaper stories and editorials
agreed,

Cuba was setting an example to the world in disposing of its labol
problems in the most humane yet practical manner.

The eight hundred and seventy-six souls formed a straggling procession
and moved across the gangplank leading to the steerage, while a dozen
or more first-class passengers lined up above to watch them.  Herded
carefully on either side by sailors and the officious men who had been
counting them, the people came on with some nervous jostling, thumping
of feet, hesitations when the whole mass would be agitated, clotted in
one spot; then it would smooth out and go forward.  Among the watchers
a new uneasiness rose, and Frau Rittersdorff mentioned it first.

"There is great danger of infectious disease among such creatures," she
said to Herr Baumgartner at her elbow.  "I am wondering-should we not
complain to the Captain?  After all, we did not engage to travel on a
cattle boat."

Herr Baumgartner's pained face leaped into new lines of anxiety.  "My
God," he said, "I was thinking the very thought.  I was thinking, you
can almost smell the diseases among them.  No, it is not right.  We
should have been warned."

Professor Hutten remarked to his wife, "I was told by the purser the
steerage contains accommodations for only three hundred and fifty, and
yet look, still they come.  I am interested to see what accommodations
can possibly be made for such a number.  Infants, too," he said, and
clicked his tongue in deprecation.  His wife sighed and shook her head,
accepting once more the sad truth that there is no cure for the
troubles of life, no peace nor repose anywhere.  Her comfortable fat
quivered with some intimation of suffering, but she could not bear to
think of it.  "Come," she said, "let's not spy upon them.  Suppose they
should look up and see us gazing?"  She moved away, her face tender and
vacant.  Bebe, somewhat improved in spirits, followed on a loose
leash.

William Denny, who had made his way safely to Sloppy Joe's and had
there swallowed rapidly several daiquiris with increasing depression of
mood, leaned on the rail and spoke at random in loud indignation. 
"Poor devils, they don't deserve it," he said, almost tearfully. 
"After all, why should they be kicked out?  They're not dirty Reds, the
papers said so."

Mrs.  Treadwell, who had found herself once or twice in some passing
talk with the young man, whom she considered odious, was standing
almost next to him; she knew well that no matter what he thought or
felt it was none of her affair, but spoke just the same on impulse,
which she also knew very well was not her style, and always got her
into some kind of difficulty.

"Why always 'dirty' please," she said in her light agreeable voice,
"and why always Red' and what do you really know or care about it?"

Denny's head rolled a trifle; he stared at her as if he had never seen
her before.  "Are you a Red?"  he asked.  Without removing his folded
arms from the rail he slid along toward her, turned sideways and
inspected her as if she were a horse he was thinking of buying.  His
gaze ran like a hand to her ears, her neck, over her breasts, down her
thighs, and his mouth was tight as if he did not like what he saw, but
could not control the roving of his eyes.  Mrs.  Treadwell made a
determined effort to catch and fix his gaze with hers, but he would not
look at her face, where a rather too-girlish prettiness lingered under
the mask of middle age.

"Do you know the meaning of the word?"  she inquired coldly, moving
from him along the rail as he approached.  She regretted now the three
planters' punches she had drunk with Wilhelm Freytag in Havana; for to
tell the truth, she did not know the meaning of the word herself- it
was just that she resented that stupid Denny to the point where she
could have enjoyed slapping him.  She had never known a Red and did not
expect to know one ever.

"I know what I'd do to them if I were running the government," he said,
in a heavy rage, peering into the front of her blouse.  Mrs.  Treadwell
pulled herself together resolutely.  How typical- here she was, about
to get into an altercation with a drunken stranger, une espce de type
at that, on a topic of which both of them were totally ignorant, and
she at least hadn't the faintest desire to learn anything.  She turned
her head aside, wheeled about and walked away, smiling into the air and
trying not to hurry.

The ship, full of fetid port air and swarming with mosquitoes, got
under way late in the evening.  A fair number of new passengers had
been added to first class, and were rather regarded at first as
interlopers by the original voyagers, who had got already a proprietary
interest in the ship.  A half dozen noisy, mongrel-looking Cuban
students made themselves conspicuous until a late hour.  Several
married pairs brought with them an assortment of normally troublesome
children.  After dinner the students formed a parade and marched
around deck chairs containing soberer folk who wished only to be left
in peace, through the ship Where people were reading or playing cards,
around deck dozens of times past windows of people trying to sleep,
bawling verse after verse about La Cucaracha, the poor little cockroach
who could not run about any more because she had no marihuana to smoke,
second because she had no money to buy it, third because she had no
feet anyway, fourth because nobody loved her, and endlessly the
students rehearsed her misfortunes as they tramped in a line, hands on
each other's shoulders.  They ranged in height from short to tall, but
they were all very stringy.  They all wore baggy "Oxford" trousers,
rather lumpy below the knees, identical in cut but of fascinating
variety in pattern: tartans, stripes, squares, zigzags, and improbably
tinted tweeds.  They wore tennis shoes and T shirts.  Occasionally they
wove sinuously in line, imitating a serpent.  Again, they leaped
rhythmically in turn, beginning at one end of the line and working
forward or backward in an ocean wave effect.

Wilhelm Freytag watched their antics for a while, decided they were no
doubt going to be a complete nuisance for the whole voyage, and
wondered if he had ever been so puerile, so callow, so absurd.  He was
thirty now, five years married, and life was getting to be a pretty
tough business, a good deal more than he had bargained for; but then,
he had not been looking for a bargain, after all.  But could he ever
have been such a fool as any one of these in that crowd?  He remembered
wd| that he had been, indeed; but he had not reached the age of
sentimental reminiscence of youthful imbecilities: he had just come to
the place where he shuddered to be reminded of them.  He now did in
fact shudder and walk on hunched a little, like a man facing a
blizzard.

He paused on his way to bed and glanced into the dim pit of the
steerage.  The deck was covered with huddled figures, their heads
resting on bundles, with only the floor under their bones.  A few men
were in hammocks, a few women with young babies sleeping on their
stomachs were leaning back in canvas chairs.  The rest slept piled upon
each other like dirty rags thrown out on a garbage heap.  He stood and
contemplated the inviolable mystery of poverty that was like a
slow-working incurable disease, and there was nothing in his own mind,
his history or his temperament that could even imagine a remedy for it.
He had been comfortable all his life in the way of his middle class;
and to them, though they furnished largely to all the professions

 and esteemed them warmly, money-making was the career undisputedly
theirs, to them the most becoming of all occupations for a well
brought-up, well-trained young man.  He was not yet rich, but it had
not until lately occurred to him that there could be any obstacle to
his getting as rich as he liked.  And it would be very rightly- after
giving due thanks to his father and mother for his education M very
rightly all due to his own efforts; if he failed it would be through
some weakness in himself that he had not suspected.  He had a moral
aversion to poverty, an instinctive contempt and distrust of the
swarming poor spawned like maggots in filth, befouling the air around
them.

Yet, he thought, moving on with a reluctant tinge of pity, they are
necessary, they have their place, what would we do without them?  And
here they are, being sent from a place they are not canted to a place
where they cannot be welcome; they are going from hard labor and hunger
to no labor and starvation, from misery to misery- what kind of
creature would endure this except a lower order of animal?  He shook
off his pity as hateful to him, and went back to his own dilemma,

and realized that the chill of horror the sight of the wretched people
gave him was for himself, his own fears taking monstrous shapes in his
imagination.  He, a German of a good solid Lutheran family, Christian
as they come, against terrible opposition from both families, against
his own better judgment, against all common sense and reason, had
married a Jewish girl with a beautiful exotic name, Mary Champagne.

The family had come from wherever Jews did come in the Middle

Ages, and had dropped Abraham ben Joseph or whatever it was,

named themselves for the district and settled down for a few hundred
years.  Some of them turned Catholic or married Gentiles and were
kicked out, and changed their names once more and became really

French; but Mary's branch were diehards and they started roaming again,
through Alsace into Germany, God knows why.  Pretty poor judgment it
seemed to him.  But they kept the fine French name they had picked for
themselves.  And they all made a point of broad mindedness and
liberality, and mingled socially with Gentiles, if they were of the
right class and would still have them.  Yet he and Mary fell in love,
and so honestly and surely in love, it was like knocking down a
hornet's nest.  They had patiently fought the battle to a finish with
his family and connections as well as with hers; in the end they had
got married in a Lutheran church, with wails and sobs of Oi oi oi oil
rising from one spot in the small group on the left-hand side of the
main

aisle... His parents could not conceal their relief when he announced
he was going to Mexico, plainly they were grateful to have an
impossible situation cleared up so simply.  Mary's mother, a widow, did
not consider her daughter as married at all, except perhaps legally,
but she was rather a worldly gay woman, not especially religious, being
at times no more Jewish than she felt suitable to the occasion: what
people didn't know wouldn't hurt her, she argued; whose business is it
but mine what I amp What she had feared in the marriage was scandal and
ostracism from her family and friends, and she got plenty of both, poor
woman.  In the end she had come over to her daughter and son-in-law,
cast in her fate with theirs and was prepared to live and die with
them- bless her!  he thought with gratitude, what a good heart.  And he
remembered they had all three begun to be proud of themselves and each
other for being able to throw off stupid prejudices and live like free
people, making a good life for themselves in an open world.  "Oh, God,"
said Wilhelm Freytag, almost aloud.  Then he smiled to himself a little
grimly.  "God of Israel," he added, "where are You?"  and turned into
the passage leading to his cabin.

Jenny Brown and Elsa Lutz, in their stuffy little cabin, were brushing
their hair and preparing for sleep in an amiable silence.  They were
getting on very well, with small talk about life on the ship, mild
gossip and harmless opinion.  Elsa in spite of her mother's warnings
was quickly disarmed by her cabin mate's gentle, rather orderly ways,
and sat by fascinated while Jenny did up her face with sweet-smelling
waters and layers of ointment like whipped cream.  The roar and tramp
of the students passed for the third time on the deck just over their
heads; the noise, rising above the sea and the engines, poured through
the portholes.  Again Elsa lifted her head to listen, with thoughtful
face.

"The ship is full of boys now," she said, almost hopefully.

"Very," said Jenny.  "It will be nice if they happen to know more than
one song."

They both were startled by an unusual noise in the passageway just
beyond their door: they listened, staring at each other, to a violent
confused rushing and stumbling about, like a struggle of some sort,
ending with a heavy soft thud as if a sandbag had been hurled against
the panel.  Two voices, male and female, in which they recognized
members

of the Spanish dancing troupe, rose in a fierce quarrel.  The quarrel
was about money.  They screamed hotly in a ragged duet about money,
calling each other by name, Concha and Manolo.  Manolo wanted, he
wanted instantly with no more talk, the seven Cuban pesos he knew
Concha had got that evening.  He had seen the man give her the change
after paying the barman.  Concha denied it brazenly, she was shrewish
and fearless.  Jenny, following the logic of the fight, realized that
Concha did not for a moment question Manolo's right to the money if she
had it to give.  She took what might seem the easy way out and denied
she had it.  It was not going to be easy.

"I saw it," said Manolo, fiercely.  "Give it me or I'll rip your lying
tongue out!"

Concha screamed that he could rip her entrails out if he liked, he
would not find the money.  Their voices joined again and crashed like
breaking crockery, then stopped dead to the sound of a ringing slap. 
An instant's pause and Concha began to weep, helplessly, tenderly,
submissively as if this was what she had been waiting for, and Ma
nolo's voice purred as softly as if he were making love, "Now will you
give me the money, or do you want me to

Jenny glanced uneasily at Elsa to see how much of Manolo's threat she
understood.  The voices faded around the corner into the main
corridor.

"Well, did you ever?"  asked Elsa in English.  Her big childish mouth,
eyes, nostrils were wide open.  "Now what kind of woman is that?  He
doesn't sound like her husband to me."

"They're in the same cabin, you know," said Jenny.

"But you do not occupy the same cabin with your husband," said Elsa,
"so how can one ever tell?"

"We are not married," said Jenny, beginning to file her nails.

Elsa waited hungrily for more.  There was no more.  Her cabin mate
smiled at her p|easandy and went on with her filing.

"Well," said Elsa in disappointment, "I don't understand a woman who
lets a man treat her like that.  She must be from the lowest class.  No
woman is expected to put up with such things."

"It's part of her business," said Jenny, yawning.  "Are you ready to
have the light out?"

"Her business?"  Jenny saw that Elsa was sincerely shocked, confused,
even pained.

"Never mind," she said, uncomfortably.  "I'm talking nonsense.  expect
they're just a married pair fighting over money.  They often do, you
know."

"Oh yes, I do know," said Elsa.

In the darkness, when Jenny was growing drowsy, Elsa spoke from her
divan bed under the portholes, an important confidence.  "My father,
all my life, told me to believe in love, and to be loving, and it would
make me happy; but my mother says it is all just make-believe.
Sometimes I wish I knew-- I love my mother, but it seems to me that my
father knows more."

"He very probably does," said Jenny, rousing a little.  "Good night."
"Good night," said Elsa.  "My father is happy by nature, he loves to
have a good time.  But my mother cannot laugh, she says only fools
laugh, that life is not a thing for anybody to laugh at... Once when I
was little I remember... I remember so many things; but this time i was
with my father and mother at a party--in Switzerland in the country
they used to take all the children, even the little babies, to the
parties--and my mother would not dance the first dance with my father,
so of course, my father could not dance with anyone else.  So he said
to her, "Very well for you, all right, I'll find a nicer partner than
you'; and he got a broom and danced with that, and everybody but my
mother thought it was very funny.  She would not speak to him for the
rest of the evening.  So my father drank too much beer and was very
gay, and on the way home he said suddenly to my mother, "Now you are
going to dance," and he took her by the waist and swung her round and
round until her feet were whirling off the ground, and she cried.  I
could not understand my mother, leally it was no harm, it was funny.
But my mother cried and then I cried too; and my poor father walked
along with us then very quietly, and I think now he wished to cry.  She
never has laughed at a single one of my father's jokes, and yet he will
keep making them.  Some of them are awful, don't think I don't know
that.  Oh," said Elsa, her voice in the night slow with grieved wonder,
"I am afraid I am like my mother; I cannot be funny and amusing to
people, I would be ashamed to call attention to myself, but sometimes
it is hard just to sit; and I think there must be something wrong with
me or the boys would ask me to dance."

"There's almost nobody on this ship you'd want to dance with," said
Jenny.  "You wouldn't look at them if you were at home."

"But I am not at home," said Elsa, "and I have never been, for in

Mexico the boys there, the ones I was allowed to go with, don't like
my style... My mother said just like you, "Don't worry, Elsa, in

Switzerland they will think you are just exactly the right kind of
girl,

a real Swiss girl, the kind they like there, don't worry, it will be
all right when we get home," She thinks love is all nonsense, but she
wants me to get married.  She says it is what women are expected to
do.

But I am not in Switzerland yet, and I hardly remember it though my
mother took me back for a visit when I was nine years old.  But oh, it
seemed such a strange place!  I shall speak Swiss-German like a
foreigner, because I spoke so much French and English and Spanish in

Mexico.  I was never at home in Mexico, but now maybe I shan't be at
home in Switzerland, either.  Oh, I am so sad about going there ,.."

The small monotonous plaint went on like rain at midnight, and

Jenny listened, touched and attentive.  She thought she knew real
trouble when she heard it.

"My mother said all this time, it is not fair to Elsa, we must take her
home in time so that she can marry a Swiss, here it is no good for a

Swiss gid.  I hope she is right, I hope they like me in Switzerland."

"Of course they will like you, you will be the new interest, the girl
from a far country," Jenny told her, and she felt an anxious
tenderness, as if she had been asked for help which she was not able to
give.

What hope was there for the discouraged young face with its double
chin, the crease of Fat like a goiter at the base of the throat, the
oily skin,

the faded gray eyes without the light of spirit, the dull thick hair,

the heavy haunches, the gross ankles.  Good nose, good mouth, good
enough forehead, these were all; no sparkle, no lift at all in that
solid mound of not very appetizing flesh.  And inside, there groped
blindly,

the young innocence and the longing, the pained confused limited mind,
the dark instincts winding upon themselves like snails.

Jenny said, "This time, I Feel your mother is right.  Let me tell you

I never knew a girl who wanted to marry who didn't get married,

sooner or later."

"Oh, I have," said Elsa, rejecting the half-truth and the pity it
offered with bitter pride and honesty.  "I have... I think sometimes
that if I had different clothes," she said, "or maybe a permanent
wave.

Maybe if I had one of those.  But my mother says young girls must be
perfectly natural and pure in every way.  No curls, even.  They must
wait for everything until they get married, even to use scent..

But suppose I never get married?"

Jenny said, "To marry properly, you must first, yourself, fall in
love.  Were you never in love?"

"Why no," said Elsa, in a startled voice.  "Never.  But my mother ays I
must wait until a man shows interest in me first."

"Interest!"  said Jenny, rousing a little.  "Listen," she said, trying
to sound very wise and final, for she could not stay awake much longer,
"I'm frightfully tired, aren't you?  It doesn't in the least matter who
falls in love with who first, but first there must be falling in love
and then marriage will take care of itself."

"But what happens," asked Elsa, with patient persistence, "if I never
fall in love?"

"Well then, just hope madly that someone will fall in love with you,"
said Jenny, feeling that she had got on a slow-moving merry-go round.
"Don't you see?  It's really all so simple, Elsa!"

"But suppose," said Elsa, "no one falls in love with me, what happens
then?"

"Nothing, I expect," admitted Jenny at last, completely cornered.

"That's just it," said Elsa, a despairing satisfaction in her tone, and
she said no more.

PART II.

High Sea.

Kein Haus, kei ne Heimat... Song by Brahms.

Ric and Rac, Lola's twins, got up early and dressed themselves quietly
before Lola and Tito were awake.  They were badly buttoned and
frowsy-haired; their wary black eyes gave their sallow sharp faces a
hardened, precociously experienced look; awake, they were up to
mischief, and asleep, they dreamed of it.  They did a song and dance
act in the show, in bullfighter and Carmen costume, and tore each
other's hair in the dressing room afterward through jealousy of the
applause and sheer nervous excitement.  Otherwise they were of one mind
and spirit, and lived twined together in a state of intense undeclared
war with the adult world- or rather, with the whole world, for they did
not like other children, or animals, either.

They were christened Armando and Dolores, but they had renamed
themselves for the heroes of their favorite comic cartoon in a Mexican
newspaper: Ric and Rac, two lawless wire-haired terriers whose
adventures they followed day by day passionately and with envy.  The
terriers--not real dogs of course, but to their idolaters real devils
such as they wished to be- made fools of even the cleverest human
beings in every situation, made life a raging curse for everyone near
them, got their own way invariably by a wicked trick, and always
escaped without a blow.  They were in short ideal characters and the
first the children had ever admired and longed to emulate.  Ric and Rac
they became to themselves and it gave them secret strength.

The decks were still damp and steaming lightly under the morning sun,
and only a few sailors were moving about slowly.  Ric and Rac went into
one of the writing rooms and there silently, as if by previous plan,
Ric took the cork from an ink bottle and turned the bottle on its side.
For a moment they watched the ink pour out over the clean blotter and
onto the carpet, then silendle they went out on the other side of the
ship, where Rac, seeing a small down pillow which Frau

Rittersdorf had left in her deck chair, without a word took it up and
tossed it overboard.  Soberly they watched it bob upon the waves,
wondering why it floated so long.  A sailor appeared just back of them,
and they fled with such obvious signs of guilt, he frowned and looked
about him carefully to find what they had been up to; saw nothing,
shook his head, went about his business, while the evidence slowly sank
far in the wake.

Ric and Rac climbed the rail in the stern above the steerage deck and
gazed down upon a fascinating sight.  Hundreds of people, men and
women, were wallowing on the floor, being sick, and sailors were
washing them down with streaming hose.  They lay in the film of water,
just lifting their heads now and then, or trying to roll nearer the
rail.  One man sat up and held out a hand to the sailor nearest him,
and the sailor turned the hose down to a light drizzle and washed the
man's face and head, then turned the water on plentifully and washed
his clothes, there on him, just as he was.

Another man lay on his face and groaned and gurgled as if he were
drowning.  Two sailors picked him up out of his own sickness and
carried him to the lowest step of the stairway to the dark steerage
quarters and there set him down.  He fell over on his side at once.
"Let's make him get up," said Ric, the male twin, and taking off his
loose heavy brown sandal, he threw it by the toe.  It missed and struck
a young woman sitting near with a baby in her arms.  Her skirts were
sopping wet and her bare feet were black with filthy water.  She looked
up at them and clenched her fist, shouting a wonderful string of dirty
words --which they knew- at them, and added a few they had not heard,
but they knew the meanings.  They smiled for the first time at each
other with an expression of discovery, then listened with all their
ears, watching her dirt-streaked face work and crumple in hatred and
helpless fury.

A sailor on deck below picked up the sandal and tossed it back so
accurately he hit Ric in the chest, and almost at the same instant the
twins were seized by an arm each from the back, and a stern voice of
absolute authority said, "What are you doing here" They were hauled
downward so strongly they had not time to stiffen their spines, but
they refused to meet the cold eye of the young ocer, who shook them
quite freely and said, "If you do such things again you will be locked
up for the rest of the voyage.  Now remember.  He gave them a little
push, and they ran in silence, with impudent faces.

They almost collided with the dying man in the wheel chair being
pushed along like a baby in a carriage by the tall angry-looking boy.
"Get out of my way," snarled the boy in Spanish, and they dodged around
him, putting out their tongues.

The man in the chair sat among his pillows and coughed, as he did
nearly all day and all night, his weak little beard agitated, his
eyeballs mustard-yellow.

"Stop here," he said to the boy, and they paused while he craned feebly
to see the people on the lower deck, a sick pity in his face in the
presence of so much misery.  Some of the men were getting on their feet
by then; they stood jammed together along the walls of the ship and at
the rail while the sailors went on hosing down the filth of their
sickness into the sea.  They then piled back upon each other, on the
wet canvas chairs in their wet clothes, and in the abominable heat a
strange mingled smell of vegetable and animal rot rose from them.

Herr Graf said in a low voice as if talking to himself: "I can think
only of how all that sinful flesh must suffer before it shall be
allowed to die.  We must all earn the blessing of death at a great
price, Johann."  At the sound of his name Johann's mouth quivered with
rage and disgust.  He did not reply.  The dying man spread one hand out
in the direction of the steerage in a gesture of blessing.  "God, heal
them, give them health and virtue and joy.... If only I could touch
them.  Johann," he said to the boy his nephew, in a weak but natural
voice, "you must help me down there among them, to touch some of those
sick; they must be eased, it is not right to let them suffer."

Johann's sulky mouth curled with exasperation, his hands jerked on the
chair: "you know you will not be allowed to go down there.  Why do you
always talk nonsense?"

In silence they moved on, the chair creaking faintly.  "I forgive you,
nephew Johann, I forgive you your hard heart and evil will.  You cannot
harm me by any means, but I might help you if you would let me."  "You
can help me by dying and letting me go free," said Johann in a low
shaking voice, giving the chair a sharp swerve.  "You can die and let
me go home!"

His uncle considered this awhile, and then said in a reasonable tone as
if in ordinary conversation: "I promised I would leave you the money,
Johann, if you would come with me and see me safely to Germany once
more, for a last look.  Is that not worth considering?"

"When?"  asked Johann wearily.  "When?"  and the chair wheels rat-
fled a little.

"It should not be long, Johann, in the very nature of things.  Do you
expect me to set the exact date for you?  But I told you in the
beginning that if you would come-" "Don't go over that," said Johann,
"I know all about it."

"And your mother my poor sister, she was glad of the chance for you.  I
renew my promise to leave you everything in my will, though you do not
deserve it, you have not merited it; for charity and kind behavior were
part of your agreement.  But leaving all that aside, you may now finish
your education in Germany; you may not have to go back to Mexico at
all; I hope not."

"I will go where I please," he said bitterly.  "And what did my mother
care what happened to me?  She wants only the money."

"It is perhaps true, my dear nephew," said Herr Graf, choking and
beginning to cough.  "Yet in fact the money will be yours and not
hers."  He spat into a folded paper box which he produced from under
his light rug.  "I can see that you are my sister's own child.  She was
never like the rest of us.  She had a cold nature, a hard heart, from
the beginning."

"It is time for me to go and ask for your breakfast," said Johann.  He
broke out suddenly as if he were near tears.  "Why can't I have my
meals with the others in the dining room?  It is making me sick to eat
always with you in that nasty cabin.  Why can't you sit up here on deck
by yourself for an hour and let me breathe?  You are a beast of
selfishness, Uncle, I say it to your face.  So."

Herr Graf groaned and hid his face in both hands.  "My God," he said,
"go, go and leave me.  Yes, leave me alone.  God will take care of me.
He will not let me suffer by your cruelty.  Stay as long as you like.
But remember, I have made my will in your favor, and you shall have
everything.  Be sure of that.  The rest is between you and your
conscience."

Johann gave a great explosive sigh and pushed the chair very fast.

He was ravenously hungry, ah, he would sit in the pleasant bright
dining salon among the lively young people and maybe get into a
conversation with one of those pretty girls.  He would get away from
death for just an hour, the smells, the praying, the phlegmy rattle in
the throat, the smothering air of old age, sick and whining and
clutching... "You will be all right, I will fix everything and you can
read for a while," he said, and he felt cold and determined.  No, not
for any money could he bear another day without relief, a little
freedom, just a few turns on deck by himself before he lost control and
smashed something.  No, not for any money.  He eased the chair down
steps with unusual gentleness, turned expertly through the cabin door,
opened the porthole; and feeling the half-fainting gaze of his uncle
heaping untold reproach upon him, he bounded out again.  Half a dozen
paces away he was whistling gaily a doleful little tune: "Das gibt's
nut einmal, das konzmt night wieder," as if his heart would break for
joy.

David Scott, who slept on the narrow bunk against the wall, was wakened
by Denny climbing out of the upper berth.  David, after a quick
glimpse, pretended to sleep.  There seemed nothing much wrong with
Denny except he was a bore.  His mind seemed to run monotonously on
women, or rather, sex; money, or rather his determination not to be
gypped by anybody; and his health.

He got up early every morning and took a dose of effervescent laxative
salts, making the same nauseated face after the draught.  Then he ate a
cake of yeast, nibbling it little by little as he shaved.  He would
dash cold water in his face and examine the whites of his eyes
apprehensively.  He had small, mattery pimples on his neck and one
cheek, like a boy of fourteen.  He had, by a long roundabout
arrangement through German friends of his father, got a chance to work
with a great chemical manufacturer's firm in Berlin, and now and then
he made a vague reference to his future as a chemical engineer.  But as
David displayed not only an utter ignorance of the subject but a total
indifference as well- and Denny thought David meant signboards or
houses when he called himself a painter--their topics of conversation
had narrowed almost to nothing unless Denny's three preoccupations
could be called topics.

Herr Glocken said little, but after a few days' rest he seemed in fair
health, and began to show himself at moments to be rather a good
humored twinkling little man in the friendly male atmosphere of the
cabin, with the two young fellows who never seemed to notice that his
back was not like theirs.  Sometimes they talked German together,
gossiping about the affairs of the ship, and the young men never made
Herr Glocken feel that their general experience of life was
particularly different from his own.  Herr Glocken was at ease.  He
slept well, and

kept the curtains drawn in the morning until he could emerge fully
dressed, saving them the sight of his unseemly frame except under the
best disguise he could manage.

At that moment there was no sign of movement behind his curtain.  David
did not stir, but was outraged to observe that Denny proceeded to strip
and give himself a sponge bath from the communal washbasin.  But I have
to wash my face in that, he thought, and viewed with horror and
repulsion the naked brown flesh of the other, like badly tanned
leather, all overgrown with sparse curly hair which came off on the
soapy cloth and stuck to the sides of the bowl in a light scum.  If he
does that again, I'll stuff him through the porthole, resolved David,
seething.  Still he said nothing and realized that probably he never
would.  He would wait until the fellow was gone and scrub the bowl with
disinfectant.  Hot and nervous, he sat up and felt for his straw
sandals with his wriggling toes.

"Hello," said Denny in a cautious voice, "I'll be the hell out in a
minute.  It's a tight fit in here."

David, feeling that for him it would be a tight fit anywhere that he
had to put on his shoes before a stranger, or speak to anyone except
perhaps Jenny before he had had his coffee, said, "I'll try to get in
the shower, don't hurry yourself."

Herr Clocken's head appeared between the long curtains, his thin
confused hair all on end.  His long face with its pseudo-Hapsburg jaw
was a network of fine wrinkles.  "Good morning," he croaked, though not
gloomily.  "Would you be so kind as to hand me that little flask?"  and
he pointed towards it, standing beside his water glass.  "And some
water, if you will please."

David gave him both, and noticed that the flask was marked "Every three
hours or when required," and it occurred to him that perhaps Herr
Glocken was never altogether without pain.  Herr Glocken, reaching out,
parted dae curtains more than he intended, and David noted with intense
surprise that he wore a bright red silk pajama coat.  Profusion of
color in anything was offensive to David; it offended more than his
eye--he distrusted it on moral grounds, and nowhere more so than in
dress.  His own neckties were black knitted strings he bought by the
half dozen from sidewalk peddlers, his socks were black cotton, his
suits were mottled gray, dark gray, light gray, Oxford gray and
blue-gray, besides the chaste white linen and canvas he wore in summer.
His favorite palette was a mixture of grays, browns,

ochers, and dark blues with a good deal of white; and his favorite
though not original theory was that persons who "expressed themselves"
by wearing color were merely attempting to supply its inner lack in
their own natures, adding a facade that fooled nobody.

A great deal of this he knew had been aimed at Jenny, who had been
brilliant as a macaw when he first fell in love with her, wearing for
her own delight high, cool colors, and splashing her little canvases
recklessly with geometrical designs in primary colors like fractured
rainbows.  She had seemed quite serious about it, too.  Little by
little he had succeeded in undermining her confidence in this
nonsensical way of painting.  Her palette lowered in tone; gradually,
too, she had taken to dressing in muted colors or black and white, with
only now and then a crimson or orange scarf, and she was not painting
much, but working almost altogether in charcoal or India ink.

Deeply he hoped she would give it up altogether--there had never been a
really great woman painter, nothing better than some superior disciple
of a great man; it disturbed him to see a woman so out of place; and he
did not believe in her talent for a moment.  The best she could hope
for was to be a good illustrator, and that she despised.  But there was
something in her whole nature that obstructed the workings of his own:
when she was painting, he could not; just as when she was in a loving
tender mood, he felt himself beginning to grow cold and defensive, to
hold her off and deny her.

Jenny was like a cat in her fondness for nearness, for stroking,
touching, nestling, with a kind of sensuality so diffused it almost
amounted to coldness after all, for she almost never wanted to make
love outright as he did, suddenly, violently, grimly, and have it over
with.  She would drink from his cup and share a fruit with him, bite by
bite: she loved to tell him how much she loved him, though she was
getting over that; but she was never happy with him, and when they
slept together, they quarreled.  David in the wave of repulsion he
suffered at the sight of Herr Glocken's red pajamas hated Jenny for a
violent moment, as he did often, and oftener.  As for Glocken- on deck
in daytime, except for his silly bright neckties, his clothes were
shabby and dull, his shoes broken.  Almost everyone avoided him.  He
scared people off; his plight was so obviously desperate they were
afraid some of it would rub off on them.  At night, behind that
curtain, in the dark, wrapped in his red silk, what did he dream about
himself?

Denny was pulling on his trousers, his face thoughtful.  "Say," he

remarked suddenly to David, "you know that little one with the red
ruffles on her skirt they call Pastora?  Well, she looks to me hot as a
firecracker.  And she has been giving me the eye, from time to time.
What do you suppose it would cost?"

David said, "I suppose about whatever the traffic will bear."

"Well, traffic's jammed right now, so far as I'm concerned.  But I
think I'll prospect around a little.  We're going to be on this boat
nearly a month, you know.  That's a long long time.  I'm beginning to
worry about the future."

David said, "You'd better try to keep on ice until you get to Berlin
where they're government-inspected, or you may have to go to see Dr.
Schumann before you get to Bremerhaven."

"I know," said Denny, turning a little pale, "I've thought of that. 
But there are all kinds of things you can- well, I think I can take
care of myself."

"Things might work and they might not," said David.  "They can talk all
they like, there aren't any sure ways."

"God," said Denny, sincerely.  He got up and looked at himself in the
mirror and took a last swipe at his hair with the brush.  "But she
certainly looks all right, healthy and everything."

"You never can tell," said David, with malice.

"Well," said Denny, "we aren't there yet.  If I can ever get her cut
out from the herd," he said.  "They run together so close you can't get
a word in between them."

Bebe, Frau Hutten decided, was recovering.  She brought him food when
she came from breakfast, and after consulting with her husband, fed
Bebe, who made out a very good meal.  "The dear blessed one," said Frau
Hutten, watching him eat with pleasure, "with his so fine instincts and
feelings, eating his food humbly face downward like any animal; it is a
great pity.  He is too good for that."

"He does not mind in the least, dear Kithe," said her husband.  "He is
more comfortable in that posture, on account of the construction of his
frame.  It would not be natural or right for him to sit up to his food.
I have seen children with unconscious cruelty try to train their pets
to eat at table, and it was so much labor lost, besides the suffering
of the animal.  No, I think our good Bebe does very well, and misses
nothing that he should have."

Frau Hutten, her confidence restored and her mind set at ease as
always by her husband's words, fitted on Bebe's leash and the three
went for a good fast walk.  Seven times around the deck was, Professor
Hutten calculated, just the right distance for a proper constitutional.
But Bebe, who started briskly enough, began to lag on the third lap,
and midway of the fourth he stopped in the grip of his familiar
convulsions and disgraced himself most hideously then and there.
Professor Hutten knelt and supported his head, while Frau Hutten went
to look for a sailor who could bring a bucket of water.

A few feet away, she heard a shout of laughter, a raucous chorus with
no gaiety in it, and recognized with a chill the voices of the Spanish
dancing troupe.  They had a way of sitting together, and without
warning they would laugh dreadfully, with mirthless faces, and they
were always laughing at somebody.  They would look straight at you and
laugh as if you were an object too comic to believe, yet their eyes
were cold and they were not enjoying themselves, even at your expense.
Frau Hutten had observed them from the first and she was afraid of
them.

Without looking, she felt that they had seen her husband and her poor
Bebe; and she was right.  They came on in a pack, sweeping around the
forlorn tableau, and as they passed her, their unfriendly eyes took her
in from head to foot.  Their teeth were disclosed and they were making
those gruesome sounds of merriment.  She felt her fatness, her age, her
heavy ankles; the Spaniards' slenderness and youth cast contempt on her
and on all that she was, in one bitter, mocking glance.

She found a sailor, a nice big boy with a good square face who was used
to seasickness.  He brought water, washed up after Bebe and went away.
The Huttens laid Bebe beside their deck chairs, folded bath towels
under his head, and sat together in massive silence, feeling themselves
figures of fun to those debased creatures, real hoodlums who should
never have been allowed to travel first class at all.  There were many
good people, Frau Hutten was sure, in the steerage who better deserved
to be on first deck.

In Mexico they had been accustomed for years to an easy, atmosphere,
among Germans of the solid cultured class who lived well and were
treated with great consideration by Mexicans of the corresponding
class.  They had never been sneered at for their shapes nor their
habits.  But as for these Gachupines, these low Spaniards, the Mexicans
knew how to treat them!  The Huttens remembered a Mexican saying that
the Germans in Mexico were never tired of repeating: Mexicans loathe

the Americans, despise the Jews, hate the Spaniards, distrust the
English, admire the French and love the Germans.  An immensely clever
Mexican gentleman had composed this saying at a dinner party, and it
had spread like wildfire among their little circle.  It was the kind of
thing that almost reconciled one to living in a foreign country with
mixed races and on the whole rather barbarous customs.

Herr Professor for years was the head of the best German school in
Mexico City, where the little boys carried their school packs on their
backs and wore round student caps; and the little girls wore black
pinafores over their sober-colored frocks, their hair shining in smooth
blonde braids.  Now and again, standing at the window of his classroom
in the big solid Mexican-French house which the German colony had
bought and remodeled in the seemly German style, Professor Hut ten
watched the children walking sedately yet vigorously in small groups,
their faces and their simple clothing so immaculate; observed the meek
looks and good manners of the German young, heard them speak their
mother tongue with good accent and pure diction, and fancied that he
might almost imagine himself to be in Germany.  Oh, that the whole
world of men might be so orderly, so well arranged, so virtuous in its
basic principles.  This hope, coming as it did to him at long
intervals, making him feel he was a part of a great universal movement
towards the betterment of mankind, had no doubt, as he confessed to his
wife, kept him alive.  But they had their private grief, their personal
loss. They were childless, and would always be so.

The white bulldog Bebe for nine years had lived with them, sharing
their lives.  He ate sitting on the floor beside the table, taking food
from their hands.  He had slept at their feet when he was a helpless
crying puppy afraid of the dark and missing the comfort of his mother's
milk.  Professor Hutten admitted in his heart that he was fond of Bebe,
in fact with his wife he loved Bebe warmly and tenderly and constantly,
in spite of the trouble he gave them.  To them, there was nothing
absurd in their feelings; Bebe, of a nobly disinterested nature,
deserved their care and repaid them with devotion.  His wife was cut to
the bone, he could see in her face, by the jeers and laughter of the
particularly base kind of Spaniards on the boat.  Professor Hutten
shared her grief, mixed with indignation and it must be said a touch of
shame.  He did not feel it was unmanly of him to have held Bebe's head,
but it was careless of him not to have a proper regard for appearances,
and to have exposed himself to the ridicule of those coarse natured
persons.  It was a consolation to remember that Bebe was an English
bulldog of champion stock, of distinguished if not absolutely flawless
ancestry; he had been awarded blue and purple ribbons without number in
very creditable shows.  Now he was a trifle aged perhaps and out of
training, but he was still able and willing to defend his master and
mistress and incidentally himself against all attacks.  If the word was
said to him it was still in Bebe to spring like a trigger, seize and
hold one of those jeering little black people by the throat, never
letting go until his master gave the command.  Professor Hutten leaned
over the sleeping Bebe and said in a low, urgent voice, "Attack, Bebe,
attack!"

Bebe rose drunkenly, scrambled on his feet trying to get a balance, his
eyes rolling.  He uttered a deep ominous growl, tottered, and pitched
forward on his blunt nose, spread out flat.  "What are you doing?"
asked Frau Hutten, in wonder.  "If we do not keep him quiet, he will be
sick again."

"It came over me to test the permanence of his training," said the
Professor, with a gratified air.  "No, he has forgotten nothing.  Ah,
Kithe, how blood and training do form and sustain character.  Look at
the good animal: he will never fail us."

Frau Hutten said, "How he reminds me of the past, of our life, now we
are going home again."  She gazed at Bebe with tenderness, but her
thoughts were disturbed with looking backward and looking forward, for
nothing in the past seemed properly related to the future.  She was
almost afraid to hope, for things in the old country must be very much
changed, and in ways she could not be prepared for.  She said as much
to her husband.

"Where we are going," he reassured her sweetly, "people and things and
ways change slowly.  We will be among those of our own age, our own way
of thinking and feeling; they were the friends of our childhood and
youth, they cannot now be strangers to us--or so we may only hope," he
added, bravely.

Frau Hutten was silent, remembering when the whole German colony in
Mexico City went to a theater to see the moving picture of the funeral
of the Kaiserin Augusta Viktoria, They rose in silence as the great
hearse appeared, surrounded by its horse guard of helmeted soldiers.
Like brothers and sisters reunited at the graveside of their mother,
they all wept together, each turned and embraced the one

nearest him.  Aloud they had wept together in broken sobs and gulps,
until the whole theater was a place of mourning, full of the sound of
this homesick, heart-soothing sorrow.  They had sung "A Mighty
Fortress," "O Tannenbaum" and "the Watch on the Rhine," with tears
still on their faces.  How near to the homeland they had seemed at that
moment, but never to be so near again, because of what they had lost:
the good, the gentle, the long-suffering Empress who had been symbol of
all they revered in home and family life, the generous hearthstone
around which their best memories clustered.

"What will it be like now, I wonder?"  she wanted to ask her husband
again, but she knew he could not answer except with hopes; and she did
not wish to trouble him.

Professor Hutten was sunk in his thought too: how he had worked all
these years, hoping against all reason that the day of his honorable
retirement with savings and pension would come, and God in his goodness
would let him see again the house where he was born in the Todmoos
country of the Black Forest; and now it had come, he was full of
misgivings.  What would it be like?  He buried his face in his hands,
leaning forward in the deck chair, and almost instantly a qualm caught
him in the pit of the stomach, and a surge of most awful sickness
chased out his comfortable piety.  He raised his head, streaming with
sweat.  "Kithe," he said in a low despairing voice, "help me.  For
God's sake quickly before anyone sees."

It happened Frau Rittersdorf saw.  But she was much too occupied
searching for her goose-down pillow, pure white goose down covered with
cream-and-pink striped taffeta, which had been sent to her from Germany
all the way to Mexico as a Christmas present from her dear dead
husband's dear mother.  How she could have misplaced it, have forgotten
it for a moment, Frau Rittersdorf was unable to explain to herself.  It
was really indispensable to her comfort, as the deck chairs were
unusually hard, or seemed to be so at any rate on this ship where
everything was undeniably more than a little on the second-rate side.
In any case, since no doubt she had left it in her chair, it was the
plain duty of someone--the deck steward for choice to have salvaged and
returned it at once to her stateroom.

She advanced upon the steward firmly though kindly.  He was a most
polite and attentive fellow who spoke with an Austrian accent... "meine
Dame," he called her, which she rather preferred to the
homelier-sounding Frau, "it cannot be lost, it is only misplaced for
the moment and I shall find and return it to you.  After all, this is a
small ship,

and it cannot have got overboard by itself!  So do please, dear lady,
be at your ease and I shall bring it to you very presently."

Frau Rittersdorf, winding her green veil closely about her head and
knotting it over one ear, noticed those two awful Spanish children
standing a few feet away, simply staring at her with animal
curiosity.

She returned their attention with a slit-eyed disciplinary face, such
as had always proved effective with her English charges when she was a
governess with a country family in England.

"Have you lost something?"  asked the little girl in a high bold
treble.

"Yes, have you stolen it?"  inquired Frau Rittersdorf, sternly.

At this they seemed strangely agitated; they wriggled somewhat, ex
changed wicked glances; the little boy said, "Who knows?"  Then they
both cackled with un childish laughter and ran away.  Frau
Rittersdorf,

considering exactly what she would do with them if they were in her
power, moved over to the deck rail near that pair of young people,
obviously American--what was there about Americans that made them so
obviously only that?  the gradual mongrelization of that dismaying
country by the mingling of the steerage sweepings of Europe and the
blacks had resulted only in a mediocrity of feature and mind impossible
to describe!  yet she wondered what they could find to talk about '"

so constantly, as they spent at least half their time in each other's
society and one might think they should finally have exhausted topics
for conversation.  They were leaning together companionably,

both pairs of eyes fixed on the glittering stretches of water, talking
idly,

with short pauses.

Frau Rittersdorf did not hope to overhear much, for she was slightly
deaf, nor to observe details except at short distances, for she was
extremely nearsighted.  At the right distance, however, considering
these disadvantages, she leaned upon the rail next the young man, and
bringing her vision into focus swiftly, ascertained that he was younger
than she had thought.  His light hair was nicely cut, he had a good
thin high nose and a well-shaped mouth, and a general though no doubt
misleading air of good upbringing.  His pale gray shirt was quite fresh
but his white linen suit was ready for the wash.

The young woman wore a short-sleeved, belted no-colored frock that
appeared to have been fashioned from hop sacks.  Her face was pale and
too thin, with high cheekbone and a sharp pointed chin

that gave her a vixenish look.  She had fairly good light eyes and
black hair parted plainly in the middle--one of these advanced,
emancipated young women of the Bohemian world, no doubt.  Frau
Rittersdorf noted that in repose his face was sulky and hers impatient.
Suddenly they both lifted their heads and laughed together, and their
faces were Instantly gay, good-humored, a little reckless.  She smiled
involuntarily at the fresh, pretty sound of youthful happiness; they
both saw her smile.  Their expressions grew a little blank and cool,
and they turned their faces away.

Frau Rittersdorf had seen quite enough to convince her that this was an
odd outlandish pair; there was something about them she could not
understand and did not like at all.  They were not the sort of persons
she would care to cultivate as traveling companions.  She returned to
her chair, arranged her skirts carefully about her legs, leaned back,
missing her soft little pillow, and got out her notebook.

She had a poor memory and a passion for recording every minutest detail
of her daily existence- even to the very moment in which she carelessly
spooned her soup too hot or forgot to stamp a letter--mingled with
scraps of philosophy, observations, reminiscence and meditation.  For
years she had filled notebook after notebook with tiny iottings in a
sharp cultivated little handwriting, and as they were filled, she put
them away neatly and never looked at them again.  Shaking her
old-banded fountain pen, she wrote in English:

"These young Americans have the affectation of addressing each other
always by their full names, perhaps the only formality they maintain
between themselves, and a very gauche sort of thing it is, or perhaps
it's the only hope they have of making themselves known to the public.
There is a faint atmosphere of moral slackness in their manner, their
dress--I cannot quite place or describe it.  It is more of an
effluvium.  The names are musical, if somewhat sentimental: Jenny
Angel- the real name is, I suppose, Jane, Johanna Engel it would be,
and much better, in the German- and David Darling.  The latter is a
common surname as well as a usual term of affection among Americans, I
believe; much less among the frozen English naturally, though it does
seem to be a corruption of the word Dear, Dearling, the diminutive;
this would sound as if pronounced Darling, since the English have a
slovenly way of speaking certain words to which, frankly speaking, I
could never accustom myself during those seven long penitential years
in that country.  Naturally I learned English perfectly at

school in Munich, and had always heard it spoken well, and the English
manner of speech seemed very crude to me after that.  Ah, those years
of bitter exile!  Ah, those frightful two-faced English children whose
affection I could never win, and who could never learn German by any
means.  DeyahIing, the English would call it after all, and the
Americans, who seem to learn their language phonetically, or by ear, as
they say, because of their distaste for reading, would add the sound of
R, a letter they seem fond of to excess.  It is all quite interesting
in its limited way."

Reading this over, she decided it was too good to hide, but would go
well in a letter to her dearest friend and schoolmate of long ago,
Sophie Bismarck, highly connected, unhappily married and living in
luxury in Munich.  Stupid little Sophie's head would spin as always,
trying to follow her brilliant schoolmate's mind.  She made a note in
the margin, "Fur lie be Sophie, to be translated in case she has
forgotten her English," dropped the book into her large flat handbag
and got up to take her walk, nine times around the deck.  Exercise
warded off seasickness, kept down liverishness, gave one an appetite,
indeed there was everything to be said for it, dull as it might be; and
the boundless rolling waters of the mighty deep inspired noble
thoughts.

Her dear husband had taught her all this.  He was a man of endless
activity, and believed firmly-how right he was- that good health was
necessary to good morality.  How many times he had fairly dragged her
up and down during their Channel crossings, even in the worst
weather--indeed he welcomed the worst weather as the most exhilarating
test of courage--when they had to cling to any available support as if
they were drowning, the waves dashing over them.  Somewhere in the calm
blue sky above she felt that her dear Otto, dead in his manly strength
and beauty at the battle of Ypres, was looking down approvingly at his
good, obedient Nannerl, walking-yes, and alone, Otto, alone!  -round
and round the deck for the sake of her health, as he would have her
do.

On the seventh lap, feeling her arches fall her in her three-inch
heels, she rested provisionally on the arm of her chair and took out
her notebook again: "If those young American persons are not married,
they ought to be.  But in that monstrous country all the relations of
life are so perverted, more especially between the sexes, it is next to
impossible to judge them by any standards of true civilization."

Reading this over, she decided it was unworthy of her.  Where had

her mind been wandering all this time?  She struck out the whole
passage, and wrote in above the thick black line: "Divine weather, if a
little too warm, and a heavenly stroll with the pure sea air on my
face, thinking of my dear Otto and of the blessings of our happy though
all too brief marriage.  RIP.  August 25, 1931."

She went on, piously to finish the two laps- what were fallen arches in
comparison to the blissful sense of keeping faith with Otto?  -carrying
the journal between her hands as though it were a prayer book.  She met
the bride and groom also strolling, their clasped hands swinging
lightly, both very beautiful in pure white; looking, too, astonishingly
fresh and carefree considering the newness of their honeymoon.  As they
neared, she perceived that the bride, though serene-looking, was rather
pale, with darkening smudges under her eyes; even a little ill,
perhaps?  And quite properly, Frau Rittersdorf answered herself with
matronly approval.  One had well-founded suspicions of those brides who
remained unchanged in appearance and manner after marriage.  Even with
all the happiness of the new state, still one does not step from
virginity to the strains and stresses of married life without visible
sign.  Say what you will, it is not all roses!  She considered this
thought for a while and decided it was leading her mind into forbidden
areas: "Even during the most passionate of her husband's embraces, a
pure woman never permits herself an impure thought," her Otto had
instructed her more than once: a hard saying, but no doubt true.
Resolutely she turned her mind to higher things, putting the memory of
Otto back once more in the sacred potpourri of the past.

Jenny had coffee early, on deck, in the cool morning light
blue-tinctured between sea and sky, and began making sketches with a
fountain pen: the canvas wind-funnel like a conventional ghost with
outspread arms over the grated pit of the steerage eating place;

the white bulldog, apparently recovering from his seasickness, sprawled
weightily on his belly; Elsa, her cabin mate, from memory, big arms
raised, doing her hair; a passing sailor with a bucket; furtively,
after a quick glance around, a hasty outline of Herr Glocken's
harmonious, interesting deformity.  Jenny, sitting at ease in her own
neatly pretty small body which gave her very little trouble except for
its long famine of love, rather idly wondered what it might be like to
live in such a hideous shape as Herr Glocken's.  The thought
frightened

her so much she started sharply and dropped her pen, in a flash of
blind terror and suffocation, a child again locked in her grandmother's
bedroom closet narrow as a coffin.  She shut her eyes so tightly that
when she opened them she saw Wilhelm Freytag through a rainbow dazzle
of light, taking a long rather graceful stride toward her, holding out
her pen.

He stopped before her then, receiving her thanks, looking very sunny
and amiable, waiting to be invited to sit with her.  She moved her legs
aside and made room for him on the footrest of her chair.

"But if you are doing something?"  he said.

"This is just idleness," Jenny told him.  "A form of solitaire.  I'd
much rather gossip a little."  She leaned toward him, feeling again how
her habitual mood of resentment, the growing bitterness and melancholy
of her mind when she was alone, could so quickly be dispersed in the
sound of voices and the nearness of others, no matter if the voices had
nothinR to say to her, if the presences were strangers indifferent to
her.  Women spoil this fellow, she thought: his charm is perhaps
slightly overconfident- and then reflected that the society of someone
with no troubles of his own might be a rest for her after her thorny
progress with David.

Freytag was cheerfully ready for gossip, and happy to tell her there
was a mysterious stranger aboard, a real political prisoner, being
deported from Cuba, it was said, in connection with the student riots
that led to the closing of the University--to be confined in cabin for
the whole voyage, finally to be put off ship at Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
"In chains, I suppose," said Jenny.  "What did he do?"  "It's a
woman."

'Would that make any difference?"

"I hope so," said Freytag.  "But then, besides that, she is a Spanish
countess, and to the Captain, let me tell you, that alone makes all the
difference possible.  He has given orders all around that she is to be
treated with the utmost consideration, and sends messages to her
himself asking her what she would like.  No, our prisoner isn't going
to suffer.  She has a whole stateroom on Deck A to herself--more than I
was able to get!"

"I would be a prisoner myself for that," said Jenny.

"Yes, indeed.  I like space above everything, but I have that seven
foot Swede Hansen for cabin mate, and he sleeps in the upper berth with
his feet stuck out so that I bump my head on them every morning,"

"My cabin mate is on the ample side, too," said Jenny, "but a very
nice girl and we don't elbow each other much."

"Why, I thought you were with your husband," said Freytag, and there
danced in his eyes a curiosity so instant and so candid it was almost
appealing.

"We are not married," said Jenny.  She scratched a few lines on the
drawing of the wind-funnel and stopped herself sternly from adding, "We
are just friends who happened to take the same boat."  Could she fall
so low?  No, there were limits, and she believed she still knew where
some of them were.  And that was not altogether an innocent question on
Herr Freytag's part, either.  She took a good, considered look at him.
Perhaps not innocent at all, but a blunder and he knew it.  Did his
face contract for a moment in strain and embarrassment or was she
giving him more credit for sensibility than he deserved'?  He picked up
her drawings and turned them about and she saw by his look that he
cared very little about them.  He lingered over the sketch of Herr
Glocken and said finally, "It's terribly like.  I wonder what he would
think of it."

"He'll never see it," said Jenny, taking the drawings back and putting
them in the folder.  Freytag said, "I didn't know you were an artist,"
and Jenny gave her usual answer to that, "I am not, but maybe I shall
be someday."

The evil little moment blew over, but there would be an endless series
of them from now on out no matter where.  She was beginning to see too
clearly what she had let herself in for when she took up with David. At
this point she was losing confidence in her whole life, as if every
step of it had been merely one error leading to another, back to the
day she was born, she supposed--no, that is too much!  I'm not going to
let this business throw me off track completely.  That poor Elsa thinks
there is something wrong with her; she would feel better if she could
know about me.  Yet I wanted to live in clean air and say Yes, or No,
mean what I said and have it understood and no nonsense.  I hate
half-things, halfheartedness stupid false situations, invented
feelings, pumped-up loves and hand-decorated hates.  I hate people who
stare at themselves in mirrors and smile.  I want things straight and
clear or at least I want to be able to see when they're crooked and
confused.  Anything else is just nasty and so my life is nasty and I am
ashamed of it.  And I have an albatross around my neck that I didn't
even shoot.  I simply don't know how he got there.

Freytag offered her a cigarette.  "Would you like to walk a little?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose it is time to start tramping around the deck saying
"Griiss Gott' to everybody."

"It's a pleasant Christian greeting," said Freytag amiably.  "But I
like better the way the country Indians say "Adios."  Still," he said,
nodding slightly towards a group of the Spanish company strolling by,
"I'm afraid it wouldn't be suitable for those."

"They're really tough, aren't they?  An Adios would bounce off them
like a rubber ball on a sidewalk."

"They're attractive-looking, though," said Freytag, "and perhaps a
little dangerous."

"They are exactly as dangerous as we allow them to be," said Jenny;

"why flatter them?  Really all we need to do is watch our pocketbooks.
Otherwise they are bores, I think--all that dingy picturesqueness. 
Such weather," she remarked, "isn't it merry?"  and stared upward with
a melancholy face.

They walked slowly, nodding to various passing figures by now more or
less recognizable on fiftieth sight.  They exchanged amused glances
when they saw Arne Hansen walking with big Elsa, her small parents
following half a dozen steps behind with tactful feet and discreet
faces.  Elsa wore an absurd white beret much too small, and she was
stiff with shyness.  Hansen was silent, his eyes fixed straight
ahead.

Jenny and Freytag fell into a kind of half-confidential talk about
themselves with the ease of travelers who hardly expect to know each
other better; that near-candor which comes of the possibility of future
indifference.  German as he was, he told her, he had a great deal of
English and Scottish in him, also Hungarian, on his Austrian
grandmother's side.  That branch of the family had been reckless
marriers, the more farfetched the match, the better.  Beyond that, God
knows what- it seemed better not to inquire.  In turn, Jenny recited
her mixed ancestry of which she was rather proud: "Western broth," she
said.  "No Tartar, no Jew, no Chinese, no Bantu, just the old home
mixture: Dutch, Scotch-Irish-English-Welsh, French and one
great-great-grandmother with a Spanish name who was just the same
half-Irish- no Hungarian even," she told him, "and above all no German.
No German at all."

He wanted to know how, among so many nations, all blood-cousins as they
were, she could be so certain- did she dislike Germans?  Because of
that beastly war?  That had been everybody's fault, everybody

 had suffered, the Germans most of all; if the Americans had taken the
part of Germany in that war, the whole future of the world would have
been changed for the better!  His eyes kindled, he grew quite eloquent.
Jenny smiled a little: no matter whose fault it was, she was glad her
country had not gone with the Germans.  But at once she had a twinge of
conscience, and said, "No, not even the war."  She had, she told him,
no prejudices of any kind.  She had been partly brought up by

'her grandmother and grandfather, her father's parents, for her mother
had died young: and these grandparents were old-fashioned eighteenth
century rationalists, just simple descendants of Diderot and
d'Alembert,

her grandfather used to say; and to them nothing could have been more
vulgar and unenlightened than even the faintest shade of disapproval of
anything or anybody on grounds of nationality or religion.  All this
was concerned with manners as related to morals.  "Negroes came to the
back door, of course," said Jenny, "and I never saw a Red Indian or
even a Hindu at our dinner table, and all sorts of persons were
excluded for this and that reason, mostly on the grounds that they were
underbred, or bores; but this was mere observance of local custom, they
told me, or they were exercising their natural right to choose their
own society--both an important part of the manners of good breeding.

Oh," said Jenny, "what a museum piece of an upbringing it was!  Yet I

loved it, I believed every word of it, I still do... so I've never
caught up with my generation.  I'm bogged down in a whole set of ideal
precepts and nowhere to practice them!  My radical friends look upon me
as a youthful fossil.  They can pronounce lady' as if it were an
indecent word; and one of them said, "Listen to the way she pronounces
"Chantilly -wouldn't you know?"

"How did you come to pick up radical friends?"  asked Freytag.  "The
only ones I ever saw had dirty fingernails and needed haircuts, and
they cadged cigarettes from anybody and then stubbed them out in their
coffee cups.  Do your radical friends behave like that?"

"Some of them," said Jenny, rather reluctantly, "but they some of them
have very interesting minds."

'they'd better," said Freytag.  "Is your friend Mr.  Scott a
radical?"

"Sometimes," said Jenny, "for the sake of the argument.  It all depends
on which side the other person takes."

Freytag laughed at this and Jenny joined in a few notes.  After a
moment's silence he spoke of his wife, as he always did sooner or later
in any conversation.  He described her coloring, very dear to his
taste:

wheat blonde, rosy-faced, true Rhine-maiden sort of girl; and told
again her charming name.  "Mary Champagne," he said, fondly.  "I think
I fell in love first with her name," he said.  It came out this time
that she selected his clothes and did rather better for him than he
could do for himself, he believed; and he looked perfectly satisfied
with himself.  In another sort of person, Jenny decided, all this could
be a horrid complacency.  She told him she thought it took a special
kind of self-confidence for a woman to choose a man's neckties for him.
She herself would never dare.  He thought it depended entirely on the
man.  "I have a fantastic respect for my wife's taste and judgment in
everything, or nearly," he said.  There was another vacant pause while
Jenny brooded on David's dull black knitted strings.  David's kind of
conceit was really much worse than Freytag's kind, which had a little
warmth and generosity in it: poor David!  sitting in himself like a
hermit in a cave, peering out, determined not to share the parings of
his nails with anybody.

"My wife is visiting her mother in Mannheim," said Freytag.  "I am
going to bring them both back with me to Mexico.  We have decided to
live there."

His air of satisfaction and repose in happiness deepened until it was a
positive radiation, like fine health or the mysterious enchantment of
beauty.  Jenny felt that his pleasure in himself was not vanity, after
all, but came of something in his state of being: something he
possessed, something he had found or that had been given to him.  He is
lucky in some way, she thought; lucky, and he knows it.  As they
rounded the bow, she leaned toward him slightly, gaunt and empty and
famished, to breathe in the air of good fortune.

The bride and groom were sitting stretched at ease in their chairs. 
She was a beautiful creature, with the grace and silence and
naturalness of a fine shy wild animal.  The other passengers glanced at
them quickly whenever they appeared, glanced away again.  Dazed and
smiling, the bride sat or walked all day with her husband, her narrow
curved hand lying loosely in his.  He was, Jenny thought, a quietly
merry person; she liked his witty, irregular features, thin and quick;
he would be the intelligent one of the two, with the undisputed moral
upper hand from the beginning.

"Aren't they lovely together, really?"  said Jenny, and hoped there was
no forlorn envy in her voice.  "Something to look at, aren't they?"
"All brides should look like that," said Freytag.  "She has just the

right look, somehow.  I don't know exactly what it is, but I know it
when I see it.  Eden just after the Fall.  That little interval between
the Fall and the driving out by that tricky jealous vengeful old God,"
he said.  "Anyone who doesn't know that, once in a lifetime, once
anyway --and maybe it doesn't happen oftener--is unlucky, no matter
what else good may happen to him."

"I suppose so," said Jenny, dryly.  "You will call that German
sentimentality," he said, and smiled as if he were smiling to himself
about something he knew that pleased him, something he need not tell
anyone.

"I haven't the faintest notion what it is," said Jenny, "but it sounds
very attractive."  Her tone did not match her words, and her answer
struck him unpleasantly as having a flinty little edge on it.  He felt
again that odd contraction of dislike for her he had felt when he first
saw her, before they had even spoken to each other.  He put the width
of another step between them and said nothing.

Jenny saw this and was curiously chilled by it.  You are perhaps
purposely making yourself very attractive with this light conversation
about the Fall, as if you know something you could teach me that I need
badly to learn.  Maybe I shall fall in love with you, maybe I am in
love with you already, the way I fall in love: always with utter
strangers and as if I were going under water, and I'll fall out again
as if I were falling off a cliff.  I'm glad I don't know anything about
you, except that you have the kind of: looks I like- one kind, anyway-
and that you are married and anxious for me to be sure that you love
your wife.  Don't insist mI am happy to believe you.  And if I knew you
better I might not like you at all- in fact I don't even like you now.
And I can tell you now that you aren't ever going to like me- you will
hate me in fact.  There would be something about the whole thing I
shouldn't be able to put up with at all.  It doesn't matter what it
might be, and I can't even imagine what it is.... If we could sleep
together without too much trouble and lose ourselves together for a
little while, I'd be easy again, I'd be able to see better.  It's only-
how did it happen?  I'm just starved and frozen out; my man won't share
with me, he wants everything to himself.  What is that Spanish saying
"Is this bread good or is it my hunger?"  And what's the other "What
dog will refuse meat that is thrown to him?"  But that one of course
will be for you.

They had come round to her chair again, "I'll stop here," she told

him, and no longer troubled herself to pretend any interest in his
company.  He could not consent to be dismissed so offhandedly.

"Maybe you would like your morning beer," he offered.  "I'm quite ready
for mine."  She shook her head with a shade of a grimace of distaste,
without looking at him.  He turned away Instantly and within three
steps' distance had joined up with the Huttens and Brb, who seemed all
three delighted to see him.  Jenny knew they would sit down comfortably
over their big steins together with nothing in particular to explain or
conceal; each well nourished and self-sufficing on his own peculiar
food.  They would loll cool and at ease, with no starved animal sitting
by feeding on the wind of a daydream, with a sorry monologue gnawing
away silently in the brain; or talking nonsense aloud at a tangent--a
stranger, a real death's-head, peering out at them through
natural-enough-looking flesh.

She took up her drawing and went on with it.  Her attention flickered
away from what her fingers attempted on the page, and back and away,
while she worried along in monotonous confusion and indecision, about
Europe, about David--what a rotten sense of proportion A man and a
continent simply can't have the same importance, or not the same kind,
or they shouldn't have--that's getting entirely the wrong kind of
things mixed up, she decided, enslaved as she was to her notions of
what life should be, her wish to shape, to direct, to make of it what
she wished it to be; and if she let David spoil Europe for her, she
must be even a greater fool than she had feared.  Leaning back in her
chair and dropping her papers into her lap, dry-eyed and staring up
into the pure blue light of a day fit for the joy of angels, she gave
way and despaired quietly and awfully.

It was very hard to admit to herself that she was a fool, but
everything in reason pointed to that fact.  Time to put on the hair
shirt, her guardian demon prompted her.  Time to say your prayers.
Don't be a lost soul, it's so stupid, such a dull occupation.  Jenny
answered herself, for her colloquies with this other self took place
with real words and a face-to-face encounter: I'm not lost, I never
have been, I never will be, unless this is being lost here and now. No,
I'm not lost, I can't get out of it that easily.  It's only I don't
know just how I came here or how I'm going to get out again, but I know
where I am all right!  Rehearsing for blowing bubbles through boiling
pitch later on!  It's the wrong place altogether, I never meant to be
here, and I believed I was on my way somewhere else altogether
different- maybe there never was any such

place, or anyway, not for me.  Never mind, my girl, pull yourself
together M we aren't going to stay here.

She examined the drawings she had just made--bad, unfinished,
half-made, half-seen, not felt at all.  All her feeling had gone into
self indulgence, self-pity, and she had done nothing but dull hard
lines, enclosing perfect emptiness.  What nonsense!  Her dishonest
remark to Freytag about her drawing being a form of solitaire rounded
on her and became true with crushing suddenness.

In self-defense she abandoned herself to fury and hatred against David.
She crumpled her drawings in both fists cruelly as if they were live
things and she could hear them scream, went swiftly to the rail and
tossed them overboard and turned away without another glance at them.
Black and white M no more of that for her.  She would draw directly on
the canvas with brush and colors as she had done before, and damn
David's advice.  I sold out, she said, for a mess of pottage and I
didn't even get that.  Well, good God, can you imagine?  I was letting
that fellow tell me how to paint.  But not for long, remember.

She stretched out in her chair and pulled her dark blue scarf over her
eyes to shut out the hateful day, but for a good while a part of her
unhappy guilty mind went on with its dialogue with another part.  She
explained and justified her mistakes, her hopeless errors, as well as
she could to her indwelling enemy, who answered her always with the
same cold unbelief, the same finality, saying still, No that won't
quite do either.  You know what you are doing, you know what is going
on, how it must end- come out with it, why did you choose this
particular kind of sordid mess?  Speak up, woman, let's have the truth
for once, if you think you can finally admit what it is.... The nagging
voice went on, oafish and devilish at once, until at last, wearied out
with self-torture, Jenny turned her face aside and fell asleep heavily,
with sick eyelids twitching under the scarf when it moved lightly in
the wind; her terror followed her in her sleep and gave her bad dreams
and would not forgive her for anything or let her rest for a moment.

Lizzi Spockenkieker, running as if pursued and looking back owe her
shoulder, dashed full tilt into Captain Thiele, who had chosen to show
himself on deck that morning.  He was unmistakably the Captain even to
the most land lubberly eye.  In stiff immaculate white with bits of
gold braid and lettering disposed hieratically upon his chest, collar
and shoulders, he bore himself rigidly, and his face was that of a
pompous minor god: a god who had grown somewhat petulant and more than
a little mean in his efforts to maintain his authority.  Every feature
of his face was ill-humored, from the narrow forehead, the little eyes
close-set and crafty, to the long sharp nose casting its shadow over
the tight mouth and stubborn chin.  It was as if his own nature had
shaped his face to match itself: and there he walked, alone, returning
the respectful salutations of the passengers with reluctant little
jerks of his head, upon which sat a monumental ornate cap, white as
plaster.

Lizzi almost overturned him in her career, slipped, and would have
fallen if the Captain had not braced himself with instant presence of
mind and balance.  He threw an arm about her stiffly, his face a dark
furious red; and Lizzi, blushing, whinnying, cackling, scrambling,
embraced him around the neck wildly as if she were drowning.  Then she
let go and backed away, crying shrilly, "Oh Captain Thiele, how
frightful of me- oh I beg of you- good heavens, how could I be so
awkward?"

The Captain glared at her bitterly, said, "It is nothing, dear
Fraulein, nothing," and moved on majestically annoyed, biting his
underlip.  When Herr Lowenthal rather nervously ventured to salute him
the Captain looked straight through him.  Lowenthal, thinking himself
snubbed, was cut to the marrow, his heart broke, the very nerves of his
back teeth began to ache, and this state went on for hours.  He went to
the stern of the ship and leaning his head on his arms he brooded over
the water in silence and wished for death, or thought he did.  He
retired into the dark and airless ghetto of his soul and lamented with
all the grieving wailing company he found there; for he was never alone
in that place.  He sat down there head in hand and mourned in one voice
with his fated people, wordlessly he bewailed their nameless eternal
wrongs and sorrows; then feeling somewhat soothed, the inspired core of
his being began to search for its ancient justification and its means
of revenge.  But it should be slow and secret.

When a shadow fell upon his shoulder, he moved away without turning his
face, not wishing to meet another blank hostile eye.  A flat American
voice said in ordinary tones: "Is this your first trip overg" and
Lowenthal, cheered almost instantly, was able to say with pride: "I
make this trip twice a year now for ten years; I have a little
international kind of business, I go everywhere."  The American was
Herr Denny.  He lounged over and seemed perfectly friendly and
harmless.

"Golly," said Denny, looking really interested, "you do?"

"South America," said Lowenthal, "all parts of Europe, Spain, and of
course, Mexico.  Mexico is headquarters: less taxes, cheaper labor,
cheaper rent, less overhead all around, cheaper materials, and those
peons, they turn out high-class articles out of nearly nothing, so you
should see what they can do when you give them good stuff to work on.
Anywhere there is a Catholic church," said Lowenthal, "I can make
money.  Rosaries, plaster and wooden saint statues, some of them
painted and decorated with real gold and silver; altar furnishings of
all kinds.  There's money in it.  Indians not got enough to eat will
buy a saint statue!  I'd like to show you my samples: rosaries alone,"
he said, "I got every grade from just plain wooden ones up to handmade
silver ones.  Some I designed myself and they're really pieces of
jewelry already, with opals and amber and even that Mexican jade.  I
even tried some of that obsidian, but it don't pay to work it--too
hard.  But there's a market for all this stuff, never fails."

He stopped; for over Denny's face there was moving an unpleasant,
prejudiced look.  Deeply disturbed, mystified, Lowenthal watched it
grow.  Then Denny said, "If there's one religion on this earth that I
despise, it's those Catholics.  I don't like anything about 'em.  Where
I come from, only the lowest kind of people, greasers and wops and
polacks, are Catholics, and I say they can have it--it's good enough
for 'em."

Lowenthal smiled, his thick curly lips and heavy-lidded eyes formed a
grin that drew all his features to the center of his face.  With relief
he seized upon this common sympathy between them, and they spent a
profitable few minutes putting the Catholic Church in its place.  The
conduct of priests towards young women in the confessional, the secrets
of monasteries and convents, the sale of Masses for the dead, the
worship of images, all these failings were aired again and denounced
thoroughly.  Lowenthal even expanded to the point where he told how his
sweet old grandmother from Cracow--"finest woman I ever knew," he said,
"the best--" had warned him many times when he was a little boy, never
in his life to pass a Catholic church at midnight, for at that hour the
doors opened and the ghosts of all the congregations who had died that
year would pour forth in the shape of swine and they would eat him,
then and there.  For years his hair stood up in fright when he passed a
Catholic church, even in daytime.  He remembered his revered
grandmother's exact words: 'the dirty cannibal

Goyim -they even eat their own brothers- the pigs!  Then they turn
into pigs when they die and eat little Jewish boys!"

Defray frowned at this, slanted an eye at Lowenthal as if remembering
something suddenly from the back of his mind, and said with a touch of
censoriousness: "I wonder why you are in that business if you feel like
that about them.  I think that one religion oughtn't to make fun of
another.  I don't believe in any of them so I can say what I please.  I
just happen specially to hate Catholics, that's all, and I wouldn't
want to handle their goods."

Lowenthal, excited, flung up his hands palms upward and said, "The way
I look at it, it's a business.  There is nothing personal in it at all
The way I look at it, the business is there, and if I don't sell them,
somebody else will.  So why not I sell them?  It's got nothing to do
with religion, anyway, from my standpoint.  From my standpoint, it's
not a religion.  What I say is, well, it's just straight business and
there's nothing personal in it."

Denny, stirring himself as if about to move on, agreed halfway.  "Oh
yes, I can see that, Business is business.  But just for myself, I
wouldn't like it."

Lowenthal watched him go with a feeling that the conversation had been
a failure, after all; maybe he said something wrong, or maybe the
fellow didn't like his looks--Lowenthal hadn't much liked Denny's
either, but that was another matter.  At any rate, he went on feeling
baffled and sore; he had taken no pleasure in Denny's society, yet
still thought they might have gone on and had a drink together.  Maybe
his mistake was in not offering him a drink... Well, next time, maybe
better luck.

His feelings about the Captain came back, but in the shape of anger
this time.  That swine.  And the steward, putting him at a table by
himself.  And the dirty things they offered him to eat--he had to live
on eggs, fruit, and broiled herring.  On many boats he had been able to
get kosher food.  Ah, he needed to be more careful and clever than he
was--he suffered waves of fright sometimes because he feared he was not
clever enough, they would play him a trick someday and he would not
know until it was too late.  It occurred to him often that he was
living in a world so dangerous he wondered how he dared to go to sleep
at night.  But he was sleepy at that very moment.

Rolling steadily and balancing on his short legs, feet turned out and

slapping the deck lightly, he went to his chair and settled himself,
sighing, full of shapeless worries, running his hand over his hair
crisped in tight waves and standing up in a ridge at the crown of his
head.  He would sleep and forget his troubles.  He would sleep until
lunchtime, and then there would be eggs or fish, sometimes fish from a
tin.  He longed for Dusseldorf and his cousin Sarah's good comfortable
house and the good solid clean food.

Elsa's mother gave her a firm kind motherly talk early in the morning,
before breakfast, telling her there was no need for her to be too stiff
in her manner towards the men.  Naturally she was not expected even to
glance at those terrible Spaniards or those crazy students from Cuba,
but after all there were some nice men on board.  Herr Freytag even if
married was a good dancer, there was no harm in a little modest dancing
with a good partner, married or not; Herr Denny, though American, might
do; at least she could try him once.  Then there was Herr Hansen, no
objection whatever to him.  "When I say to you, be modest, be discreet,
I don't mean you are to sit without a word, or a look around you, Elsa,
and Herr Hansen is a man I would trust.  He is the kind of man a girl
may depend upon to be a gentleman in whatever circumstances.

Elsa said with surprising spirit, "I don't like his looks, he's too
cross."  "I would never pick a man for looks," said her mother.
"Handsome men are often deceitful, When you think of marrying, you must
look for one who has a firm character who could be the head of his own
house.  A steady, real man.  I do not think Herr Hansen is cross, he is
just serious.  As to most of the others on this boat, I think I never
saw a worse lot--all those male dancers, la de da deda!  with all those
loose dancing women- it is a scandal."

"Herr Hansen never takes his eyes off the one they call Amparo," said
Elsa, hopelessly.  "If he likes her, Mama, you know he can never like
me.  I saw them standing very close together this morning, and he was
giving her money; I am sure it was that."

"Elsa," said her mother, shocked.  "What do you mean?  Do you know what
you are saying?  You are not supposed to see such things!"

"I couldn't help it," said Elsa, with a grieved face.  "I was just
coming out of my cabin and there they were, in the passage, not ten
feet away, I had to walk right past them.  They did not pay any
attention.  But I cannot believe that Herr Hansen will like me."

"Never you mind, my dear little girl," said her mother, "you have your
own virtues and qualities, never you be afraid of wicked women.  Men
always come back to the good ones at last.  You will have a fine
husband someday when she will be in the ditch.  Don't you worry."

Instead of raising Elsa's spirits, this conversation seemed to dampen
them completely.  The prospect of following Amparo in Herr Hansen's
affections somehow was not attractive.  She drooped and folded her
hands on her knees.  Her mother said, after a sad little pause, "Look,
if it will make you happier, I will buy you a box of face powder when
we get home.  After all, it is perhaps time for you to be a real young
lady, now that we are going to be among our own kind once more.  Yes,
you shall have face powder, any shade you prefer."

"They have it for sale in the barbershop here," said Elsa, timidly,
"all kinds, some of it perfumed with lily of the valley.  It is Rachel
number one, just my shade exactly.  I just happened to notice it when I
was having my hair washed... I..."  she trailed off, losing courage.

"How much did it cost?"  asked her mother, opening her purse.

"Four marks," said Elsa, and she stood up stammering with amazement and
joy.  "Oh, M-M-Mama, d-do you m-mean I am really to have it?"

"Didn't I say so" asked her mother, and put the money in her hand.

"Now go and make yourself pretty and come to breakfast."

Elsa threw her big arms around her chubby mother and hugged and
squeezed her and kissed her face, her eyes trembling with tears. "No,

no, now, that's enough," said her mother, "don't act like a big
baby."

All the way to the barbershop Elsa fought to control her tears.  She
appeared at breakfast with her hair fluffed out under a child-sized
white beret, her face, neck, arms and hands covered smoothly with a
thick coat of flesh-colored powder.  She had also ventured a tiny
crooked smear on her lips with one of Jenny's lipsticks.  Her mother
said censoriously, "I did not say paint, Elsa- that is going a little
far- but let it be for the present."

Elsa blushed and her father said, "Ah, so that is why my Elsa is
looking so pretty this morning.  Now, there remains only to get your
hair wound up on bobbins, and the next thing you know--" He beamed and
wagged a finger at her.  "Ah ah now, be careful!"  Elsa smiled in quiet
rapture and ate a fine breakfast.

Arne Hansen hardly knew how it happened, but as he left the dining room
the Lutzes were with him, he was walking beside Elsa, and

Frau Lutz was saying that a short turn around the deck might be very
pleasant in the morning air- would he join them?  He glanced back
Amparo like a man expecting the worst.  She, with elbows on table,
managed an impressive display of pantomime at high speed: pity for him
or perhaps his stupidity, contempt for the Lutzes, warning, insult,
false commiseration, and finally, just simple ridicule.

He turned away and lunged forward.  The big plain girl at his side hung
her head with her eyes so cast down she seemed to be asleep.  The gay
little procession advanced, but after one lap around Herr Lutz moved up
abreast of Herr Hansen, and Frau Lutz walked with her daughter, it
being quite clear that the young people were not making any headway in
conversation.

Herr Lutz, whose mind, when not exercising its peculiar form humor,
stuck pretty consistently to the practical considerations of life,
always led off his first talk with any stranger by inquiring how he got
his living.  The more unpretentious and immediate the means proved to
be, the sooner the stranger established himself in Herr Lutz's esteem.
He learned with delight that Herr Hansen had been in the dairy business
in Mexico.  "Ah ha," he exclaimed, "we go well together.  I deal in
bread, you in butter.  I ran an inn near Lake Chapala, but you see, we
have thought better of that.  And how did you find the dairy business,
in Mexico?"

"I found it so poor," said Hansen, "I sold out and am going back to
Sweden.  However, I made enough on the deal to start again at home, and
there at least I shall know the tricks and know how to look out for
them.  In Mexico, they change the rules every day."

"Oh, there is only one rule everywhere," said Herr Lutz, expansive as
if he were bringing a pleasant piece of news.  "The big fish eat the
little ones, and the little ones eat seaweed, maybe."

"Well do I know that," said Herr Hansen, joining Herr Lutz in a
moderate laugh.

"I tell you what," said Herr Lutz, warmed by the young man's wonderful
sense of humor, "let's all have one more little cup of coffee in the
bar.  Or maybe Elsa would like a glass of beer, eh?"  he said slyly
teasing.  Frau Lutz frowned, Elsa turned dark red under her powder, and
Hansen said quickly, "No, please let me invite you."

There followed a sociable little contest all the way to the table, but
finally it was as Herr Hansen's guests that the Lutzes sat down to the
morning beer.

"You being Danish," said Herr Lutz affably, after the first fine
swig,

"naturally you would be in the dairy business."

"I am Swedish," said Herr Hansen, patiently weary of this lifelong
dullness on the part of foreigners who could not tell a Dane from a

Swede or a Norwegian from either.  'there is a slight difference."

"So?  Well, myself being Swiss, naturally I am in the hotel business.

From my great-grandfather to me, we had the same hotel in St. Gallen.

But I was restless, a good living was not good enough for me, I must go
and run a hotel somewhere else besides Switzerland.  Switzerland,

for me, was too peaceful.  Ah, beautiful, picturesque, peaceful Switzer
land, as the travel books say.  That's true enough.  But almost every
week

I got in the mail guidebooks and pamphlets from Mexico inviting solid
businesslike foreigners to come to Mexico, invest their money and make
"

their fortune."

"So did I," said Hansen.  "Some of it was true."

"Not enough of it, though," said Herr Lutz.  "Not a word about
politics, not a whisper about revolution.  Just all about beautiful
scenery,

beautiful weather, beautiful tourists with pockets bursting with
beautiful money.  Now then," he asked in some surprise, "wouldn't you
think that I, a man weaned on those very things, would have said to
myself,

Why, we have all that here already.  But only one thing wrong: there
are many tourists in Switzerland, but also there are many, many too
many hotels.  The tourist trade did not always go around.  We had dead
seasons.  There came those times when we were all prepared to hand out
lavish hospitality and almost nobody came.  In Mexico, the pamphlets
said--serious, official, from the proper departments of government all
was better.  No seasons, the suckers just poured in the year round.
Cheap food, cheap labor, cheap rent, cheap taxes, cheap every thing
except the tourists.  They were nearly all North Americans and you
could charge them just what they were used to paying at home or even
more.  You could give them almost anything, they wouldn't know the
difference.... Of course the pamphlets did not say this in so many
coarse words, but I, a good hotel keeper could read between the lines.
Even now, it sounds like Paradise on earth- well, we all know there is
no such place.  In Switzerland it was the Germans and the British and
the French and the Spanish and the Central European Jews and oh, my
God, in the old days the Russians who drove us to our graves.  Also the
political refugees from everywhere who arrived looking rich without a
franc in pocket who were always expecting tomorrow

huge sums of money... So, we started out, my wife and I with this Elsa
here, who was a lump of a thing this high, in 1920 --"

Elsa fidgeted and clutched her beer glass.  Hansen glanced at her
briefly as if she were an inanimate object of no interest whatever, and
away.  Her mother tried anxiously to catch her father's eye, but
failed.  Herr Lutz was wound up in his story and talked only to
Hansen.

"We told our families we were coming back millionaires, and they
believed us.  We promised to send back money in the meantime and make
everybody rich.  Truth is we never sent a centime.  We were a year
getting started, with finding a suitable place, arranging things with
the government, bribing here and there, struggling with native labor-
too long to tell, and you know all of it, anyway.  But we did get a
presentable little inn going, and yes, it was true, the tourists did
come and they did pay well for everything.  In 1920 there was
revolution.  Likewise in 1921, 1922; then counterrevolution in 1923 and
'24: and so, revolution again, and so on, until now.  At last we
decided to go back to peaceful Switzerland.  So you see?  Well, maybe
we can talk a little business.  Send me tourists from your country and
I will buy a few pounds of your best butter.  We have butter too- we
have everything in Switzerland but not quite enough..  "

Herr Hansen then talked a little, obligingly, in turn, about the export
business in butter and cheese, also eggs and bacon, strictly and
minutely from the standpoint of the hazards and profits to be expected
from it.  Elsa, discouraged, was sure that Hansen did not talk about
the butter business to Amparo.  Well, it was a good thing he really did
look c ross grained and hard to get along with.  And he was as tiresome
to listen to as her father.  She was glad she did not like him, never
had; she did not want him to like her, either, yet she was deeply
wounded by his neglect, which seemed as if he meant to insult her.  He
was too old, anyway- at least twenty-eight.

She drew a deep weary breath and straightened up and turned her eyes
away to the morning light on the glittering, dancing sea.  Quietly she
worked up in her mind a sound grudge against him, his poor manners, his
awkward long legs and huge feet and furry light eyebrows.  No, she
wanted another kind of man altogether.  Surely now her mother would be
able to see that Herr Hansen, even without Amparo, would never be the
right one.  Not even just to dance with on a ship.  No, she would never
dance with him even if he asked her.  But of course he never would...
There was a tall thin black-haired young student, with a dangerous eye
as if he feared nothing and nobody on earth, who went leaping madly
around the deck at the head of the line, shouting mysterious Spanish
phrases--some kind of slang she could not make out.  Once he had looked
at her and leaned out towards her as they passed, smiling on one side
of his face as if they had a secret together.  His glance had shot like
arrows into her eyes and he had gone on leaping and singing.  That was
the one for her.  She leaned her face on the palm of her hand, hiding
from the others, fearing that the warmth and sweetness that poured into
her heart would show on her face.

"Elsa," asked her mother, anxiously, "what is the matter?  Do you feel
badly?"

"No, no, Mama, thank you," said Elsa, without taking her hands from her
face, "the light is blinding."

That very student, as if Elsa had conjured him up, appeared in the bar;
he was not leaping or shouting, but walking lazily with two others of
his crowd.  He was talking, though, and his voice carried to her
buzzing ears.  "La Cucaracha Mystica," he was saying, with a flourish
of theatrical inflections, "the mystical cockroach herself, the queen
of insects, is on board this ship, the very figure of rampant idealism.
I saw her.  She is here, pearls and all, a prisoner."

"La cucaracha, la cucaracha," chorused the others, as instinctively
malicious as monkeys.  They were halfway through the first verse,
leaning towards each other and making dreadful harmonies, when the
bugle sounded for the second breakfast sitting.  With famine-stricken
comic faces they turned as one and charged towards the dining room.  As
by then everyone on shipboard lived for food, there was the usual crowd
milling at the top of the stairs, thinning out gradually into a
procession.

At lunch, the Captain was seated at the head of his table, his napkin
tucked into his collar and spread neatly over his rigid chest.  Dr.
Schumann, seated at the opposite side, was turning his water glass
about absently.  At sight of the ladies of the party they both rose.
The Captain withdrew his napkin, made a deep bow and seated himself
once more, tucking the napkin back under his chin.

Lizzi Spisckenkieker, at his left, giggled and blushed, eying him with
coy intimacy.  "Dear Captain, we met this morning, I believe."  she
said, indiscreetly.

"We did indeed, my dear Fraulein," responded the Captain, with extreme
formality.  On his right, Frau Rittersdorf gave Lizzi a guarded look of
warning and social censure, then turned her most charming smile upon
the Captain, who rewarded her with a glimpse of his two front teeth and
slightly upturned mouth corners.  The others ranged round him, faces
bent towards him like sunflowers to the sun, waiting for him to begin
conversation.

"It is not usual for me to appear at table so early in the voyage,"
stated the Captain, as if he were reading an address, "since all my
energies and attention must be devoted to the affairs of my ship.  But
I am happy to be able to say that in spite of a thousand difficulties
and inconveniences which added together amounted to a state of
emergency, never have I been able so swiftly and so effectively to
dispose of them all.  On a ship, no detail is trivial; the slightest
laxity at any given point may lead to the gravest consequences.  For
this reason," he said, "usually I must deprive myself at intervals of
the good company I enjoy at my table.  But it is in the cause of your
safety and comfort that I deprive myself," he told them, putting them
forever in his debt.

Little Frau Schmitt blushed at her own boldness but managed to utter in
a tiny voice, "Even if it is for our own good, we are also deprived."

Frau Rittersdorf was annoyed at this speech, which should have been
made, certainly, but in much more elegant terms, with more manner, and
not By Frau Schmitt, who by no means took precedence at that table. The
Captain however seemed pleased.  He bowed gently to Frau Schmitt. "You
are very kind," he said, approvingly.

Herr Professor Hutten, without changing the conversation from its prime
subject, the presence and authority of the Captain, shifted the
emphasis from the feminine to the masculine domain by speaking in
general terms of the importance of the science of navigation: "Of
which, frankly I can do no less than admit, I know nothing," with the
manly generosity of one who knows himself to be an authority in his own
field, "yet it is of never-failing interest to me to observe how all
science, as all art, is based firmly, immovably, upon mathematics.
Without mathematics, where should we be for music, for architecture,
for chemistry, for astronomy, above all for the scientific art of
navigation, both on the sea and in the air?  One may safely set it down
as a rule that the better the mathematician, the better the navigator,
the better the composer of music.  Do you, my dear Captain, from the
point of

view of practical experience, find yourself in agreement with this
rule?"

The Captain almost modestly admitted that his native aptitude for
higher mathematics had been of great value to him as seaman.  Professor
Hutten went on to expand his ideas somewhat, from the purely
philosophical view, while the others, more especially the ladies,
listened in respectful silence, all except Frau Rittersdorf having lost
the thread of discourse some time ago.

A slight but welcome interruption occurred when Wilhelm Freytag was
heard again as usual to refuse the delicious Westphalia ham as
appetizer.  "Deviled eggs, then, sir?"  asked the waiter, "or perhaps
liver pate?"

"Herring in sour cream," said Herr Freytag, "I think."

"Oh, Herr Freytag, are you a vegetarian?"  asked Lizzi.  "How
interesting!  How can you give up all these delicious sausages, and
bacon for breakfast and this delicious ham.  You must try it with a
slice of melon sometime.  It is divine!"

Freytag, helping himself to a fine mound of fresh peas, said rather
flatly, "Oh, no, I never eat pork at all," at which Frau Rittersdorf
exchanged a lifted eyebrow first with the Captain, then with Frau Hut
ten, then with Herr Rieber, and her fleeting thought was returned to
her in the quick gleam of their eyes from all three.  Herr Rieber
smiled broadly, wagged a finger at Freytag and remarked, "Aha!
Observing the dietary laws, I suppose."  At this improbable notion--or
was it?  everybody laughed heartily and beamed upon Herr Freytag as a
man who could take a friendly joke.  They then exchanged a few
customary remarks about the Jews and their incomprehensible habits, a
sort of small change of opinion which established them once for all as
of?  the same kind of people without any irreconcilable differences;
and they settled down together comfortably prepared to change the
topic; but their attention was directed to a rather noticeable
commotion at the students' table.

The boys rose from their chairs and bowed in the direction of the
stairs, and one of them shouted "Viva!"  explosively.  The woman who
came in made them a formal little bow, very old-fashioned and learned
in courtesy, then followed the steward to a small table where she sat
alone with her back to the students.  They sat down again exchanging
odd malicious glances, elaborately wiping away smiles under their
napkins.

She was perhaps fifty years old and she had been a fine beauty not

so long ago.  Her face was smooth and wax-colored, her small round
mouth was painted bright red, the small, clever-looking black eyes were
sketched in and lengthened with dark blue smudges, her lightly tinted
reddish hair was cut short and curled around her forehead and ears. 
She was slender except for a lazy little belly, and her clothes were
very expensive looking; shabby as they were, they were still much too
elegant for her present occasions.  She wore enormous pearls in her
ears, around her throat, on two fingers of her left hand.  On her right
she wore what appeared to be a light-colored much-flawed emerald, big
as a robin's egg and surrounded by small diamonds.  These hands, very
narrow, fine, heavily veined, and old-looking, were in constant
movement.  Thumbs turned in lightly to the palm, the hands moved
aimlessly from the edge of the table to her lap, they clasped and
unclasped themselves, spread themselves flat in the air, closed, shook
slightly, went to her hair, to the bosom of her gown, as if by a life
of their own separate from the will of the woman herself, who sat quite
still otherwise, features a little rigid, bending to read the dinner
card beside her plate.

Everybody in the room turned to stare at her.

"But where," inquired Frau Rittersdorf of the Captain, "where does she
come from?  No one saw her come on board, nor in the town before that,"
she said, doubtfully, looking around the table, "at least, none of
us."

"And no wonder," said the Captain, importantly.  "That lady--she is a
Spanish condesa-was brought on board quietly, hours before the other
passengers, by two police officers who attempted at once to escort her
to the steerage, under the impression that I was going to put her in
chains for the voyage, or at least confine her to a cabin.  I could not
treat a lady so, no matter what she had done," said the Captain, and
his eyes rested gently upon his passenger; indeed, they feasted
themselves upon that personage, a real member of the nobility, a
species seen all too rarely upon his modest decks.  "I should somehow
have managed to provide for her properly; but fortunately, friends of
hers reserved her stateroom by cable to Mexico, when it was learned
that she would sail on this ship."

"Her hands!"  exclaimed Lizzi.  "What is she doing with them?"

"She is in a highly wrought nervous state at the moment," said Dr.
Schumann.  "Pardonable in her situation, perhaps.  She will feel better
shortly."  His tone and glance were dryly professional.

"A little on the faded side," said Herr Rieber, and instantly repented
his tactlessness when seven pairs of eyes fastened upon him in rebuke.
" "She is not young, true," said Dr.  Schumann, "and her troubles are
rather complicated M all completely unnecessary perhaps, but still..."
"Would I not be a dupe," asked the Captain, glancing sharply from face
to face, "to take these Latin-American politieals seriously?  I was
told she is a dangerous revolutionist, an international spy, that she
car ties incendiary messages from one hotbed of sedition and rebellion
to another, that she incites to riot-you would hardly believe all the
nonsense.  My own opinion is, she is one of these idle rich great
ladies who like excitement, who get into mischief and make more
mischief without in the least understanding what they do M this is
always true of women in politics of any kind!  and she has got her
fingers badly burnt.  Well," his voice softened, "this will teach her a
lesson, it is not for us to add to her penalties.  She is only going to
Tenerife, in any case.  That is not so bad, and in the meantime, I wish
her a pleasant voyage."

"Those students who greeted her with such apparent respect," said Herr
Professor Hutten, thoughtfully, "resemble very little the revolutionary
type as I have learned to recognize it in Mexico.  I should have said
of these that they are the lamentably overindulged sons of well to-do
parents who have not taken their parental duties very seriously.  It is
a type all too prevalent in Mexico, indeed, in all the Americas.  One
of our most constant problems," he said, "was to protect our German
youth from their influence in our schools.  I am happy to say, relying
as we did on the infallible combination of German character and German
methods of discipline, we enjoyed a modest success."

"In Guadalajara also," rejoined Frau Schmitt, "how often I have heard
my dear husband deplore a state of affairs where our beautiful German
children were exposed to the pernicious foreign customs."

"I had never imagined a revolutionist wearing such pearls," said Frau
Rittersdorf, who had been thinking her own thoughts.  "If, indeed, they
are real, which is doubtful."

"When such a lady wears pearls," said little Frau Schmitt,
respectfully, "I think we may be confident they are real."

"The students," said the Captain to Herr Professor Hutten, heading off
this dangerous feminine diversion of the topic, "are on their way to
complete their studies in Montpellier, since on account of the recent
disturbances the University in Cuba has been closed over their heads.

It is all disorder of the most senseless kind, naturally, and should
have been suppressed long ago without hesitation and with every
necessary severity.  As for revolutionists, they are a species of
animal I am not acquainted with.  I leave them gladly to those whose
business it is to deal with them."  Leaning his head low over his
plate, ducking up and down rhythmically, he began to gulp his dinner.

The subject seemed closed, or suspended satisfactorily, on exactly the
right note.

Jenny, who felt refreshed and good-tempered after her nap, in spite of
her disturbing dream, told David what she had learned about La Condesa,
and was surprised at his look of lively admiration as he watched the
lady, who had grown calmer and was peering nearsightedly into her
salad.  "Who told you all this?"  he asked, unwilling to believe
anything Jenny said, however entertaining it might be.

"Wilhelm Freytag, this morning while we were walking around deck," said
Jenny.

"Is it a habit by now?"  asked David.

"This is only the second time," said Jenny.  "I wish you'd look at the
zarzuela troupe.  Aren't they simply weird?"  For some reason she could
not admit the human existence of the Spanish company.  They seemed to
be life-sized dolls moved by strings, going gracefully through a
perpetual pantomime of graceless emotions.  Their frowning faces, their
gestures of anger, ill-humor, mockery, contempt, all seemed too
farfetched and over rehearsed to be probable; she did not believe that
any of it came out of living organisms.

The Spaniards had hardly removed their several gazes from La Condesa
since she appeared, and their eyes were charged with staring, bitter
resentment.  They nudged each other and whispered, their mouths sullen;
as they ate, or turned their heads, their eyes moved and maintained
their gaze.

"If: they're planning to rob her," said Jenny, "they will give
themselves away long before the deed.  That fellow they call Pepe
hasn't been able to tear his eyes from her pearls once.  And I really
don't blame him- look, David darling, aren't they lovely?"

"They seem all right," said David, "but they could be pearls from the
ten-cent store and I wouldn't know.  I never saw a real pearl close
up."

"Darling, you make yourself sound as if you'd had a pathetic childhood.
Did you?"

'yes, I damned well did."

"Well, you might at least admit they are beautiful."

"I'm not sure I think so," said David, "I'm so blinded with prejudice
against people who can afford to buy pearls.  They may be wonderful.

I

don't care."

"It's handsome of you to concede that much," said Jenny.  "Really
handsome."

"I'd perhaps like them better if I knew they weren't real," said
David,

idly, losing interest.

"Yes, darling," said Jenny, with sudden gaiety, "I know, that is just
the kind of fellow you are- but would you like a sawdust woman instead
of one with live insides?  It is really strange," she said, "but I can
love you and real pearls too- now how can that be?"

She smiled at him, he watched the smile change her face altogether for
the better, and smiled back at her lovingly.  They seemed beautiful to
each other.  "Are you calling me a fake?"  asked David.  Jenny said,
"Besides, maybe she didn't buy them at all.  Maybe she inherited them,
or they were given to her by a lover."

"Maybe," said David, and a pleasant silence settled between them.

At the Captain's table, Frau Hutten observed that her husband was not
eating well; indeed, he was manipulating his knife feebly, raising an
ill-laden fork from time to time for appearance's sake only.  His face
was stern and pale, a light effusion appeared on his forehead.  When
the talk, rather aimless, drifted around to the Professor, it paused
there uncertainly, went around him and was taken up on the other side.
Halfway through her own lunch, which she was enjoying, Frau Hut ten in
one flash of a thought was annoyed with her husband--so reasonable a
man where the problems of others were concerned, so wise and all-seeing
in abstract ideas, he was no more than a willful child when it came to
a question of his own good.  She had helped him to their cabin two
hours before, he had allowed her to stretch him flat and put cold
towels on his head, and he had, in his temporary weakness, promised
that he would be quiet and allow her to nurse him back to health.

Then without warning he had roused himself, had thrown away the towel
and sat up, exclaiming in a loud, martial voice, "No, Kathe, this is a
weakness of which I must be ashamed... it wants only a small effort of
the will, and this shall be conquered..."

Frau Hutten, seeing that one of his stubborn fits was on the way, had
tried to head it off, as if it were an escaping animal.  "Ah, no!"  she
protested.  "Here, Will does nothing for you.  Let your Will rest for
the moment, and make yourself comfortable.  This is no time for the
exercise of the higher faculties."

Her husband had not troubled even to answer such heresy.  He had risen,
squared his shoulders, drawn his brows together over his nose, and, at
the sound of the bugle, had taken her arm firmly under his.

"Forward," he said, "let us breathe the fresh air and take our food as
usual, and leave all such nonsense as seasickness to our good Bebe who
has no intellectual resources to speak of--iI est chi en de eoeur," he
said, archly; they then both laughed, jovially, and went away laughing,
and arrived in triumph at the table.

Now, unless they got away quickly, God knew what might happen.  Losing
her appetite so suddenly it left a great void that filled promptly with
nausea, she did the one thing necessary to deceive her husband and
persuade him from the table.  "Excuse me," she said, standing up
without looking at anyone, nodding around the table slightly.  "My
dear," she appealed to the Professor, "will you please go with me, I
don't feel very well."

Herr Professor Hutten rose at once, backing stiffly away from his
place, overturning his chair, which he hardly noticed.  Frau Hutten had
to brace herself strongly to support the weight of his assisting arm.
There remained nothing to do but to go, as swiftly as possible, without
another word.  Not until their cabin door had closed upon them safely
did Herr Professor Hutten fetch a loud hollow groan.  He fell face
downward on the couch, retching.  Bebe crawled out of his corner
towards him and licked his fallen hand more in duty than in pleasure;
and Frau Hutten, overcome by the revolting sight, felt a dreadful chill
down her spine.  She fell back too, upon the bed, eyes closed.

"Kithe," called her husband, hoarsely, "Kithe, help me."

"Let me alone," she said heavily, through stiffened lips.  By means of
a slow surging movement, she rolled over and reached for the bell,
which she pressed down and held steadily, not letting go until the door
was opened and she heard sounds of rescue in the room.  Conscience,
duty, attentiveness, obedience--all the granite foundations of her
marriage, her wifely career slid from under her without a sound, and
she sank into a hideous luxury of moral collapse.  Let somebody else
wait on him hand and foot for a change.  Let him do something for
himself.

Let somebody even, for once, do something for her!  She was sick of
the world... she was sick to death of people... in a harsh gulping
voice she demanded relief of the stewardess, whose rather amiably
stupid, absent-minded face Instantly chilled into hostility; and the
hand that poked spoonfuls of crushed ice into Frau Hutten's open mouth
was anything but gentle.

Dr.  Schumann, strolling about the deck after lunch, paused to glance
at the horse races, set up for the first time since Veracruz, and was
indignant when he saw that, in spite of his express orders, the boy
with the floating kidney had been put again at the job of moving the
toy animals along the track.  A small number of passengers were sitting
about comfortably, their faces smooth and at ease, eyelids relaxed
behind dark glasses, enjoying the sunlight and the sea air; but the boy
sweated as he stooped and rose, straightening his lame back slowly,
stooping again, with dark lines around his pale gray mouth, his eyes
strained.  The other boy was tough and able, but he kept his eyes down
as if he were ashamed of?  his childish occupation.

Further along, Dr.  Schumann saw the tall shrill girl and the little
fat man, who seemed to be inseparable, playing ping-pong violently, and
several persons were splashing about in the small canvas swimming tank
set up on the lower deck.  On the port side Dr.  Schumann stepped
carefully around a game of shuffleboard without observing the players,
but nodding Good day in their direction; and saw, at the same time,
almost without seeing, Ric and Rac, the two Spanish children, beguiling
the ship's cat, a fine tiger tom, with back strokings and ticklings
under his chin.  The cat arched, his face full of sophisticated
pleasure, and allowed himself to be picked up between them.

He was heavy, loose, ungainly in his surrender, and in his sensual
trance he did not grasp the nature of their intentions towards him
until it was almost too late.  With sharpened faces and urgent hands,
Ric and Rac lifted him to the rail and tried to push him overboard.  He
stiffened, dug his fore claws into the rail, braced and clawed fiercely
with his hind feet; his back went into a bow, his tail became a wild
plume.  Silently, desperately, he fought with all his weapons.

Dr.  Schumann fairly leaped forward and seized the children back from
the rail.  They brought the cat with them in their rush; he fell out of
their clutches and tore his way across deck straight through the
shuffleboard game- a thing he would not ordinarily have done, for he

was a polite cat.  The children stared upward at Dr.  Schumann, their
bare arms, striped with long bleeding scratches, going suddenly limp in
his hands.

Dr.  Schumann, holding them firmly but with practiced gentelness,
examined the depths of their eyes for a moment with dismay at their
blind, un winking malignance, their cold slyness--not beasts, though,
but human souls.  Oh yes, human, more's the pity, thought the Doctor,
loosening his hold.

Instantly they wriggled free, their fierce little faces exactly alike
except for the mysterious stigmata of sex, turning towards each other
with their instinctive complicity; then they ran, their thin legs
jutting at the knees, their tangled hair flying.  He supposed they
should have, as a matter of form, at least a few drops of iodine on
those scratches, but he felt they would probably do as well without
it.

He sat down carefully in the nearest chair, breathing as lightly and
deliberately as he could, holding himself together with intent
stillness.  He had a very ordinary kind of heart trouble and might drop
dead at any moment.  He felt his pulse softly with two fingers, but he
knew the count already; he knew exactly what was happening, what always
did, or could, happen at the slightest shock or sudden movement: he had
been over this rather dull case so often in the past two years there
was nothing new to say or think; above all, alas, nothing new to be
done.

He had always tried to avoid diagnosing and treating himself, he made a
habit of consulting doctors he believed more able than he, he wished to
believe in their procedures in his case, but he had not needed to be
told what his trouble was.  In the end, there was nothing in medical
science related in his mind to what he knew about himself as physician,
and what he felt about himself as a man in danger of death from one
moment to the next.  He sat with the fated calm of a man caught in a
thunderstorm in an open space, rather humorously counting on a scale of
chance he knew to be mythical.  At last, cautiously, he felt in his
inside pocket and brought out the small phial of crystal drops.  The
thing he could never explain to himself about this incident was this:
knowing about himself such a simple daylight fact, with his orderly
plan to live as long as he could on whatever terms he could make with
his disease, he had endangered his life to save the life of a cat, a
kind of animal he disliked by temperament; he was devoted to dogs.
Given a moment for reflection, would he have leaped so and risked the
stopping of his heart to save- even his wife?  He had never

been required to face that emergency, and the idea was an absurdity,
of course- of course the answer was clear, that question had been
settled long ago, or so he hoped.  He smiled inwardly, with a composed
face, at the thought of the cat, that supposedly most astute and
self-possessed of all animals, being seduced within an inch of his life
by a tickling of his nerve endings, the pleasant crackle of his own
electricity along the fur of ?  his spine.  Nothing in his celebrated
instincts had warned him that those stroking hands were willing to give
him a moment of his private pleasure so that they might the more easily
seize him by the scruff for their own satisfaction.

Perhaps that should not be surprising.  It happened to others besides
cats.  Love!  said the Doctor, surprised that the word should have
popped into his thoughts.  He put it out again at once, with a proper
regard for its true meaning.  He had spent the best years of his
life-after all, he had prepared well for it, how else should he have
spent them?

patching up the deceived, the foolhardy, the willfully blinded, the
lover of suffering; and the most deadly of them all, the one who knew
what he was doing and what he was bringing upon himself, and yet could
not for anything resist one more fling at his favorite hot thrill of
the flesh- drink, drugs, sex, food- whatever his particular
concupiscence might be, though it might be his own death.

His own death, or my own death, I know it is of no importance, Dr.
Schumann told himself, especially my own if I have made peace with it;
he touched his wrist again with two fingers and waited.  He longed so
deeply to live, even merely to breathe, to move within his familiar
body, to stay safely within himself, a place he knew as home, he could
not control the warm wave of excitement which ran all through him as if
he had drunk hot spiced wine.  "My God," he said, and fixed his eyes
attentively on the deep waves of the sea, turning upon each other
endlessly, without thought, without feeling, moved by a power they
obeyed in universal harmony.  "My God, my God!"

Dr.  Schumann believed in God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
and the Blessed Virgin Mother of God finally, in a particularly
forthright, Bavarian Catholic way; and having spoken the Name which
included all the rest, he closed his eyes, gave himself over to the
hands of mercy, and became soothed and quiet.  Deliberately he moved
his fingers from his pulse, ignored the beat of his heart upon his
eardrums, and for a few seconds his whole being reconciled itself
almost completely to the prospect of death, despising briefly, but
with

satisfaction, the cowardice of the flesh.  He realized then that the
drops were working, as they had worked before, as they might again and
again work; that the attack, a light one, was passing over; he had
escaped once more.  He opened his eyes and crossed himself
unobtrusively, noticing at the same time an arresting scene about
twenty feet away.

La Condesa was talking to a young sailor.  He was a very at
tractive-looking fellow, with a fine show of manly muscles in shoulders
and arms, his cap sitting forward over an ingenuous sunburned face with
a broad mouth and slightly snubbed nose.  He stood perfectly straight
with his hands at his sides, but his head was inclined away, and he
looked past La Condesa with an occasional quick, uneasy glance at her.
His back was to the rail, he was almost touching it, and La Condesa
stood before him, talking very intently but slowly, spreading her arms
as if she would bar his way.  Her thumbs were turned in flat to her
flattened palms, which moved in a monotonous beat; her eyes were like
agates, and she swayed from side to side, stretching her neck, trying
to force the boy to look her in the face.  His head turned from her,
far to one side and then in a slow swing back again, nodding slightly
always as if in deferential agreement, but full of shame and confusion.
La Condesa patted him on the arm, at which he leaped as if touched by a
live electric wire-end.  His hand flew to his cap in automatic salute,
he stepped past her and seized his bucket and brush, and made off in a
long stride, his ears a burning red, leaving La Condesa standing. 
After a moment she walked slowly in the same direction, her neck and
spine very straight, her hands clenched at her sides.

Dr.  Schumann, finding himself of at least three minds in the matter,
that is, simple human curiosity at this freakish behavior, an unwilling
admiration for the woman, who struck him as unusually beautiful, and
that professional interest which had become second nature in him, rose
and followed her at a good distance, keeping the appearance of being on
a casual promenade.

Within the next hour, the Doctor had seen enough to make him very
thoughtful.  Wherever she saw a man alone, any sort of man so long as
he was young, the Doctor observed with a good deal of moral
disapproval, whether sailor or officer or passenger, she backed him
into a corner, or against a wall, or rail, and somehow managed to

pin him there, standing before him and talking always in the same
intimate way, as if she were imparting some agonizing secret with which
they would be bound to sympathize.

The effect on the several different young men was astonishingly
similar.  They began with polite listening expressions deepening
rapidly to surprise, pained embarrassment, then to utter restlessness.
Their faces would freeze in strange smiles, their eyes would begin to
roam seeking a way out.  At last in some pause in her uneasy flow of
words, or suddenly as if signaled from afar, they would break away, no
matter how.

Dr.  Schumann never came near enough to hear what she was saying, but
her gestures shocked him deeply, modest man that he was.  She stroked
her own breasts and thighs, patted the face of her listener, laid her
hand upon his heart.  Yet the expression of her face was
grief-stricken, her words seemed grave and hopeless.  "Perhaps I am not
young enough to attract her eye," Dr.  Schumann thought a little
acidly, "I am no doubt much too far from the cradle for her," but he
decided deliberately to put himself in her path.  He had a powerful
sense of time and its effects on the human organism, and he felt that
man owed it to his own dignity to live with philosophy within the
limitations of his own time in the world.

All other considerations aside, he reflected, there was something
scandalous and perverse in older persons, especially women, who at
their very best showed always disturbing signs of innate perversity,
turning back to youth for sexual satisfactions: unnatural parents
devouring their own young- a species of incest, in short, to put a
severe word upon it.... Well, he would see.  It was obvious the woman
suffered from some acute form of nervous disorder; she should not be
traveling alone, her situation as prisoner itself proved her
irresponsibility, and she must be friendless indeed.  That was the
first, the most dreadful effect of even a simple "breakdown"--the loss
of human love and sympathy, the literal alienation from the common life
of one's fellow beings.  Madness, he considered, having never separated
the practice of his medical science from his theological beliefs, was
the temporary triumph of Evil in the human soul; he had never seen
mania assume any but ignoble shapes.  Let science do what it might,
there was a mystery in the destiny of man beyond fathoming except in
the light of divine revelation; at the very bottom of life

there is an unanswerable riddle, and it is just there, concluded Dr.
Schumann, his softened eyes still observing La Condesa, just there,
where man leaves off, that God begins.

La Condesa disappeared, walking rather fast, around the upper end of
the deck, and Dr.  Schumann turned through the bar and emerged on the
opposite side intending to approach her slowly.  But at sight of her,
three of the Cuban students left their shuffleboard and swarmed about
her.  She put on a new air for them, gentle, graceful, indulgent.  They
fell in step with her and with each other, and fairly outdid themselves
in deference and attentiveness to her.  She was talking as they passed
Dr.  Schumann, and he caught a few words in her frail, complaining
voice: "Hunted like beasts, my children, my children, my lovely ones,
and they ran away to sleep in the woods... and I could only wait and
suffer, suffer and wait--I could not lift a hand for them--" Her hands
flew up and described a whirling ring around her head.  "But they were
right to revolt, they were right, my children, even if they die for it,
or I must die, or be in exile.... "

The students put on faces of exaggerated melancholy.  She smiled at
them blindly with frowning brows.  One of the students fell back a pace
or two, and boldly with crassest impudence he winked at Dr.  Schumann
and swiftly tapped his forehead with a forefinger.  He got in return a
stare of such stony severity it abashed even him and he made haste to
catch up with his gang.  Dr.  Schumann looked at his watch, drew a
careful slow breath, feeling oppressed in flesh and spirit, and decided
to lie down quietly for the rest of the afternoon.

Lizzi Spockenkieker and Herr Rieber were having a very fast game of
ping-pong, which had begun lightly and at once developed into a duel.
They smashed the little ball back and forth over the net, crack pop pop
crack, their strokes speeding up shorter, faster, their faces darkening
with blood, until both grimly, silently, struck like automatons.  It
was a matter of life or death to win and they were smiling no longer. 
La Condesa with her three students who were singing "La Cucaracha" bore
down upon them suddenly at Lizzi's back, sailed by her without a pause
or glance; but Lizzi faltered, her eyes flashed aside, and Herr Rieber
won, at last.

"Ah, shame!"  screamed Lizzi, and running around the table with long
strides she cracked the triumphant Herr Richer over his bald head with
her little paddle.  "Ah, if it had not been for that crazy

woman and those stupid boys- they- they--Oh why must things like this
always happen to me?"

Herr Reiber ducked and sidestepped; indulgently he soothed her: "Come
now, even the best of us must lose sometime.  Let's not mind so much.
'remember, it is the playing of the game that counts, not winning!"

"You can talk," cried Lizzi, lifting her paddle again.  Deftly he
seized her wrist, brought her hand down to his mouth and imprinted a
large, juicy kiss upon it.  "There now," he said, "what a quick pretty
hand it is and it shall be much quicker the next time.  Don't mind not
winning from me.  I am ping-pong champion of the Sports verein in
Mexico City now three times over."

"I can believe it," said Lizzi, calming down a little.  "I am not used
to losing at this game."

Herr Rieber twinkled instantly with immense meanings.  "At what game
then do you lose?"

Lizzi shook his elbow violently.  "If you talk like that I shall leave
you!"  she threatened, tossing her head like an unmanageable mare. "No,
I shan't listen to such things or answer them."

"Clever girl," cried Herr Rieber, "nothing escapes you.  Now suppose we
take a little swim and cool off, unless of course you want to beat me
again," he said with infinite slyness, "at ping-pong or at any game at
all--any game you choose?"  He squeezed her arm with such warmth that
Lizzi blushed.

"No no, let's swim," she said, her voice rising, "ah, we must have a
race!"

At six o'clock a steward brought Dr.  Schumann a message from La
Condesa-saying she was ill and must see him at once.  A stewardess,
waiting outside La Condesa's cabin, knocked rather loudly when she saw
the Doctor approaching, and moved as if to follow him in.

"You may go, thank you," said La Condesa to the stewardess, in the
metallic quiet distant voice of a woman skilled in handling servants
whom she hated and who hated her, and she looked a shade to the right
of the stewardess as if she were already not there.  The woman, trained
in the same school, backed out at once with her eyes fixed on a point
in air about the height of the washbasin.

The air of the cabin was thick with Turkish cigarette smoke, a mixture
of heavy scents, and ether.  Expensive-looking, badly worn luggage was
spread about open, with shoes, evening wraps, improbable hats, wrinkled
soiled fine gloves, and pale-colored un botanical flowers of crumpled
silk and shattered velvet tumbling out on all sides in a confusion past
ordinary remedy.  La Condesa was in bed, a faded pink satin bed gown
falling off her white shoulders, barely veiled in thin violet-colored
stuff, She sat up staring, opened her mouth without speaking, her
clasped hands snapped apart and flew backward, forward, backward again,
and she gasped at last, "You must help me, I believe I am going to
die!"

Dr.  Schumann summoned his calmest and most reassuring air, laid his
palm on her forehead as though she were a child, and said, "I don't
think so, at least not just yet."

She bowed her head upon her raised knees and broke into a kind of
sobbing, a crying complaining voice full of incoherent words, but, Dr.
Schumann observed, without tears.  He sat beside her and began to
remove various contrivances from the black instrument case he carried.
She stopped crying and peered into its depths with instant curiosity.
He took advantage of her silence to ask her some plain necessary
questions about her bodily functions and she answered plainly and
sensibly.  When, however, he asked her to take off her bed gown and
lower her nightdress over her shoulders and back, she simply sat and
looked at him with a provocative flicker in her black eyes, and began
to smile with sly glee; she sat quite still, smiling so, while he
removed them himself.  She lifted her arms to help him with the
sleeves, but that was all.

He counted her pulse and listened to her heart and breathing, setting
his ear firmly to her breast and shoulder blades, noting her long thin
delicate bones.  He flashed small white lights into her eyes, and took
her blood pressure.  He caused her to breathe deeply and say oh and ah
several times while he peered down her throat with another little
light.  He tapped her ribs front and back rather sharply with two
fingers, kneaded her stomach in careful exploration, fetching a slight
sigh from her.  "Clench your fist, please," he told her, and took some
blood in a tiny glass pipe from the thin blue vein of her inner arm.
Her dilated eyes gradually became calmer, she lay back at last with
hands and shoulders flat and still, gazing at him as if she were rather
pleasurably hypnotized, and said in an entirely changed voice, "All
these charming attentions are making me deliciously sleepy, dear
Doctor.  Perhaps I only needed a human touch after all those

interrogations and those military police.  They are very
heavy-handed."

She breathed out lightly with her mouth open, and the smell of ether on
her breath was very strong.  The Doctor leaned towards her to speak,
concealing his moral disgust at the discovery he had made in the first
few seconds of the interview.

"You don't need stimulants," he said gravely, taking one of her wrists
and holding it lightly, "nor narcotics, either.  Whatever you may
need," he said, his forehead gathering in a frown, "it is not ether.
What a debased sort of habit for a woman like you!  Why do you waste my
time calling for me?  So far as I am able to see, you are not sick at
all," he told her, severely; "you are in enviably good condition,
organically quite sound.  How old are you?"

"Old enough as you can see," she said.  "Much too old."

"Perhaps fifty?"

"When you guess so well," she said, "you deserve to be told you are
right.  Fifty, then."

"That does not seem so great an age to me now," said Dr.  Schumann.  "I
should be pleased enough to be fifty again."

"Ah, I would not be a day younger for anything.  Believe me, there is
not one day of my dreadful life I would live again..  or so I think
now.  What shall I do?  Where shall I go?  What is to become of me?  I
am exiled," she said, sitting up again, and beginning to weave and
sway, "my husband is dead.."  my husband, thank God, is dead," she
repeated without levity, "but my two sons, my children, they are
fugitives somewhere- here, now, while we are here talking comfortably,
sheltered in this mean ship, but sheltered!  my sons are ... where do
they sleep at night, who befriends them, who gives them food, where are
they- when shall I see them again?  My house was burned too," she went
on in a lifeless voice as if she were reading a dull page aloud, "and
my beastly servants all ran away, looting as they went--money, silver,
clothes, furs, anything, whatever they had coveted; they scattered out
of the gates like the cattle they are.  Every face I saw then was the
face of someone who no longer regarded me as a human being.... " Her
hands began to dance, her lips drew back over her teeth, she struggled
to get out of bed and knocked the instrument case to the floor.

"Wait," said Dr.  Schumann.  He rose, picked up the black case, and
began to prepare a small hypodermic needle.  She became silent at once
and watched him with her air of easily distracted attention.

"This for tonight," he explained, "only.  And you must not take any
more ether.  Where do you hide it?  I shall take it away with me."

She motioned towards one of the sprawling pieces of luggage.  "It ix
all there somewhere."

He pinched up the flesh of her arm, and at the slight stab of the
needle she shuddered and said, "Ah, how delicious.  How I love drugs,
any kind of drug, to wake me or to make me sleep, I adore them all. You
should praise me a little, because I do not, ever, take all the kinds
of drug I should like.  It would be so easy, so easy..."

She dropped back among the pillows, and Dr.  Schumann rummaged
carefully among the disorder of the suitcase, bringing up a flask of
ether.

"Is this all?"  he asked.  "I expect you to tell me the truth."

She prolonged her silence, waiting to be cajoled, but he said nothing
more.  He went over to the washbasin and emptied the flask.  The fumes
rose in his face and he coughed.  "You have taken too many drugs of one
kind and another," he said, "say what you please."

"Don't scold," she said, "you have not told me what is to become of me,
with or without them."

"With your good health," said Dr.  Schumann, "I could wish you a
sufficient settled income and some reconciliation with society.  And
nothing more could happen to you."

"How dull," she said, blankly.

"Maybe," said Dr.  Schumann, "for one of such specialized tastes."
"Here is the difference between you and me.  I do not intend to
reconcile myself with a society I despise.  Yet it was not I who
quarreled with society, but my sons--I was content to despise it.  It
was my sons who turned me out into this world.... Look, I have such
good health as you say.  But no income at all.  A prisoner on her way
to a dreary island in the Canaries..."

"I do not find Santa Cruz de Tenerife so had," said the Doctor,
comfortingly.

"You have not been deported there," said La Condesa.  "Cuba, God knows,
is dull enough, but Santa Cruz!  No, don't try to console me... You
know what?  You sound to me like a man with money in the bank, entire
personal freedom, all you want- and your" health is perhaps not so
good?  How right am I?"

"Right enough," said Dr.  Schumann, sitting beside her again.  "Where
is the rest of the ether?"

"you can see how useless, how unkind really, it will be for you to
give me good advice," she said, stroking his hand that lay on his knee
near her.  "But don't stop giving it.  Don't go away.  I love your good
advice, I love to hear you scold and see you frown straight into my
eyes, as if you meant it just for me--as if you cared what happened to
me.  i should like being dull for a little while.  I promise to stop
taking ether, at least for this voyage.  I do this for you, not for
myself.  I know I will begin again afterward.... I tried everything,
anything at all, in the end ether seemed best, vulgar as you seem to
think it!  A lovely excitement without pain.  Have you ever taken
it?"

"No."

"You must try it sometime," she said, in a drowned voice.  "The other
flask is in the red leather dressing case."

"It is time for you to sleep," said Dr.  Schumann, and he laid her hand
back at her side.  "I shall send the stewardess now, and I shall see
you again tomorrow."

"What is this heavenly drug I have now?"  asked La Condesa, her eyes
closing slowly.  "I don't recognize it; is it something new?"

Dr.  Schumann gave a short laugh, at which she opened her eyes shining
with delight upon him.  "Do you expect me to tell you?"  he asked, as
if he were speaking to an obstinate child.

"You laughed," she said, tenderly, "I never heard you laugh before! 
But never mind, I'll try to guess this drug, or maybe you will give it
to me again.... I adore you," she said, "you are such a preposterous
good moral dull ridiculous man, but charming, charming!"

Her eyes closed again, she lifted both hands and slowly stroked her
small breasts upward, and her expression, especially about the mouth,
quite startled Dr.  Schumann.  He shook her shoulder with careful
violence.  "Look at me," he said sternly, "stop that nonsense!"  Her
hands fell back and her face turned to one side.  He stood almost
holding his breath watching her sink into sleep as into the bottomless
pit- he touched her pulse lightly, and almost feared to leave her.  He
gathered up his black case and turned away resolutely, stopped himself
from saying "Good night," and opened the door.

The dank air of the passageway struck upon him as a fresh breeze after
the fetid sweetness and rot of the cabin.  He instructed the waiting
stewardess and returned to his quarters, feeling unpleasantly exhausted
and freshly apprehensive about his own condition.  He lay down with his
rosary in his fingers, and began to invite sleep, darkness, silence,
that little truce of God between living and dying; he put out of mind,
with deliberate intention to forget forever, the last words of that
abandoned lost creature; nettles, poisoned barbs, fishhooks, her words
clawed at his mind with the terrible malignance of the devil-possessed,
the soul estranged from its kind.

On the second evening out from Havana, with twenty-odd days to go, the
ship's commissary began doling out the modest pastimes and amusements
of the voyage in the attempt to make life on shipboard resemble a
perpetual children's party on land.  Dinner was "gala," so the dinner
card read, and fresh flowers appeared on every table.  Beside every
plate were small gilded paper snappers with noise making machines
inside, and comic paper hats for everybody.  Several of the women wore
dinner gowns; beer foamed in great steins; waiters twirled bottles of
Phine wine in ice pails, with a flourish.

Herr Glocken and William Denny, sitting together, put on their clownish
hats first, grinned around vaguely and received a vague grin or two in
return.  Hats then bloomed on many beads; small colored balloons
floated about over tables, tossed from hand to hand, now and again
exploding to the noise of rattles and tin whistles.  The band struck up
"Tales from the Vienna Woods," and continued with Strauss waltzes to
the end.  Dinner was going to be treated as a social event, so the
voyagers seemed to ace, even if on the most provisional terms.  There
was a great deal of laughter and calling out of toasts between tables,
and the Spanish dancing troupe leaned over and lifted their glasses to
the Captain, who responded with a stony face but an elegant bow,
raising his own in acknowledgment, setting it down again and seeming to
put the whole thing out of mind.

Herr Baumgartner had got a false beard with his hat, and he sent two
small children at the next table almost into fits of joy with his trick
of making it waggle up and down, like a goat's beard.  The children, a
boy of five and a girl of three, were peaceably waiting for food with
their parents, Cubans who had embarked at Havana.  Hans, the
Baumgartners' timid child, was enchanted with these children, such a
change from Ric and Rac, who could terrorize him with just a glance. He
had been hanging shyly around these new passengers without daring to
speak, but now, by means of his amusing father, he saw his chance to
make friends with them.

Herr Baumgartner quite outdid himself with fascinating devices, and

the children squealed and giggled and peeped through their fingers
most flatteringly.  Hans made himself laugh louder and longer than he
wanted, to bring himself to their attention.  "Eat your dinner, though,
Hans," said his mother after a while, "and we shall play some more
afterwards."

Her husband disregarded this hint.  He pushed the beard up to the
middle of his forehead, parted it like a curtain and said "Boo!"  The
children screeched with delight and the parents smiled indulgently.
Herr Baumgartner pulled the beard down under his chin and pushed the
paper hat far back on his head.  The children still laughed.  Frau
Baumgartner took a morsel of food and set about cutting up the roast
duck on Hans's plate.  She did not altogether trust his table manners
in public for such things.  Nearly eight years old and yet so awkward
with his knife and fork--it made her feel that she was not a good
mother.  "Eat while it's hot," she told him.  Observing her husband
uneasily, she reflected that his great weakness was a lack of the sense
of propriety, or the limits of things.  He simply never knew when to
stop--drinking, making faces, anything.  Her heart sank as she
perceived that now in a split second he would go too far, and he did.
He pushed the beard up under his eyes, dragged his hat forward,
agitated the beard fiercely, growled like a lion, maybe, or a bear, and
it was too much.  Hans, his mouth half-open to receive food, stopped
and smiled uncertainly; the other little boy laughed in a quavering
artificial tone; but the baby girl was too young to pretend anything,
and she gazed in growing terror, then burst into tears.  Lamentably she
wept "Ay, ay, ay," her flooded eyes fixed unbelievingly on the sight
that had been so jolly suddenly turned dreadful without warning.  The
young mother, with a quick sharp exclamation at Herr Baumgartner, took
the child on her lap and pressed the crumpled face against her breast;
the young father leaned forward to lay a tender hand upon his
frightened baby.

Frau Baumgartner said, "Oh, I am so sorry," and her tone, her manner,
shut out her husband.  Her eyes signaled to the other woman, You see
how it is, please do not blame me... as woman to woman, as a mother who
knows all that can happen, I beg of yOU.... The young mother gave her
back the guarded look of an indifferent stranger, refused confidences,
rejected implied kinship of feeling, and managed a deprecating small
smile and nod as if to say, This is nothing--and

thinking all too clearly, Except perhaps a little stupid, and what
trouble you are making for us!

Herr Baumgartner swept the hat and heard from him, cast it utterly away
to the floor like a man in a play, his face tormented with remorse. "Oh
dear sir!"  he addressed the father in German, "I meant only to amuse
the little ones."  The young father nodded, made a light gesture of
waving away all misunderstandings, then exchanged a troubled glance
with his wife, for they knew no German.  Herr Baumgartner would have
persisted, in Spanish, but his wife halted him.  "Don't," she said,
"don't.  You have said and done enough.  They understand perfectly, and
if they choose to pretend they don't at least please keep your
dignity."

This completed the ruin of what was left of Herr Baumgartner's
self-esteem.  "Ah, good God," he said, 'as it come to this with me,
that I cannot even play with a little child without frightening it?
Hans, you were not frightened, were you?  Your poor father hoped only
to hear you laugh!"

"I laughed," said Hans, with a manly air, comforting his father.  His
mother said, "Of course you laughed, because it was very funny.  Little
babies always cry for everything.  You cried when you were a little
baby," she told him, so convincingly Hans forgot for a moment all the
crying he had done since.

His father ate in silence as if his food were bitter medicine to him,
and the three of them fell silent.  Hans felt that his mother was being
particularly gentle and that she smiled at him too tenderly, too often.
It worried him to have to smile back every time, for he felt he was
taking her side against his father, and he did not want to take sides.
His father went on looking at him so kindly too, with his familiar sad
face, poor good Vati; until Hans could bear it no longer, but turned
his head from them both, unhappy and lonely and lost.  The children at
the next table had forgotten the whole thing and were playing with
their balloons and rattles and hats while their mother and father fed
them from spoons and forks and buttered their bread for them, and none
of them gave Hans another look or thought.  The little crybaby of a
girl was having the best time of all.

The festival spirit seemed to go on thriving more or less.  The diners
followed the hand on deck, where the Strauss waltzes sang to the stars
above the sound of the waves.  The ship rolled gently, the heavy
cooling winds whipped skirts and scarfs about, hair became

ruffled but faces were smoother, and the slow great waves folding back
from the ship's side were alive with lazy green fox fire.  A gauzy new
moon sailed downward swiftly.

"It's so heavenly, David," said Jenny.  "How I wish you would dance."

But David did not dance, and he had a not-heavenly name for dancing, a
byword of contempt which offended Jenny, who had danced a distance
perhaps twice around the globe.  "And my mind was never purer than
then," she told him; "I wish I had worn one of those measuring things
on my ankle then I could tell you exactly how many miles I have
traveled when I was happiest!"

They enjoyed the light of the starry sky and the glow of the
seaweed-colored deck, and breathed in the fine weather, but Jenny was
restless, wanting to dance; so David, with a tight, obstinate face,
left her and went in the bar.  A few minutes later he looked out and it
was as he had expected: she was dancing with Freytag.

The whole scene was filled with spinning figures whirling like cheerful
dervishes in the Viennese style.  Mrs.  Treadwell, dressed in some kind
of airy yellow stuff, was dancing with a young officer; Arne Hansen
with the Spanish dancer they called Amparo.  The absurd Herr Rieber
clung as usual to the tall, awkward, ugly Lizzi; he was as light as a
rubber ball on his feet, and spun and whirled with the equilibrium of a
top, guiding Lizzi in rings around the others.  These others were
married pairs mostly, though the Lutzes and the Baumgartners sat the
evening out.  Two of the Cuban students danced with Pastora and Lola,
while the male Spanish dancers sat in the bar and kept out of their
way.

David's attention was fixed on those who were not dancing: the born
outsiders; the perpetual uninvited; the unwanted; and those who, like
himself, for whatever sad reason, refused to join in.  He ranged
himself with all of them; they were his sort, he knew them by heart at
sight.  That big Elsa for one, sitting with her parents, drooping,
unable to conceal her yearning, her disappointment, her fear of being
left out.  "I would dance with you," he told her, but she would never
hear him say it.  Herr Glocken, huddled on the foot of a deck chair
near the band, his face in his hands, his paper hat over one eyebrow,
sat motionless listening but not seeing.

The dying man in his chair was drawn to the rail, wrapped in shawls and
rugs to the throat, asleep perhaps; the boy Johann, his

nephew who attended him, leaned his arms on the chair handle, with the
look of an outcast dog for longing and hopelessness.  David felt he
knew all of them well.  For himself, he refused to join in, to take
part, because he knew well there was no place for him and nothing that
he wanted anywhere--not at that price, he said, loathing the milling
herd whirling past the window.

The Mexican bride and groom, he noticed, were not dancing.  They were
strolling together, came upon the scene and paused there, amiable,
distant, like charmed visitors from another planet.  They did not dance
or put on paper hats or drink or play cards or grin at other people.
They did not even talk much to each other; but they were paired, that
was clear.  This silence, this isolation, this ceremonial exclusion
from their attention of all but their love and their first lessons in
each other, seemed natural, right, superb to David.  He surmised in
them gravity and severity of character; under their beauty there lay
the promise of dryness and formality in time; but the marriage would
last, they were joined for good.  As he imagined their characters and
the nature of their marriage, which was the kind he believed he would
want for himself, Jenny went dancing by again with Freytag.  They were
spinning gaily as one body, but their faces were only two famous masks.
David, who considered sexual jealousy as a piece of nonsense beneath
his notice, felt again that familiar hot wave of repulsion against
Jenny's lack of discrimination, her terrible gregariousness, the way
she was always ready to talk to anybody anywhere, join up with any sort
of party, go anywhere she was invited, take up with the most gruesome
assortment of loons and clowns and thugs and drunks and perverts, and
male model types like this Freytag.  "To hell with it!" said David
aloud, feeling more bitterly trapped than usual.

He returned to the bar and drank a whiskey neat, then another.  Denny
was there, and David had seen him hanging around uneasily on the edge
of things too, but he could not take Denny into his sympathies.  No,
Denny was on the outside for the wrong reasons.  He would follow and
leer at the Spanish dancing girls--or rather, at Pastora- but none of
them would have him.  They had found him out.  He would not buy them
drinks, he would not come to any terms with them--he wanted his
pleasures for nothing, the kind of man who should be whipped with
scorpions and made to pay well for

it.  He honed and hankered, that was obvious, but not to the extent of
a five-dollar bar bill, which might lead to nothing, or to more expense
in the long run, and nothing gained either.  The girls had got in the
way of snapping their eyes at him in contempt as they passed; a little
more and they would be flipping their petticoats from the back at him,
they had so low an opinion of him.  They also fully intended that one
of them, no matter which one, should certainly pick his pockets clean
before the voyage ended.

Denny was drinking steadily with a firm purpose.  "I aim to be stinkin'
before this here night is done," he promised solemnly.  "Come on and
get in the game."

"It's as good as any," said David; and for a fact, Denny was just the
one to get drunk with.  No pretensions, no fooling around, no chatter,
just a slow deliberate premeditated wallow to the finish.  Fine, that
would be just fine.  David downed his third whiskey, and the small
nagging dig of uneasiness, not quite pain, in that blank hungry spot
just between his forward ribs, began to ease up a little.  He intended
to drink until no matter what happened he shouldn't be able to remember
one thing tomorrow morning.

Arne Hansen and Amparo ended their dance, a rather monotonous
swing-around accommodated to Hansen's awkwardness, within arm's reach
of Elsa, and Elsa gazed from under puzzled eyebrows at Amparo, trying
to find the secret.  There was no secret that Elsa could see, or admit:
Amparo was beautiful in a slatternly too-dark sort of way, but she made
no smallest attempt to be agreeable; she had a sulky, unsmiling face,
she hardly spoke, she seemed even a little bored and out of temper.
Hansen, Elsa observed with satisfaction, danced like a bear.  He kept
his attention set upon Amparo as if she might disappear if he looked
aside for a moment.  Amparo carried and waved freely a black lace fan
with a red cotton rose pinned over a torn place.  Anybody with eyes in
his head could see why the rose was there--anybody could see!  Amparo,
her hips rocking, walked over and said something to Pastora, who left
the deck and went in the bar to take a message to Pepe.  Then Amparo
walked away slowly without looking back, and Hansen took off after her
with long steps.  Frau Rittersdorf, who had just danced with the
purser, a hugely fat, fatherly-looking fellow with a dumpling face and
walrus mustaches,

found herself standing near Mrs.  Treadwell.  She nodded, her mouth
prim, towards the retreating figures.  Hanson had overtaken Amparo, had
seized her arm, they were hurrying away together.

"I don't think that is a very pretty sight," she observed.  Mrs.  Tread
well turned a too-innocent face upon her and asked, "Why not?  I think
they look very well together!"

Pepe sat late alone, over a half bottle of red wine.  Ric and Rac,
Tito, Pancho, Manolo, Pastora, Concha, and Lola had finally deserted
him.  The band stopped playing, the dancers dispersed, lights were
dimmed in the salon and on deck; sailors came out with their buckets
and brushes; the man at the bar was obviously closing up for the night.
Cigarette ends were stacked high in the tray before him, though the
waiter had emptied it twice.  Swallowing his last drop of wine, Pope
lighted another cigarette and strolled outside once around, and then,
cautiously as a cat, descended into the depths of the ship.  Lingering
there, patrolling the corridor, at last he saw Arne Hanson come out
looking as if he had dressed in a hurry, enter the passage almost at a
run and disappear around the far corner as if the police were after
him.

Pope advanced then softly, opened the cabin door, and found Amparo as
he expected, in her black lace nightgown, counting her money, in
substantial-looking American banknotes, and a sizable lot of them.  He
put out his right hand palm up, rubbing thumb and forefinger together
humorously as if this were an old joke between them.  Instead of giving
them to him as she usually did, she tossed them into the washbasin,
where he had to pick them out for himself.

David Scott and William Denny woke from drunkenness with shattering
headaches, eyes that would not focus properly, and sunken stomachs.
Herr Glocken in a trembling voice was asking for his morning medicine
and water as if he had been asking at intervals for a good while. Denny
groaned loudly and thrashed about in the upper berth.  David rolled off
the couch and ministered to Herr Glocken, whose hand shook as it closed
round the tumbler.  Instantly his medicine was down, he gave David a
proud, lopsided smile.  "I drank too much," he said, and dropped back
behind the curtain.

David, brushing his hair, noted with sickening anxiety the thin line of
glossy skin at the top of his forehead where, at twenty-six years,

his hairline was slowly but fatally, visibly receding.  Years might
pass before it happened once for all, but there would come a day, an
unspeakable day, when he would be bald, as his father and his
grandfathers and his great-grandfathers were before him.  No earthly
power could avert it.  He knew because he had tried everything.  He had
been guilty of buying every kind of hair tonic and salve and fancy
shampoo and massage device any barber wished to sell him.  At great
damage to his Pennsylvania Quaker conscience, he had committed
methodically the two greatest sins possible (or so he had understood it
as a child, from precept and example): he had spent on frivolities
money meant for better purposes, and he had pampered his bodily vanity.
Not that he gave a damn, as he was fond of assuring himself; but those
tight-mouthed, tight-handed, tight-souled old gaffers had left some
kind of poison in his blood that kept him from ever really enjoying his
life, and besides, he was going to be bald.  Still he blushed at having
been such a dupe as to think, for example, that a hairbrush operated by
electricity was going to destroy the genes of all those bald-headed
ancestors.  His inevitable baldness, then, he jotted down as one more
grudge against his mother, who had never shown any judgment as a
mother, certainly, and least of all in her choice of the father of her
children.  His father had not only been prematurely bald, he was
flighty, irresponsible, unfaithful openly in low ways, incapable of
even the lowest form of loyalty to anything or anybody.  He had the
Quaker tendency to count his pennies, but that was all.  He had finally
looped out with a girl half his age, and nobody ever caught up with
him, or even ever heard of him, again.

He left his wife a letter, though, saying that this new love was not
based on mere physical attraction, as his marriage and many affairs had
been, but was a matter of deep spiritual and intellectual interest as
well, something too high and beautiful for his wife to understand.  He
did not expect her to understand it, and was not going to try to
explain any further.  It was Good-by, and Good Luck!

David was nine years old at the time, and had already thought often how
pleasant life could be if it were not for his father being around all
the time.  Nov his disappearance seemed to David no less than a
wonderful stroke of divine Providence, the source from which he had
been informed all blessings arrived.  His mother had taken the whole
thing quite differently.  "Spiritual!"  she had said violently, as if
it were an unclean word.  Then she said to David, "Here is the kind
of

father you've got, and read the letter in a high strained voice to
him; standing in the middle of the floor with her chin thrown back and
her eyes closed with the tears streaming, she had nearly laughed her
head off.  Then she sat down and almost embarrassed him to death by
seizing him, a big bony lank boy, and dragging him onto her lap, where
she cradled him as if he were a little baby, rocking back and forth
sobbing as if she would never stop.  It had all made him so sick he
threw up his supper, and afterward he got very sleepy; but woke in the
night with the most terrifying feeling of pure desolation.  Quietly,
secretly, he cried bitterly too, cried himself to sleep again in his
dampened pillow smelling of old feathers.

In the midst of brushing his hair, David vomited suddenly into the
washbasin.  Furtively with shame he scrubbed the bowl, thinking that
his hair tonic was as bad as Denny's patent medicines and laxatives and
sleeping pills.  He turned away from the sight of his hangdog face in
the mirror, and the dreadful muddled feeling of moral self reprobation
which Jenny called a Methodist hangover clutched him, not for the first
time, in the vitals.

He had done something ridiculous last night, what was it?  He
remembered Jenny's face somewhere along the evening, her eyes very
brightly cold; she was closing a door in his face--what door, and
where, and why?  A great thunderous gap of darkness existed in his mind
between a last series of drinks with Denny at the bar, and Jenny's
glittering eyes at the closing door.  But she would remember, she would
be glad to give him a full account.  He had only to wait until they met
at breakfast or on deck.  She would tell him a story to please herself,
half invention, half true, he would never know which was which, and she
would be certain to add something like: "Don't feel badly about it,
darling.  I'm probably making it all sound much sillier than it really
was.  I wasn't quite sober myself, remember," she would say with purest
hypocrisy: for Jenny was a sober little creature who didn't depend upon
alcohol for anything.  The thought of Jenny's mere existence at that
moment was a fresh accusation against him.  He should marry Jenny, or
offer to marry her, anyway: they should have got married before they
left Mexico- this way everything was plainly going to be a mess.  But
Jenny was not the wife he wanted if he wanted a wife, which he
certainly did not want now: in fact, he faced it coldly, he would never
in the world marry Jenny, he did not intend to marry at all; marriage
was a bad business, a mug's game.

On reaching this candid conclusion, his spirits improved somewhat: he
felt able to face Jenny on her own terms.

Herr Professor and Frau Hutten opened their eyes, moved their heads
experimentally and asked in duet, "How do you feel, my dear?" 
Comparing notes, they decided their seasickness was past, they must
rise and face the day.b seeing them stirring, took heart and walked
about confidently, and when Frau Hutten kissed him on the nose, he
responded with a hearty lap on her chin.

The Indian nurse waked Senora Ortega gently and tucked the baby to her
breast for the morning nursing.  The mother drowsed and waked
deliciously to the steady warm mumbling of the ravenous mouth, the long
forward rolling surge of the ship, the sleepy beat of the engines.  Her
pains and fatigues were gone at last.  Folded together, mother and baby
slept as one in soft animal ease, breathing off sweet animal odors,
cradled both like unborn things in their long dark dream.  The Indian
woman, who slept in her white chemise and full white petticoat, filled
her palms with cold water, washed her eyes and smoothed her hair,
slipped into her embroidered wool skirt, put on her earrings and
necklaces, and lay down again, her meek bare feet, pointed and
delicate, close together; and dozed.  Now and then she twitched a
little, and opened one eye.  A voice she did not recognize, but
believed to be her dead mother's, often called her name in a tone of
warning as she slept.  "Nicolasa," the voice said very tenderly as if
she were a child again.  But it meant to tell her the sad news that she
was needed, she must break her night's rest, she must all day long be
silently ready to do whatever was required of her.  She often wept in
her sleep because she lived her whole life among strangers who knew
only her christened name, not a word of: her language, and who never
once asked her how she felt.  "Nicolasa," said the soft voice,
urgently.  She sighed and sat up; saw that her poor little baby was
still asleep and the poor mother also, but perhaps they would be
quieter, sleep longer and more deeply, if she kept watch over them. She
drooped on the edge of her bed, smiling vaguely at mother and child;
then dropped to her knees and took her rosary out of her pocket. A
charm of dried herbs in a cheesecloth bag was attached to the rosary,
and she kissed this charm before she kissed the crucifix.

Wilhelm Freytag woke feeling a fresher, cooler wind blowing upon his
face.  The round bit of horizon shone through the porthole, not clear
but a thick cloudy blue.  They were six days out, yes, this was Sunday
and the ship had settled to her speed such as it was in a beeline
across the waters, already, he noticed, putting out his head, a little
troubled.  It was real sea air, dense yet sweet and mild, with long
sooty streamers of cloud trailing from deep blue thunder banks to the
east.  It seemed late; perhaps he had missed breakfast.  The ship's
bell clanged.  Eight o'clock; time enough if he speeded up a little. 
Hansen would miss it, though.  The breathing of deepest slumber stirred
behind the curtain, and Hansen's huge feet, with smooth glossy soles
and assertive great toes standing apart from the others, stuck out of
the upper bunk as usual.  Freytag wondered how he managed in cold
weather, and remembered being half wakened by the noise of Hansen
scrambling into bed at what must have been a very late hour....
Probably up to no good with that Spanish woman he had been dogging from
the first.

While he shaved he riffled through his ties and selected one, thinking
that people on voyage mostly went on behaving as if they were on dry
land, and there is simply not room for it on a ship.  Every smallest
act shows up more clearly and looks worse, because it has lost its
background.  The train of events leading up to and explaining it is not
there; you can't refer it back and set it in its proper size and place,
You might learn something about one or two persons, if you took time
and trouble, but there was not time enough and it was not worth the
trouble; not even that American girl Jenny Brown was interesting enough
to try to know better.  By herself, a nice enough person, he believed;
good dancer and full of lively talk and odd random humor that amused
you at the moment, though you could not remember a word of it
afterwards.  But that strange young man she was traveling with gave her
own personality a dubious cast: such as that odd behavior of his last
night, when he came between them abruptly during a waltz, seized Jenny
Brown by the elbow and snatched her away, and had performed a few steps
with her of a kind usually seen only in the lowest dance halls.  Jenny
Brown had tried to fight her way out of his clutches, and she succeeded
for a moment; turned to wave good night to Freytag, and then David
Scott had seized her arm and she had given up and walked away with him.
It was all pretty cheap and stupid, from Freytag's viewpoint, and it
illustrated the danger of getting involved with strangers and their
messy situations.

What he, Freytag, preferred from strangers was a friendly
indifference, a superficial pleasantness.  This was quite enough for
any voyage, any evening at all among strangers, but it is just these
things that too many persons know nothing about, he said, now beginning
to carry on a silent, internal conversation with his absent wife Mary.
People on a boat, Mary, can't seem to find any middle ground between
stiffness, distrust, total rejection, or a kind of invasive, gnawing
curiosity.  Sometimes it's a friendly enough curiosity, sometimes sly
and malicious, but you feel as if you were being eaten alive by fishes.
I've never been on a boat, remember, said Mary in his mind.  Ah, but
you will be soon, you will be.  You'll see for yourself then.  Would
you believe, I danced with a girl, her name was Jenny
something-or-other, had a drink with her, and a young man she was
traveling with, rather a common sort of chap I think he must be, made
the oddest scene about it.  Traveling with?  He realized at once that
such an episode was not the kind of thing he could tell Mary.  It had
no meaning, no importance, it was outside of their lives altogether, he
would have forgotten it by the time he saw her again.  And then too, if
Mary heard such a story, she might say slyly, as she had said before
when he told her of his travel adventures, often rather charming, he
thought: "More Goyim, I expect?"  And he always had to say, "Yes."  And
she would remark, "It's so strange that you never meet any jews when
you travel alone!"  Once when he had tried to show her why he felt that
this was an outrageous thing for her to say, they had almost quarreled;
she would not at these times accept a fact she "knew well: that it was
the Jews who drew the line and refused associations and friendship. But
the subject was dangerous ground between them, and he had learned to
avoid it.  He felt his own life within him thrMng safe and sound,
something intact with a smooth surface very hard for the fishes to get
their teeth in.  He would keep away from that Jenny Brown and her
private affairs, whatever they were.  She was evidently at loose ends,
ready for a little excitement.  Her way of talking was too intimate,
too personal; she asked questions; she wished to confide and explain
about herself.  She was not so interesting as her vanity led her to
suppose.

There was nothing he wished to confide or explain to anyone but Mary.
He was very simply transporting himself, like something inanimate sent
by freight, stored in the hold, until, from the house he had taken and
begun to prepare for Mary in Mexico City, he should set himself down in
the house where Mary was waiting for him in Mannheim.  In that
interval nothing concerned him, he had no business with strangers. When
they returned together, the ship and the passengers would still not
matter, for it would be the voyage of their lives.  They would never
see Germany again, except for a miracle.  Mary must be his native land
and he must be hers, and they would have to carry their own climate
with them wherever they went; they must call that climate home and try
not to remember its real name--exile.  A vision of Mary playing and
singing at the piano formed in his memory, and he whistled along with
her the song she was singing: "Kein Haus, leeine Helmat.... "

That was the way it would be.  And what would it be like to know
always, to carry the knowledge like a guilty secret, that they had not
come to any given place of their own free happy choice, but had been
driven there; that they were in flight, harried over one frontier and
then another, without power to choose their place or to refuse what
shelter might be offered?  His pride sickened.  What a shameful
existence for any man, what a doubly shameful existence for a German!
No matter what he might say for the sake of politeness about his
mixture of nationalities, he knew he was altogether German, a
legitimate son of that powerful German strain able to destroy all
foreign bloods in its own veins and make all pure and German once more;
and the whole world had been for him merely a hunting ground, a
foraging place, a territory of profitable sojourn until the day should
come when he would go home for good, having never been away in his
soul.  Wherever he had been, he had felt German ground under his feet
and German sky over his head; there azas no other country for him, and
how was this taken away from us, Mary?  You are no longer a Jew, but
the wife of a German; our children's blood will flow as pure as mine,
your tainted stream will be cleansed in their German veins Freytag
pulled himself up with a sharp turn, and wiped his streaming face.  His
reveries had turned to a painful rhapsody, some fearful daydream had
taken hold of him, he was talking his madness even while the solid
earth was slipping from underfoot, the house shaking overhead, the long
flight was beginning, and he could not even imagine the end.  The
future was a vast hollow sphere, strangely soundless, uninhabited,
without incident or detail; yet he knew that, visibly, nothing might be
changed for a great while; perhaps things would change so slowly he
might hardly be aware of change until one day it would be too late.  No
doubt he would continue as a minor executive in the

German oil company until the time came to look about for something
else in a firm where nobody would mind that he had married a Jewish
girl.  He dreaded introducing Mary to his circle in Mexico City- they
would never be deceived by that blonde hair and her little tip-tilted
nose.  He had been deceived, but then he had loved her on sight,
literally; she had told him almost at once, but he had not cared, and
he could see no signs of Jewishness in her--but those colonial Germans
in Mexico City, they would know what she was instantly and as far as
they could see her.  He had seen it happen in Germany, in all sorts of
places, restaurants, theaters, all kinds of company- well, there it
was, beyond belief and beyond help, and he could only hope that by the
time the thing caught up with them he would have found another job as
good or better, somewhere else.  He might go in business for himself,
in Mexico or South America, perhaps even in New York, but only as a
last resort.

Facing the perpetual question as he did, his mind turned dry and
practical.  He could not feel fated, destined for catastrophe; actually
he could not imagine himself being driven out of a place, or in peril
of his life; surely he and Mary would never be put on a ship,
penniless, prisoners, to be thrust into still another country that did
not want them either like that unbalanced Spanish countess prisoner
with her wild tale of terror.  Poor woman, he found himself thinking
with impersonal pity, but his own worry was such he was unable to care
deeply for her fate.  Leaning over the rail, he looked again into the
steerage deck.

Dr.  Schumann was nearby, observing the steerage passengers also with a
very thoughtful face.  He greeted Freytag mildly and shook his head.

"They seem to be more comfortable this morning," said Freytag.  The
people were moving sluggishly, but they were moving, busy with their
hands, putting things to rights as well as their means afforded.  Some
of the men were smoking, and the huge fat man in the cherry-pink shirt,
who had sung as the ship left Veracruz, stood among them, legs apart,
roaring another song, a few scattered words rising on the wind.  The
other men, rolling up their bundles or opening canvas chairs, stopped
now and then to listen, smiling broadly, joining in for a phrase or
two.  The women had managed to wash a few garments, faded shirts and
baby rags; a long line of them flapped from a cord hung so low everyone
crossing the deck had to stoop under it.  There appeared to be somewhat
more space, and nobody was actively sick.

"They will do well enough if we don't run into weather," said Dr.
Schumann.  "Broken arms, legs, heads, maybe necks," he said, brooding
over them.  'they have no place to make themselves secure- there are
too many of them--it's a disgrace to the ship.  I am hoping the weather
holds at least to the Bay of Biscay, when more than half of these will
be left at Santa Cruz de Tenerife."

"It is always rough in the Bay of Biscay," said Freytag.  "Well, at
least these people are lucky in one way- they are all going home."

"So they are," said Dr.  Schumann.  "I hope only we can get them there
without further suffering for them."  He seemed rather gloomy and under
the weather himself, and barely nodded when Freytag moved away.

In the areaway leading into the dining room, the bulletin board was a
morning gathering place.  David saw Jenny, looking very smooth and
fresh, standing before the board with Mrs.  Treadwell.  He went
straight up and joined them, meaning to take Jenny away at once and
have it out with her.

"Why, hello, David darling," said Jenny, easily, and slipped her arm
through his.  He gave it a small pressure, at the same time pushing her
away.  She let go at once and moved away a step from him.  Mrs.  Tread
well nodded a greeting, and together they read the thin array of
pastimes, already somewhat frayed with repetition: religious services
in the morning, a variation because this was Sunday; horse races at two
o'clock, swimming at all hours, music on deck at five, tea in the bar,
a band concert after dinner, dancing on deck later.

The little flags on pins, stuck every day in the map to mark the
progress of the ship, were marching in a curve across the blue field of
the Atlantic.  "We are really getting somewhere," said Mrs.  Treadwell
to David.  "I can't sight land anywhere with my strongest glass."  From
the Caribbean to the Canaries would be fourteen days; from the Canaries
to Vigo, to Gijon, to Southampton, to Bremerhaven, eight days more or
ten perhaps.  "We can begin to look forward to the end of this voyage,"
said David.  News dispatches were rather nautical in character and the
movements of ships unknown to landlubbers were thought worth
mentioning, with passing references to dockworkers' strikes almost
simultaneously in San Francisco, New York, Lisbon, Gijon.  Passengers
advertised on little thumbtacked slips of paper that they had lost or

found jeweled combs, down pillows, tobacco pouches, small cameras,
pocket' mirrors, rosaries.  The ship's pool was there with the name of
yesterday's winner.

Mrs.  Treadwell traced with a bright red varnished fingernail the
ship's course on the blue map.  She spoke, perhaps to David.  "It's
true," she said, "we do not stop at Boulogne."  Her face was amiable,
timid, composed into a smile.  He watched her sparkling fingernail
glide into port, into Boulogne.  "And that happens to be the only place
I wish to go," she told him, speaking into the air.

'then why did you take this ship?"  asked David, He waited confidently
for some preposterous feminine explanation.  She was undoubtedly a
woman who lost her keys, missed trains, forgot her engagements, and
mailed letters full of indiscreet gossip to friends in the wrong
envelopes.  But no, she had a reasonable answer.

"The man at the North German Lloyd in Mexico City sold me a ticket for
Boulogne and said the ship stopped there," she said carefully, without
indignation or complaint.  It was, she added, nothing unusual or
surprising.  Ticket agents often did that.  "My ticket reads..."

She opened her handbag and rummaged among the contents delicately with
a forefinger.  David glanced over her elbow at a clutter of expensive
trifles in gold, silver, leather and tortoise shell.  Mrs.  Treadwell
emptied a flat envelope of red ostrich skin bound in gold, her passport
case.  "It should be here," she said, without expectation.  "Wherever
do things go?"  she asked herself aloud.  "At any rate, it said
Boulogne, clearly."

"You haven't lost your ticket?"  asked Jenny, alarmed.

"I haven't it with me, but it's about somewhere.  I am not the only
passenger for Boulogne.  Those Cuban medical students..."

"Montpellier, yes, I know," said David.

"I wonder what they mean to do there, what possibly?"  asked Mrs.

Treadwell.  "Surely not to study medicine?"

"Poor Cuba!"  said Jenny, idly.

David asked how they would get there, in the first place.  Mrs.  Tread
well supposed they would be put off, all of them and herself, at
Southampton and from there" It would be nice," remarked Jenny, "if the
Captain might just put them off in a leaky lifeboat, with two oars
maybe, and a small keg of old water with tadpoles in it and a few
biscuits full of weevils- I'd love seeing them start out and I bet you
anything they'd get there."

"But what about me?  I want to go to Boulogne too; from where stand,
that's the shortest route to Paris."

"Ah, so do I want to go to Paris," said Jenny.  "The more I think of
it, the more I hate going to Germany.  That same man in Mexico toll us
if we changed our minds about Germany, we could always get visa from
the French consul at Vigo, and that is my one hope now."

Mrs.  Treadwell turned smiling to David and saw with amaze men that his
face was pale and tight and he seemed silently enraged.  nice," she
told him, saying what she had meant to say before she saw his face. 
"Do you wish to go to Boulogne too?"

"Not in the least," he said, "I am going to Spain."

"And I am going to Paris," said Jenny, sharply.

Mrs.  Treadwell felt quite suddenly that she was standing between two
persons throwing stones at each other.  She stiffened and smiled, and
almost furtively began to edge away, covering her retreat with little
haphazard statements about the beautiful morning and a mention
breakfast.  Could it have been possible they were ready to quarrel
there before her?  The notion filled her with embarrassment and fright.
As she hurried along, the smile must have remained on her face, for
Wilhelm Freytag asked her what she was looking so gay about so early in
the morning?  She had no idea, she told him, and watched his gaze
resting on Jenny and David, who drifted past together, both a little
pale and strained in the brilliant light; they exchanged sketchy nods.
Freytag, with the stupid incident of the evening before fresh in mind,
felt a certain lightly malicious satisfaction in his belief, his
knowledge indeed, that no matter--no matter at all- what kind of
appearances they chose to keep up, the match was no good; they were not
in the least happy together and would never he; it couldn't go on.  He
turned as if for a last look at the retreating figures to fix an image
in his memory even then changing and disappearing; and before he could
stop it, suppress it, before he even realized he had thought the
fearful thought, it formed in actual words shockingly in his waking
mind: "If that were Mary walking yonder, even at this distance, at
first glance, anybody even I!anybody would know she is a Jew What have
I done to us both, Mary, Mary... what shall I do now?"

It was all in a fraction of a second that his image of his whole life
split apart.  He turned back to Mrs.  Treadwell with an amazed face,
and suggested in a slightly raised voice that they breakfast together
on deck.  "Delightful," she agreed, after thinking about it.  They
settled

themselves and hailed the steward.  The sunlight poured upon them,

'the waves glittered.  Coffee was brought, the trays with smoking
broiled lamb chops, honey and hot rolls and butter.  The big white
napkins reflected softened light on their faces, their momentary
well-being cast a brief pleasant glow forward over the whole
unpromising day.

As their fellow voyagers passed, Mrs.  Treadwell noticed that at least
half of them did not salute each other, not from distaste but from
indifference; she remarked to Freytag that the party last night had not
seemed to change things much.  Freytag said, in what sounded to Mrs.
Treadwell a very good humor, that a few little incidents had happened,
just the same, that might make changes in the long run.  Mrs. 
Treadwell privately considered the few little things she had observed
and decided that silence perhaps would be, as usual, best,

Herr Lutz, alone and at his ease, stopped to peer down at their trays.
"Ha," said he, wagging his head at them, "eating again, eh?  Three
times a day for a hundred years if we are lucky, what?"

Mrs.  Treadwell's plate seemed to her at once too full, the food
somewhat coarse; not the first time she had felt the coarsening effect
of Herr Lutz's presence on everything around him.  Freytag was piling
honey and butter on half a roll.  "How true," he said cheerfully, and
engulfed the hearty morsel.  Too handsome in that wrong kind of German
way, Mrs.  Treadwell decided, too carefully dressed, too healthy
entirely, not an idea in his head, and it was a sad fact that too often
the very nicest Germans wolfed their food.  It had been noticed and
mentioned by travelers through the ages; she herself had never known
one who was not a glutton.  Freytag turned to her innocently, his mouth
stuffed, enjoying his breakfast, and encountered her eyes for the first
time fixed on him in a bland gaze, slender dark eyebrows lifted
lightly, head on one side, a look that said nothing in particular but
which threw him off center for an instant.  He turned away and
swallowed laboriously.  When he looked at her again, her face was
towards the sea.

"I like breakfast best of all," he told her.  "At home we used to have
it English style, with all kinds of hot things, chops and scrambled
eggs and broiled mushrooms and little sausages and muffins on the
sideboard where you helped yourself, with a big urn of coffee steaming
away.  My wife-"

English style of course for breakfast, and French style for dinner no
doubt, and other imported styles for other occasions, with just now and
then a comfortable lapse into the native Eisbein mit Sauerkohl and

beer.  "What a hard-trying race it is," thought Mrs, Treadwell, "and
all their style, whether their own or imported, comes out in lumps just
the same.  "Ich bin die fesche Lola," she hummed, imitating Marlene
Dietrich's broadest lowest style.  Freytag laughed gaily, and joined in
with the line about the piano la

Where did you learn that?"  he asked.  "It's my favorite of all."

"In Berlin, when I was there last," said Mrs.  Treadwell.  "I loved her
best when she was being comic in her wonderful bull-contralto.  How
much nicer she was when she wasn't being the romantic heroine in the
mOVieS,"

He agreed, and added, "My wife collects that kind of disk, we have
hundreds of them, all nationalities, all delightful low types, we love
them."  He went on to say what a knack his wife had for making
everybody around her comfortable, and gay too.  "Life, in fact," he
said, "goes on better wherever she is."  And for a moment he was
reassured by the sound of his own words.  His imagination began picking
up the pieces of his shattered image and putting it together again; it
did look almost the same.  It was true, or had been- it could still be.
It was Mary herself who made the difference to his whole life, her
qualities were changeless, what had possessed him to fall into a fright
about their future?  The rest of the world would be no worse than it
had been in Germany, maybe not so bad.  He was sunk in shame and
contrition for his abject disloyal thoughts; he must be careful not to
betray anything of his doubts to Mary, who for all her gaiety and
worldly smartness was easily upset and nervous: she woke screaming in
nightmares and clung to him pressing her face under his arm as if she
were trying to hide inside him; but she could never tell him what had
frightened her in her sleep.  And there were times when she retreated
from him, from life itself, and would sit nerveless and sunken for a
whole day, her face hidden in her hands.  "Let me alone," she would
say, tonelessly, "I must go through it.  Wait."  And he had learned to
wait.

Mrs.  Treadwell tried without much interest to imagine his life, a
moment-by-moment affair, no doubt, running along night and day between
four walls, with much hearty love-making under the feather quilts, and
bushels of food; with a smooth rosy calm wife on the large scale,
pouring out comfort and fun like thick crusty soup into deep bowls, her
light hair in a braided crown.  There would be an occasional opera or
theater party; frequent visits to cabarets and variety shows to

hear the latest comedians and bawdy singers.  Plenty of wine and beer
drinking at all times, and very special celebrations on birthdays and
wedding anniversaries.  She pondered his manifest contentment, based no
doubt on lack of imagination and the family custom of hearty
English-style breakfasts; and gnawed her lamb chop lightly, finding it
delicious.

For all the money she had spent, and the things she had bought, and the
places she had visited, she could hardly remember ever having been
comfortable.  Beggars pinch me, she reminded herself, and never for any
price will I be able to buy a ticket that will set me down in the place
I wish to be.  Maybe the place does not exist, or if it does, it's much
too late to go there.  And my husband preferred sleeping with any
chance slut rather than with me, though I tried hard to be slut enough
to please him- and he talked day and night about how he loved me!
Especially he talked about it to other people.  And if there is a dull
man on board ship I am certain to fall into conversation with him.  Yet
this one looked promising enough when Jenny Brown was hanging on his
words.

Freytag had been saying something, and she emerged from her warm bath
of self-pity in time to catch the tag of his sentences: "... my wife is
Jewish, you know- and we are leaving Germany for good--" "But why?"
asked Mrs.  Treadwell.

"I suppose there is no real hurry," said Freytag almost apologetically,
"but I prefer to make my own arrangements and to leave while there is
time."

"Time?"  asked Mrs.  Treadwelt, without thinking.  "What is happening?"
Then her heart jumped, for she already knew the answer and did not want
to hear it spoken.

"Oh, same old signs and portents," said Freytag, already regretting his
words, for the intelligent-looking, attractive woman beside him seemed
remarkably obtuse and apathetic.  "Warnings of one kind or another.
Nothing too serious, I suppose, but we" (We?  he asked himself) "have a
habit of watching the weather," he ended, and wondered at his weakness
in having spoken so carelessly to this stranger.

"Oh, you needn't tell me," said Mrs.  Treadwell hastily.  "I once knew
a Russian Jew who remembered a pogrom he was in when he was a child. He
was six when it happened," she told him in a light, gentle voice, "and
he remembered absolutely everything- he gave terrible details-
everything, except how he got away alive.  That he did

know at all.  Isn't it strange?  He was rescued and adopted and
brought to New York by some people he had never seen until the pogrom,
and he does not remember anything about any of it.  He was a very sane,
kind, learned man, a teacher of languages, all sorts; he looked as if
he had never had a trouble in his life.  Don't you think that's pretty
beautiful?"

Freytag was silent for so long that she turned her amiable smile,
somewhat brighter than usual, upon him.  He was picking at his
thumbnail and looking as if he had got a blow over the head.  "I
shouldn't have tried to talk about it," he said, with some underlying
resentment, "I should never say anything about it."

"Perhaps you are right," said Mrs.  Treadwell, thinking, What do you
expect of me?  What can I do?  She moved to put her tray aside.  He
took it from her and set it on the deck beside his own.  They rose.

'that was lovely, having breakfast here," she told him, "it was
wonderful of you to think of it."  "Charmed, I am sure," said Freytag,
in a rather stagy manner.  Mrs.  Treadwell moved away again, from the
threat of human nearness, of feeling.  If she stayed to listen, she
knew she would weaken little by little, she would warm up in spite of
herself, perhaps in the end identify herself with the other, take on
his griefs and wrongs, and if it came to that, feel finally guilty as
if she herself had caused them; yes, and he would believe it too, and
blame her freely.  It had happened too often, could she not learn at
last?  All of it was no good, neither for confidant nor listener. There
was no cure, no comfort, tears change nothing and words can never get
at the truth.  No, don't tell me any more about yourself, I am not
listening, you cannot force my attention.  I don't want to know you,
and I will not know you.  Don't try to come nearer.

Through David's blurred eyes and rather seedy morale, Jenny had seemed
so fresh and fair at the bulletin board before breakfast, and her
manner to him had been so misleadingly sweet, his anger against her
began to simmer again; it was indecent for her to look and behave like
that after what had happened, whatever had happened, last night.  Jenny
for her part was in a fine state of mind, and for a strange reason. 
She had wakened early out of a nightmare, and even after her eyes were
open she was holding her breast in horror, afraid to take her hands
away because of the blood on them.  Then her brain cleared and the
vision dispersed like smoke, she was able to explain quite logically

the whole train of her dream and its connecting links.  Of course. The
night before, David had stayed in the bar until he was glassy-eyed
drunk, then had followed her and Freytag about, skulking along very
like a private detective collecting evidence for the suspicious
husband.  Freytag had seen it all too soon, but pretended not to
notice. They danced again, and hoped to escape, but David had pushed in
between them and seized her by the arm with a foolish mean look on his
face.  After trying to free herself, she gave way and went with David,
who kept his hard clutch on her arm.  She had seen at a distance that
he was utterly drunk; he would be stubborn, silent, unmanageable, a
lunatic in fact; at such times she was afraid of him; it was best to
walk along with him and work her way towards his cabin, where she could
manage to leave him.  She realized very soon that his intentions were
otherwise.  He was leaning upon her shoulder and regarding her with a
glazed, wandering, but lustful eye, and their direction was towards her
cabin, not his.  She turned cold with anger and disgust; at the door,
she wrenched her arm free, taking him by surprise, swung through and
turned instantly to close it in his face.  He braced against the panel
with his shoulder, and she strained with all her strength on the other
side.  He stopped instantly when Elsa, who had started up in terror,
cried out, "Who is it?  What are you doing here?"  The door closed then
and Jenny slipped the bolt.

"Don't be nervous," she said, her voice shaking.  "He is only drunk and
a little confused.  He forgot you were here."

Oddly enough, Jenny thought, Elsa connected the sordid little episode
somehow with love.  She wanted to talk about love.  She confessed she
was afraid she might fall in love--she drooled the word rather, Jenny
noticed, which is perhaps the right way N in love with the wrong man,
with that beautiful Cuban student, the tall one who sang and danced so
well.

"But I dare not let my mother suspect," said Elsa, with something very
like a tremor of delight in her tone.  "Can you imagine what she would
say?"

"Oh yes, I can," said Jenny, "and you had better be careful.  That
Cuban will make you nothing but trouble."

Elsa thought this over for a while, then ventured, "But I have always
been told that love makes trouble- that is what it is for.  Trouble."
She drew a deep quivering happy sigh.  "I shouldn't mind!"  Then she
ventured rather timidly: "I think it must be divine to have a man

so much in love with you.  It seems to me so sad that you must shut
him out."

"Sad?"  said Jenny, surprised at the bitterness of her feelings.  "No,
that isn't exactly the word for it."

After a long time of lying still in the darkness, listening to Elsa
turn and sigh, Jenny slept and lived through again in her sleep
something she had seen once in broad day, but the end was different as
if her memory had patched together two or three unrelated bits and
pieces to contrive a meaning for the whole which the separate pieces
lacked.  During the first month after she began to live with David, she
had gone by bus from Mexico City to Taxco, to look at a house there. At
noon of the burning bright day they had slowed down in passing through
a small Indian village with the little thick-walled windowless houses
sitting along the road, the bare earth swept before each door. The dust
was bitter to taste, the heat made her long for sleep in a cool
place.

Half a dozen Indians, men and women, were standing together quietly in
the bare spot near one of?  the small houses, and they were watching
something very intensely.  As the bus rolled by, Jenny saw a man and a
woman, some distance from the group, locked in a death battle.  They
swayed and staggered together in a strange embrace, as if they
supported each other; but in the man's raised hand was a long knife,
and the woman's breast and stomach were pierced.  The blood ran down
her body and over her thighs, her skirts were sticking to her legs with
her own blood.  She was beating him on the head with a jagged stone,
and his features were veiled in rivulets of blood.  They were silent,
and their faces had taken on a saint like patience in suffering,
abstract, purified of rage and hatred in their one holy dedicated
purpose to kill each other.  Their flesh swayed together and clung,
their left arms were wound about each other's bodies as if in love.
Their weapons were raised again, but their heads lowered little by
little, until the woman's head rested upon his breast and his head was
on her shoulder, and holding thus, they both struck again.

It was a mere flash of vision, but in Jenny's memory it lived in an
ample eternal day illuminated by a cruel sun, full of the jolly
senseless motion of the bus, the deep bright arch of the sky, the
flooding violet blue shadows of the mountains over the valleys; her
thirst; and the gentle peeping of newly hatched chickens in a basket on
the knees of

the Indian boy beside her.  She had not known how frightened she was
until the scene began repeating itself in her dream, always with some
grotesque variation which she could not understand.  But this latest
time, she had been among the watchers, as if she were at a play, and
the two narrow white-clad figures were unreal as small sculptured altar
pieces in a country church.  Then with horror she saw that their
features were changing, had changed entirely--the faces were David's
and her own, and there she was looking up into David's bloody streaming
face, a bloody stone in her hand, and David's knife was raised against
her pierced bleeding breast.... In her relief at waking, and her
melancholy in remembering that time when she had been enchanted with
David and had believed in their love, she almost wept.  The tears rose
back of her eyes and dried there.  She still believed she loved David,
but whatever it was that he understood as love was a mystery to her.
She believed she thought of love as tenderness and faithfulness and
gaiety and a true goodness of the heart to the loved one; she wanted
David to be comfortable, she wished to be easy within herself, and
though David seemed coldly to devour everything, yet it was as if he
were alone, he would not take her into his confidence, he would give
nothing back.  He sulked when she was painting and could not do his own
work, but wandered about aimlessly.  He disliked her friends, and made
none of his own.  He would not listen to music with her, he would not
dance, he would not share her moods or allow her to share his, or to
make some sort of life of his own that she might share, if he could not
take part in hers; he lived like a willful prisoner within himself, he
would not let the door be unlocked.

Lying there with her arms under her head, her list of accusations grew.
They had agreed in the beginning not to marry because they must be
free, marriage was a bond cramping and humiliating to civilized beings:
yet what was this tie between them but marriage, and marriage of the
worst sort, with all the restraints and jealousies and burdens, but
with none of its dignity, none of its warmth and protection, no honest
acknowledgment of faith and intention.  Ah, it was high time to think a
little.  She had fallen in love with him recklessly, on sight (why?),
and she went over the hurdle at once because she did not dare to
hesitate, to think of anything.  Once they were together, she no longer
felt reckless, but happy and right in her feelings and

strangely bound to David.  She had believed he felt the same, for a
year at least she had been certain the bond was real and would hold
fast.  They were going to make a splendid life together.

Little by little she had been dismayed by his stubborn resistance to
love, as if it were an evil force outside of them both, instead of a
force of life they both possessed and exchanged with each other, and by
his refusal to take part in any plan that would engage him for even the
nearest future.  She had believed that his recurring fits of long
silence were evidences of strength and reserve power of character; but
when he was drunk he was vulgar and silly, as if the binding strings of
his character were cut and he fell apart.  She had believed that his
contemptuous dismissal of all her friends was the sign of a
discriminating taste and judgment superior to her own.  Now it seemed
to her that David watched and listened so narrowly for the fallacy, the
blind spot, the small but certain marks of weakness and vulgarity in
others because finding them soothed his own fear, lulled his deep
uncertainties about his own qualities.  She wanted to cry out, "Oh
David darling, there's nothing to be afraid of!  It's only this world!
Let's not mind it!"  Had he always been like this, or was it his
defense against her?  And why should he defend himself'?  And had he
been like this all along and she could not see it because she had been
so much in love?  But what was there to love in him, then?  How could
she have loved him?

She began to wash and dress with a wonderful exhilaration.  The long
fight was over, the question had been asked, and it carried its own
answer--not the answer she had expected--what had she expected, then? 
but it was an answer and she would accept it.  We will go on for a
while, and it will be worse and worse, and we will say and do more and
more outrageous things to each other, and one day we will strike the
final death-giving blows.  There is nowhere to go back and begin again
with this... there is no place to go.  The past is never where you
think you left it: you are not the same person you were yesterday--oh
where did David go, I wonder?  The place you are going towards doesn't
exist yet, you must build it when you come to the right spot.  Oh, God,
don't let me forget any more what really happened to me.  Don't let me
forget.  Please help me!

When Jenny saw David a few minutes later at the bulletin board, she
felt very tenderly towards him, after the purging of her rancor.  If
she could possibly help it, she would not quarrel with him any more.
She was going to separate from him at the dock in Bremerhaven,

and go straight to Paris, and he could go to Madrid as he wanted; and
meantime The very first words she spoke to him were full of
provocation; she could hear them as they must sound to David.  She
could not stop herself.  As she poured his coffee she glanced about the
dining room and greeted almost everyone who entered.  "I see that all
the drunks and sea sicks are up and tottering about," she said, "even
your cabin mates.  Do you ever get lonely in there, darling?  Ever feel
like coming in to spend the night with Elsa and me?"

David turned a pallid green and braced himself.  "Was that it?"  he
asked.  "I knew it was something good.  Go ahead and tell me."

"That's all," said Jenny, "unless you can remember something more
msomething interesting you did when I was not there?  You never
remember what happens when you're drunk, do you?  I think that must be
superbly convenient."

He gazed into his plate and said nothing.  She studied the very fine
clear modeling in the outer corners of his eyes, and the touching inner
corners with their thin blue veins in the lids.  The nose was
especially fine.  The set of the ears.  The whole head, long and
narrow.  She had made dozens of sketches of his head, trying to catch
exactly what she saw , but none of them were ever enough like to please
her; maybe she could bring it out in color.  The face was a curious
mixture of sensibility, with some elements very hard, and others very
petty- perhaps it was in the mouth.  David ate as if there were no God,
and he never gained an ounce; there was a starved look about him.  She
had never even heard of anybody who could sleep as David did, like a
dead man; sometimes it was terrifying.  She would go back on tiptoe to
have another look at him, listening to his breathing.  On Sundays and
holidays he slept for sixteen hours on end.  He would wake looking
tired as if he never hoped to catch up on his sleep.  He loved to loll
in water without ever having learned to swim, and he could lie on a mat
sunning himself for hours, idle as a dog.  When he drank whiskey,
deliberately he went on with it until he was in a stupor.  He practiced
all these dull excesses in a methodical, uncommunicative frenzy of cold
yet sensual enjoyment', and when he made love, Jenny knew he forgot who
she was.  Yet he still managed to look like an innocent young monk
during Lent.  He had told her once that his mother had not been able to
keep him after she was deserted by his father- he had a nasty younger
brother who cultivated asthma as a means of getting his mother's whole
attention- and she had turned him over to be brought up by three
dreadful, sour-smelling old great-aunts who never gave him enough to
eat.  Hunger was in his bones, in his soul.  Vague maternal feelings of
the kind she abhorred in herself welled up in Jenny.

"David," she said, in a soft, blurred voice, and he saw with surprise
again the now familiar change in her face, just when she had been in
her most difficult and perverse mood, the gentle blinded look of abject
tenderness, mysterious but real for the moment, touching and
believable.

"What is it, Jenny angel?"  he asked very gently, and waited for her to
repent of something, to offer some concession he had not asked of her,
which later she would take back and deny when her mood had changed and
hardened again.  He was tired of trying to understand her, and he knew
by now that he could not depend upon her for anything at all.

"I am glad you have decided to go to Spain," she said.  (A lie, thought
David, you are anything but glad!) "Let's go there first.  I've always
wanted to go to France, I shall always want to go.  Any time at all.
And one day I shall.  It will always be there.  I have time.  But you
want to go to Spain now.  So let's.  I wish we had never drawn those
straws."

"It was your idea," said David, relentlessly.  "I have a notion we'll
land up in France, after all."

"Oh no!"  cried Jenny, though her eyes lighted at hearing the mere
words.  "No!  We are going to Germany, God help us, unless we can get a
visa at Vigo, and if the ship stops at Boulogne, after all.  Those
Cuban boys are saying there is an old maritime law the Captain is bound
to put you down at the port you have paid passage to.  But the purser
told Mrs.  Treadwell that the fare is the same to every port beyond
Gijon onward, and the Captain isn't bound to stop anywhere he doesn't
please between Gijon and Bremerhaven.  And the Captain has said
positively he doesn't please to stop at Boulogne.  So darling- when we
get to Bremerhaven, let's toss a coin, once: heads for Spain, tails for
France; and let's buy our tickets then and there before something else
happens to start us off on another tack."  She became very gay at the
prospect of settling a question.  "Oh, David, let's just do this and
end the worry.  This would be such a nice voyage if only we knew where
we were going!"

David could not or would not make the decision.  "Let's wait," he

said, after a long uneasy pause.  "I don't know yet where I want to
go."

He was annoyed at the situation getting out of his hand, rather; he had
meant to quarrel with her about her carryings-on with that preposterous
Freytag; for once he had her fairly in the wrong.  She had intended to
turn the thumbscrews hard, and give him a comic and cruel account of
his behavior of the evening before.  But there was nowhere to start, no
common ground--their separation had begun, the distance between them
had widened without warning.  There is no moment of peace, thought
David, except in that split second of hope, of belief even, that now,
now you have it.  It we go on together, she is going to be unfaithful
to me, she is going to have "affairs" as she did before.  Why go to
Spain with her?  Why should we go anywhere together?  Her life, or her
version of it to him, had been a disordered history of incoherent
events, apparently meaningless wanderings.  "Oh, no," Jenny would
protest, "it all meant something marvelous to me," but what the marvel
was she never said.  She could never explain her real reasons for
having been in certain places, or what she was doing there.  "Why, I
was painting, David.  And I had no home any more.  My grandparents were
dead, and the house was sold, and they had almost nothing to leave
me--I had to make a living, didn't I?  And I wasn't very good at it-
I'm still not, but I do try!  I had a job there."  A man, or men,
always seemed to lurk in the background.  "Good heavens, David, of
course there were men.  What do you take me for?"... '"why no, David,
of course I never married anybody, why should

I?"

She would never admit that she had loved any man but David, and more
curious still, she would never admit that any man, except perhaps
David, she would wait and see, had ever loved her.  "None of it meant
anything at all, David darling," she assured him over and over with
earnest innocence, "nothing lasted.  It was just for the excitement,
David.  It wasn't love, it was fox fire."  She could never understand
why, for him, the whole wrong lay precisely there.  It should have been
love, it was a disgrace to her that it was not love; and, he told
himself with bitterness, it isn't love again, I expect.  Maybe it will
never be anything but fox fire.

It was Sunday morning, after all, as the godless were reminded by a
sight of the godly wearing Sunday faces going each one to his own kind
of worship.  At six o'clock Father Carillo was down on the steerage

deck, saying Mass before a portable altar adorned with small lighted
candles and limp red paper flowers.  The people knelt and rose and
knelt again, huddled shoulder to shoulder, with bowed heads and moving
lips, their hands fluttering constantly in a complicated series of
signs of the Cross.  Among them all, only six women were in a state of
grace.  They crawled forward on their knees, their heads shaw led in
black, to receive Holy Communion.  Raising their chins and closing
their eyes, they opened their mouths wide and thrust forth their pallid
tongues to inordinate lengths to partake of the Angelic Bread.  The
priest went through the ceremony severely and hastily, placing the
wafers on the outstretched tongues expertly and snatching back his
hand.  He ended the Mass in due form but at top speed, and almost
instantly began to pack up his altar as if he were removing it from a
place of pestilence.

At the farthest end of the deck from the altar, a considerable group of
men who had stood throughout the ritual with their backs to the priest
now faced about and began to disperse.  In silence, without any other
demonstration, they expressed contempt and anger even in the movements
of their hands, exchanged scornful derisive smiles.  The fat man in the
cherry-colored shirt seemed to be the ringleader.  He walked
deliberately against a man who was still kneeling, his ragged cap in
hand, almost knocking him over.  The man got to his feet, put his cap
on slouch wise and squared up to the other, who stopped short, looking
down his nose with exaggerated disdain.

"Wipe that dirty look off your face in the presence of the Host," said
the man who had been jostled, with extraordinary ferocity.

"In the presence of what?"  asked the fat man.  "I see a eunuch with a
bread pill."

They struck at each other's mouths almost at the same instant; the
smaller man leaped and tripped the fat man, they crashed to the deck
together and fought with deadly fury for a few seconds, when half a
dozen men seized and separated them by force, holding them intently,
while the women scattered, crying out and stumbling over chairs and
bundles.

Father Carillo picked up his altar and made for the stairs without even
a glance towards the unseemly disturbance.  When the men who had fought
were freed and standing, there was blood on their faces and their torn
clothes.  Their eyes, quite murderous and calculating, met for an
instant in a promise that this was not the end; then they walked away
from each other in silence, each mopping his face with a

dirty rag, each surrounded by his own friends, or guards as they had
be come.

At seven, in the small library off the main salon, Father Garza said

Mass attended by the troupe of Spanish dancers, the bride and groom,

Dr.  Schumann, Frau Otto Schmitt and Senora Ortega, who was pale and
blotchy so early in the morning, and who leaned upon the shoulder of
her Indian nurse.  All knelt upon the carpeted floor, missing their
padded prayer stools, the soft hot wind bringing out drops of sweat on
their foreheads.  The Spaniards knelt closely together, their bitter
faces closed smugly, their dingy slender hands twiddling with their
rosaries.

Frau Schmitt, observing that the bride and groom knelt at a discreet
distance from each other and did not even once exchange a glance,
approved this delicacy of behavior.  She then covered her face with her
hands to shut out all distractions, and gave herself up to soft
emotions,

remembered blisses of mingled love and prayer, a melting sweet, ageless
vision of divine joys to come.  Lamb of God who tak est away the sins
of the world only in Thy grace shall my soul be healed.  Holy Mary,

Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Near her, Amparo stirred, rustling her petticoats and rattling her
beads, hissing her prayers under her breath, exuding from every pore a
warm spermy odor mixed with the kind of perfume only the lowest sort of
woman would ever use.  Frau Schmitt, disturbed by the sounds and the
smells, body odors and stale hair oil added from all sides, moved away
a few paces on her knees, then stopped, feeling foolish.  Her happy
mood was shattered.  She sat back on her heels, resigned and dull,
opened her eyes and followed Father Garza's formal gestures as he
murmured in a low voice.  She knew it all by heart, but feeling cheated
of her rapture, she stole glances now and then at the Spaniards,

who had cheated her.

They were peculiarly repellent to her; how could anyone call such
swarthy people beautiful?  The presence of Dr.  Schumann, the good and
wise man, was comforting to her.  She felt she knew him well, ah,

he was the kind of man she understood and who would understand her.  A
tender, sunny memory of her honeymoon at Salzburg rose like a little
painting flamed in gold in her mind- her new, wonderful,
ever-to-be-wonderful husband with her in their first room together in
the White Horse Inn at St.  Wolfgang's; the lovely green summer light
everywhere; the small white steamer coming in from a trip around

the lake, and everyone going down to a wharf no larger than a school
platform, to meet it as if it came from across the sea... and the
little gilded globes dancing in the fountain spray at Hellbrunn, and
the darling little dwarfs and gnomes in glazed colored crockery peeping
out from hedges and flowerbeds!  Ah, those Spaniards with their harsh
faces and hating eyes, if ever they had seen the white marble statue of
the martyred Empress Elizabeth at Hellbrunn, they would understand what
beauty is... This was a sad voyage, her last in this world maybe, and
what a pity most of the people around her were so unpleasant.  She was
so bitterly lonely for her husband, one night she had put herself to
sleep imagining that she might get up and go down into the hold, and
just sit there by his coffin in the dark, for the dear company of it.
Then in her sleep she had gone down, and there at the door stood her
husband shining like moonlight on the sea, and he had said, waving his
hand, "Go back, go back, go back," just that and nothing more, three
times; and had disappeared.  She had waked in a fright, turned on her
bed light and begun to say her rosary; and now she had only to resign
herself to not seeing him again in this poor world, and to try not to
let her heart be hardened against the poor and the unfortunate for
surely those dreadful Spaniards were both.  She had always believed so
deeply that human beings wished only to be quiet and happy, each in his
own way: but there was a spirit of evil in them that could not let each
other be in peace.  One man's desire must always crowd out another's,
one must always take his own good at another's expense.  Or so it
seemed.  God forgive us all.

Herr Lowenthal, wandering moodily alone, after having put on his
phylacteries and said his morning prayers, was brooding hopelessly on
Herr Rieber's treatment of him.  It was not a matter of rude words, for
Herr Rieber would hardly speak to him, and if Herr Lowenthal asked a
civil question he got only a grunt for answer: the trouble was that
Herr Rieber behaved as if he were alone in the cabin, and had all the
rights and space there.  He pushed Lowenthal's belongings around as if
they were mere trash in his way.  Once he had deliberately swept all of
Lowenthal's toilet things off the shelf to the floor, breaking a good
bottle of shaving lotion, and he had not even the decency to pretend it
was an accident.

if Herr Lowenthal hung his pajamas in the small locker near Herr R
ieber's garments, Herr Rieber, with a nasty fastidious expression,
handling the pajamas between thumb and forefinger, would remove them
and let them drop to the floor.  And all this, mind you, in the most..
confident insolence, as if he knew he could dare venture to any lengths
without fear of consequence.  Herr Lowenthal, accepting all this
without present protest, making up his mind painfully to endure in
silence and wait as patiently as he could for the end of this monstrous
situation, spent a good deal of his time trying to find a place of his
own to stow his property that could not possibly be claimed by Herr
Rieber.  He repacked his suitcase and sam pie cases, put his new supply
of toilet articles in a bag, and set them all in the corner opposite
the bunks, at the foot of and under the couch.  Once he found them all
in the middle of the floor again, and once piled helter-skelter in the
lower bunk.  There would be no end to it, that was clear.  Herr
Lowenthal with some wry humor began to think of Herr Rieber as that
fabulous German household sprite of mischief, the poltergeist.  No
poltergeist could have been more persistent in malice.  All this so
soon, what would not Herr Poltergeist think of to make himself tiresome
before they reached Bremerhaven?

This dark question in mind, Herr Lowenthal on deck glanced through the
window into the small library and saw the Mass going on.  He restrained
his impulse to spit until he had passed beyond the line of vision of
the worshipers; then, his mouth watering with disgust, he moved to the
rail and spat like a landlubber into the wind, which blew it hack in
his face.  At his curse being thus returned to his very teeth, his
whole body was suffused with superstitious terror, it scurried like
mice in his blood, it shook his nerves from head to foot.  "God
forbid," he said aloud, with true piety, and dropped shuddering all
over in the nearest deck chair.

Father Garza came out in a few minutes, looking very refreshed and
good-natured after the performance of his religious duties, lifting his
cassock skirt and plunging his square bony hand into his trousers
pocket to fetch forth a packet of cigarettes.  Father Carillo joined
him.  They both beamed amicably upon Herr Lowenthal, whose gaze was
fixed unseeing upon them.  "Good morning," said the fathers, affably,
in very bad German, and Father Garza added, "it's a beautiful day we
are having."  They paced on slowly, and Herr Lowenthal in his fit of
'misery did not even hear them until they were gone.  He pulled himself
up laboriously.  "Guten Morgen," he said forlornly, to the empty air
and the bitter rolling sea.

- There being no Lutheran minister aboard, the Captain assumed
leadership of the religious observances suitable to the day.  At eleven
o'clock all the guests at his table except Dr.  Schumann and Frau
Schmitt gathered in the main salon, and were joined there by Herr
Wilibald Graf and his nephew, Herr Glocken and the Lutz family, the
Baumgartners and their son Hans.  Even Wilhelm Freytag, who happened to
be already present, stayed on for the service.  The Captain read a few
verses of Holy Scripture in his most commanding voice, and said the
appropriate prayers, his congregation listening respectfully with bowed
heads.  Everybody joined in several fine rollicking hymns, their firm
warm voices carrying all through the ship, even out to the bar, where
the barman stood listening thoughtfully, with a pleased face, nodding
in time and humming under his breath.

Frau Hutten, Frau Rittersdorf and Frau Schmitt retired to the shady
side of the deck prepared to sit there in Sunday dullness waiting for
their dinner.  Herr Professor Hutten took part in a conversation with
the Captain and Dr.  Schumann, a short distance away.  Their voices
were low and their manner earnest, so the women gave up trying to
overhear, and Frau Hutten, observing that Frau Rittersdorf was writing
in her notebook, kept a considerate silence, fumbling absently with
Bebe's cropped ears.

"It seems that those young Americans," wrote Frau Rittersdorf neatly,
"have quite commonplace names, after all, Scott and Brown.  Braun the
name no doubt was, and perhaps the young woman is of German origin,
though I should detest thinking so.  One more un-German in every
respect it would be difficult to imagine.  Angel and Darling are their
love-names for each other.  In quite bad taste of course, and much
exaggerated besides, as neither of them is in the slightest degree
attractive.  She is a dry thing like too many American women--even the
beautiful ones have no real freshness, but seem either like painted
wood or just on the point of fading.  This is caused, I am told on good
authority, by their almost universal custom of losing their virginity
at puberty or even earlier, and thereafter leading lives of the utmost
promiscuousness.  But this young woman is not beautiful in the least; I
should think she might have encountered difficulties in losing her
virtue at any age.  As for the young man, I suppose she is the best he
can do for himself, and indeed, is quite all that he deserves."  She
tucked her pen in the narrow pocket on the back of the book and leaned
back cheerfully, thinking she had well repaid that pair for misleading
her in the first instance.

She turned to speak to Frau Hutten, when her attention was arrested by
the queer behavior of Herr Rieber and Friiulein, Spockenkieker engaged
in a most unedifying scuffle at the rail.  Herr Rieber was wearing the
lady's green and white scarf around his neck, and she was rather
pulling him about by the ends.  Frau Rittersdorf snapped her face-amain
upward for an instant.  Yes, that girl was pretending to tie a bow
under Herr Rieber's chin, but she was really drawing the noose about
his windpipe until he clutched for air and his beaming smile almost
disappeared in a blue cloud of distended veins.  She then loosened the
knot, and the good-humored martyr went through a pantomime of coming to
life again, gratefully.

His whole attitude was offensive to Frau Rittersdorf.  It was
unbecoming to the dignity of a man to submit to amorous persecutions
from any woman, no matter how irresistible her charms.  More properly
the other way about, for the crown of womanhood was suffering for the
sake of love.  A positive thrill of sensual excitement ran through Frau
Rittersdorf's frame as she tried to imagine what would have happened if
ever she had, no matter how playfully, attempted to strangle her
Otto.

"Let us have some beer," shouted Herr Rieber gleefully, stuffing the
scarf in his pocket, where it dangled like a tail, and the shameless
pair ran away, followed by a row of censorious glances.  Frau
Rittersdorf remarked to Frau Hutten, in a sweet charitable voice: "If
one judged always by appearances, how often one would be obliged to
think the worst."

Frau Hutten stirred lazily, and after reflection, answered with
indulgence: "Ah well, it seems that neither of them is married.  Who
knows, it may be a match."

Little Frau Otto Schmitt ventured: "Yhey seem rather oddly matched.  I
always like to see the man taller than the woman."

The three then noted that Captain Thiele, Herr Professor Hutten and Dr.
Schumann were still absorbed in their talk a safe distance away.  They
gave free rein to their womanly tongues without fear being overheard by
the men, to whom such talk was always trivial, unworthy, and fair game
for their male sense of ridicule.  "Fraulein Spockenkieker is a
divorced woman, so I have heard," said

Frau Rittersdorff.  "She is, I am given to understand, a woman of
business- a lingerie business of sorts, she has three shops and has
kept her maiden name in all circumstances.  No wonder she no longer has
a husband.  It may also account for her manners, or lack of them."

"I wished to continue with my teaching after marriage," said Frau
Hutten, with wifely pride, "but my husband would not hear of it for a
moment.  The husband supports the family, he told me, and the wife
makes a happy home for them both.  That is her sacred mission, he said,
and she must be prevented at all costs from abandoning it.  And so it
was.  From that day to this.  I have done only housework, except to act
as secretary to my husband."

Frau Schmitt blushed.  "I taught for years," she said, "in the same
school with my husband, who was in poor health, almost an invalid,
after the war.  He could not carry a full professorship; it was
important for him not to be too heavily burdened.  We had no children,
what else should I have been doing?  There was not enough to do in our
simple little house to keep me occupied.  No, I was glad to help my
husband.  And we had a happy home as well."  Her tone was gently
defensive and self-satisfied.

"We can make no fixed rules, after all; it depends always on what the
husband wishes," said Frau Hutten.  "For me, I lived only to please my
husband.  Now, whatever life was like in that wild foreign country, we
are all going home at last.  But it cannot be the same," she told Frau
Rittersdorf.  "Nothing can be the same.  We went out to Mexico in 1912,
foreseeing nothing of the disaster that was to overtake our beloved
country.  Fortunately, the Professor has very poor eyesight, and has
suffered since youth with fallen arches: there was never any question
of his going to war-"

"Fortunately?"  echoed Frau Rittersdorf, her arched eyebrows rising.
"Fortunately, my husband was a magnificent, a perfect physical specimen
of a man, a Captain, who saw three years' service at the front, in the
very thick, I may say, of the battle.  He received the Iron Cross for
his displays of superhuman courage in action, and he was killed on the
field.... Is it not strange that war should destroy such men, the
brave, the noble-minded, the sound in body, the invaluable fathers, and
leave only the defectives to carry on the race?  Oh, I have asked
myself that question many times in these years since I have been alone,
and I can find no answer!"

"The world needs scholars and thinkers as well as soldiers," said
Frau

Hutten, mildly.  She was proof against this argument, being the sort
of woman who admired intellectual attainments and bowed eagerly to
moral superiority.  "But I quite understand your feelings in the
matter."

"My husband," said Frau Schmitt, "was a brave soldier, and a fine
scholar, at once.  These qualities are not incompatible.  My
husband..."

She stopped, drawing a long breath, which fetched up tears on its
return as a pump from a well.  Her face quivering, she felt blindly for
her handkerchief.  "No better han a dead man all those years," she
said, choking, "a dead man all those years."

The two women observed her display of feeling with composure and
perhaps a slight tinge of satisfaction.  Women must weep, each one her
own tears for her own troubles, in her own time.  Tearless themselves
at the moment, their faces wore also a faint expression of disapproval.
Frau Schmitt appeared to be making rather a parade of grief, yet they
could not help seeing with some adverse criticism that, in spite of her
widow's crape, she wore a heavy gold necklace with a large
locket-inappropriate, to say the least.  Frau Schmitt saw their glances
wandering around her neck and throat, and being another woman, guessed
their thought.  She put her hand over the locket: "My husband's
portrait," she said.  "I have worn it so long, I cannot be without
it!"

In a rather prolonged silence not without edges, Frau Schmitt rose, her
small nose and eyelids scarlet.  "Excuse me," she said.  Balancing
herself on her blunt-toed pumps, she edged around them and proceeded
uncertainly towards the door.  She paused there and stood aside for the
sick old man in the wheel chair.  Above the yellowed, parchment colored
skull the bright angry face of the young boy hovered, and rudely he
attempted to crowd his way through the door, almost before Frau Schmitt
could get out of his path.

"Stop," said the sick man, in a hollow voice, holding up his hand,
taking hold of Frau Schmitt's sleeve with finger and thumb.  She
trembled and dared not move, as if a ghost had laid a hand upon her.
"Are you in pain, my child?"  he asked her.  "Let me help you.  Come,
walk beside me and tell me your trouble."

"Oh, no, no," whispered Frau Schmitt hurriedly.  "It is nothing.  Thank
you, thank you so much.  You are very kind."

"It is God who is kind through me, his instrument, his servant," said
the sick man.  "I, Wilibald Graf, can heal your sorrows by His grace if
only you will believe..."

"Uncle," said the boy, hoarse with rage, "we are blocking the
doorway."  He shoved the chair forward violently, and Herr Graf's
fingers still clinging slipped from Frau Schmitt's sleeve.  "Oh no,"
she said, hurrying by, her body clumsy in flight, "thank you!"  The
shock of his blasphemous proposal dried her tears, her grief made way
for a sound religious indignation, and a few minutes later she was
talking to the Baumgartners, who had been sitting in a doleful family
isolation in the main salon.  Herr Baumgartner was making his daily
brief losing fight against his longing for a brandy and soda before his
dinner, and his wife was waiting coldly for the moment when he should
admit defeat.  Hans was kneeling on a chair at the window, watching the
sea and waiting for his glass of raspberry juice.  His mother would
then sit between him and his father, her head on her hand, and she
would not let either of them out of her sight for a minute if she could
help it.  Hans wriggled and sighed, seeing Ric and Rac climbing to the
very top of the rail, leaning far out over the water, shouting to each
other, wild and free.  They saw him and put out their tongues at him.
Rac turned her back, flipped up her skirts and showed him the seat of
her pants.  He shrank down a little at this, behind the upholstered
chair, shocked but not unpleasantly.  He had never seen a girl do that
before.

Frau Schmitt said to Frau Baumgartner, "Imagine a man on the edge of
the grave.."  and Frau Baumgartner mentioned, almost shyly, that she
had herself known persons, not always in the best of health themselves,
who had the power of healing.  Indeed, it had sometimes seemed it was
their own health they gave away to others, so that they had none left
for themselves.

Frau Schmitt shook her head.  "His face is not good.  He frightened me
with the look in his eyes."

Herr Baumgartner frowned with pain, groaned softly, and said, "There
were saints in the old days certainly who could heal the body as well
as the soul."

"He is a Lutheran," said Frau Schmitt, impulsively, "how could he be a
saint?"

Frau Baumgartner stiffened slightly, her tone and manner thoroughly
chilled.  "We are Lutherans," she said.  "We have our saints also."

"Oh dear," said Frau Schmitt, "please believe me when I say I would
never willingly offend the religious feeling of anyone--oh, to me, that
is an unpardonable thing!  I am sure I did not make myself clear..."

"I am afraid you did make yourself very clear indeed," said Frau
Baumgartner, not ceding an eyelash.  "There are saints in every church.
But I suppose you Catholics think that nobody exists in God's sight but
yourselves- I suppose you could not admit that I am as much God's child
as you are..."

"Oh please, Frau Baumgartner," cried little Frau Schmitt, who by now
seemed ready to swoon away.  "Yes, we are all God's dear children
together, and I have never dreamed of anything else.  When I said you
had no saints in your church, it was my ignorance- I did not know you
had saints, nobody ever told me!  I thought only the Catholic church
had saints--forgive me!"  She held out her hands wrung together.  "Who
are they?"

"Who are what?"  asked Frau Baumgartner, distracted by the expression
on her husband's face which meant he was going to order a brandy and
soda.

"Your saints?"  asked Frau Schmitt, eager to learn.

"Oh good heavens what a question," said Frau Baumgartner, firmly
putting an end to the scene.  "I never discuss religion with anyone.
Come Hans," she called to her son, "we are going to have raspberry
juice."  With averted face she snubbed Frau Schmitt finally and
forever, and left her sitting there feeling deeply, unjustly injured.
Even with the best will in the world, with nothing but kindness in your
heart, Frau Schmitt felt again for the thousandth time, how difficult
it is to be good, innocent, friendly, simple, in a world where no one
seems to understand or sympathize with another; it seemed all too often
that no one really wished even to try to be a little charitable.

Captain Thiele, in his talk with Herr Professor Hutten and Dr.
Schumann, mentioned the trouble in the steerage that morning.  He
remarked in the easy tone of one whose authority is not to be disputed,
if there was any more disturbance among that riffraff, for any cause,
he would lay the troublemakers in irons for the rest of the voyage.  He
loved to see his small brig occupied, and it was now standing empty.
Dr.  Schumann mentioned he had been told that one man had a broken
nose, another a cut chin.  On going down to see for himself, he had
found them both getting on very well; he had put court plaster on the
nose and had taken two stitches in the chin.  Herr Professor Hutten was
pained to hear that the fight had been about religion.

"Religion?"  said the Captain haughtily.  "What do they know about

that?"  And they dismissed the matter.  But Professor Hutten thought
it interesting enough to mention to his wife and Frau Rittersdorf.
Meeting Arne Hansen on deck, Frau Rittersdorf made bold to ask him if
he had heard any further details about the riot in the steerage.
Hansen, being barely awake, had heard nothing, but he asked a sailor in
passing, and the sailor told him it had been a pretty good fight,
though short.  He had missed it, but he heard they drew knives.

Frau Hutten, airing Bebe, fell in with the Lutz family, and in some
agitation told them what she had heard from her husband, what she
believed she had heard, and the Lutzes got the impression there had
been a full-scale free-for-all scrimmage among dangerous criminals
lurking below, with much bloodshed.

Herr Lutz asked Herr Glocken, who was walking, swinging his long arms,
whistling a tuneless air, if he had heard of the battle in the
steerage, adding his hope that their grievances might be settled to
their satisfaction.  "Or they'll be up here cutting all our throats,"
he said, only meaning it halfway.  Frau Lutz turned pale at such
scandalous levity, and added as her personal opinion that it was
probably a food riot: "Our own is not improving, you may have noticed,"
she remarked.

Herr Glocken was pleased to find Wilhelm Freytag knew nothing of the
disturbance.  "Odd," Freytag said, "I saw Dr.  Schumann just a few
minutes ago, and he said nothing of such a thing."  But he took the
cheerful view.  "So they are fighting down there already?  Good," he
said, "good.  What about?"

Herr Glocken did not know.  Opinion was divided.  People drifted into
the bar.  Arne Hansen's booming intolerant voice could be heard in
English saying to the company assembled in a line on the high stools:
"When they are all starving, in rags, shipped like cattle only not with
such good care, can you guess what they find to fight about?  Religion.
My God.  They give each other bloody noses because one man kneels and
another does not."

"Maybe religion is the only subject on which they have opinions," said
Mrs.  Treadwell, gently whiding her stein of beer to make the foam rise
again.

"Ach," said the purser, next to her, in distress, "please don't whirl
your beer.  You will spoil it."

"Sorry," said Mrs.  Treadwell, smiling at him and setting down her
stein.  Hansen leaned forward, his pale eyes glaring under his
knotted

brows.  "Opinions?  What opinions?  What do they know to have opinions
about?  Only the fat man has opinions and the Captain says he is to be
put in irons... so much for the right to opinions among those
people."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said the purser, "the Captain has said only
if the fat man makes more trouble he will-"

"And who is to judge what is trouble?"  bawled Hansen.

"Why, the Captain, of course," said the purser, readily but a little
uneasily as if he were dealing with a lunatic.  Hansen nodded his head.
"Just so," he agreed, sourly.

"How could anyone have an honest opinion about religion?"  intervened
David, and Jenny noticed that he spoke with a slight Spanish accent,
one of his more irritating habits: pure affectation, she called it,
though David denied it bitterly and claimed it was the natural result
of speaking Spanish almost constantly for eight years.  "All the claims
are just prejudice against prejudice; blind feeling fighting for the
upper hand.... People love the right to hate each other with moral
sanction.  The real basis of the religious question is political-"

"Just so," boomed Hansen.  "All is politics, who said otherwise?  Who
would give a damn what a man's religion was if religion was not part of
politics?  Who will go to jail in this case?  The man who is against
religion.  Why?  Not because he does not like the Church, but because
his acts disturb the government.  The Church and the government are
like that!"  Hansen held up two fingers pressed together.  "He could
knock down altars all day and who would care?  Nobody, if it was only a
question of religion."  He turned his frown upon Freytag as to someone
he knew.  "Isn't that so?"

Freytag said in a calm reasoning voice: "Perhaps the man whose altar
was knocked down might fight for pure religious reasons.  His act might
be useful to a political party, but his own feelings needn't have any
political meaning at all.... I don't suppose either of those fellows
could give a reasonable explanation of why they hit each other, but on
one side at least I like to think it was something better than
politics."  ("Now I really like you!"  Jenny said to herself, and hid
her pleased face behind her tilted stein.) "Better?"  asked Hansen, and
his heavy voice took on reproach and grief.  "You think it is better
for religion to make dupes of those poor people so that they fight each
other instead of fighting their enemies together?"

His sorrow and indignation were real, but their origins so mysterious
to his listeners no one could answer him.  The purser only clicked his
tongue against his teeth several times and wagged a finger at him,
shaking his big head with paternal gravity.  Hansen ignored him.

Herr Baumgartner spoke up from his table in a voice of deep emotion. 
"I am a lost soul, perhaps," he said, "but never would I deny the power
of true religion.  It is the spiritual source of our civilization, our
one hope in eternity.  Poor as we may be now, what would we be without
it?"

Hansen swung around and glared at Herr Baumgartner under his pale
eyebrows.  "Which true religion?"

"They are all true," spoke up Herr Baumgartner, stoutly.

"Oh," said his wife in a tiny prolonged scream, "how can you say such a
thing?"

Herr Hansen paid no attention to Frau Baumgartner.  "Civilization,"

he said, with blunt contempt, "let me tell you what it is.  First the
soldier, then the merchant, then the priest, then the lawyer.  The
merchant hires the soldier and priest to conquer the country for him.
First the soldier, he is a murderer; then the priest, he is a liar;
then the merchant, he is a thief; and they all bring in the lawyer to
make their laws and defend their deeds, and there you have your
civilization!"

Herr Baumgartner flinched and closed his eyes and seemed about to
reply; his wife set her lips and nudged him with her toe; he remained
silent.

"What about the artist?"  asked Jenny, egging him on.  "What about
him?"

"He comes last, he pretends everything is what it is not, he is a
fake," said Hansen simply, without looking at her.  Denny, sitting next
to Lowenthal, who kept saying under his breath "Bolshevik, Bolshevik!,"
had been very gloomy during this exposition of Hansen's views.  He now
burst into a loud laugh.  Nobody laughed with him.  He lapsed into
red-faced confusion.  "Fakes, ha, that's right," he said, at random.
"Fakes!"

"I'd like to see what is really going on," said Jenny to Freytag, who
had been watching her face.  "I think if the fat man is in the brig we
ought to picket the Captain and carry banners and make a big day of
it..."

Freytag followed her, and they watched the people in the steerage for a
while, but nothing was happening beyond the ordinary.  Men

lolled and played cards on the deck, the women nursed their babies or
did their washing, the hot sunlight poured over them, there were no
signs of uneasiness.

At the other end of the ship, they found the Lutz family, the Huttens,
the Cuban students, and Herr Glocken in a row looking down into the
pit, where the canvas covering had been removed from the grating to
give light and air to the quarters where the steerage passengers ate.
The first table was already spread, a reassuring sight.  Thick as flies
the people were clustered around huge slabs of boiled ox-brisket,
dumplings, bowls of cooked apricots, piles of fresh green onions.  They
fed in devoted silence, reaching out long arms for the chunks of bread
scattered along the white oilcloth.  They leaned on their elbows and
ate, feeling their strength return, feeling their blood and bones
renewing themselves, their hopes coming back, their desire to live
rousing once more.  The six students lined up and shouted something
friendly and barbarous in their unfathomable argot; several of the men
turned their faces upward, mouths full, cheeks bulging, and jerked a
hand at them, good-naturedly.  They were sunken hardened faces, but
their eyes were the eyes of tired men who had at last slept and
eaten.

The sight-seers moved on, a little bored with relief, their eased minds
reflected in their slightly vacuous expressions."  Murmuring among
themselves like pigeons, the Lutzes and the Huttens and Herr Glocken
seemed to be vaguely agreed that to mistreat the poor is not right, and
they would be the first to say so, at any time.  Therefore they were
happy to be spared this unpleasant duty, to have their anxieties
allayed, their charitable feelings soothed.  Those strange foreign
people did not appear to be dangerous; they were obviously not being
mistreated at all; on the contrary they were enjoying an excellent
dinner; and if there were mischief-makers down there, no one need
worry- the Captain would know how to quell them.

Jenny and Freytag lingered, some distance apart, then moved closer and
stood together, their hands almost touching on the rail.  Last nl,hos
absurd scene was between them, and David Scott might again appear at
any moment behind them, like a ghost returning to confirm his first
suspicions of their guilt, or guilty intentions at least.  Freytag's
belief in his own innocence took the form of an obscure resentment
against Jenny: why did she allow that fellow to carry

on like a cad, when he so obviously had no rights over her except such
as she chose to allow?  Freytag in the depths of his mind believed
instinctively in legal rights only; marriage tacitly gave to a man the
legal right to abuse his wife up to a certain point, and Freytag took
rather for granted that the wife had consented to this state of affairs
when she took the marriage vow.  All this was fermenting in his brain
shapelessly, but he was clear about one thing--a woman who allowed a
man to mistreat her when he had no legal right to do so was a fool, or
worse.  His feeling about Jenny, such as it was, lowered and cooled
within a few seconds.  Could she be in love with that fellow?  It
seemed most improbable.

Jenny, leaning far over, searched among the crowd in the shadowy grated
pit.  'es, there he is," she said, pointing out the fat man, who had
changed to a grass-green shirt, "eating away.  Not in the brig at all.
So our parade is off, what a pity!  No injustice has been done, isn't
that a shame?"  Her manner was entirely candid, her eyes very clear and
gay.

"There is injustice, all right," said Freytag, "but it lies far back
and deep down, it is in our grain, incurable- look," he said earnestly,
"if there were not injustice how could we even have the idea of
justice?  An old lecturer I knew as a boy used to say, ?ge right Wrong,
and wrong Right."  It wouldn't have done any good to picket the
Captain."

"Oh, wouldn't it?"  cried Jenny.  She disagreed with him altogether.
She thought he was just sitting down and letting things run over him.
Nothing was incurable, not even human nature.  And if you waited to get
to the root you would never get anywhere.  The top surface was quite
enough to keep anyone busy!  If you wanted things changed-always for
the better, of course!  you just kicked over the nearest applecart,
spilled the first available bag of beans.  She believed warmly and
excitedly in strikes, she had been in many of them, they worked; there
was nothing more exciting and wonderful than to feel yourself a part of
something that worked towards straightening out things-getting decent
pay for people, good working conditions, shorter hours--it didn't much
matter what.  She had picketed dozens of times with just any strikers
who happened to need pickets, and she had been in jail several times,
and really, it was just a lark!  She didn't stay long, anyway. Somebody
always came from a mysterious Headquarters with plenty of money, so it
was out on bail for everybody and back to the

line.  She had never held with those hotheads who advised her to bite
policemen and kick them in the shins.  She had heard gruesome stories
of police brutalities to working women, really on strike, on the picket
line and in jail, and knowing what she did about people, she could
believe it.  But she was glad to say she had got along very amiably
with her policemen, all of them.  She always made conversation and
tried to convert them on the way to the station, and they were always
quite polite, or at least decent, and impervious.  They also knew what
they knew and what they believed, and if this picketing stuff wasn't
against the law, it ought to be.  "And yet," she said, "some of them
were quite nice!"

She might have been a young girl talking about the gay parties of her
debutante season.  Freytag could not take her seriously.  She did not
say where or when these things happened, nor precisely how she had
happened to be mixed up in them- where had an apparently well
brought-up young girl run into such company?  nor what were the beliefs
that led her to such acts.  Her light running talk was full of
omissions and pauses which she seemed to expect him to fill in from his
own experience of such events.  He knew nothing whatever about them
except from a distance: he had seen police breaking up picket lines
before cigarette factories in Mexico and had approved of it thoroughly,
waiting until the sidewalk was cleared before going about his own
business.

He listened, then, not for what she was saying, for it sounded like
childish nonsense, or was repellently hard and careless, he could not
decide which; but she was full of feminine gentleness in her little
person, harmoniously modeled and sweetly rounded.  He realized with
acute dismay that she seemed beautiful to him, and he remembered well
that on first sight she had certainly struck him as nothing out of the
ordinary.  Out of his past, out of his restless, seeking sentimental
youth before he knew Mary, there rose disturbingly a half dozen faces,
dimmed, almost forgotten; none of them beautiful before he loved them,
none of them beautiful since, some of them hateful even, but each one
unbelievably enchanting for that brief time when he was hot after each
in turn, bedeviled and blinded with illusion.  It was always true love
and it was always going to last forever... He moved away from her
abruptly and, frowning a little, leaned on his folded arms and let his
eyes rest on the people below.  They were milling about, replacing each
other at the tables; great heaps of dirty

plates were being taken away, the platters of hot food were again
being thumped down on the oilcloth.  Jenny's face was a little dulled
with melancholy; rather suddenly her mood changed for no reason that
Freytag could surmise.  Amparo and Pepe, with sulky morning faces,
paused for a glance into the pit, another glance of calculated
insolence at Jenny and Freytag, and passed on, their narrow, highly
specialized behinds swaying gracefully.

"Wasn't Hansen funny in the bar just now, with his poor crooked mind
trying to straighten out the question of justice?"  asked Jenny.  "All
animals are sad after making love."

"Except women and mares," said Freytag.

"I don't know about mares," said Jenny, but it seems to make Hansen

"

angry.

"He's an extreme character," said Freytag.  "Something is troubling
him.  He groans and yells and thrashes about at night and gets into
fearful scrimmages with some enemy who attacks him in that upper
berth."

"A political enemy, no doubt," said Jenny.  She enjoyed Freytag's good
looks, he was a delight to her eyes.  She liked his harmless dandyism;
every man she had ever liked except David had been beautiful and vain
as the devil.  It had been her ruin, she decided, this weakness for
handsome men.  If a man were sufficiently good-looking she granted him
all desirable qualities without hesitation.  Freytag was almost too
conventionally handsome to draw- David had a much more interesting
face, really.  Or had he?  A clinical expression dawned in her eye: she
wanted to see the bones.

"Whatever are you looking at?"  asked Freytag uneasily, and barely
restrained himself from running his hand over his hair, twitching at
his necktie.  He was not the first man so affected by Jenny's intent
but not flattering stare.

"At your head, I like your head," said Jenny.  "I wish I could see the
brains..."

"Oh God, what an idea!"

"The brain is most beautifully designed," said Jenny loftily.  "Maybe
you would let me try to make some drawings of you?"  It might mean a
few pleasant hours sitting about on deck; she'd like to see David try
to make a scene about that.

"Of course, I would," said Freytag, "but--"

"Nothing would happen," she said, cheerfully.  Then she took the

plunge.  "I don't understand David at all," she told him.  "I never
pretended to, and he is always surprising me by some new glimpse of
him.  Nearly always when he is drinking.  And there is a certain kind
of truth in drunkenness.  I know that what I do and say when I am drunk
is just as true as the other different things I do and say when I am
sober.  It's just another side of me coming up for air!"

"Do you get drunk?"  asked Freytag.  "Amazing.  You seem a very sober
person to me."

"I am sober, even when I'm drunk," she said, anxiously.  "It's always
by accident and just for fun.  But I am apt to say things I'd have
sense enough to hide at other times.  And I know David does the same
thing..."

David gives himself away badly, she thought.  That is what I am saying
now, cold sober.  The next step is to apologize for him.  Explain that
he really is not that sort of manor not often.  That is not at all the
kind of thing he usually does.  He is ever so much nicer than you might
think from what you have seen of him.  He's had a terrible kind of life
and has to work harder than most people to keep his balance.  You must
know him pretty well before you can see his true qualities clearly.  I
do know him well and when I say I don't understand him it's because I
am ashamed for him and for me about what happened last night.  It was
the least important part of David who did that.  I know a great deal
more about him, I know some lovely things, I love him.  Shameful,
shameful.  The next step would be to break out with what was really
hurting her; about that terrible dream last night that just left her
nowhere to go but out and away... "When you are in love," she said
aloud above the chattering of her thoughts, "it is nearly impossible to
make yourself see straight, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure I can agree with that," said Freytag.  "Love," he said
speculatively, giving the word just so much weight and no more.  The
nape of her neck was very white and exposed-looking as she turned away
her head, but she listened attentively when he talked about love,
boasting a little, perhaps.

He told her, as if not making much of a point of it, that he believed
love was based on faith, complete loyalty its first attribute.  Far
from being blind, real love helped one to see clearly perhaps for the
first time.  Any smallest betrayal of the loved one, whether the act
came early or late, was total betrayal from the first, and it destroyed
not only the future but the very past itself, for every day lived in
confidence

had been a lie and the heart a dupe.  To be unfaithful even once was
never to have been faithful at all... "No," said Jenny, "to be
unfaithful once is to be unfaithful once, and you can be repentant and
get back in the fold just like an old-fashioned Methodist.  I used to
have a lover," she said, clearly but without boldness, "who always said
he never realized how much he loved me except when he was being
unfaithful to me.  There's a flaw in that doctrine," she said,
beginning to laugh rather sharply, "but I was never able to convince
him."

Freytag laughed with her, and agreed that men's techniques of having it
both ways had a comic side.  Then he went on quietly as if he were
talking to himself: Love, he said, was a benevolent passion, full of
patient kindness and fostering tenderness, faithful not by choice nor
design but by nature, hardy and lasting, full of courage.  Flowers
crept into his sentences, life, death, even eternity, were mentioned:
bread and wine, and the perpetual recurrence of hopeful mornings with
no evil memories and no remorses.

Jenny listened as if hypnotized.  The dreamy voice was soothing as a
cradlesong, a song her own wishful deluded heart sang to itself.  It
mingled with the soft dance of light on water and the fresh wind on her
face.  She heard a strange voice, now with the faintest trace of a
German inflection in it, echoing not what she knew in her bitter mind,
but her feelings; it seemed sick and sentimental and false.  At the
last word her eyes flared open, and she cut through his maunderings.

"I think it is a booby trap," she said, with a violence that made her
shake all over.  "I hate it and I always did.  It makes such filthy
liars of everybody.  But I keep falling into it just the same."

"With all the wrong people," he said, flatly, but in a covert tone of
triumph which annoyed her at once, "and what you fall into isn't
love."

"I Know, I know," said Jenny, intolerandy, "it's only Sex, you'll be
telling me next.  How do you manage to keep True Love and Sex
separated?"

"Why, I don't," said Freytag, surprised and indignant, "I don't at all,
of course not.  It never occurred to me that it was possible!"

"I don't know what I fall into, then," said Jenny, and her face was
pale, woebegone, no sparkle or warmth at all, "only that it comes to no
good and it could be love."  The word fell softly between them and
chimed in them both.

"It might be," agreed Freytag gently after a moment.  "Maybe we get
the kind of love we are looking for."

Jenny turned on him in a blaze.  "Stop tying everything up in your neat
little bowknots!"  she said vehemently.  "That's just a way of
sidestepping your own responsibility for the trouble you cause somebody
else.  "She asked for it," you can always say, "I only gave her what
she wanted!"... that's just moral imbecility and you know it!"

"Oh come now, Jenny," he said masterfully, using her name for the first
time, quite sure of her feeling for him by now, "you're talking
nonsense.  I won't listen to it.  We have no quarrel, none at all.
Can't we be friends, can't we be loyal good friends and talk things
over sensibly?  Isn't there something besides love?"

Oh God, thought Jenny, that's the next gambit.

"Oh yes, of course, and much better as a rule," she said, in order to
end the talk, and they stood together in a baffled silence.  As for
loyalty, thought Jenny, you shouldn't be talking about love to a
strange woman on shipboard, nor I to a strange man.  It's the narrow
end of the wedge.  Your wife would hate it and so would David, and
they'd be quite right.  That's one thing about David.  He'll never be
mooning around about love to any other woman.  He won't even talk about
it to me.  David hates love worse than I do, even.  You've got a roving
eye and the sidelong approach.  If you belonged to me I wouldn't trust
you any further than i could throw you by the ear.  I can always trust
David.  David is going to be mean and tough and stubborn and faithful
to death.  We aren't going to kill each other because I mean to get
away before that happens.  But we'll leave dents in each other.  When I
get through with David, he'll know the difference between me and the
next woman, and I'll be carrying David like a petrified fetus for the
rest of my life.  She felt empty and sick and tired enough to lie
down.

"Love," she remarked, wrinkling her nose, "this ship is simmering with
it.  I'm sure it's all Real Love.  I must fly," she said, "Elsa's in
love, too, and i promised to help her fix her hair in a new way."

Alone, Freytag regretted what he had said to her, or most of it; she
was rather plainly laughing at him more than once.  No doubt she
thought him a touch soft-headed.  But she would live to learn better.
She might have been lovely before she was maimed and perverted by her
disordered life, her false notions of love and reckless waste of her
womanly substance.  He had known girls like her before, in several

countries--wild and confused and lonely, full of mistrust, letting him
come nearer with a wary look in their eyes as if they would dash away
if he tried to touch them.  Their waywardness, homelessness, and lack
of scruples had freed him from any sense of obligation to them, they
asked nothing of him, and had left him at last free to enjoy a
remembering pity and tenderness for them.

But that was all in the past.  Such follies as Jenny promised to be
belonged to his other life, that life peopled with phantoms and foolish
dreams; he knew what they were worth, compared to the solid reality of
his marriage.  He was certain that he was by nature the most single
hearted and faithful of men, he had needed only to find his Mary, his
love, and he had found her.  Now, he had been separated from her for
nearly three months, and his flesh was uneasy, desirous; he was
sleeping as badly as when he was a bachelor, spending far too much time
and energy trying to find relief from sex: and accepting too often, he
remembered with a chill, some pretty sad versions of it.  It was a very
bad sign when he began feeling sentimental about the first possibly
available woman not a professional whore, at least, who crossed his
path in an unlucky moment.

What was he thinking about?  He brought himself up short; a slight
uncomfortable twinge--could it be guilt?  went over him, almost a
tremor of the nerves.  This tremor of guilt and the beginning of sexual
uproar were hardly to be told apart: his preoccupation shifted without
warning from Jenny to one of those available Spanish dancers-Lola for
choice, she was the basest-looking of the lot.  Something good and
dirty and hot- that would do.  He gripped the rail and stood there
holding himself together resolutely, and trying to get his impulses
under control again.  The first sign of returning sanity was that he
damned Jenny freely for a teasing bitch: invoked the name of his wife
fervently and made up his mind to write her a long letter after dinner,
and to read all her sweet, passionate, wifely letters again before
sleeping.

The Cuban medical students on their way to Montpellier had become more
than ever a hermetic society, with ritual greetings, secret handgrips
which when applied properly wrung responsive yells of facetious anguish
from the initiates, and a jargon so recondite they referred constantly
in speech to small typewritten code sheets.  They engaged in what
appeared to be long, learned debates, carried on with

farcical solemnity always where they might be seen, but in such
lowered tones their rather bored audiences were in no danger of sharing
their secrets.

It became known however that they called themselves "Les CameIots de ta
Cucaracha," and they published on the ship's press every morning copies
of a miniature newspaper bearing in highly visible type the banner El
Pi-pi Diario.  Midmorning they were often seen going into La Condesa's
stateroom, and coming out being a little boisterous among themselves
later; and one day in the small writing room off the bar, they held a
meeting and elected La Condesa president, or Cockroach Extraordinary.

Dr.  Schumann, who was sitting outside the window, could not have
helped overhearing and in fact had not tried to avoid it; and he was
outraged to hear in what lewd and disrespectful terms the students
talked about her.  They believed her to be insane, that was clear, and
the designated object of their monkeyish ridicule, but why they chose
to expend their boyish filth upon her the Doctor could not understand.
Above all, she was not a fool, but a woman of the world and wise in it,
and why would she let herself be made a figure of fun by these
particularly crass young men?

Upon her appearance in the dining room, Dr.  Schumann observed again
that La Condesa seemed to have all confidence in her young admirers,
and enjoyed their company.  They rose as one, bowed deeply, and
escorted her to their own table.  Her chair was brought, and she sat
among them with her elegant manner and, Dr, Schumann thought, a
slightly distracted smile.  He continued to watch her while she read
their no doubt dreadful little newspaper, and she laughed most
unbecomingly, showing gold teeth in the hack.  Taking first the student
on her right, and then the one on her left, by the head with both
hands, she whispered things in their ears that set them off with shouts
of applause and eager questions from the others.  Her hands then flew
to her own breasts and she stroked them up and down, her face pained
and thoughtful.  No doubt she had reserved for herself a third flask of
ether, and perhaps a fourth, Dr.  Schumann concluded with resignation,
and a great temptation to give her up, to make no further attempts to
help her.

Captain Thiele, whose standards of behavior for the nobility were of
astronomical heights, viewed with pinched mouth and beady eyes

the frivolous conduct of his distinguished prisoner.  She glanced his
way, fluttered her fingers at him and at Dr.  Schumann, both of whom
returned the salute gravely.

Captain Thiele was suffering from indigestion brought on by frustration
of his natural sense of authority, to say nothing of his official rank.
Upon hearing of the disturbance in the steerage his first impulse had
been to order all the participants instantly confined for the rest of
the voyage.  He had received the deported workers as so many head of
cattle, and to find them at the very beginning of the voyage daring to
assert themselves with outright insolence was not to be endured for a
moment.

Father Carillo had talked to him, in abominable German, as if the fight
were not merely a low brawl; he mentioned several times such terms as
syndicalism, anarchism, republicanism, communism, besides atheism,
above all atheism, the common root of such pernicious theories; and he
seemed very instructed in the fine shades of opinion on all subjects
existing among the rabble on the lower deck.  According to Father
Carillo, the lower classes were being led astray by a thousand evil
influences from every direction, and a great many dangerous subversive
elements were on the steerage deck.  These should be watched carefully,
not only for the sake of the first-class passengers, the crew, the ship
herself, but for the protection of the innocent poor below, those good
and harmless people who wished only to be allowed to obey the law and
to practice their religion in peace.

The Tenerifans, for example, were mostly decent pious folk.  The
trouble would be found among the Asturians and the Andalusians, between
whom there existed old enmities at best, and he, Father Carillo, was
not surprised to discover that the antireligious faction consisted
almost entirely of Asturians, with a sprinkling of Basques.... They
were then the ones to watch.  As for the fat man who had pushed the man
still kneeling in prayer, he was of the lowest order of rabble rouser
and meanest of leaders, a Mexican on his way to Spain for the sole
purpose of making trouble there and linking Mexican labor uprisings
with those of Spain.  No use to worry with him--he would be arrested
the moment he set foot on Spanish soil.

The Captain found himself divided into many sections: he loathed
Catholics on principle (he believed that priests without exception took
advantage of the privacy of the confessional to seduce their more
attractive female penitents), he was violently prejudiced against
Spaniards as well as Mexicans, and he felt it was beneath his dignity
to take the advice of a priest, as well as to admit any human meaning
or importance in the doings of the rabble in the steerage.  He thanked
Father Carillo stiffly for his information, promised to order a general
tightening of discipline, using his favorite phrase about laying in
irons the next offenders against the peace, and very shortly after that
his breakfast began to disagree with him.

His real trouble was, in the heavily overcrowded condition of the ship,
there was no place to confine malcontents, especially if they were so
numerous and so slyly threatening as Father Carillo seemed to think. 
In case of outright revolt, it was possible the crew would not be
sufficient to control them.  Suppose they should seize such small arms
as were in the hold, what then?

The Captain, who had spent his professional career, except for the
interval of the war, in the relative calm of merchant passenger ships,
small ones on long dull cruises, had a riotous, violent imagination
which now took possession of him.  He dreamed for a brief moment of a
cinematic crisis full of darkness, hand-to-hand struggle, flashes of
light and thunderous explosions, broken heads and mangled limbs and
pools of blood, screams and yells and incendiary flames lighting the
sky, with lifeboats being lowered away into the heaving sea, himself
still on the bridge somehow in full command of the situation, and
completely calm.

Before actually leaving the bridge, however, in the present broad light
of a peaceful day, he issued a hasty order that every man in the
steerage--woman too, on second thought--was to be searched for weapons
however insignificant, and all were to be confiscated for the duration
of the voyage.  This done, he felt somewhat restored, and in spite of
his gas pains was able to speak of the morning's incident with becoming
casualness to Herr Professor Hutten and Dr.  Schumann.  They had
disappointed him by accepting his manner at its face value, and seemed
to think the incident of very little importance.

The Captain's mood of disapprobation drifted from La Condesa.  She was
after all not to be blamed so much, since she was a lady in frail
health and in a situation highly unsuitable to her caste; however, her
very presence on board in such circumstances was a serious symptom of
the disorder abroad in the world.  Dimly her conduct reflected upon his
authority as much as the impudent brawling among the steerage
passengers.  He was not thinking only of himself--a deviation from

routine, a threat to his established rule, every moment of every day
within the range of his orders, was not merely a personal affair.  As
Captain he belonged to a larger plan, he fulfilled his destiny in his
appointed place as representative of the higher law; if he failed in
his duty--and the very foundation of his duty was to exact implicit
obedience from every soul on the ship, without exception- why, then the
whole structure of society founded on Divine Law would be weakened by
so much.  He could not face such a moral catastrophe, and he need not.
He would not.

He gazed fretfully, his underlip pouted, at the irritatingly complacent
faces gathered around his board.  Herr Freytag--who was he?  A man who
looked upon a ship as a public conveyance meant only to get him in
safety and comfort from one port to another.  Herr lie her the same.
Herr Professor Hutten was a man of learning, but what could a professor
know of the stern realities of the sea?  In spite of his profound
respect for Dr.  Schumann, he had felt more than once that the Doctor
had no real understanding of the discipline necessary on a ship, no
genuine regard for rank.  He had to warn him more than once, tactfully,
against coddling the sailors when they were in sick bay as if they were
his patients at home.  There were even times when the Doctor seemed to
be enjoying himself, quite as if he were merely on a voyage for his own
health.  It was true, except for his heart he would never have shipped
as doctor, but still: when he returned from the steerage that morning,
the Doctor had almost ignored the disturbance at the end of Mass, but
had mentioned that during the night two women had babies on the bare
deck, and he had arranged for them to have bunks in the same cabin for
three or four days at least.  It showed a lack of proportion in his
mind somewhere, the Captain concluded, an indifference to truly serious
things.

Of the women the Captain expected nothing, but their low-voiced babble
among themselves annoyed him.  Little Frau Schmitt was leaning over and
talking across Herr Rieber to Fraulein Lizzi, while Frau Rittersdorf
and Frau Hutten leaned towards her from their side of the table.  Frau
Hutten was shaking her head sadly.  The Captain pretended to attack his
dinner, but he was hot with irritation and his vitals were stabbing him
cruelly.

Frau Schmitt's grief had dried up somewhat after her experience with
Herr Graf and her unlucky encounter with the Baumgartners; she wandered
out on deck and paused idly, as everyone did sooner or

later during the day, to watch, as at the bars of a cage, the strange
life going on in the steerage.  She found herself near the
reserved-looking young American, Herr David Scott, also leaning on his
elbows with his collar hunched up around his ears.  Her eyes were
attracted to a sad sight.  A man, very bony and ragged and worn, but
perhaps young, it was hard to tell, his tousled hair on end, was
sitting, back to the rail, his knees drawn up and his bare toes curling
and uncurling with sorrow; he was crying openly and loudly like a
child.  He wept and scrubbed his eyes with his fists, his mouth was
distorted like a howling dog's, and at his feet were several small
objects, Frau Schmitt could not quite make out what they were.  The
other people paid no attention to him; they sat near him with stony
indifferent faces; men stood in groups over him with their backs
turned, women almost stepped on him going about their own concerns.  He
seemed completely alone in the world; there is nothing like trouble to
divide the human heart from you, thought Frau Schmitt, her own heart
swelling with tears once more, but this time with softer and gentler
tears, because they were shed for another's sorrow.

She spoke gently to the listening women.

"$o I said to the young man, Oh, wouldn't you think at least some one
of them would speak to him?  They might ask him what is the matter. 
The young American then said to me, They know already what is the
matter; why should they ask?  And then it seemed there had been an
order, from whom I do not know, and the officers went among all the
people and took away their knives and such little edged tools as they
had, and this poor man is a wood carver."

Frau Schmitt, deep in her story, raised her voice a little, forgetting
her natural timidity in the interest she saw in the faces around her,
and the Captain sat up sharply listening with a gathering frown which
Frau Schmitt did not notice.

"Well, the Herr David Scott told me then this man was carving small
animals from bits of wood he had brought in his bundle, hoping to sell
them to people in first class.  Herr Scott had half a dozen in his
pocket, and he showed them to me: they were very pretty and childlike;
Herr Scott said, He is a fine artist.  But you know how these Americans
are--they worship primitive things because they cannot understand
better.  They are corrupted by the Negro, of course--what can we
expect?  I smiled at him and said nothing; but the poor man in the
steerage was in trouble!  When the officer asked him for his knife, he
some how thought he was lending it, imagine, and would be given it
back in a few minutes.  Think of that.  The young man told me
everything.  He had seen and heard.  He was very angry in a cold pale
way as if he had lost blood.  Gone then for good were the hopes of that
poor man, gone his happy occupation and his little knife, and so he
cried, he cried like a baby."

Frau Schmitt's sensibilities almost overcame her again.  She sat back
and put her napkin to her mouth.

Frau Hutten clucked softly, deprecatingly.  Lizzi said in a high
infantile voice, "Oh, I don't think that was very nice, taking the poor
little man's property away from him!  Make them give it back, dear
Captain, please?"  Her long arm flew forth and she struck him lightly
on the sleeve with her fan.  The Captain did not respond with the
charmed gallantry she expected.  His wattles grew scarlet, he bridled
until his chin backed into his collar, and he gave Frau Schmitt a truly
awful glare.  The perfect victim of his wrath had been delivered into
his hands, and he proceeded to make an example of her.  "I am
exceedingly sorry, ladies," he began, in a voice of blistering
courtesy, and his glance took them all in: their unbalanced female
emotions, their shallow, unteachable minds, their hopeless credulity,
their natural propensity to rebellion against all efforts of men to
bring order and to preserve rule in life.  "Oh, very sorry indeed,
ladies, to distress your kind hearts, but let me confess that I myself
gave the order for the disarming of the deportees.  I wish I might
trust you to believe me when I say that all my acts are governed by a
knowledge of the true situation regardless of sentimental
considerations.  In the end I alone am answerable not only for your
safety but for the very life of this ship; therefore, please do allow
me to advise you that I act from the gravest motives of responsibility.
A little discretion, please, dear lady," he added sternly to Frau
Schmitt, "at least do us the favor not to listen to the gossip and
prejudices of foreigners, who naturally are anxious to put the worst
possible light on anything at all done by a German.  Or if you must
listen to such rubbish, above all do not repeat it to anyone!"

This unexpected climax to a trying morning crushed Frau Schmitt.  She
bowed her head, her shoulders drooped, a blush mounted painfully,
slowly, from neck to forehead, her hands lay beside her plate and she
seemed unable to lift them.  From under her eyebrows she saw Frau Rit
tersdorf's sweet, satisfied smile, yes, just like a cat's.  Frau
Schmitt

was not comforted to know she would see that smile again in the cabin
that evening, and for many days after.

The ship's band did not play in the morning, it being Sunday, but after
dinner the elevating strains of Wagner and Schubert filled the salon,
where the Baumgartners, the Lutzes, the Huttens, in a word the more
respectable element, settled down to the relaxation of cards, dominoes,
and chess.  La Condesa disappeared, and later the students could be
heard shouting first at shuffleboard and then in the swimming pool.
Mingled with the strains of the band came a harsher music.  The
zarzuela company had brought a small gramophone on deck, and a sharp
soprano was raised in urgent obsessive complaint, accompanied by the
insinuating clack and whine of outlandish instruments.  They danced
together, clicking their heels and snapping their fingers resonantly,
revolving about each other with the grace of birds in a mating dance,
but with cold professional faces.

They stopped the music for a few minutes, talked among themselves, and
began again, watching each other sharply.  Ric and Rac joined in,
facing each other with narrowed eyes and bared teeth, their small
thighbones strangely agitated.  At intervals they stamped and screamed
criticisms at each other without interrupting the rhythm of the dance,
their faces almost touching.  Their elders watched them without
interfering or offering advice.  Then all but Lola sank gracefully to
the deck in a beautifully composed group, and Lola the star began a
slow graceful intense dance.

"Ole, ole, viva tu madre!"  they cried in time to the music, clapping
their hands with subtle variations of rhythm as Lola's undulating
skirts almost rose over their heads.  The Cuban students came up out of
the pool; reluctantly most of the Germans left their games; sailors
appeared with the air of being there on duty; all were drawn
irresistibly to the charming scene.  Freytag, finding himself standing
beside Herr Hansen, said in real surprise, "Why, she's a wonderful
dancer!"  Herr Hansen turned like a man brought out of a hypnotic
trance.  "Eh?  What's that?  She's great--she's a great dancer."  Not
quite that, perhaps, thought Freytag, moving on, still feeling a little
ashamed of his recent flurry about Lola.  He felt a touch of
condescension towards a man so poverty-stricken he must fall in love
with the whole zarzuela and its future for the sake of such an animal
as Amparo.

Lola danced grandly and severely, her features fixed in the classic
erotic-frowning smile, which fetched forth ritual amorous groans from
the males of her assisting company.  At her last roulade of clicking
heels, the others sprang up.  The rehearsal over, they danced in pairs
as if for pleasure, but with no pleasure in their faces, and they
ignored their audience with well-rehearsed contempt.

Elsa, with her hair in a roll on top of her head, which Jenny had
helped her to do and which made her look older, broader in the cheeks,
averted her eyes suddenly and stepped backward as if she would hide
behind her parents.  Excited by the dancing, her face had fallen into a
vacant, happy smile.  Then alas she saw her student, with only black
wool trunks concealing his nakedness, take one of the Spanish girls
about the waist and begin dancing with her.  Elsa's modesty suffered a
shock which caused real pain at the very center of her body; it rippled
out in hot waves to her fingertips.  She closed her eyes and saw in
fiery darkness what she refused to see by daylight--the flexing muscles
of his back, the thin beautiful ribcage, the long slender legs with
boyish bony knees, and worst of all, the long fine-muscled arms
embracing that girl they called Concha, her body limp and yet in
movement against his naked chest.  No, she could not bear it.  "Mama,"
she whimpered, "Mama, please, let's go inside."

"Are you sick, Elsa?"  asked her mother.  "Is there anything wrong with
you?"

"No, no, please," said Elsa, in an oppressed, patient voice.  "The sun
is so hot."

"I give you until tomorrow," said her mother firmly, "until tomorrow to
be in better spirits, and then I shall give you a good purge.  That is
no doubt what you need.  Here on this ship, with the lack of exercise,
the indigestible food--yes, I could have a headache myself, easily.  A
good purge, that is what you need.  But now control yourself, and come
finish the dominoes with your father.  As to your hair, Elsa, I don't
like it so.  This evening you must put it back in the old way.  And
never change it again without asking me."

"Yes, Mama," she said, meekly, and sat down with her father again.
Dominoes and checkers with her father, housework that she hated under
the constant advice, direction and reproof of her Mama, never to be
able to call even her hair her own, to be left on the shelf an old maid
at last, yes, that would be her fate, she could feel it deep within

her.  Her heart sank and then rose again in her and began to knock
desperately against her ribs as if it were a prisoner beating against
the bars, as if it were not part of her but a terrified stranger locked
up in her, crying crying crying "Let me out!"

Her father, noticing her forlorn face, pinched her cheek with
tenderness and said jovially, "Maybe our Elsa is in love with somebody
maybe that big solemn Swede Hansen.  No, Elsa, my treasure?  Tell your
papa and mama.  We know best."

Elsa said even more meekly, placing a double six after long hesitation,
"No, no, Papa, not that."

Frau Lutz, glancing up from her knitting, saw for a moment framed in
the doorway against the bright horizon a sight which caused her to
frown warningly at her husband, indiscreet as he ever was, thoughtless
as usual.  Arne Hansen was dancing with Amparo.  She seemed to be
instructing him in the mysteries of her native dances.  They passed and
repassed the doorway, Hansen following as awkwardly as a dancing bear,
with Amparo treating him as if indeed he were that animal and she the
trainer.  She seemed to be scolding and laughing at him; they would
pause swaying and she would take him by the elbows and shake him.  In
all seriousness he would begin again, his big hands and feet getting in
the way, his wet shirt sticking to his pink skin.  He seemed like a man
bewitched, utterly indifferent to the scandalous figure he presented to
the eyes of the world.

Frau Lutz, amazed at this instance of failure in her judgment of men,
subject in which she considered herself an expert, was pleased to note
that her daughter's back was turned towards this unedifying scene.  She
never ceased to worry, night and day, at the unbelievable hardships a
mother encountered in her efforts to preserve the innocence of a
daughter.  Everywhere you turned, unsavory sights, immoral situations,
disreputable characters, shameless behavior on the part even of those
in whom you had some reason to place a little hope.  Men!

Her gaze rested upon her husband with baleful intensity.  He was
talking his usual foolishness to Elsa, playing his game without a care,
understanding no better than ever the deadly seriousness of life's
problems; joking with Elsa about love, of all things.  What would have
become of them if she had been unwise enough to depend upon him in
anything for a moment?  Ah, she would find a very different kind of
husband for Elsa, she had made up her mind to that.

Johann, pushing his uncle's wheel chair, heard the Spanish music and
went a little faster, then slowed down again as he came in sight of
Lola, turning and clicking her heels.  His sullen fair-skinned face,
with its scanty blond stubbles of beard shining, lighted up so tenderly
he looked for an instant like a young angel.  He turned the chair to
the rail and stopped to watch the delightful show.

"Go on, Johann," said his uncle, for the slight joggling of the chair
soothed him, and the movement against the wind helped his breathing.
His shriveled flesh and his very bones were old and tired and lonely;
they cried day and night for a little pity and ease and comfort.  In
the hospital in Mexico the nurses had rubbed him with sweet-smelling
witch hazel all over, their firm young hands pressing lightly into the
weariness of his shriveled muscles; they had fed him warm milk and cool
fruit juices, papaya, pomegranate, lime; he sucked them through a glass
tube, half asleep as if he were a baby again.  In the night when he
groaned and called out, a Mexican nun in her white face bands and gauzy
white veil would come and minister to him, and she would swing the
mattress softly on its light springs as if it were a cradle, saying
under her breath, "Ave Maria..."

Now in the miserable cabin, Johann touched him with loathing, he would
hand him a dripping cold cloth and say viciously, "Wash your own dirty
face."  He set down trays of coarse revolting food beside him and went
away without giving him so much as a spoon for the soup.  In the long
nights, when he would be in pain to ease nature, he might call and call
until his throat closed and the pain in his chest shot through him like
fire before Johann would rouse to bring him the vessel.  The
humiliation of the helpless flesh was punishment enough, without that
hard, unforgiving face above him, averted in loathing.

"Johann," he wanted to cry, "child of my hopes, what has become of you?
Where did you go?  Pity, a little pity, in God's name."  But there was
no pity in that child.  His soul was sicker than any flesh could be.
Herr Graf trembled to think of its fate before God's judgment.

"Can't you see there is no room to pass?"  asked Johann, stubbornly
lingering.  "Let me alone a minute, can't you?"

"Turn back, then, Johann," said Herr Graf, calmly, "turn back."

The chair was whirled about so sharply he was thrown to one side.
"Don't try to kill me, Johann," he said in an ominous voice.  "My God
has promised me that I shall see Germany again.  Defy Him if you
dare."

"Keeping me penniless as a beggar," Johann burst out in a fury. 
"Where is the allowance you promised me?  Why must I ask you for money
even to go to the barber?"

"What would you do with money on this ship, Johann?  It would be only
another temptation set in your way.  I will provide the necessaries,
nephew, but I will not nourish your lusts and appetites.  Your soul is
too precious to risk in such a way, Johann.  I know too well what use
you would make of money here."  He drew a long, rattling sigh, the
bloody phlegm came up in his throat and he spat into his paper box.

"That's what you get for gabbing all the time," said Johann, "you
miserly old Jew."

Herr Graf looked at his hands, emaciated, the knuckles mere knobs, the
fingers so weak and limp they lay flat or curved as they fell, and
thought how not so long ago they would have had the strength to thrash
this boy as he deserved.  For such as he there was only one remedy--to
mortify the flesh until the hard knot of the will was reached and
dissolved--ah, a task he might have done so well, and would have so
delighted in, the saving of this now ungovernable soul.  But God, who
was taking away his life little by little, meant for him to suffer all
affliction, all possible abasement of mind and flesh to balance the
great gift he had conferred upon his spirit.  From the very moment he
had learned that his body was beginning in earnest to die, like a
stream of pure light the divine knowledge had descended upon him that,
as recompense for his death, God had given him the power of healing
others.  In this power his soul had been eased of its fears.  To his
shame now he remembered that he once feared death, he had cringed
abjectly as a condemned criminal at the sight of the ax, he had prayed
endlessly and incoherently, begging God to reverse his inalterable law
in his, Wilibald Graf's favor; to send a miracle; to punish him for his
sins in any other way, no matter how cruel, but only to let him live,
even as he was, in pain, in decay, in despair--to let him live.

He, a philosopher and teacher of philosophy, lecturer in universities
and before learned societies, had done this terrible thing.  When?  In
his other world, his other life.  All his false wisdom had dropped away
from him like soiled, outworn rags, he had stood naked as the newly
born in the steady stream of cleansing light, and the softest most
loving voice he had ever heard, he had not dreamed of such love in a
voice, spoke within his ear.  "Heal the sick," the voice had said,

with the simplicity and directness which is the language of tree
revelation.  And from that day he had gone about his work, knowing the
truth; so long as he was able to keep upon his feet, he was to go among
the sick and touch them and counsel them and heal them in God's name.

It had not been easy, for the perverse human wills of his family and
friends had put every obstacle in his way.  It seemed almost--and this
was so dreadful a thought he hardly dared give it room in his brain- as
if they bore some malice or evil intention toward the dying, as if they
did not wish the sick to be healed and well again, like themselves.  A
friend of his sister's, a willful woman, would not allow him to touch
her little grandson who was suffering from bowel complaint.  "He needs
his rest, he must not be disturbed," she said angrily, and the child
had died.  But he had saved his sister's servant, an Indian woman who
had been in labor for three days, until her eyes were mere pits in her
face, and her lips were blackened and dry.  "It is not decent for an
Indian woman to let a man see her having a baby," they told him.  "A
modest woman would rather die!"  At last he had gone in boldly, pushing
them aside, asserting a man's authority over them, and they ga'e way
before him as God meant them to.  He had laid his hands upon the
distorted suffering belly where the child kicked and heaved in his
struggles to be born, called upon God to admit this new soul to life
and to His heaven at last, and the child was born safely with three
tremendous tearing pains in a very few minutes.  He had breathed
secretly into the mouth of an infant drowning with pneumonia, and from
his own ruined lungs had poured life into the child's.

Oh, there were many: after he had been sent to the hospital, he had
been forced to do good by stealth, for the doctors were bitterly
jealous of his power, and hindered him by rules, forbidding him under
pain to visit the dying in order to touch them and give them life
again.  But God guided him.  He knew from God in what place and at what
hour he might find the one who needed him most, and no one was afraid
of him because he always said at once, "God bless you, and make you
well," and then he touched them lightly, just barely with the tips of
his fingers, and was away before some prowling nurse or interne should
discover him and put an end to his work.  Barely in the hospital did he
have the joy of seeing his dear resurrected ones in health and
strength- he was watched too closely, he could not risk a second visit.
But there was one: the girl with the red hair in two braids lying

behind the death screen with eyes fixed upward, her face livid and
mouth half-open, burning to his touch like living fire.

"God will make you well, do you believe?"  he asked her, and from the
scorched mouth scarcely moving he heard the words, "I believe."  Oh
blessed child of faith.  He had seen that girl, recognizable by her two
long red braids flying and shining in the sun, leaving the hospital
with her happy family not a week later.  "The doctors will think they
did it, but we shall know the truth," he had told her.

These were his memories, and this his recompense, and what were his own
sufferings but a divine grace since they had been made useful to
others?  What was death?  Why had he been afraid?  There remained the
greatest reward of all: immortality for the suffering bewildered soul.
Immortality.  It is not a matter of belief, what is there to believe?
How can anyone form even an idle wish around anything so infinitely
formless?  It is a matter of faith N no, a hope, a fixed changeless
longing for a continued existence in another place, under another
appearance, in a different element; continued existence at least until
all questions are answered, and all unfinished things are done.  Is it
not fairly a certainty that this is a divine impulse sent from God to
guide us to Him?... And yet, this longing may prove to be merely a
motive power of man's present existence, an intellectual concept
related to his animal instinct of self-preservation; man loves himself
so dearly he cannot relinquish willingly one atom of himself to
oblivion.  Perhaps the whole idea then originates in the will, that
source of self-love, and is simply one more of its various and deluded
activities.  And what about the four-footed beasts, the feathered, the
finny?  Perhaps they have a corresponding source of vitality in them;
or better, they do not even suspect they shall not live forever
precisely as they are.  Ah, there's happiness for you, there is the
lucky state of being.

Herr Craf opened his eyes with a leap of the nerves, thrilling with
pain all through: he must have dozed and dreamed, there was some
terrible nightmare at the edge of his memory.  Weakness and despair
almost overwhelmed him.  "Johann, Johann," he muttered, his tongue
thick, "water, water," and then, "My God, my God," but the prayer,
whatever it was, stopped on his lips.  He did not dare to pray, he did
not know what to pray for.  The soul after death may discover, may wake
in morning radiance, to a bliss it is now unable to imagine, and no
matter how mysterious its longings now, it will understand everything
then.  Ah, maybe heaven itself is only this: that Wilibald Graf may

never once remember he was Wilibald Graf, miserable lost pilgrim in
this terrible world.  Is that what is meant, perhaps, by the blessed
words "forgiveness of sins"?

"Water, water, Johann, my sweet child," he said again, but there was no
answer.  He felt the slight swaying motion of the chair being wheeled
again smoothly after a long pause.  As they turned the corner the dark
shadow of his nephew's head and shoulders fell across his own, lay upon
his knees and stretched before them upon the deck.  The silence
stretched too until it broke with the strain of its own hatred.

"You want water?"  asked Johann, with false solicitude, mimicking the
tone of kindness with elaborate cruelty.  Gathering himself, he spat
out his poison: "Well, wait until you get it, you stinking old
corpse."

"Shame on you, Johann," said his uncle calmly.  "I leave you to God."
Without warning, in silence, Johann spun the chair around violently,
guided it swiftly through the main salon, down the stairs and through
the long passageway into their cabin with its bitter smells.  At the
door he simply gave the chair a shove through; it rolled to the
opposite wall and fetched up with a bump.  Herr Graf had not protested,
nor even turned his head.  The chair slithered a little sideways, and
in a flash fearful hope Johann saw his closed eyes and dropped jaw like
a newly dead man's.  Slamming the door behind him, he raced back to the
deck, his stomach so sunken and tight between fury and terror, his
heart pounding so heavily he could hardly hear, his eyes dancing so
that he was nearly blinded.  Yet he could see Concha, not clearly, but
enough.  He halted then and moved to the rail and stared at her; she
stared back in perfect stillness, meaning with her look to motion him
to her.  He did not move, and with his hot, fixed eyes he resembled
uncommonly a famished tiger regarding its prey, lips drawn back, teeth
bared.  Concha had seen this look often and had never been dismayed by
it.  On the contrary, it exhilarated her, lightened for her often her
rather dull occupation, to find a young one full of fire and awkward
eagerness.  She was young too, the youngest of her company, not yet
hardened altogether, and she was not at all deceived by this unhappy
boy, standing there gazing at her like something lurking behind a bush,
slouched over a little, hands in pockets, trying to carry it off,
longing to be a man.

Concha walked towards him smiling, and without hesitation held out her
arms to him while she was not yet within reaching distance.  Johann
took one bound towards her, seized her waist accurately at arm's

length, and strode away with her in the dance, still with the look of
one caught between flood and fire.  Concha put her nose to his chest
inside his open shirt front and took a deep luxurious breath.  He
smelled like a clean baby, with rich under smells of a real male.  She
took a good hold of him then; her breast rose high under her thin
shabby black dress, her neck arched; she preened and strutted and
murmured like a pigeon.  Head back, eyes raised and shining, she smiled
at him deeply, gave him a long heart-shaking look, then dropped softly
against him the full length of her body, and rested her pale cheek on
his chest as if she slept.  Meanwhile, asleep or not, her neatly
rolling little hips kept tireless rhythm, she stepped and swayed and
spun in the perfection of her delicate art.  Little by little Johann's
desperate face smoothed and softened, he rested his cheek on her sleek
black hair and danced too with closed eyes.

A rather routine performance perhaps, Freytag was thinking. Considering
all the uproar it can cause, the instrument is strangely limited; a
mere reed flute with a few monotonous notes--but this girl does have
style.  She may teach him something he'll never be sorry for knowing. 
He could see that Concha was not just running through her repertory
like a wound-up doll, as she had done at the rehearsal with the
company, but was putting her heart, or whatever stood for her heart,
into the matter, with perfect effectiveness.  It was easy to see that
she had reduced that glittering-haired boy, who had struck him as no
great specimen of wit at best, to a state of bliss bordering on idiocy,
in this sudden half-relief from the hopeless ferocities of his desire
which was, if only he could have known, so simple, so usual, and at his
age and in his prime condition, so easily satisfied.  "Why could he not
put on a cheerful grin, and jingle a few coins in his pocket? However,
in his situation, obviously under the thumb of his dying old uncle, the
lack of money was no doubt the main reason why he could not put on the
cheerful grin.  That too was a commonplace.  Freytag, having some how
recovered his own self-approval, left them dancing and walked on,

Jenny, who had borne all she was able of David's silence and sulkiness,
and tight, white-ringed mouth at dinner, after a day of sitting or
strolling about with him, the air between them twanging painfully at
every passing breeze, disappeared into her cabin to write letters to
several members of her family.  Though David never believed it, no

matter what she told him, Jenny had, in a mid-Southern state, a small
but pertinacious family of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins,
even a small niece and nephew, the quite most conventional assortment,
really; and she was fond of them all, in a baffled, detached sort of
way.  As she began "Dear..."  she thought again that it did not matter
which of the lot she addressed the letter to, for they presented to her
the impermeable front of what she called "the family
attitude"--suspicion of the worst based on insufficient knowledge of
her life, and moral disapproval based firmly on their general knowledge
of the weakness of human nature.  Jenny couldn't possibly be up to any
good, or she would have stayed at home, where she belonged.  That is
the sum of it, thought Jenny, and wouldn't their blood run cold if they
could only know the facts?  Ah well, the family can get under your skin
with little needles and scalpels if you venture too near them: they
attach suckers to you and draw your blood from every pore if you don't
watch out.  But that didn't keep you from loving them, nor them from
loving you, with that strange longing, demanding, hopeless tenderness
and bitterness, wound into each other in a net of living nerves.

It was no question at all whether they were the kin you would have
chosen, would have preferred, at any rate; they were the family you
belonged to, and there you were, stuck for good, for life and for
eternity itself, no doubt.  At this point in her half-conscious
meditations with her pen hesitating above the paper, Jenny dropped the
"you" form, and stopped thinking in words, only knowing in her bones
that she could not live near her family because she was afraid of their
weaknesses and faults--they were also her own; and most of their
virtues repelled her even more than their faults.  She had spent years
of strategic warfare trying to beat those people out of her life; then
more years trying to ignore them; to forget them; to hate them; and in
the end she loved them as she knew well she was meant in simple nature
to do, and acknowledged it; it brought her no peace, and yet it put a
certain solid ground under her feet.  She did not turn to them at last
for help, or consolation, or praise, or understanding, or even love;
but merely at last because she was incapable of turning away.  They
were the family and she was the stray sheep; they never let her forget
it, they were full of malice and resentment they could not hide, and
they invented little slanders about her among themselves to justify
their view of what they called her "desertion."

And moreover, they couldn't be fooled for a moment with all that

nonsense about wanting to paint, to be an "artist."  A young woman of
good family leaves her home and place for only one reason: she means to
lead a shameless abandoned life where her relatives and her society
cannot restrain or punish her.  Artist indeed!  What was to stop her
painting at home in the back garden?

With all this and a good deal more running not exactly in her mind but
in her bloodstream, Jenny was writing, "Dearest Cousin or Brother or
sweet Nephew or Aunt... weather is beautiful, getting cooler... I am in
wonderful health... looking forward to Paris... let me hear from you...
yours, yours and yours with my love..."  yours indeed, with my love, my
devilish dear family!  She was folding up the last when Elsa came in
from the moving pictures, with traces of tears in her eyes, yet
cheerful and ready to talk.

She sat on the side of her bed and began letting down her hair.  "Mama
doesn't like it this way," she told Jenny, shyly.

"I don't either, really," said Jenny, "the other is prettier."

There had been moving pictures for the first time, and when Jenny had
suggested to David that they see them, David had said he couldn't
imagine a reason for passing an evening in such a stupid way, and Jenny
had retorted at once that she couldn't imagine anything more stupid
than the way they were passing it now.  That had settled the question
and ended the talk, and they spent the evening apart, Jenny writing
letters.

Elsa, it came out, had a lovely time.  The pictures were just the kind
she liked best, the kind one saw so seldom in Mexico, where they were
always about bandits fighting on horseback in the mountains, and
burning ranches; and low women always after men; and all sorts of ugly
people playing bad tricks on each other.  No, these two pictures were
very different.  They were German, and so sweet.  As she sat getting
ready for bed, she remembered the plots utterly.  There was one about
the miller's beautiful daughter who was loved by two rich gentlemen,
real lords-father and son.  She will not have the father, who forbids
her to have the son, whom she loves.  By a vile plot, she is seized by
two villainous servants of the old lord, while she is picking flowers
by the millstream, and taken to the lodge of the gamekeeper, and there
she is heartlessly married off to that low person, who is a widower
with a daughter her own age, the old lord standing by giving the orders
for everything in the most cruel way!

"Where was the son?"  asked Jenny, stamping envelopes.

"He had just happened to go on a journey," said Elsa.  "But the
gamekeeper's daughter thought of a way to help her.  She pretended to
go with the bride to her room to help her undress, but instead she tied
sheets together and let her down out of the window and the new bride
ran home through the woods--oh it was beautiful with the moonlight
shining in the treetops- and the wicked gamekeeper sets out after her;
but his foot slips on the bridge of the millstream- it is an act of
God, you understand- and he is drowned.  And just at that moment the
young lord comes home and learns everything; and the girl is restored
to him a virgin widow!"

"What became of the old lord?"  asked Jenny.

"He repented and gave them his blessing," said Elsa.  "The last scene
was the wedding in a great church full of flowers and music, and then a
dance on the village green.  I wish they would show more pictures like
that... the girl was so pretty, and the young man was so handsome, and
they were so happy together!"

"It's a fine big wedding cake with plenty of icing and sugar birds and
roses," said Jenny, "like the one you'll have someday."  "Oh, I hope
so," said Elsa, but doubtfully as ever.  'the second picture was nice
too... Jenny reached for a light wrap, laid it across her knees, and
sat waiting for the end.  "It was a little hard to follow because there
was so much happening all the time, but there was a handsome young
Archduke who wished to marry only for love, and he would not wed the
Grifin von Hohenbrecht sight unseen, out of obedience to his dear
parents, who arranged the marriage for his own good you know how
parents are," said Elsa, with a surprising lapse into everyday common
sense, "and the poor old people, who want him to be happy, make a plot
with the Grifin's father and mother to bring them together in some way
so.  that they are both disguised and take each other for simple
peasants.  You will understand that the Grifin, too, is romantic and
has also refused even to meet the Archduke, for she wants to marry only
for love.  Well, the Grifin's parents tell her it is time for her to
know something about life and how to run a castle, and that she is to
dress like a laundry maid and go with servants to the river for the
washing day.  But she doesn't do any work, you know, she just orders
the others around.  Meantime they have arranged for the Archduke,
disguised as a forester, to be hunting in that part of the woods with
some of his men.  He sees the beautiful maiden, she sees

him, they fall in love on sight, of course!  that's the point; and the
young Archduke tells his parents he has met the true love of his whole
life, and will marry only the laundry maid and no one else.  Then the
two families have a great time carrying on the joke and making
difficulties until they are sure the love is real.  Meantime the
Archduke and the Grifin put on their disguises and run away to meet
each other in the forest every time they can manage.  This goes on for
a long time, until finally everything comes out; and there is a great
wedding, in a cathedral, and afterwards a gay ball at the castle, and
the servants all dance on the castle green.  Oh," said Elsa, suddenly,
"you'll think I'm just silly.  I know already that life is not like
that, I don't expect any such thing.  And yet," she said, "I don't
understand those Cuban students.  Even that tall nice-looking one who
sings so well- you remember the one I like?  well he was just like the
rest.  All through, in the love scenes and even the sad parts, they
jeered, and whistled, and yowled like cats and behaved so badly a
steward asked them for silence.  So they all got up and went away with
that Condesa, you know the prisoner, and she was making fun too.  I
can't understand people being so hardhearted--they were sweet pictures
full of lovely scenes-"

"The trouble with those students is simply that they haven't been born
yet," said Jenny, severely.  "They are just their parents' bad dreams.
Elsa, you should try to forget about that boy."

"How can I forget him," asked Elsa, a trifle fretfully, "when I see him
every day?  But my mother says La Condesa is a disreputable woman, tide
or no title, and that I must on no account even speak to her.  How can
I speak to an older woman unless she speaks to me first?  And yet, how
I should love to know what it is like to be that kind of woman!"

Jenny said, smiling, "But Elsa, you are coming on, fast.  What an
idea... what would your mother say?  Now tell me, after this merry
evening at the movies, why were you crying?"

"I am so happy sometimes, and then so miserable," confessed Elsa,
simply, and she wiped her eyes where the tears began to form again.

"That's all right then," said Jenny hastily, "if it's nothing more
serious than that.  I'm not sleepy.  I'll take a turn around the deck
and look at the moon; good night."

"Good night," said Elsa, in a pacified voice; and the long confusions
of her day slipped into easy dreams.

Frau Otto Schmitt was still feeling somewhat intimidated by her recent
encounters with a world of male un accountability which she found
dismaying in her new and tender state of widowhood.  She was beginning
to realize with astonishment that she had never really known any man
but her husband; no women except wives of her husband's friends, or old
maid teachers as remote from her womanly confidences as if they
belonged to another species.  For years she had hardly seen anyone,
outside of her classrooms of younger students, except in the company of
her husband: indeed, she had lived her married life almost literally in
his presence.  His state of health after the war had made it seem at
times almost as if he were her child', in better times, a kind
sympathetic brother; yet always her husband, after all.  And oh, what a
poor preparation for her life without him he had given her!  Where
could she turn, to whom could she speak, sure of a gentle human
response?

Almost she took it as an answer to prayer when Dr.  Schumann appeared
alone at the head of the deck and stood at the rail.  She approached
him as nearly as she might without, she hoped, appearing to ambush him,
but she longed to be near him if only for a moment, for he soothed and
reassured her sense of all that was right, good, and appropriate in
every way.

The left side of his face was turned towards her, and she could have
worshipped that noble Mensur scar.  Her husband's scar, quite as
impressive as the Doctor's, had been her life's pride.  It reminded her
of salutary facts: that his family had been superior to her own, that
his university dueling had further enhanced him socially; that
altogether he could have made an advantageous marriage, a rich one. But
no, he had chosen her, with her tiny dowry, and her brothers who had
never touched a foil; and had never, he told her, regretted it for a
moment; for which she never ceased to be grateful to him.  The Doctor's
scar was as perfectly placed as could be: for if a student wavered,
turned his head or lowered his chin, he was apt to be slashed even on
the forehead, or the cheekbone- she had seen too many such scars- and
it was a disgrace to him, unless it could be blamed on the awkward
swordsmanship of the other--and how does one go about explaining that,
all one's life?  Frau Schmitt had grown a little tired of hearing Frau
Rittersdorf boast that her husband was a bold dueler, always the
challenger, always the victor, with four scars on his left cheek, every
one a beauty, a split to the teeth, and not a quarter-inch apart! 
Well, she suspected Frau Rittersdorf of exaggeration, at times.
Besides, one

one good scar well placed was enough- what was it for, after all?  A
token in the living flesh, another kind of medal bestowed for proved
courage.  Having achieved it, a gentleman might then go about his other
concerns and occupations.

In her shy adoring mood she almost crept towards the Doctor, who turned
and gave her that serious smile she admired in him, and seemed about to
speak, when the raucous chorus of "Cucaracha" broke upon the evening
air.  La Condesa, in a flowing white dress and green sandals, sailed
out of the salon in her swarm of grotesque courtiers, riffled her
fingers and smiled charmingly at the Doctor, and walked on swiftly, her
skirts flying, the students howling their song and keeping time in a
rumba step.  One of them, a stringy boy in purple tweed Oxford bags,
like tucked-up skirts, lolloped in the rear a safe distance, mimicking
her frail complaining voice: "Ah, youth, beautiful youth, she's not
having any, thank you."

He even had the impudence to wink outright at Frau Schmitt, who
scarcely believed her eyes.  She turned in dismay to Dr.  Schumann, and
could only gasp, "Well!... but did you ever?"

Dr.  Schumann moved nearer, and they stood together watching the
students- their convulsed gait, their apelike grimacing, the flying
impudent gestures of their hands, in the graceful wake of La Condesa.
How could she, who seemed so acutely aware of herself and all around
her, tolerate for a moment such effrontery?  He suppressed a huge sigh,
turned back to the sea, and said to Frau Schmitt, in a melancholy
voice: "It is hardly to be believed, the malignance of the young.  We
hear a great deal, do we not?  spoken against the middle-aged, and too
much of it is true- about our growing faults of sloth, of selfishness,
of complacency, of despair-"

"I hope not despair, dear Dr.  Schumann," said Frau Schmitt,
uneasily.

"Above all, despair," said the Doctor firmly.  "But the real
wickedness," he said, "is in youth.  We sin, we older ones, and we know
we sin; some of us try hard to repent, to make reparation.  But they--'
he inclined his head towards the students" they sin and they do not
even know it; or they know it and they glory in it.  They are
shameless, cruel, and proud... they love themselves with a passion
unknown to age--perhaps exhausted," he added, with some sudden touch of
humor, "in age... but still, they sin all day long against all that
exists, from the human heart to the Holy Ghost, and when they

are tired of sinning they lie down and sleep like newly washed lambs.
All that ignorant scorn and mockery," said the Doctor, "all that
senseless cruel jeering against a lady who is suffering, and who has
never harmed them!"

Frau Schmitt said, with naive, gentle wonder: "But Doctor!  This is the
first time I ever heard you speak harshly!"

"I mean to be harsh," said the Doctor, calmly.  "I am the voice of
rebuke itself lifted in the wilderness, or over the waste of waters!  I
wish my words were stones that I might throw them to crack the heads of
those savages."

"Or their hearts," said Frau Schmitt.

"No, they have no hearts," said the Doctor.

Frau Schmitt was silent, feeling that she had been drawn beyond her
depths, and yet, such depths as she longed to be drawn to.  Ruefully
she watched his gaze as it followed the figure of La Condesa
disappearing around the stern; saw what she saw, read it in her own
way, thought her own simple thoughts.  What a pity such a good man
should fall in love with such a woman.  And at his age too, and
married, and all!  Oh, it was frightening, and it happened all too
often.  Her faith in the Doctor wavered, sank, recovered somewhat, but
never in its former glory.  She felt newly wounded, left out of things
again, life was going to pass her by.  She wished only to say her
rosary and place herself in God's hands, and go to sleep and forget.
There was never again to be anything pleasant or good in this world for
her.  After a stricken moment, she murmured a little formal phrase
proper to leave-taking, and went on her way.

Dr.  Schumann wondered at himself, reflected somewhat on his words, and
regretted them as immoderate: that is, spoken out of place, with undue
emphasis, at the wrong moment, and to the wrong person M indeed, they
should never have been spoken at all, he concluded, the feeling which
inspired them being itself suspect.  He made a little Act of Contrition
in the depths of his mind, stretched himself in the nearest deck chair,
and closed his eyes.  The deck was dimly lighted and deserted for the
moment, all silence except for the lulling sound of the waves.  Dr.
Schumann, who before had been playing with the notion of signing up for
another voyage, then and there in a flash of insight knew that this
voyage was to be his last.  in his relief at being given a glimpse of
the certain end of a journey that was proving to be,

mysteriously, a surprisingly trying time for him, the Doctor fell into
a gentle sleep.

When he opened his eyes, La Condesa was stretched beside him in the
neighboring chair to his right, quite at her ease, wide awake,
pensively beautiful, regarding the darkened sea as if she were waiting
for a curtain to rise.  He was so amazed he almost stammered:

"W-what have you done with those terrible young men?"

"They can be a little dull at times, that's true," she told him calmly.
" They got tired of playing the monkey, and said they were going to
play dice.  You were sleeping enviably.  How do you do it?"

Dr.  Schumann sat up, feeling refreshed and restored to his center.  He
said almost merrily, "A clear conscience, of course!"

"Of course," said La Condesa.  "I can see that you are a man who could
not live without a clear conscience."

"There are worse things to have," said the Doctor, sturdily, being by
now well aware that he must begin to take a firmer hand with this
erratic lady who was after all his patient.  "Tell me, have you nothing
to reproach your own conscience with just now?"

"I know nothing about a conscience," said La Condesa.  "I have instead
just the faintest sense of honor which does almost as well...
intermittently!  But as to my promise to you, I have kept it until
now-can you not see?  But it does not make me happy; no, it causes me
acute anguish, I have cactus in my veins, and why do I do it?  For you,
as I told you; why do you ask more?"

"I did not even ask that," said Dr.  Schumann, "that least of all.
Indeed, I never would have made so bold as to dream of such a thing."

"I know," said La Condesa, almost with tenderness.  "I need badly
something to help me sleep.  I cannot endure any longer."

'try just a little longer to do without," said the Doctor, "and I
promise to help you when the time comes."

"I detest martyrdom in all its forms," said La Condesa.  "So unbecoming
to me.  I cannot be heroic--I detest that even more.  Yet, see here I
am promising to be both because you think it may be good for me- good
for what, my soul?"

"Your soul as well, no doubt," said the Doctor, amiably.

"Do you expect some great change in me because of this strange voyage,
so unexpected, so unlike anything I have ever known?"  asked La
Condesa.  "A miracle of some kind?"

The Doctor began to speak, and at that point they both noticed the
rather comic pair, the scrawny Lizzi and the little fat Herr Reber,
ascending to the boat deck, followed rather furtively at a little
distance by Ric and Rac, the twins.  Neither La Condesa nor the Doctor
mentioned these apparitions, or hardly noticed them, and went on with
their conversation, pleasantly.

Ric and Rac, after skulking about the boat deck, keeping well out of
sight of the objects of their attentions, whose habits and designs they
knew well, heard at last a confusion of most promising sounds coming
from behind the second great funnel, a fairly dark and private place: a
light scuffling, slipping boot heels, frantic smothered feminine yaps
and hisses, a male voice gleefully gurgling and crowing.  Ric and Rac
could not understand the words, but they knew in their bones the lingua
franca of gallantry.  Discreetly as little foxes they approached,
holding each other back, for fear the other would get the first
glimpse, exchanging shrewd glances, the whites of their eyes gleaming,
their pointed red tongues running round their open mouths.  The wind
whistled past their ears and whipped their hair against their cheeks;
their stringy garments flattened against their meager frames as they
leaned upon the funnel and slid round towards the enticing noises.

In greedy silence and stillness they observed the expected scene. 
Lizzi and Herr Rieber were huddled together on the deck, backs to the
funnel, fighting, laughing, wrestling.  He was trying to play with her
knees, and she was pulling down her skirts with one hand and pushing
feebly at him with the other.  Ric and Rac waited for something more
interesting, but the bony girl broke away and shoved the fat man almost
over on his back.  The front of her blouse was open almost to the belt
and the children remarked with distaste that there was really nothing
to see. Tossing her head about, squealing, the girl's wild eyes pointed
suddenly at Ric and Rac.  She gave a shrill, new kind of scream, "Oh,
look, oh look, oh-" waving her long arms at them.

Herr Reber sobered at once, and as Lizzi sprang upright in an
instantaneous unfolding movement like a jackknife, he got to his feet
by squatting first, then supporting himself on a coil of rope and at
last heaving himself up with a laborious groan.  Ric and Rac merely
took a step backward around the funnel, still gazing, balanced for
flight if necessary.

"What are you doing here, you shameless creatures?"  asked Herr R
eber, taking a somewhat choked but severely paternal tone.

"Watching you," said Rac, pertly, putting out her tongue; and Ric
joined in, "Come on, don't stop.  We'll tell you if anybody's
coming."

Herr Reber, honestly shocked by such early cynicism, rushed at them
snarling, with ready hands, but they leaped out of his reach.

"Out of here!"  bawled Herr Rieber, almost beside himself.  Ric and Rac
danced, actually clapping their hands for pure glee, as Herr Rieber
bounded here and there after them, aiming blows which landed in air and
turned him right about, Ric and Rac pranced savagely around him,
shouting, "A peso, a peso, or we'll tell- a peso or we'll tell- a
peso-"

"Monsters!"  cried Lizzi hoarsely.  "You horrible little-"

"A peso, a peso!"  chanted Ric and Rac, still sliding around Herr R
eber and avoiding his blows with perfect ease.  Herr Rieber stopped,
panting, head down like an exhausted bull in the ring.  He reached in
his pocket.  A peso rang on the deck and rolled.  Ric put his foot on
it.  "One for her too," he said, "one for her."  His face was sharp and
cool and wary.  Herr Rieber cast away another peso.  Ric snatched them
both and clutching them in one hand he motioned to Rac, who followed
him instantly,

Running, they collided somewhere at the head of the steps, and both of
them saw the same thing at once and had the same notion about it.  The
canvas covering of one of the lifeboats was partly unfastened, it hung
loose and could easily be opened further.  They tried the fastenings,
which gave way surprisingly; they raised the flap and wriggled into the
boat, Rac first, Ric following, without a word.

The boat was very much deeper than they had thought.  With a good deal
of scrambling about, they managed to bring their faces up to the
opening in the flap, where they listened attentively, faces touching,
for some moments.  Then the fat man and the scrawny girl passed by
them, she buttoning her blouse and both of them very angry-looking. 
Ric lost his balance and made a scrabbling noise; the girl turned her
head and peered toward them without seeing; then she stumbled on the
steps and the fat man took her arm.  "Careful, my beautiful," he said
softly.

"Stop that," she said, bitterly, snatching away from him.  Ric and Rac
fell back into the boat, all tangled up giggling in the darkness. "Give
me my peso," said Rac fiercely, clutching Ric in the

ribs and digging her nails in.  "Give me my peso or I'll tear your
eyes

OUt."

"Take it," said Ric, in the same tone, clenching his fist over the
money.  "Go on, take it, just try!"

Locked in what seemed to be a death grapple, they rolled to the bottom
of the boat and fought furiously, knees in ribs, claws in hair; the
pain they inflicted on each other had a strong undertow of pleasure.
Little by little they fell quiet and then began to giggle again.  A
young officer passing stopped to listen, his face very thoughtful.
Stepping forward, he snatched back the canvas, and whatever he saw
there appeared to turn him to stone for a second.  Then, throwing
himself over the side and bending down nearly head first, he seized
them and dragged them both over the side of the boat.  They were as
light as if their bones were hollow, and they came out limp and
dangling as broken dolls.

La Condesa and Dr.  Schumann remained at ease in their long chairs,
watching the ship's lights dance in the darkened sea, and the Doctor
was saying: "One has no new weaknesses, no new strengths, but only
developments, accentuations, diminishments, or perversions of original
potentialities.  These may at times be so abrupt and powerful they give
the ilusion of radical change, but it is only illusion, I am afraid. As
one grows older, one is more conscious of the shifting, unstable
elements in one's temperament.  One attempts to keep accounts, to
assume control, you might say.  One realizes at last, simply and
perhaps with some dismay, that what one was told in childhood is after
all true--one is immortal certainly, but not in this flesh.  One..." He
paused.

"One, one- one," said La Condesa lightly.  "Who is this One you are
always talking about?  Let's talk about us- you and me, precisely."

"Myself, I have a very ordinary weakness of the heart; so I ship as
doctor for a voyage or two, following the prescription I have so often
given others, hoping for a little repose, imagine.  Now if only I can
live long enough once more to see my wife chasing the chickens out of
our country kitchen with a broom, and scolding steadily, I shall ask no
more of this world.  How much that dear woman has scolded me, and
everybody and everything, all her married life, at least, with such
good reasons always, and for everybody's good, for truly she is nearly
always right- and what has it come to?"

"Well," said La Condesa gaily, "for you at least, it has come to an
end for a little while."

Dr.  Schumann chose to smile only a little at this and looked away over
the rail to the waters.  "Imagine me, a doctor, after all these years
in quiet Heidelberg thinking I should find repose from the world on a
ship.  I am astonished at myself for thinking, now maybe I shall learn
something new about myself or the people I live with; but no such
thing.  I have seen all this before, over and over, only never until
now did I see it on a ship.  These people I have seen them all before,
only in other places, under different names, i know their diseases
almost by looking at them, and if you know what sickness is in a man
you very often can tell what form his vices and his virtues have
taken."

"Now talk about me," said La Condesa, clasping her long hands lightly
about her knee and bending forward from the leg rest of her chair.

There appeared at the upper end of the deck an unusual group in a state
of violent action.  A young officer with his cap knocked crooked was
struggling with those dreadful Spanish twins.  Yet in spite of all, the
officer continued to advance firmly and managed a kind of ragged
progress toward Dr.  Schumann and La Condesa, hauling his captives, who
were trying to bite his hands.

"More mischief," said Dr.  Schumann, his serenity fading away.  "I have
yet to see those children in a situation where they are not making
trouble for somebody."  He called out to the young officer, "What is
happening?"

The young officer blushed at the question.  He planted himself before
the Doctor and renewed his grip on Ric and Rac, who suddenly gave up
struggling and stood stock-still, sullen eyes gazing at nothing.  The
young officer began: "Sir, these children, these unspeakable-"

Ric and Rac made a concerted bolt for freedom in opposite directions so
that his arms flew wide but he did not lose hold of them.  His blush
deepened until his ears seemed about to burst into flames.  He turned
his head from side to side, mouth opening and closing in silence,
appealing to them both wordlessly that in the presence of a lady he
could not continue.

"I am a mother," said La Condesa encouragingly, giving him a most un
maternal smile; her bright red mouth rounded and softened, her eyebrows
went up.  "I can guess the very worst and truly I must say I do not
find it so bad.  What do you think, Doctor?"

"I agree that no matter what they did, they are little monsters," said
Dr.  Schumann, bending his head to observe them without hope, "and
entirely outside any usual mode of discipline."

"They were in a lifeboat," said the young officer, stuttering slightly.
"They had unfastened the edge of the canvas top and had crawled in-"

"And were amusing themselves?"  asked La Condesa.  "Well, il faut
passer la jeunesse... infancy is a great bore, I find, one's own first,
and then other peoples'... my poor children were not in the least
monstrous, on the contrary almost disconcertingly normal- but they were
quite simply bores until they were eighteen years old.  Then they
became charming young men to whom one could talk.  I do not know how
this miracle occurs.  And so," she added, "we must wait and have
patience with such phenomena as these," and she smiled enchantingly at
the children, who stared back with utter malignance.

"Nothing of the sort will happen with these," said Dr.  Schumann.
"Their evil is in the egg of their souls."  And then to the young
officer: "Can't you just hand them over to their parents?"

"Their parents, my God!"  said the young officer, in a spurt of
contempt and despair.  "Have you not seen them, sir?"

"Then," said La Condesa, "I see nothing for it but to let them go-or,"
and she looked tenderly into the burning eyes of the two little
criminals, "perhaps we should save time and trouble for everybody we
threw them overboard"

"Yes, Madame, a good idea," said the young officer, grimly, "and a pity
it cannot be carried out."

"Oh, you take everything too seriously," she said.  "They're only
children."

"Devil-possessed, though," said Dr.  Schumann.  La Condesa studied his
friendly benevolent face now overcast with an almost military severity.
"What an.  old-fashioned sort of man you are," she said, admiringly.

The Doctor's eyelids flinched once.  'yes, I know- a little dull, no
doubt."

"But charming!"  she said, and reached for his hand.

The young officer, whose moral sense was in a particularly tender,
flamed state, was almost as shocked by this gesture as he had been by
the sight of Ric and Rac in the boat.  So all the rumors he had heard
about La Condesa were true!  He saw himself abandoned to his

dilemma with Ric and Rac- very well, they were no worse than their
elders.  Let them do as they pleased.  He loosed them as if he were
throwing off vipers; they broke Instantly into their long, shambling
run up the deck.  He then bowed with a courtesy as false as he dared to
show to La Condesa and the Doctor, straightened his cap and moved on.

La Condesa glanced after him and laughed, in a fresh, joyous tone, her
eyes glistening.  "Poor, nice young man," she said, "he's still too
young--too young to remember his own childhood.  Dear Doctor, I have
never understood the dogma of Original Sin.  Children are only
perfectly natural little animals before they are brought under the
whip- why be shocked at them?"

"There is nothing discoverable of good in these," said the Doctor.
"Never these.  Why deceive ourselves with hope?  They will come to no
good end."

"They are not in such a good state now," said La Condesa.  She leaned
back and drew a long breath.  "What kind of childhood had you?"

"An innocent one," said Dr.  Schumann, in perfect good temper again,
"or so I like to think."

"Ah, so you like to think and maybe it is true," cried La Condesa. 
"But can't you remember anything interesting at all?  Did nothing gay
ever happen to you?"

Dr.  Schumann meditated in silence for a few moments, began to smile
rather reluctantly, then decided to make a clean breast of it.
"Innocence," he began, "our highly debatable innocence..  "

"So you do have some amusing memories," said La Condesa, laying her
silky hand over his, the blue veins standing up branched like a little
tree.  "Well, truth- to encourage you- I was never innocent, never.  I
had not the opportunity, for one thing, surrounded as I was by
attractive cousins, boys of the most adventurous temperament, like
mine.  I had no aptitude for it, above all, never the wish.  I could
never endure to think that any secret or any pleasure was being kept
from me.  I surmised without help, everything, very early.  From there
to experience, it was only a step; from experience to habit a matter of
moments.  I cannot be sorry for anything except that I did not always
make the most of my chances."

"I was innocent," said Dr.  Schumann, "as a calf; full of hopes and
animal spirits, a simple soul without a care, believing everything I
was

taught, an obedient loving child... I could be kissed into anything,"
he said.  "But still, it is true that at the age of five I seduced my
little girl cousin aged three, and at six I was in turn seduced by a
little girl playmate aged nine.  In our ignorance, we did preposterous
things-not even parodies," he said.  "Both of my playmates were very
nice, charming, virtuous girls who turned out well, married happily,
and spanked their own children thoroughly for the least thing.  Yet I
say, the impulses that drove us were grounded in Original Sin, in which
i believe as I do the Real Presence.... "

"I believe in neither," said La Condesa, without emphasis.

"Still you must allow me my beliefs," said the Doctor, gently.  "As for
innocence, does anyone know what it is?  For I remember guilt and
pleasure, always associated, yet never seeming to touch that part of my
life and those acts founded on the moral law and which seemed real to
me and not a fable, or a mere daydream, and which I do believe were
innocent."

"I shall not try to follow this," said La Condesa.  "Are we not talking
for pleasure?  Theological discussion fills me with gloom.  I had all
the joys of sinning as you call it, without guilt," she said, with a
certain complacency.  'q3ut you must have been a most charming little
person.  I should have adored you, even then.  Some of my crimes were
of a base, unimaginative order, I am sorry to say.  When I was four I
persuaded my little brother to drink lye-water used for cleaning
drains, telling him it was milk.  He took a mouthful, spat it out, ran
shrieking.  He was rescued at once, his mouth scrubbed out; I was
punished, beaten black and blue; otherwise nothing came of it.  And
indeed, I meant no harm N I was only curious to see whether it would
kill him.  But older people do not understand these things."

"Ah, childhood," said Dr.  Schumann, "time of the tender bud, the
unfolding leaf."  They both laughed pleasantly and sat back in their
long chairs.

"Truth is, it was not so bad," said La Condesa.  She lifted the
Doctor's hand and slipped her fingers between his, knitting them
together.

"I love you," she said, gently and unexpectedly.  "Not so much you,
perhaps, though you are very nice, but I love what you are.  I like
gravity and seriousness and strong principles in a man.  There is
nothing more repellent to me than a frivolous, timid, vacillating man,
who does not know his own mind and his own heart.  And why?  Because

then he cannot ever know the mind and heart of a woman.  Were you ever
unfaithful to your wife?"

"Well!"  exclaimed Dr.  Schumann.  "What a question!"

"Oh yes, I know, you have to be surprised and even a little shocked. It
is quite proper, you are always right.  But think a moment.  It is not
just curiosity and impertinence in me.  Partly that, course, but there
is something more besides, and it is that something more I want you to
believe-"

Dr.  Schumann untangled his fingers from hers, took her hand in his,
and then slipped his fingers to her pulse.

"How does it do?"  she asked.  "Is it settling down?"

"Very Well," he said, "perhaps better than mine just now.  But then I

have told you," he said, and yet could not help mentioning again his
unsteady heart.  "At any moment," he told her, and laid her hand down
again.

"I think it is enviable to know how you will die," she said, "and that
it will be sudden and not ugly.  I wish I knew, because I am afraid
long suffering and disfigurement.  I don't want to leave a hideous body
behind me-"

"You are just hopelessly vain," said Dr.  Schumann, and it sounded as
if he were praising her.  "I know that nothing is more precious than
beauty to the one who has it.  And it is hard to come into the world in
beauty and to go out in ugliness.  And it is like any other gift or
quality in the least worth having, you must be born with it, you cannot
acquire it, and you should treat it as it deserves."

"But you find me beautiful now?"

"Of course," said the Doctor.  After a short pause he said, "I will
answer your question truthfully.  I was never unfaithful to my wife."

"How charming of you," said La Condesa, sympathetically.  "It must have
been dull at times."

Dr.  Schumann, who had always viewed himself as the soul of reserve,
found himself possessed by a demon of frankness.  "It was," he answered
simply, amazed at himself, "but she was faithful to me, and that could
have been a little dull for her, too, at times."

"Were you really so very good because you wished to be, or was it your
weak heart?"

"My heart was sound until about two years ago," said Dr.  Schumann with
a faint trace of resentment, feeling that his confidence was being
abused, and that perhaps he deserved it.

"But you love me just a little, don't you?"

"No," said Dr.  Schumann, "not at all.  Not at all if I know in the
least what love is.  I know what I should say, I know that is not very
gallant, but I am not a man who can afford to say what he does not
mean; and would you wish to hear it?  There is perhaps not time for
that sort of thing."

La Condesa took his chin between thumb and fingers and kissed him on
the forehead twice.  Her round mouth left shiny red smears on his face.
Dr.  Schumann looked very pleased but quite calm.

"you are delicious," she told him.  "You are exactly right.  I love
you."  She added, "Let me wipe your dirty face."  She touched her wet
tongue to her small lace-bordered handkerchief and scrubbed away the
red spots and said, "If anyone saw us now, they would think we were the
most devoted married pair."

"Someone has already seen us," said Dr.  Schumann, "the very one of all
people who would enjoy it most."

They sat in silence, hands folded, heads inclined towards the sea,
faces tranquil, as Frau Rittersdorf strolled by alone.  "Such divine
weather for sitting out," she informed them in a high clear voice, full
of the most intimate sympathy and comprehension.  She paused, shivered
a little, and wrapped her thin scarf about her bare arms.  "Perhaps one
should be careful of the night air, especially at sea," she said,
smiling gaily.  She bent over and peered into their faces with the most
ravenous inquiry.  They gazed back calmly.  A second's hesitation and
Frau Rittersdorf moved on slowly, tossing back over her shoulder,
"After all, rheumatism and arthritis lurk in night air and we're only
young once."

"What a museum piece," said La Condesa, also in a high, clear sweet
voice, aimed at Frau Rittersdorf's undulating shoulder blades.

"Oh come now," said Dr.  Schumann mildly, "do leave that sort of thing
to her," and he seemed ruffled and uncomfortable.

La Condesa gave a little saw-edged trill of laughter.  Then she fell
silent again for a moment, and her face was grieved and weary.

"I loathe women," she said, in a tone of flat, commonplace sincerity
such as the Doctor had never heard in her voice.  "I hate being one. It
is a shameful condition.  I cannot be reconciled to it."

"That is a pity," said Dr.  Schumann, who in his heart knew that he
quite agreed with her.  But he did his manly duty of reassuring her.
"And you are quite wrong.  It may be a misfortune to be a woman, so

many of you seem to think so, but there is nothing shameful in it-is a
destiny to be faced, like any other.  You are," he told her earnestly,
"a more than ordinarily perverse sort of being, and a change of sex
would do nothing for you.  There are many men of your temperament and
of your habits; if you were a man, you would still be a mischief-maker,
a taker of drugs, a seducer."

La Condesa rose lightly as a cloud, opened her arms wide as if to
embrace him, leaned over him smiling and exhilarated.  "Naturally!" 
she said with delight, "but think with what freedom, and more
opportunity, and no scolding from mossy old souls like you!"

Dr.  Schumann rose deliberately and stepped back from her hands that
were about to rest on his shoulders.  "I am not scolding, he said, in
pure forthright anger, "and you are talking like any foolish woman!"

"And you sound like a husband," cried La Condesa over his shoulder, for
he had turned and was leaving her, "like any foolish man!"  and her
terrible peals and trills of laughter followed him, blowing like a cold
rain down his collar as she ran after him, came abreast, slipped her
arm around his elbow, folded her hand in his.  "You are adorable and
you can't shake me off," for Dr.  Schumann was trying to reclaim his
arm without losing at least the appearance of dignity.

She loosed him then and stepped before him, and he saw that her eyes
were wild and inhuman as a monkey's.  "Stop," she said, her laughter
threatening to slide into tears.  She held his hands and laid her head
on his shoulder lightly for an instant.  "Oh, can't you see?  I am
tired, I am crazy, I must sleep or die.  You must give me a piqIre, a
huge one that will make me sleep for days... Oh, don't leave me, you
can't--you shan't, I won't let you go!... Oh, quiet me- put me to
sleep!"

Dr.  Schumann gripped her hands and held her off, searching her face
shrewdly, hoping to be able to refuse her', but what he saw decided him
at once.  "Yes," he said, "yes."

She turned at once, dropping her hands at her side, and they walked
together through the ship towards her cabin.  "Ah," she said, and
raised to him under the mottled light of the passage a ravaged and
desolate face, unbelievably changed, "ah, you are so good.  Oh, never
believe I am not grateful... and now i can keep my promise not to take
any more ether!"

"Ether," said the Doctor, on a rising note of disciplinary severity.
'you still have ether?  You did keep back a flask, then?"

"Of course," she said, responding instantly to his tone of voice with
a faintly contemptuous impatience.  "When will you learn not to trust
me in anything?"

Dr.  Schumann stopped short and turned to face her.  "Even now?"  he
asked.

"Even now," she said boldly.  Before the expression in his face as he
studied hers for the space of a breath, she lowered her eyelids and
glanced aside.

"Well," he said at last, in a dry distant voice, "you shall have your
liqfre just the same.  Go on by yourself," he said, turning off towards
his own cabin.  "I will join you in a few minutes.  You may trust me,
as you know well enough," he said, and was amazed at his own
bitterness.  She turned and went her way as if she had already
forgotten him, as if his given word could be so taken for granted she
could treat it lightly which was true, he admitted to himself with a
wry little grimace of humor, or had been true until now.  As he was
selecting and arranging the ampules for the piqare, the doctor began to
think fairly clearly and in a more or less straight line, with the
reasonable, cooler part of his mind.  He had not failed, he thought, in
his responsibility to her as her physician.  Yet he could not deny that
his personal feelings for her had intervened and helped to create a
situation very unbecoming to him--to her, also, he admitted with
reluctance.  But all these shocks and upsetsm her constant turning of
every meeting between them into scenes which left them both prostrated;
the constant danger of his having another heart attack; her reckless
disregard for appearances, which could so easily make the kind of
scandal the Doctor shuddered even to think about- ah, well, it all must
end.  He called upon not only the reserves of his authority as ship's
physician, but, if she resisted, upon the Captain's final word, and
resolved that this unruly relationship should be put in order at once.
She must be treated like a hysterical woman with no control over her
own acts, She could have been the death of him with her silly
melodramas.  Nonsense, and there was to be no more of it.  Yet, he
intended to be merciful and consign her to a narcotic limbo, which was,
after all, her notion of Paradise.

"Oh," said La Condesa, sitting up at sight of him, her face shining
with relief from anxiety, "I am so happy to see you again!  I was so
afraid you would not come!"

"what?"  said Dr.  Schumann, amazed.  "When I had just assured you
that I would not fail you?"

"Ah," she said, "it is just then one should begin to doubt!  The
eternal vow- ah, that is the one that is always broken!"

"I did not make any such vow, remember," said Dr.  Schumann, "it was
only a little promise for this very evening."  He resisted the slow
ripple of apprehension that ruffled his own nervous system and
disturbed the marrow of his bones; here at any moment, if he did not
act with speed and decision, was the beginning of another scene.

"I am keeping here and now the promise I made you," he told her, "and
the only one I did make."  As he approached the side of her bed, needle
poised, she dropped back on her pillows and gave him a melting glance
of confidence.  They smiled at each other lovingly as he took hold of
her upper arm.

Mrs.  Treadwell sat in the middle of her narrow bunk as if it were an
island, and played an intricate game of solitaire with miniature cards
on a folding chessboard.  She drank wine in slow occasional sips from a
small glass; when it was half empty she would pour a little more from a
bottle of Burgundy standing on the floor beside her.

She wore a nightgown of smooth white satin, with a buttoned-up collar
and full bishop sleeves.  Her hair was brushed back from her forehead
and bound with a white ribbon, in the Alice in Wonderland style she had
worn in bed since she was four or five.  Yet viewed from without by an
impartial eye, the scene, she decided, would be completely
disreputable.  The lack of a table and tray for the bottle and glass,
the bottle itself even, in the circumstances; Lizzi's clothes lying
about in heaps just as she had stepped out of them; the rank smell of
Lizzi's stale mingled scents all based on musk; perhaps above all her
own occupation, or pastime, contributed to an effect, oppressive to the
last degree, of female disorder, hysterical solitude and general
forlorn-ness.

Mrs.  Treadwell had been in a pleasantly self-sufficient mood when she
left the boredom of the upper deck for what had then seemed a
reasonable prospect of silence, seclusion, an evening with her own
thoughts, such as they were, and early sleep.  Lizzi's habits were
Fairly dependable.  She stayed out usually until after midnight with
that wretched little fat man; they were to be seen dodging about from
one

shadowy recess to another, with a great deal of giggling and squealing
and not too furtive fumbling.  Then Lizzi would come in, steaming hot,
knocking against objects, her awkward stride accommodating itself too
late to the confined space, clicking on the light and revealing herself
with her hair like electrified strings, and her pupils excited as a
cat's in the small mean-looking irises.  She would step out of her
shoes and kick them into a corner, step out of her flimsy frock and
expose her long bony legs in their short pink pants and flesh-colored
stockings.  Dropping her brush and picking it up, without fail she
would say in her insolent imitation of courtesy, "So sorry.  I hope I
didn't wake you," in that voice which affected Mrs.  Treadwell's nerves
like the sound of a file on metal.  It was absurd to pretend to go on
sleeping after that.

The woman was, Mrs.  Treadwell decided, the most entirely unattractive
animal she had ever seen.  Undressed, her ugliness was shocking.  Yet
she was possessed by the mysterious illusion that she was a beauty, as
she sat before the spotty little looking glass of the wash hand stand,
looking deeply into her own eyes, the corners of her mouth twitching.
She painted and powdered her face half a dozen times a day, putting on
her mask as carefully and deliberately as an actress preparing to face
her audience.  Upon her head as if in baptism she poured her musky
cologne out of a large square bottle, drenched her underarms until the
liquid ran down her lean ribs, a flickering, self absorbed smile on her
face, her nostrils working like a rabbit's.  All her talk ran on about
perfume, about clothes, about her shops, and men.  "Friends," she
called them.  "A man I know in Hamburg, a real gentleman, very rich- a
friend," she would say coyly, and rear the undersized head on the long
neck with the cords in it.  "I almost married him, but now I am glad I
did not," because it turned out he had lost his money.

These friends however were not all so unfortunate, and they paid her at
all times the most expensive attentions, the most overwhelming
compliments; she had them at her beck and call.  Only the difficulty
had been that there were so many of them.  "One must choose somewhere,
Night wahr?  One can't marry them all, that's a pity!"  Little by
little though the truth leaked out; most of them were married already,
but that was a detail of no consequence; they were all of them prepared
to break up their domestic arrangements at any moment if she said the
word.  But she loved her freedom too well, that was her trouble.  "When
I left my husband, he accused me of going away to

another man.  "Ha," I told him, 'what do you take me for?  There are
five of them."  She would writhe with laughter at passages like this,
flapping her hands.  "Well of course, you know that was not quite true,
there were only three or four, and none of them serious.  But believe
me, I am finished with marriage.  I mean to amuse myself, but no more
marriage!"

Mrs.  Treadwell gathered up her playing cards and fitted them into
their case.  She folded the chessboard and set it aside, smoothed the
slightly rumpled sheet and light blanket.  There was a new chill in the
air; she shivered and closed her eyes.  Why could she not remember what
traveling was like in these out of the way places and on horrid little
boats?  Why hadn't she sense enough to stay in Paris the whole year
round, yes even August--Paris was delicious in August- where she was
always so safe from the sort of people she seemed to meet up with
almost anywhere else?  The faces and figures of her fellow passengers,
if they could be called that, were all in a muddle with the wrong names
attached, and the very thought of them confused and oppressed her mind.
Lizzi gossiped about them perpetually, her dreadful voice grating
along, with an affected superior little air.

"Oh now, imagine--that Spanish Condesa, the prisoner, you know her?
-well, they say she is sleeping with every one of those students by
turns.  They are always in her cabin, sometimes two or three of them,
and they say it is quite fantastic what goes on there.  They say the
Captain is outraged by it, but what exactly can he do?  Should he put a
spy under her bed?  and here is a marvelous thing; you know that little
sick man in the wheel chair?  Well, if you don't watch carefully, he
will reach out and touch and stroke you--that is, if you are a woman.
He will pretend he is curing you of whatever ails you.  The old
hypocrite, at his age, and with one foot in the grave!  Anal do you
know that miserable Jew they put by mistake with Herr Rieber?  Well,
the other day he asked Herr Reber, What time is it?  My watch has
stopped," and Herr RiEBer said, "Time to stop all Jew watches."  Herr
Rieber is very witty.  He says the look on his face would have done
anybody good."

Mrs.  Treadwell threw off the gabbling Fury-like echoes, got up
suddenly shaking out her long gown and went to the porthole.  The pure
cool air bathed her face, she opened her mouth to breathe more freely,
feeling soiled by what she had listened to in that cabin.  The sea and
the sky were almost one in the vast darkness, the waves just beneath

rolled and washed back upon themselves in white foam in the rayed
lights from the ship.  What am I to do, she asked herself, where am I
to go?  Life, death, she thought in cloudy fear, for she was not able
to face the small immediate situations which might demand decision,
action, set dement no matter how temporary.  Her very vagueness
frightened her, for life and death, rightly understood, were ominous
dreadful words, and she would never understand them.  Life, as she had
been taught in her youth, was meant to be pleasant, generous, simple.
The future was a clear space of pure, silvery blue, like the sky over
Paris in good weather, with feathery playful clouds racing and tumbling
in the lower air; all clean and crisp as the blue tissue paper in which
all the white things of her childhood had been folded, to keep them
white, to make them whiter, to give them icy-blue whiteness.  She was
always going to be gay and free, later, when she was rid of nurses and
school was over, and there was always to be love- always love.

Well, well, she said, drawing in her head, Life has been in fact quite
disagreeable if not sordid in spots.  If anybody called me a lady tramp
I hope I should not have my feelings hurt.  Nasty things have happened
to me often and they were every one my own fault.  I put myself in
their way, not even knowing they were there, at first.  And later when
I knew, I always thought, But this is not real, of course.  This is not
Life, naturally.  This is just an accident, like being hit by a truck,
or trapped in a burning house, or held up and robbed or even murdered
maybe- not the common fate of persons like me.  Was I really ever
married to a man so jealous he beat me until I bled at the nose?  I
don't believe it.  I never knew a man like that- he isn't born yet.
It's something I read about in a newspaper... but I still bleed at the
nose if I am frightened enough at anything.  Would murder seem real, I
wonder?  Or would I just say, Oh, this isn't happening either not to
me!

Yet, here I am cooped up in a dingy little cabin with a vulgar woman
who will come in presently and begin talking about her "affairs."  She
is a woman I would never have in my house except to dress my hair or to
fit a new frock; and I sit here smelling her horrible perfumes and
sleeping in the same room with her; and I have drunk too much wine and
played thirty games of solitaire without winning once.  Because
otherwise life- this life, this is life, this beastly little business

here and now- would be too dreary and disgusting to be got through
with another moment.... She turned the covers down, smoothed them out
again, and went back to bed; drew her nightgown about her legs, shook
her sleeves down into pretty folds, and poured another glass of wine,
all her movements very calm and orderly, like a convent-bred girl.
Maybe her ruinous childhood was to blame for everything.  A doctor had
told her once, years ago, that sometimes it was as disastrous for a
child to be loved too much as too little.  How could a child love, or
be loved, too much?  She thought the doctor was silly.  Her childhood
had been very bad for her on the whole, no doubt, and very lovely.  The
memory seemed to be in her blood, alive and breathing in her.  The old
house in Murray Hill was a beautiful ample house, she realized later;
then it had been merely her home.  In her blood still were all those
years of softness and warmth and safety, the easy procession of days,
the luxury she had not known was luxury, everyone she knew lived so.
And the gentleness of the voices and hands around her every day--her
nurse's voice, "I declare, this child is almost too meek!"  and her
mother answering, "No, not meek at all- just very good-tempered."

Later she knew so many women who envied her because she had traveled in
France and Italy every year of her childhood, and because she had been
brought up in her girlhood in French and Swiss schools.  She had not
thought it so grand--mostly she remembered the discomforts of those
schools, the stuffiness of the mistresses, the cold water, the
tasteless food, the niggling rules, the constant chapel, the horrors of
examination papers; and the strange pleasure of weeping or rejoicing
with her roommate over the letters and little gifts from home.  Each of
them could weep or rejoice quite as freely over the other's news and
presents as her own.  What was that girl's name?  Her name, her
roommate?  As if it mattered.  As if she could even invent a regret for
a bond that had no more substance than a drift of cigarette smoke.  She
turned the light on and took a cigarette and tried to break through the
senseless melancholy blur of her thoughts.

All those parties and dinners and dances and flowers of the year of her
coming-out had whirled into one soft shimmer; could they have been
anything like so joyous as she remembered them now?  No dream of war f
no dream of change.  Her memories of that lifewof her nurse who had in
time become her maid, and always her near friend

and confidante, how much more about her did this old nurse know than
any parent or kin- had become a warm soothing mist, a rosy cloud moving
in her head, she had long got in the way of putting herself to sleep
with them; she had in this memory the happiness she had expected, had
been taught to expect, in first love.

Time had juggled everything, time was a liar and a cheat, but it could
not touch anything that lay on the other side of that first love which
had cut her life in two, leaving all that had happened before it
enclosed and changeless, and true, so far as she could see, for all she
had been able to learn.  Keep it, keep it, her heart said, it is yours
whether it was true or not.  What if her father and mother could not
recognize her now if they saw her?  In her flesh they slept serenely,
loved and loving, not as remembered faces, nor in any arrested act of
posture, but as her blood running softly in her veins, as the beat of
her heart and the drawing of her breath.  It was all real, it had
happened, it was hers.  Until she was twenty, life--life, what a word!
had been believable, for the more wonder in it, the more she could
believe: oh it had been anchored fast yet always in slow movement, like
a ship in harbor.  She had fallen in love with the wrong man, how wrong
her parents never knew, for they never saw him, and she never went home
afterwards--and the long nightmare had set in.  Ten years of a kind of
marriage, and ten years of divorce, shady, shabby, lonely, transient,
sitting in cards and hotels and boats and trains and theaters and
strange houses with others transient as herself, for half her life,
half her life, and none of it had really happened.  Only one thing real
had happened in all that time--her parents had been killed together in
a motor accident, and she had not gone home to see them buried.  For
all the rest, she denied it, not a word of it was true.  Not a word. 
If it were I couldn't bear it, she said, and sat up again.  I can't
bear it.  I don't remember anything.  Oh my dears, she said to her
parents as if they were in the room with her, if you had known you
wouldn't have let it happen.  Oh why didn't I come home?  Why didn't I
tell you?

She reached for the wine bottle and held it up to the light.  There was
nearly half the bottle left.  That will be enough, she decided, if I
drink it fast.  She poured steadily into the glass, smiling.  After
all, soon she would be in Paris.  In Paris there would be somebody- a
dozen names and faces trailed through her mind--somebody to sit

with her at the Flore, or we'll go and play roulette at the Cosmetics
Queen's Husband's Polite Gambling Hell.  We can lose our money, what
there is of it, until it is time to go to Les Halles for onion soup. 
We can drive through Paris after midnight with the horse's feet going
clop-clop, echoing in the dim houses, and watch the vegetables coming
in on the little old-fashioned train running straight through town like
a child's toy.  We shall go again, again to the flower stalls and find
one of those poisonous-looking flowers, what's its name?  like a
bleeding tongue on a pike, and drive home again with the sun just
turning the sky opal colors, the clouds and the houses all gray and
rosy, and the workmen beginning to drop into the cafes for coffee and
cognac.

We'll drop in too, and we will kiss each other because we've had such a
good time together--who will it be first, I wonder?  and are such good
friends.  And we will watch the sun come up as if we had never seen it
before, and vow to get up early every morning, or stay up all night to
see it because sunrise is much the prettiest sight in the world.  These
are the simple kind of human pleasures I love, the kind I can do with,
the things one can just naturally do if one is a resident tourist in
Paris.  I don't really live there any more, I'm really no better than
those American drunks at the Dhme I used to sneer at with my French
friends.

i want to live there again.  I want to llve in that dark alley named
l'Impasse des Deux Anges, and have those little pointed jeweled blue
velvet shoes at the Cluny copied, and get my perfumes from Molinard's
and go to Schiaparelli's spring show to watch her ugly mannequins
jerking about as if they were run with push buttons, hitching their
belts down in back every time they turn, giving each other hard
theatrical Lesbian stares.  I want to light a foot-high candle to Our
Lady of Paris for bringing me back, and go out to Chantilly to see if
they've turned another page in the Duke's Book of Hours.  I'd like to
dance again in that little guinguette in rue Denfert-Rochereau with the
good-looking young Marquis- what's his name?  descended from Joan of
Arc's brother.  I want to go again to Bagatelle and help the moss roses
open; in cold springs, they get stuck, poor things, halfway --all you
do is loosen one outer petal and there it opens, before your eyes!  I
want to do that again.  I'll go again to Pambouillet through those
woods that really do look just as Watteau and Fragonard saw

them.  And to St.  Denis to see again the lovely white marble feet of
kings and queens, lying naked together on the roof above their formal
figures on the bier, delicate toes turned up side by side.

i never saw such rainbows as i saw over the city of Paris, I never saw
such rain, either.... I wonder if that Catholic society in Montparnasse
still gives dowries to poor but honorable girls in the parish.  I
wonder if the little novices who used to climb ladders and go to the
top of the apple trees to pick the apples- in that old convent garden
under my window--oh I wonder if they have grown sober and sad living on
greens, and apples and prayer?... I'm going again to St.  Cloud next
May to see the first lilies of the valley.... Oh God, I'm homesick. 
I'll never leave Paris again, I promise, if you'll let me just get
there this once more.  If every soul left it one day and grass grew in
the pavements, it would still be Paris to me, I'd want to live there. 
I'd love to have Paris all to myself for even one day.  Slowly, with
strangely blissful tears forming under her closed lids, she drifted
from her waking dream to quiet sleep.

"I can't see quite why it gets so stuffy in here," said Lizzi, dropping
her hairbrush and picking it up.  "So sorry.  Did I disturb you?  When
there's a whole ocean full of: the most divine air outside."

Mrs.  Treadwell opened her eyes, shut them painfully and turned on her
side towards the wall.  "It's the way they build ships," she said
drowsily.  "Little cubbics with little holes in them and all kinds of
smells... Sometimes they build houses the same way," she said, feeling
very reasonable and remote.  "Very few houses are fit to live in
either, it's the world makes it so, didn't you know?  Who are you?"

"You were asleep with the light on," said Lizzi, her glance darting
over the wineglass and bottle on the floor.  Lowering her voice
somewhat, she added confidentially, "I had some delicious Schaimwein,
with Herr Rieber.  Are you awake?  You sounded still asleep, somehow?
Every day I learn new things about him.  Just to think he is a
publisher.  I had not known that!"

"How fascinating," murmured Mrs.  Treadwell, from the depths of her
pillow.

"Yes, in Berlin.  It is a new weekly devoted to the garment trade, but
it has literary, and intellectual features besides.  One of these is
called the New World of Tomorrow, and he engages the very best writers
to contribute, all on one topic, to be examined from every point of
view.  The idea is this: if we can find some means to drive all

Jews out of Germany, our national greatness will then assert itself
and tomorrow we shall have a free world.  Is that not marvelous?"

Mrs.  Treadwell deliberately kept silence.  Perhaps the worst thing
about her undesirable cabin mate was the extraordinary vulgarity of her
talk about Jews.  The word haunted her speech, it cropped up no matter
what the topic, a most unpleasant obsession, and the sound of it gave
Mrs.  Treadwell again a creeping chill of distaste.

"He is very intellectual, Herr Rieber, in spite of the fact," Lizzi
smirked, leaning into the looking glass and brushing her hair as if she
would scrub it off, "he is so very playful at times.  He is part of the
movement to restore German publishing, more especially in the trades
and professions; it has been almost destroyed by the Jews.  They are
poisoning German thought, Herr Reber says.  And I quite agree, I know
that in my business, lingerie, they are everywhere, making prices,
cutting prices, tampering with fashions, bargaining, cheating, trying
to control everything and everybody.  You do not know what it is to try
to deal with them in business.  No trick is too low."

"Isn't all business low?"  asked Mrs.  Treadwell, turning again, and
yawning.  "Doesn't everybody cheat?"

"Oh, Mrs.  Treadwell, that is the way the old-fashioned socialists
talk; all business is graft and corruption.  No, not at all!  In
Germany at least, it is only the Jews.  That is what is the matter with
German business and finance, Herr Rieber was saying only last evening,
at dinner."

"It must be wonderful to have intellectual companionship," said Mrs.
Treadwell, sweetly, in German.

Lizzi turned upon her the eyes of puzzled, dawning suspicion.  Mrs.
Treadwell's eyes were closed, her features looked quite innocent.

"Oh yes, naturally," said Lizzi, after a stiff pause.  Then, "You have
really such an American accent I could hardly understand you at first.
The best German of course is spoken in my own city of Hanover; you were
never in Hanover, I imagine"

"Only in Berlin," said Mrs.  Treadwell, patiently.

"Oh, you will never learn good German if you go only to Berlin," said
Lizzi, oiling her hands freely and drawing on a pair of large soiled
cotton gloves "Perhaps you cannot hear the difference, but for example,
Frau Rittersdorf for all her airs and graces speaks a vile Mtinchener
accent; the Captain speaks Berliner style, atrocious; the purser speaks
Plattdeutsch, the worst of all except some of those sailors from up
around Konigsberg who talk like mere Baltic peasants!"

Mrs.  Treadwell's head swam slowly, the darkness behind her lids was
full of fiery sparks.  What she wanted to hear, God let her live to
hear again, was Parisian in every street and alley and place and park
and terrace in Paris, all of it, from Montmartre to Boulevard St. 
Honor to St.-Germain-des-Pres to Menilmontant; from the students on
Mont-Ste.-Genevibve to the children in the Luxembourg--the speech of
Paris, and in every accent from the Haute Savoie and the Midi to lou en
and Marseille.  She wished she might be unconscious until she got
there, she wished she might sleep the voyage out or be dead drunk all
the way.  Would that bloodcurdling voice go on all night?

"Even Herr Reiber," said the voice, now coming from the berth above,
"even he comes from Mannheim and his accent is a little provincial-
only a little."

The sounds came nearer, and Mrs.  Treadwell opened her eyes to see the
shadowy little nubbin of a head waving like a cobra's in the air over
the berth side, the face a blur dropping its words with mincing
elegance, Hanover style.  "As for that high and mighty Herr Wilhelm
Freytag, he prides himself on his Oxford English, but as for his
German- well, it is hard to explain, but he has some odd little turns
of speech, not really German.  Also, words, perfectly proper in
meaning, you will understand, but in a dreadful dialect... Herr Rieber
says he thinks it is Yiddish, can you imagine?  And it is true, he does
not eat pork in any form, nor oysters.... When we speak of Jews we have
observed a certain expression on his face.  It is not the right
expression for a good German.  And so in a word, Herr Rieber and I
think- and we are not the only ones that he is a Jew.  And at the
Captain's table.  Could anything be more scandalous"

"Easily," said Mrs.  Treadwell, "many things.  I can think of a great
number in fact."  Through her maze of wine and sleep and boredom she
suddenly came wide-awake, feeling thoroughly competent to clear up at
least one small area of confusion in this woman's afflicted mind,
senseless and restless as a caged monkey's.  "You are entirely wrong.
It is Herr Freytag's wife who is Jewish, not he.  He told me this
himself.  He is very much in love with her.  So you see," she said,
sweetly, with satisfaction, "you are in no danger of contamination."

"He told you this himself?"  asked Lizzi in a shocked hoarse whisper.
"You are on such terms with him?  Well!may I ask you one little
question.  Do you like Jews?"

"Not particularly," said Mrs.  Treadwell, watching the porthole swim
ruing like a blue globe filled with the dark, hypnotic sky.  "Should I?
Is there something about theme"

"Should you?  Oh, my dear Frau Treadwell, how amusing you can be, like
a little child," cried Lizzi, and she fetched up two nervous hiccups to
prove it.  "Oh, you Americans who go through the world and never
understand anything!  Should you?  Oh, what can you mean?"  Waiting,
head cocked for an answer, she heard at last a sigh of resigned
weariness from the berth below.  After which, the silence continued
until morning.

After dinner Captain Thiele, still unsettled in his midriff and full of
generalized, unsatisfied indignations, took a ceremonial, solitary tour
of the main deck.  He had said a short grace before soup and then sat
in bitter patience waiting for the others to finis heating successfully
concealing, he hoped, his disgust at the gluttonous spectacle his
guests were making of themselves.  A breath of fresh air was what he
needed before turning in early.

The unexpected and therefore annoying sounds of singing, and dancing,
or rather a rhythmic thumping of feet, brought the Captain to the stern
overlooking the steerage deck.  Those people down there who had still
seemed half-dead that very morning were now, he decided, showing a
touch too much spirit.  They had fetched from their abject bundles not
clothing or household gear, of course not, thought the Captain with
deepened contempt; but battered guitars and decrepit accordions, and
numerous worn leather dice boxes and ragged packs of cards.  The women
and children, dark and shapeless as heaps of refuse, had moved back
into a closely massed circle, in perfect silence; the old men were
seated in another circle in front of them; and the center was a varied
sports arena.

Graceful, light-boned, underfed boys, who the Captain admitted
grudgingly seemed to have some sort of training in the art, wrestled
among themselves so lightly it was more like dancing; but they were
urged on as if it were a blood-combat with impassioned cries from the
witnesses and beseechments to murder each other, and at once!

Older men danced strange outlandish dances in a ring, or facing each
other in two lines; creaky in the joint, stiffened in the foot, yet
they raised their heads and chests proudly and moved together with

the rhythm and incessancy of a drumbeat, their faces solemn.  Still
others crouched over their slow, fatal gambling games, each man put
tins down his greasy card as if his head went with it, tossing the dice
as if his life were on the east; and each man bet what he had, from a
frayed neck cloth to a packet of matches.

Little boys who knew better than to open their mouths were allowed to
sit in front of the women, but at a respectful distance from their
elders to observe and take serious notes on the conduct becoming to the
state of manhood.  Harsh toneless voices were raised in songs of
despair almost beyond lamentation, while the sweet-toned guitars mocked
them with their frivolous, heartbreaking irony; occasional boot heels
tapped and rattled and cackled and clacked like gossip on market day.

The Captain, whose favorite composer was Schumann, and who admitted no
dance but the true Viennese waltz to his graces, felt his ear and his
nervous system being most impudently imposed upon; for there was, no
doubt about it, something strange in those savage rhythms that moved
the blood even against all efforts of the will; indeed, he recognized
it for what it was, the perpetual resistance of the elemental forces of
darkness and disorder against the very spirit of civilization--that
great Germanic force of life in which--and the Captain began to feel a
little more cheerful- in which Science and Philosophy moved hand in
hand ruled by Christianity.  Gazing downward, he despised these filthy
cattle, as he should; yet, viewing the scene as a whole, he could not
but in all fairness admit there was a kind of: shapeliness and order in
it; not even his rightly censorious eye could find any real harm, other
than the harm of allowing such people any liberties at all; and harm of
some sort was naturally, constantly latent in any human situation.  It
was possible that the spirits of the rabble in the steerage had been
elevated by liquor.  A limited quantity of beer had been made available
for sale to them, though with what coin they were supposed to buy it,
the Captain could not imagine.  He had been told that not a man in the
lot had more than ten Cuban pesos on him.  Still, rumors had gone
abroad, after the fight at Mass, that the fat man who had started the
row was not only a labor agitator and atheist, but an unlawful seller
of hard drink; he was said to have brought on board at Havana a large
supply of a vile cane-juice concoction, you could hardly call it rum;
and was dispensing it secretly and cheaply, hoping to attract followers
and disciples.  A search for

this contraband ended in failure; perhaps the rumor had been only
that, the Captain decided.  Still it boded no good for these creatures,
little better than four-footed animals- indeed it was a question
whether they were not lower- to be showing so much energy all at once.
The voyage was still new, Santa Cruz de Tenerife seemed a long way off;
in fine, it always disturbed the Captain, annoyed him, put him off, to
see the lower classes enjoying themselves; and never more so than in
his own steerage.  The premonitions of the day suddenly returned to him
full force- this was no time for rosy optimism.  Glancing at his watch,
he decided on a reasonable step.  His order given from the bridge was
passed on until it came to the right man, who put out the lower deck
lights, except for the essential two, fore and aft, two hours earlier
than the usual time.

This measure did not have the desired effect at once; the people in the
steerage were not used to lamps in the evening.  They had played cards
by moonlight often, it was not the first time they had danced by the
light of the stars.  The still-weary, more delicate ones gave way at
last and slept, face downward on the edge of the crowd.  A few mothers
sighed with relief, sank limply into their canvas deck chairs, and
shifted the weight of their babies to more restful positions. Gradually
there was less shouting, and more singing, lower-toned; at last only
the plaintive notes of the guitars, like sleepy birds in a far-off
wood.

This died away; and a small group gathered around a bony, shambling
shape with the loose weathered clothes of a scarecrow, his boina pulled
to a rakish tilt over one jutting ear.  He opened his great toothless
mouth in his furrowed narrow face and lantern jaw, and began to sing
improvised couplets on words suggested to him by his audience.  They
cleared a good circle for him, and clapped their hands as he sang a
wandering tune in a strong deep voice, head bent, eyes fixed on his own
feet.  Someone would call out a theme, or word; he would mutter to
himself for a moment, then break into a long cry, sing his verse, and
wind up with a slow, flat footed dance, backwards and forwards,
stamping to the rhythm of the accompanying hands.  His listeners would
shriek for joy and shout merry double meanings at him, which he would
pick up and improve upon.

This performance went on and on; and the young officer whose duty it
was, and who had been peering down upon this scene as into a bear pit,
decided that, until further orders, he could safely ignore the whole
thing.  Though his naval training and the practice of his vocation
rested securely on the dogma that disobedience to his superior officer
equaled disobedience to God- and was considerably more dangerous still,
in the farthest, deepest, darkest, most suppressed reaches of his
being, there lay vast quicksands of reservations which now took partial
form in a fleeting, heinous thought: the Captain took alarm at some
very odd things and a little too easily?  And he had a somehow amusing
vision of the Captain breaking into a sweat at the thought those
harmless poor devils in steerage.

In this moment he noticed some night-prowling first-class passengers,

and took himself off with the speed and silence of a ghost.  He had got
a bellyful of passengers for that day.  These particular ones had no
designs on him, if only he could have known- Jenny Brown and the
Huttens with their bulldog Bebe; Jenny fighting restlessness and
anxiety, the Huttens and Bebe fighting seasickness and insomnia; all
looking for relief from themselves and from each other in the fresh
winds from the sea and the lulling darkness.  To the young officer it
was not so much a matter of fleeing their designs to intrude upon his
privacy, his few free moments of solitude in a long crowded day though
that was a never-absent threat.  It was their mere presence he had
learned by experience to deplore, to resent, and to avoid by flight
whenever possible.  He had no use for male landlubbers; he found his
right and proper friendships with young officers of his own rank and
class; and as for women traveling alone, he feared them, for no matter
how amiable they might seem at first, if they once grappled they
developed claws like a crab's.  He realized that all this was
quarreling with his bread and butter.  Ship's passengers were like
that, just hopelessly what they were and no help for it; and if they
refused to sail on his wretched ship for he was ashamed of the honest
Vera, and schemed constantly to get a better berth- his noble calling,
as he had once been taught to regard it, could not even survive.  But
the tact remained, he detested the very sight of passengers, all sorts:
there was no point in pretending anything else.

Yet there was on board a rather prettyish American woman of maybe
forty, a Mrs.  Treadwell, who looked nice enough.  He had begun little
by little to feel a certain friendliness towards her, and he knew why
she had never even glanced at him, she did not know he was alive.  That
was the way he liked his women passengers: not like that high-smelling
Spanish woman who kept trying to corner him.  He was engaged to be
married and glad of it, to a girl he had known

all his life who would never be able to surprise him, or so he hoped;
there should be some safe place to go when a man is on land.  What he
did not know, could not have imagined, and would have been displeased
to know, was that Jenny and the Huttens were also entirely unaware of
his existence.  Indifference and reserve were his prerogatives -not
theirs.

At this unexpected encounter, Frau Hutten was disposed to be a little
more friendly to the American girl who, no matter what she said or
did--indeed, even when just sitting silent with her hands folded- would
always seem odd, unaccountable, unacceptable to her; but her natural
amiability would not be suppressed altogether.  After all, as her
husband had reassured her earlier in the evening, this voyage was a
thing that would end.  Jenny was all sympathy for the family
seasickness.

"It is nothing much, our own indisposition--but ah, our poor Bebe,"
said Frau Hutten.  "First he is a little better, and then he is worse,"
she said in wonder, as if this phenomenon were entirely outside nature.
Jenny showed no surprise but leaned over and patted Bebe between the
ears.  As she straightened up, she glanced right and left, and saw,
first, David seeming to lurk on one side of the deck, while Herr
Glocken, approaching from the other side, obviously had seen them and
was hurrying to join them.  Jenny tried to pretend to herself that she
had not seen either of them, or rather, that it did not concern her.

Herr Glocken, suffering more than usual, drowsy and dazed with his
narcotic but unable to sleep, drew near them hopefully as if he
expected some sort of relief and help from them.  They all greeted him
pleasantly, and when he said that such air and such a sea and such
moonlight should never be wasted in sleep" Above all," agreed Jenny,
"in such stuffy little dens."  Out of curiosity Herr Glocken turned his
attention to Jenny, for that strange young man David Scott, her lover,
had treated her much more like a wife or a sister than a mistress: he
had never once mentioned her to his cabin mates.  While he spread his
arms and rested his chin on the railing, Jenny repeated that one should
never waste moonlight in sleep anywhere, especially not on a
ship--above all not in the Atlantic... She had never voyaged anywhere
except in the Caribbean, among the summer islands, and to Mexico;
didn't he find the Adlantic much more impressive?  The very ship seemed
to know she was in bigger waters,

and was sometimes playful as a dolphin, et cetera, et cetera; she
babbled on as if talking to herself, now and then glancing away, to her
left.  Herr Glocken understood easily that she was not talking to him,
that she was not going to let him say a word, nor would she say
anything to him that could possibly call for an answer at any future
time; so when she paused for breath, he said, "Ah, yes, quite, Mees
Brown," in English; and Jenny, turning to look at him, realized what
she had done when she saw the dwarfish shape make her a bow, with a
slight kick of the heels, and swing away without hesitation.

"Oh, I am afraid I hurt his feelings!"  she said almost in a whisper to
Frau Hutten, who drew away and seemed confused.  Herr Professor Hutten
intervened with words of reassurance.  "You need not distress yourself
too much, my dear Fraulein," he said, addressing her kindly over the
slightly bowed head of his wife.  "Persons with incurable physical
defects, especially of a congenital nature, invariably and always show
an excessive sensibility to the attitudes of others, more particularly
in situations of a social character, and peculiarly so in all that
concerns the other sex... you can hardly avoid wounding such persons at
one time or another, no matter how unintentionally.... "

"I just didn't want him near me," said Jenny, almost in tears.  "I have
a kind of horror of him!"

"I should think he'd be used to that by now," said Frau Hutten, gently.
She tightened the leash on Bebe, took her husband's arm, and said, as
they moved away slowly, "Ah, well, we must try again to sleep a little!
Good night."

"Good night," said Jenny, noticing for the first time that Frau Hutten
limped slightly.  Jenny felt a little pang of fright: had Frau Hutten
been born to a limp, or was it an accident?  And she thought she must
be changing in some evil way: she had never been repelled by deformity,
or any affliction, before.  What was happening to her?  And did David
think she was flirting with Herr Glocken, as well as with Herr Freytag,
and for that matter, anything on board ship in trousers?  She walked
slowly in the direction where she had last seen David, meaning if she
saw him to put her arms around his neck and kiss him and say, "Good
night, darling," for she could not in the least control her terrible
rushes of tenderness for him.  But resolutely she left the deck and
walked through the ship and down the long corridor to her cabin, hoping
that Elsa was safely asleep.

David, after his appalled glimpse of Jenny and the new company she
appeared to be keeping, went back to his cabin, lay down in his
clothes, turned out his light, and crossed his hands palm upwards
loosely over his eyes.  Who wouldn't she take up with, he wondered.
She'd run off with just anybody--if a band passed playing in the
street, she'd fall in step and march with them... would say just
anything she pleased to the merest stranger--did she ever really see a
stranger?  Listens to just anybody, as interested in the idlest
silliest chatter as she is in the most intelligent talk--more so, damn
it!  Can't pass a beggar without handing out; her house full of stray
cats and dogs--given away at last, when she left, to people who didn't
want them.  She would sit and listen with an eager look to that big
dull Elsa mumbling along--as if Elsa were telling the most marvelous
thing in the world.  Get out and picket with strikers without even
asking what they were striking for, or even where they worked. "Tobacco
factory, I think," she said one night, when he came in and found her
very exhausted, in bed drinking hot milk.  "I lost five pounds today,"
she told him, bragging.

"Whatever for?"  he asked.  "For fun," she said, not bothering to try
to explain anything to him.  Yet there had been a time when he felt so
close, so nearly identified with Jenny, so tenderly in love with her,
she could have done anything with him, have made him understand
anything no matter how preposterous: or so he believed now; and why had
she refused to become that part of him which was missing, which would
have made him whole--why had she been so strange and wild and made
their life together so impossible.?  It occurred to him bitterly for
the first time that, in fact, Jenny seemed to get along on the simplest
terms with anybody, everybody, but himself.  The notion, too, of that
Glocken prying into his private affairs, getting on terms with Jenny,
made his blood run cold.  He was astonished to find that he disliked
Glocken intensely.  God knew what Jenny would say to him, what
impression he would get of her; he could imagine Glocken turning a low,
mean opinion of Jenny over in his warped little mind The light flashed
on and there was Herr Glocken, grinning like a complacent gnome.  "Ah,
awake still?"  he asked, and added almost at once in what David took to
be an intolerably intimate tone: "I cannot rest until I tell you what
an entirely charming young lady your fiancee

is... We talked a little on deck just now," he said.  "She is
delightful."

David had a singular gift of hardening Instantly into silence that
extended long after the speaker had ceased to expect an answer,
expressing disapproval and disagreement in terms much stronger than
words.  The air of the cabin froze with this silence now as David rose,
undressed deliberately--though omitting to wash his teeth as being an
act too ridiculous to perform before this detested stranger--put out
his light again and turned his face to the wall, every nerve humming
and every fiber dancing in outrage.  It was long before he gave way and
slept, in his sleep contracting convulsively again and again; but
longer still for Herr Glocken, bewildered, stung, mystified.  He had
thought that being on speaking terms with Jenny, even though she had
snubbed him so rudely--who need ever know that?--would have meant a
pleasant friendship with her lover.  He had felt very elegant and
worldly and correct in substituting the French "fiancee" for the less
musical if more exact German word he had in mind; but everything had
gone wrong between him and these young people, and he must be more
careful.  He had not known many Americans, and those only in Mexico; he
could never make them out, nor had he tried particularly.  But these
had seemed a little different, because they spoke Spanish and were
obviously living in a Bohemian style.  Just the same she was an
attractive young woman, no matter about her poor manners, and Herr
Glocken wondered what she could see in that cranky, bad-tempered young
man.  Finally he slept.  In the morning, feeling very poorly, he asked
Herr Denny, by name, please to hand him his medicine.

The sailors were out again washing down the decks, which rolled gently
as the Vera set out resolutely for the Canaries, with only a head or
two looking out of her portholes to watch the eternal love affair
between the moon and the sea.  Pepe, again turned out of his stateroom
for Arne Hansen, began to look at his watch, deciding that even for the
money, Amparo was giving the fellow too much time.  She had done that
before, with other men, often, and no amount of beating had cured her
of the habit.  However, he would try it again, but not until they
landed at Vigo, where she could scream as much as she liked without
attracting attention.  He stepped tiptoe around the sailors' buckets
and brushes, and stood on the coping of the deck rail looking into the
steerage deck.  Everybody seemed to be settled down and sound asleep;
the very sight caused him to yawn heavily.  Some of them lay stretched
in canvas chairs, some were flattened out on hard bare benches, others
were curled like snails in hammocks.  One man in blue overalls lay
stretched crosswise in his hammock, his head bang hag over one side,
his great crooked dirty bare feet over the other.  Pepe knew all of
them well, he was an Asturian, and just like them; yes, there were
times when he even felt kinship with an Andalusian, but not with any of
those down there!  If he had been as stupid as they, he would have been
sleeping among them or in the fleas and lice of some hovel in Spain. He
shuddered fiercely as if a snake had crawled over his bare foot. All
those shouting, singing, dancing, fighting, cursing Asturians as be
remembered the people of his childhood, now lay, most of them, among
the quieter Andalusians and Canary Islanders, in the attitudes of
well-disposed corpses; under the ghostly white moonlight, the muffling
sheets gave them the look of bodies waiting to be taken to the morgue.
Pepe selected the man hanging at both ends out of his hammock and
deftly flicked his lighted cigarette into the folds of dry cloth which
muffled his middle.  That might wake him up!

Three shapes sprang instantly to their feet, and one of them, the huge
fat man Pepe remembered as singing like a bull, found the cigarette and
ground it between his fingers.  He shook his fist at the slender figure
above still leaning over the rail.  "Cabrtn!"  he shouted furiously in
his comic Mexicala accent, even as he recognized one of the pimps he
had seen floating about on the day of sailing.  He changed his tone to
a heavy jeer.  "Puto."  he said.  "Come down here and we'll-"

Then others woke and joined in, making a clamor.  Pepe, glancing back
uneasily, saw that the sailors had heard the noise.  One of them was
coming toward him, of course not threateningly, but solidly, calmly,
striding like a horse, just in line of duty to find out what was going
on.  Pepe stepped off the coping and sailed gracefully as a swan but
much faster in the opposite direction.

He found Amparo brushing her tangled hair, her lipstick badly smeared
over her bitten-looking mouth, and the lower berth was in a tumble as
usual.  "Well?"  he said.  In sulky silence she nodded backward.  He
picked up one of the stale-smelling pillows and found the firm green
notes thee.  "More dollars, good," he said, smoothing them out and
counting there.

Amparo frowned and said, Fhey are not so easy to get, let me tell you.
That fellow keeps saying, "Five dollars more for one more time!"

and he wants his money's worth."  She turned the tap in the basin,
"What are you doing?"  asked Pepe, beginning to undress.  "I'm going to
wash," she said, still frowning.  "I'm filthy."

"Don't be too long about it," he said, and at his tone as at a signal
she shivered a little, her flesh rippled with excitement.  She soaped a
cloth and began washing herself and he watched without curiosity, yet
following her hands intently as they moved over her body.  He stripped
to the skin and lay down.

"You were a good while at it," he said, "even for the money."

"Let me alone," she said, "I've told you how it is."  "Let you alone?"
he asked, smiling.  He got up very swiftly and quietly and gave her a
solid openhanded blow on the flat of her shoulder blade where it would
sting but not bruise.  Then he grabbed her by the nape of the neck with
one hand and shook her hard, his other hand stroking down her spine and
ending with a blow of his fist.  Her eyelids drooped, her mouth became
full and moist, her nipples stiffened.  "Now hurry," he said.

"I won't hurry," she said with bitter coquetry, powdering herself with
a very dirty eiderdown puff.  "I'm tired."

"Not too much of that," he said, taking the puff and tossing it away.
"So you let him have everything did you, pouring your stuff down the
gutter again?  Do you want me to break every bone in you?"

"He is just an ox," she said.  "What do you take me for?"

She was standing near the berth.  Seizing her by one wrist, with a
light turn of his arm he threw her off balance and she fell easily full
length upon him.  Their supple dancers' legs writhed together for a
moment like a nest of snakes.  They sniffed, nibbled, bit, licked and
sucked each other's flesh with small moans of pleasure, exploring for
odors and savors and sensations in all its parts, their bodies going
obediently through a repertory as complicated as a ballet, in the
rhythms of a slow-motion film.  He never wished to make love to her
except when she had just come from another man, full of strange smells
and heats, roused and disturbed, ready for him and his special ways
with her, Since she had known him he was the only man who could please
her in the least, and to please her she had only to let him please
himself.  She saved herself like a miser in the dull plungings and
poundings of those men who were her business, and spent herself

upon Pepe, who was tricky as a monkey and as coldly long-lasting as a
frog.  Pepe beat her often, for jealousy, he said, when he suspected
her of some feeling for another man.  But often after he beat her the
hardest he made love to her for hours afterwards until it would seem
their bones would dissolve in delicious exhaustion.  He could beat her
as much as he pleased, for she never tired of the pleasures he gave
her.

Pepe was hard as nails about getting every last peso, franc, dollar, no
matter what, from her, because he was saving to open a little place of
his own, in Madrid, where Amparo, as long as she lasted, would be the
main attraction as dancer; he had often, in a cold still fury,
threatened to kill her in such ferocious ways she knew he did not
really mean it; but she was saving too.  All through the bad times in
Mexico, and here on this boat, Amparo was holding back part of her
money from Pepe, who would undoubtedly strangle her at least if he
knew.  But he did not know; and Amparo meant one day to be a star all
by herself, traveling everywhere and getting rich and famous like the
great Pastora Imperio.

The Captain was increasingly annoyed by the slow drift of rumors that
came to his ears he hardly knew how; crosscurrents of gossip he could
scarcely realize he had heard at all until in his solitary hours on the
bridge they began to move and mingle in his head.  The most persistent
of these were murmurs about the life of La Condesa in her private
stateroom, if private it could be called any longer, with those
students making free of it at all times, The Captain turned over rather
sourly in his mind the notion of putting a stewardess in there as
guard; but he knew well there was no stewardess to spare for such duty.
He thought now and then halfheartedly of keeping her confined to her
stateroom for the rest of the voyage, but he had no means of doing it
short of force, the very idea of which horrified him.  He had heard
from someone--was it that Frau Rittersdorf?  a very straightlaced
woman- that La Condesa had been seen clinging in hysteria to Dr.
Schumann, who had great trouble in controlling her.  Well, Dr. Schumann
was her doctor for this occasion, let him take his luck.  The Captain
could not think it too hard a fate to be embraced and wept upon by a
beautiful noble lady, no matter how hysterical.  When the Captain had
asked Dr.  Schumann, as discreetly as he was able, how his patient was
doing, Dr.  Schumann said, "very well indeed.  She has decided to keep
to her bed for a few days.  She is reading."

The Captain hoped he concealed his surprise.  "Reading?  She?  What, I
wonder?"

"Romans policiers," said the Doctor.  "The students bring them to her
from the ship's library.  She tells me there is a fine collection on
board."

The Captain said, in some pique, "I cannot imagine how they came there,
unless they were left by passengers."

"Possibly," said Dr.  Schumann.  "I am grateful to whoever did leave
them.  She was very overwrought the other evening, and I have decided
to put her on a regime.  She reads her detective and murder mysteries,
then she plays chess with one or another of those students, and I give
her a sedative at night I am much more hopeful of her condition than I
was."

The Captain said warily, "Then you think the presence of the students
at all hours does not upset her nerves?"

"For some mysterious reason," said the Doctor, "they amuse her.  They
are rowdy, noisy, disrespectful, ignorant---"

"I have heard them mention Nietzsche, Goethe, Kant, Hegel,
Schopenhauer," said the Captain, "in those loud discussions at
table."

"Oh yes," said the Doctor, "they have all been to the University."  The
Captain occasionally invited the Doctor for an afternoon coffee or an
after-dinner schnapps in his quarters, and a little pleasant, if always
reserved, conversation with one whom he could, in a way, regard as an
equal.  The Captain did not really care for the society of his
equals--he got on best looking down his nose, or up under his brows. 
He had hoped to find the Doctor a source of information as to any
disorders or strangenesses among the passengers, which he himself would
hardly have occasion or opportunity to observe.  For example, it
appeared that an odd thing had occurred--nobody's fault, he supposed,
unless the purser's, and yet!  no, not even his... the first time in
his whole experience as a seafaring man, indeed, the first time in his
whole life, so far as he could know, he believed that he was sitting
daily at the same table with a Jew.  Had Dr.  Schumann, by any chance,
heard anything about this?

Dr.  Schumann said easily that yes, he had heard something of the sort
two or three days ago, but from a source he considered very unreliable;
his tone seemed to say, 'the ladies, God bless them, of course, but
don't listen to them."  He did not even have to restrain himself from
saying he was not in the least concerned whether Freytag was.

Jew or not, and that he thought the whole question beneath contempt.
He regarded the unbridled expression of opinion on all topics and at
all times as mere self-indulgence, if not actually the mark of a
mischievous nature.  Also Dr.  Schumann had been all over this rather
dreary subject many times before with too many persons long before he
had come on this ship, and he was a little tired of it; he no longer
felt able to fight with those strange senseless states of mind, as
shapeless and un capturable and real as smoke.

The Captain understood the Doctor's detachment as his professional
unwillingness to take sides: after all, everybody on board was his
potential patient, he could not choose any on personal grounds.  Yet
tactfully as he could, he hinted to the Doctor that in his special
situation he must learn a great deal about all sorts of persons.
"Priests, lawyers, doctors," he said, cordially, "how many secrets must
be unloaded on you!  I don't envy you, really," and the hint was rather
broad that the Doctor would find a way to pass on to the Captain any
scandals, queernesses, indecorums which might need to be corrected. The
Doctor did not pretend to misunderstand: he simply ignored the
suggestion, amiably refused a second cup of coffee, shifted the topic
almost imperceptibly, and very, soon took his leave.  The Captain,
newly flushed, uneasy, irritable, resolved that no later than tomorrow
he would proceed to settle this dubious and unbecoming state of
affairs, whatever it was.  The Doctor had left with him an
uncomfortable impression that he, the Captain, was listening to women's
gossip.  Well, this was a question to be settled strictly between men,
and the first thing to be done was to get the women out of it, and keep
them out.  The unsavory fact remained that women had started the whole
thing: that American Mrs.  Treadwell had told Fraulein Lizzi
SpiSckenkieker some confidence she had got from Herr Freytag, and Lizzi
had told Herr Rieber, who had passed it about freely until it had come
to the ears of the Captain, who now, as a matter of social duty and his
own dignity, must at once take steps.  He shook his head as if in a
swarm of gnats, and decided to dine alone that evening.

Freytag was a few minutes late to the dinner table.  Everybody was
present except the Captain; Dr.  Schumann conveyed the Captain's
regrets to his guests for his unavoidable absence, which were received
in form.  Freytag slipped into his chair with a smiling nod of greeting
all around, which was returned not so smilingly--or was it his own

state of nervous exasperation which caused him to imagine all these
rather dull strangers were looking at him with a kind of furtive
curiosity, except Dr.  Schumann, whose air of benevolent detachment was
beginning to annoy Freytag somewhat, as being a little patronizing; and
Frau Hutten, who gazed in her plate, as usual.

The steward presented him with the appetizer, Westphalian ham folded
delicately beside a slice of melon.  He shook his head, and the steward
asked, "What would you like instead, sir?  Smoked salmon?  Herring in
sour cream?"

"Either will do nicely," said Freytag.  "The herring."

Herr Professor Hutten, observing Herr Freytag's lack of conformity in
choice of food, as usual, remarked almost absent-mindedly, as if his
thoughts had taken off from some very distant point of origin: "The
condition of Jewishness offers to the Western, more especially the
Christian, mind an endless study in spiritual and moral contradictions,
together with a mysterious and powerful emotional and psychological
cohesiveness.  Nothing can equal the solidarity of the Jew when
attacked from the outside, by the heathen, as they say; nothing can
exceed the bitterness of their rivalries in every field among
themselves.  I have asked many in all scholarly seriousness and
philosophical detachment, "Tell me, please- what is a Jew?"  and not
one of them has been able to give me an answer.  They call themselves a
race, yet that is absurd.  They are just a tiny fragment of a branch of
the white race, like ourselves!"

"Oh, not Nordic!"  squealed Lizzi, "not that!  Since when?"

"Are they Hamitic then?"  answered the Professor, turning upon her
witheringly."  "Mongolic?  Or Ethiopic?"

"They are everything, utter mongrels to the last degree, from every
dregs of every race and nation!"  said Herr lie her suddenly losing his
merry temper and turning quite scarlet.  "And so they were from the
beginning of time..."

"In that sense," said Wilhelm Freytag, putting down his fork, "we are
all mongrels by now, I expect..."

"Oh, speak for yourself, dear Herr Freytag," said Frau Rittersdoff, and
she leaned forward to smile at him with her teeth closed.  "But I am
astounded.  How can you, a German of the purest type, blond, tall,
gray-eyed-"

"... and I ask them, What is a Jew?"  and I ask them, "Are you a
nation?"--No, -- A race?  No--Are you then only a religion?

No.Do you practice your religion, do you observe dietary laws?  No."
Herr Professor Hutten raised his voice and chanted, silencing Frau
Rittersdorf and forging on determinedly to his little joke, which he
would not be denied.  "So then, I ask them- and I would have you
remember that I choose only those who could easily have been mistaken
for pure Germans, anywhere--I ask them, "On what grounds then do you
call yourself a Jew?"  And without a single exception, every one of
them said with perfect obstinacy, "Still, in spite of all, I am a
Jew!"--So then, I say to them, "Ah, so!  it is clear that Jewishness is
a state of mind!"  He beamed under the approving smiles of his
hearers.

"It is their claim of Ghosenness that annoys me," said Frau
Rittersdorf.  "It makes God look so stupid, don't you think?"

There was a shocked silence, as if no one dared to deal with this
mixture of good sense and something too near blasphemy for comfort.
Frau Rittersdorf instantly perceived her mistake and tried to right it.
"I only mean," she began, "I'm -- I " Herr Professor Hutten rushed to
her rescue kindly.  "That mistaken idea, born of tribal vanity, is of
such an extreme antiquity I think we may safely say it was a most
primitive kind of god who chose that peculiar people.  Or rather, let
us say more precisely that they chose him-not an ignoble concept at the
time," he added, generously, "when we consider the nature of certain
other gods equally ancient.  By comparison at least, on the whole Old
Jahweh does not come out so badly."

"You are right!"  cried Herr Rieber, swallowing and wiping his mouth.
"It was Jahweh who chose the Jews, and he can have them--"

"Imagine a handful of people, a few little millions among nearly two
billion others, having such impudence!"  cried Lizzi.  "I think it is
that makes me most furious.  Besides their manners, their tricks,
their-"

"The divinely inspired truth of a God of Justice, Mercy, and Grace, the
Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the great truth which
Christianity brought to the world," began Herr Professor Hutten, by now
faintly discouraged, "proves..."

Frau Rittersdorf, while conscious of the social inferiority of Herr
Rieber, yet in justice, swallowing her prejudice, agreed with him. 
"You are right, Herr Rieber," she said, with condescension.  "It is
only their god who chose them, we must remember.  We are under no
obligation to emulate his poor taste..."

"I am not interested in the religious question," said Herr Reber, who
never dreamed that Frau Rittersdorf was condescending, "I am anxious
only that the German nation, the bloodstream of our race, shall be
cleansed of their poison."

"But you are a real anti-Semite, cried little Frau Semite, suddenly, as
if frightened.  "I don't know any Jews, but i don't dislike them--"

"I am not an anti-Semite at all," said Herr Rieber, contentiously. 
"How can you say that?  I am very fond of the Arabs, I lived among them
once and found them very good people..."

Frau Rittersdorf turned her smile upon Dr.  Schumann.  "You have said
nothing, dear Doctor!  What do you think about Jews?"

Dr.  Schumann said mildly and precisely, "I have nothing to say against
them.  I believe that we worship the same God."

"But Doctor," said Lizzi, leaning forward and waving her head, "you are
a Catholic, are you not?  Do not Catholics worship the Virgin Mary
first, and then God?"

"No," said Dr.  Schumann, crossing his knife and fork in the form an x,
laying down his napkin carefully, and rising without emphasis.  "Allow
me to be excused, if you please," he said, and left them.

"He is subject to heart attacks," said Frau Hutten to her husband.  "Do
you suppose we should send to inquire after him?"

"He is a doctor," said the Herr Professor, "he does not need our
attentions or advice."

"Schumann," said Rieber, pouting his underlip, "is that not a Jewish

"There is no such thing as a Jewish name in the German," said Herr
Professor Hutten, who seemed a little on edge and spoke rather
abruptly, for him.  He observed that Herr Freytag had sat in stiff
silence throughout the talk, now and then moving a morsel on his plate
from one point to another with his fork, but not eating; and his face
was so fixed and pale one might suspect oncoming seasickness.  "There
are only German names adopted by Jews in medieval times and later, when
they decided to drop their ancient style--Isaac ben Abraham, let's say-
a good old custom, and a pity they abandoned it; and these by lineal
descent have become associated with Jewish families.  Schumann is one
of them, and Freytag, may I venture, is another.  Is that not so, Herr
Freytag?"  He spoke directly across the table, unexpectedly, and
Freytag raised cold gray furious eyes.  "Have you never been troubled
by discovering Jewish branches of your old German family name?"

I do not know any Jews named Freytag," he said, and the tremor of his
rage got into his voice, "that is, except one- my wife," he said,

and he raised his voice and steadied it.  "She is Jewish and her name
is Freytag, and she does it honor."

The instant he heard the words pronounced he knew he had let himself be
trapped again into temper, into melodrama, into a situation as false as
it was unnecessary.  His mother-in-law had spotted this weakness in
him.  A little mockingly she advised him: "Remember the rules!  Never
tell your family business.  Never say what you are expected to say.
Answer one question with another."  She said it with laughter, but he
noticed that she practiced it seriously.  He had felt again and again
that he was living between two armed and irreconcilable camps, deserter
from one side, intruder in the other, the turncoat nobody trusted.  How
often, when he had found himself alone among Jews, after he married
Mary, they had attacked him, from all sides at once, some of them with
open contempt, or a genuine personal dislike; others told Jewish jokes
against the Goyim, and they used in his hearing the disrespectful names
for Christians they used in their private talk.  And now his own
side--he turned his eyes slowly along the faces at the table, and there
was not one he did not find detestable N his own side, for these were
his people, were getting another chance at him; they would never let up
on a German who had degraded himself so.  He decided he had had enough;
with his hands against the edge of the table he pushed back his
chair.

Lizzi cried out in shrill excitement, so that he stopped on the point
of standing up.  "Oh, Herr Freytag, how strange!  We some of us thought
you were the Jew--how could we have been so blind?--and only a few
evenings ago, I was talking to that odd American woman who shares my
cabin- you know her?  Mrs.  Treadwell?  and she told me something I
simply did not believe- that no, it was your wife- just as you say!"

"Mrs.  Treadwell?"  repeated Freytag, shocked.  "She said that?"

"Of course, am I not saying so?  But--please don't misunderstand me-
she was a little- you know, she drinks- sometimes she is very vague..."
She looked for understanding in the faces now all pointed towards her
with exact attention.  Nothing however disreputable they could hear
about the Americans on board could surprise them.  Lizzi ended: "Well,
more than once, a whole bottle of wine, by herself, after dinner!"

Freytag got up decisively at this point, favored his circle of
compatriots with a nasty smile, and spoke like an actor giving the
curtain

line: "Well, I leave Mrs.  Treadwell to your tender mercies!"  and did
not wait for an answer.  And may they pull you into pieces, he wished
hotly, noticing her seated alone at her small table, eyelids lowered,
the living image of innocence, eating ice cream.  He was struck with a
wish to have a table to himself.  He would speak to the head steward
about it tomorrow.  He could not stick that crowd at the Captain's
table much longer.  One more round of remarks about the Jews and he
would slap their faces, once each.  Yes, even Dr.  Schumann, old
hypocrite, who had got out without committing himself.  And instantly
upon this blaze of fury came a chill straight from the grave- he was
going even now to Mary's relatives, those of them who would still call
on Mary's mother, or come for dinner: to listen to jokes about the
Goyim, jokes that had burnt acid-holes in his memory, and in his
feelings for all of them.  He leaned on the rail and gazed into the
darkening water, by now no longer the pleasant novelty it had been.
"Can I be thinking of suicide?"  he asked himself after a short
interval of rigid blankness; for all the time when he believed his mind
was empty, he had seen himself going smoothly as a professional diver
headfirst in the depths, sinking slowly and slowly to the very ocean
floor, and lying there flat, for good and all, eyes wide open, in
perfect ease and contentment.  He pulled up with a shudder, blinked
several times, and began to walk.  The image had been so clear it
unnerved him almost.  But no, nothing to worry about.  That easy way
out was not for him.  His way was clear- the road ran all the way in,
and through, and out again on the other side; all he had to do was to
keep going, and not lose his head, and not let Jew or Christian bedevil
him into losing his temper and playing into their hands.  In the
meantime, he'd like just a word with that Mrs.  Treadwell; but no
hurry.

The Captain left his second cup of dinner coffee and went out to grant,
on the bridge deck, not in his private quarters, a curt interview to
Fraulein Lizzi Spokenkieker, who embodied to the last trait and feature
everything the Captain found most positively repellent in womankind;
and to her besotted admirer Herr Rieber, who must surely be lacking in
some indispensable male faculty, such as taste or judgment where women
were concerned.  They had requested to see him in writing, which gave
an urgency no doubt spurious to their occasion.  What business could
they have with him that would not wait until lunch tomorrow, if not
even to the judgment day?  He suppressed

a belch and eyed them sternly, meaning to warn them even at this late
moment that he was not to be disturbed frivolously.

Both of his visitors were breathless at their own daring, the honor
being done them, and the importance of their errand.  Their message was
simple but cogent.  Not only the Captain's own guests, but many other
German passengers, had almost from the first their suspicions that
there was one person at the Captain's table who had no right to be
there.  Perhaps not a Jew himself though they had no proof that he
wasn't except his own word but he was known- indeed, he declared it at
table before everybody- that he had Jewish connections of a most
intimate nature--in fact a wife!  Oh how Fraulein Lizzi and Herr Rieber
regretted to cause unpleasantness of any kind, but they were so certain
the Captain should know, would indeed wish to know of such an
unheard-of mischance at his table.  They understood well that such
details properly belonged to his subordinates, and yet yet The Captain,
instantly sensitive to the faintest implication that a subordinate of
his should dare to be remiss in duty however slight-indeed, there was
no such thing as a slight duty on his ship- now bridled haughtily and
said, "Of course, I am very grateful to you for your thoughtfulness.  I
agree it is a most unusual occurrence."  Lizzi added impulsively,
stretching her long neck at him and cackling in her highest voice, that
the dear Captain had done so much for all of them and they could do so
little for him, it was a divine pleasure to be of even the smallest
service to him.  The Captain, whose irritations invariably translated
and expressed themselves in a knife-edged grinding and growling of his
bowels, now began to feel his familiar distress.  With many more thanks
and compliments, even taking three steps forward with them to speed
them on their way in the right direction, he dismissed them they had
been standing all the time on the well lighted bridge deck under a
starry sky--and burning, went to look for his bismuth.  Changing his
mind, he gulped down the last of the coffee and swallowed a drink of
schnapps.  This eased him at least for the moment, and with no period
for reflection, he did not need it, he set in motion at once a train of
events that would shortly result in a slight but significant
rearrangement of the seating order in the dining room.

This done, the Captain's mind turned to relatively happier topics.  La
Condesa- ah, the right thought occurred at once.  He would send

her a little present of wine, an attention no lady could find fault
with.  She reminded him of his university days--he had hung around
stage entrances and yearned after strange idols, great wax dolls so
painted, laced, covered and disguised in the hieratic dress of their
calling, he had offered his modest flowers and wine, his shy boyish
itch of sex, his dirty little dreams without ever daring to get within
arm's reach. He had never been able to imagine one of them undressed,
and he had never even once confused any of them with any living women
he had known.  Yet he loved his dream of them, and La Condesa somehow
brought it all back.  The Doctor was right, though--it would not do to
be too lenient with her.  She must be kept in order, perhaps reminded
from time to time that she was his, the Captain's, prisoner.  He sent
her two bottles of well-chilled sparkling white wine, with a gallant
little note: "Dear Madame: We Germans no longer use the word
'champagne' nor indeed, drink that rather pretentious wine any longer. 
So I am happy to say this modest offering is not French, but only good
Sch*amwein from an honest German vineyard, sent to you by one who
wishes you well in the cordial hope that it may bring you an evening's
refreshment and enjoyment.  In the meantime, please do me the great
favor to obey your doctor's orders and keep to your stateroom for so
long as he thinks necessary for the good of your health."  And he was,
so to speak, entirely at her service.

When Dr.  Schumann called on La Condesa to administer the last
hypodermic for the day, he found her in a fit of laughter, sitting up
in bed with a red damask bed gown falling off her shoulder, her curly
reddish hair somewhat too youthful for her face, standing up in
tendrils waving like little serpents.  She held a note open in her
hand, and beside her were two bottles of German champagne.

"Ah," she called out in delight, "you are just in time to share my wine
and my love letter from the Captain!  Oh, come and laugh with me
please?"  She gave him the note, and as he stood looking at it
uncertainly, the stewardess, obeying Dr.  Schumann's latest instruction
always to be present at the giving of the narcotic, knocked and
entered.

"What are you doing here," demanded La Condesa, "did I send for you?"

"Let her stay," said the Doctor.  "I cannot read this letter, I am sure
the Captain does not mean anyone but yourself to see it."

"As if it mattered what the Captain means!"  cried La Condesa.  "It
concerns you too!  I am ordered to obey you and keep to my stateroom-
in a word, I am in jail again!"  Uncomfortably, Dr.  Schumann held the
paper nearly at arm's length as if distance might lessen the fault of
reading something not meant for him to see, while the stewardess began
to pull at the bed coverlets and reached for the pillows to plump them.
"Wait until you are told to do these things.  Don't come near me unless
I send for you," said La Condesa.  The stewardess backed away with a
scarlet face and stood near the doorway.

"No, you exaggerate.  And you distrust the Captain, who wishes to
protect you, and I, who wish to help you, and yet look at your
amiability, your confidence, in those manner less students who should
treat you with the regard due a mother, and yet!  -- I cannot repeat to
you the disrespectful things they have been heard to say about you, but
please take my word for it, they say them!  Tell me, why do you let
them make you a laughingstock?"

"Do they?"  said La Condesa, and she reached out to stroke his hand.
"On this ship?  Well, that amuses me.  You have heard someone laughing?
Do not all boys speak disrespectfully of women of any age?"  She
laughed, holding her head.  "I am not their mother!  If I were, they
might have better manners, better family, better minds, more
imagination, and I think, I am almost certain, they would be somewhat
better looking too.  No, I am attached to them because they were
schoolfellows of my sons, my charming young madmen who must go running
off after something they called the Revolution!"  She turned to him
with a face of distress, her hands beginning to dance.  "Where are they
now?  I hid them for a day and night under the altar in the chapel, and
the soldiers and the ruffians were everywhere, yet not one thought of
looking under the altar!  Then they set the whole hacienda on fire,
cane fields and all... and my sons escaped, but I was taken away--"

Her voice had lapsed into the monotonous complaining light chant he had
heard that first day out on shipboard, but she wrapped her arms around
her knees and looked at him very reasonably.  "It is over," she said.
"They are gone.  They will never come again."

"How do you know?"  asked Dr.  Schumann.  "Can you not wait a little
patiently for news?  This need not be the end!  I think you make
everything unnecessarily difficult," he told her.  "Have we not
troubles enough as it is?"

"We?  You have troubles, too?"

"You are my trouble," he told her, "but I shall help you if I can!"
"Do," she said, lightly, her arms falling away to her sides.  "Do try!"
"Captain Thiele has not sent you a command, but a recommendation; I
hope you will take his advice as well as mine.  He is an honorable
man,"

"I shall always take yours, always," she said, with her habitual
gesture of reaching for his hand, which this time he quite openly
evaded.  She drew hers back instantly and laughed again.  "Sehaumweinl"
she said in mocking delight, making it an absurd sound.  "Oh, how
ineffably German!  I'm sure the Captain's honor is just as good an
imitation as this," and she flourished one of the bottles.

"Please," said Dr.  Schumann, feeling a new sort of sting of anger
against her that made him sound touchy and quarrelsome.  "If you
please, remember I am German, too--" and he stopped himself just short
of saying something as ridiculous as "and proud of it."

"Ah, yes," said La Condesa, and she sighed with real weariness, "too
true.  It's an incurable malady, isn't it?  As hopeless as being a

Jew,"

"Or a woman," said Dr.  Schumann with malice, "you said so yourself."

"It is not the same," said La Condesa almost gaily, "I am not going to
listen to you any longer, I have something better to do."  She threw
back the covers and swung her delicate white feet, legs bare to the
knees, over the side of the bed, let her bed gown fall away, and stood
up in a limp blue silk shift that hardly covered her thighs.  She
picked up the two bottles of the Captain's Schaumwein and went to the
wash hand stand.  She wrapped each in a towel neatly, then stood back
at the right distance and crashed them, one and then the other, against
the metal edge of the bowl.  The jagged glass flew from the bottom of
the towels and the wine foamed up through the cloth and splashed the
walls, the looking glass and the carpet.  Leaving the debris, she
nodded to the stewardess.  "Now you will have something to do," she
said, pleasantly.

The stewardess moved sideways along the wall, somewhat as if she had
found herself caged with a dangerous beast.  Dr.  Schumann did not wait
for La Condesa to get back in bed, but seizing her by the upper arm as
she passed plunged the needle abruptly into the soft muscle.  She
shuddered deeply with pleasure, her eyes closed, and

reached up to breathe in his ear warmly: "What a bad-tempered man you
are, and what shall I do without you?"

He glanced at the stony-faced stewardess on her knees mopping up
Schaumwein and back to La Condesa, frowning.  He dropped her arm and
summoned the principles of his whole life to rebuke her immodesty and
her utter lack of regard for appearances.

"Oh Madame, good night, and do try to compose yourself!"  he said,
sternly, hearing how feeble his words were compared to what she
deserved.  He waited to see her cover her nakedness; lie flat and turn
her head on the pillow to smile at him drowsily.  "Sleep," she said, in
a drowned voice, "sleep, poor prisoner."

Turning the corner in the corridor a few steps from her door, he almost
collided with two of the Cuban students, one carrying a bottle of wine,
the other a chessboard.  They bowed and stood to the wall to allow him
to pass, but he stopped also, and spoke to them abruptly without any
attempt at ceremony: "Gentlemen, I have been many times astonished at
your lack of consideration for Madame, and I must now insist that your
attentions cease at once.  Madame is my patient, and I forbid all
visits in the evening, and none in the day without my special
permission.  I am sorry," he said, with a good deal of bitter
satisfaction.

They bowed again with effusive good manners- a slight parody of good
manners, the Doctor thought--and one of them said, "Of course, dear
Herr Doctor, we understand perfectly."  The other said, "Oh,
perfectly," and they turned ahead of him, outdistanced him and
disappeared almost at once.  The Doctor dismissed them from mind with a
swift impression of their coarse-grained, thick-looking skins and the
muddy whites of their eyes--a slight touch of the tar-brush, no
doubt--what matter?  His nerves were shaken again, and he permitted
himself a brief vengeful meditation on the crockery-smashing sex, the
outraged scullery maid the exasperated housewife of the lower classes,
the jealous mistress--the sex that brought confusion into everything,
religion, law, marriage; all its duplicities, its love of secret
bypaths, its instinct for darkness and all mischiefs done in darkness.
Who was La Condesa smashing, he wondered--himself, or the Captain, or
both?  Or another man, or other men in the past who had resisted her,
restrained her, baffled her, denied her, and finally evaded her?  Or
was she used to easy conquests, eager dupes?  The Doctor halted at this
point, said suddenly under his breath, "Mother of God be my

refuge!"  and crossed himself, and instantly felt his head clear a
little, as f the demons had fled.  Quietly, as if he were thinking
about someone else's misfortune, he faced his own: this malice had
tinged his sinful love from the first, for he had loved her from the
first before he admitted it was love; as his guilt deepened, his wish
to ease her sufferings was changing slowly into a wish to cause her
suffering, of another kind, in which she would be made to feel his hand
and his will... why did his love wish to degrade her?  He knew well she
was no enraged servant, no jealous mistress; she had chosen the
simplest most direct way in the world, even touching in its simplicity
and directness, to express her contempt and her defiance of the
Captain, of the Doctor, and of all the powers that held her prisoner.
Her face had been composed, her eyes when she turned them towards him
had been shining with amusement; she had swung the bottles as if she
were christening a ship.  As for her immodesty, walking about in her
nightgown, showing her bare legs so carelessly--there was something in
it very disrespectful to him, as if he were not even present, or was
not really a man with whom she should exercise a little prudence... as
if he were harmless, impotent.  This was a familiar trick of women,
every man knew it well, but- and the Doctor's heart gave a leap and
started beating too fast--it was intolerable, just the same!  He slowed
down, unnerved, and reached in his inner pocket for the little phial.
"Love," he said with hatred, as if someone could hear him and answer,
"to call this baseness love?"  He walked slowly once around the deck,
making up his mind to look for one of those priests and go to
confession, and to receive Holy Communion in the early morning.  For
the first time in a great while, he felt not the right contrition, that
good habit of the spirit, but a personal shame, a crushing humiliation
at the disgraceful nature of what he had to confess.  Folly, folly, at
his age, a married man, running in his mind after that strange woman as
if he were one of those pimple-faced students, yet denying his feelings
to himself, blaming her for everything, and hating his own evil in
her.... He drew a good breath and squared his shoulders when he saw
striding down upon him, cassock flapping, the older, more austere of
the Spanish priests, no doubt taking a constitutional before turning
in.  He stepped in his path a few paces away, and put out an arm in
signal.

"Father..."  he said, and Father Garza stopped before him.

Late next morning Freytag, still sulky and uneasy ax.

sleepless night listening to Hansen's loud quarreling with h mare in
the upper berth, drank coffee alone in the bar.  He was ously hungry
after his spoiled dinner the evening before, but his sentment had
hardened, and he was resolved to ask for a change table before he ate
again.  When he saw the drift of familiar figures beginning the morning
round of the deck, he went to look for the head steward.

The head steward's love of authority was second only to the Captain's.
Freytag expressed his wish to be seated alone for the rest of the
voyage in the easy tone of a man reserving a table in a restaurant with
the headwaiter.  The head steward consulted his seating chart as if
there might be some doubt in the matter.  Then he tapped his palm with
the head of his pencil and said, most politely, "Mein Herr, there will
be no difficulty.  In fact, it has already been arranged for you, I am
happy to say."

"Arranged?"  repeated Freytag, and stopped himself just in time from
asking "Who arranged it?"

"Your request made to the purser was conveyed to me, sir," said the
head steward, in a voice full of respect, his face full of guarded
insolence.  Freytag said at once, "Thank you," and turned away.  He
felt quite light and hollow with rage, and hardly knew how he reached
the upper deck again; when that doleful little Baumgartner family, with
its sickroom air, walking in a huddle, murmured among themselves at him
"Guten Morgen... Gruss Gott... Haben Sic gut geschlafen?"  he rudely
passed them by, and hurt their feelings badly, and never knew it, and
would not have cared if he had known; such abject bores did not really
exist, they had no right to feelings.  Or at least, no right to intrude
them on him.  He thought he could trace the snail's trail of events
quite clearly; there was nothing subtle about either that pig Rieber or
that half-witted rat de Lizzi; they would go to the purser, or even
straight to the Captain himself; the Captain would do the rest, at the
proper godlike distance- oh it was all plain enough!  Except for
certain details, it was not even anything new, not the first time since
he married Mary that he had been refused a table in places where before
he had been welcome.  But this never had happened except when Mary was
with him.  Smart and beautiful and golden and trim and smiling a
little, eyes averted, Mary would stand beside him in silence while the
headwaiter explained that he was

sorry, but there was no record of a reservation: "Our mistake, no
doubt, we regret it deeply, but as you see--" and it was true, every
unoccupied table in the place would have a large card saying:
"Reserved."  He would rage and storm along the street and in taxicabs
and back at home, but Mary never lost her strange patience.  "I am used
to it," she told him, "and you are not.  But didn't I tell you my love
how it would be?  I know where We may go and where not, please will you
not listen to me?"

"I will listen, Mary,"."  he promised her now.  "If you can't come with
me, I will go with you!"

At lunch Freytag advanced into the dining room without hesitation, as
if he knew where he was going.  A steward ran towards him as if he were
heading him off, and in a wheedling murmur directed him towards a small
table set near the service entrance against a blank wall, where,
Freytag had noticed a good while ago, the Jew Herr Lowenthal sat by
himself.  He was sitting by himself at that moment.  The steward bowed
HerrFreytag to his chair, drew it out, seated him, unfolded his napkin
and handed it to him, and offered him the lunch card before Herr
Lowenthal finished choosing his own lunch and glanced up.  "Good
afternoon," he said, in the tone of a man in the door of his own house
greeting a stranger, perhaps a dubious one.

"Good afternoon," said Freytag, with neutral blandness, considering
that he had fought this battle out with himself, and was going to
control the situation by sheer calm and will power.  "I hope I am not
intruding."

"And could we help it if you were?"  asked Lowenthal, raising his
shoulders and eyebrows.  "Did anybody ask us?"  He did not seem
offended, but merely was mentioning an obvious fact.

Freytag's raw nerves prickled.  "I asked the head steward for a table
by myself," he said, in a carefully easy tone.  "There has been some
mistake."  He could not help seeing at much too close a range Herr
Lowenthal's smooth oily face, his large heavy lids over chocolate
colored lightless eyes, the unpleasantly thick mobile lips that
squirmed as he chewed or talked.  Freytag knew the type too well-
overfamiliar if you made the mistake of being pleasant to him; loud and
insolent if he suspected timidity in you; sly and cringing if you knew
how to put him in his place.  No, this one won't very well do as the
hero of a Cause, Freytag decided.  He's not the one all the row is
about.  Even other kinds of Jews don't like him.  He's the kind that
comes to the

side door peddling trash; Mary's mother would set the dog on him!  He
recalled all the queer comic names the Jews made up for each other,
names of contempt and ridicule, and the worst of them were meant for
fellows like this.

Lowenthal was looking about him with skeptical eyes, a sour twist on
his mouth.  "You didn't look around before you asked?  Where did you
see a free table?"

Freytag, to his intense irritation, found himself answering earnestly,
'q-'here is one on the far side, near a porthole."

"That is for that big raw German boy with the sick uncle," said
Lowenthal.  "Only he's like a prisoner yet; and there's that Condesa,
only not for days now; and that American shicksa, the widow--she never
misses!  What I mean is, you got to sit with somebody--so why not
somebody else?  Why me?  Why not one of the ladies, or that boy you
won't have to see much?"

"The purser used his own judgment, I expect," said Freytag, "such as it
is."

A sarcastic grin positively discomposed Herr Lowenthal's features.  "At
the Captain's table?"  he asked unbelievingly.  "And you want to be
moved?  Only Allrigbtniks eat with the Captain-so you don't appreciate
all that high society."; Well, excuse me, no kikes wanted, hein?  So we
are in the same boat, hein?  No, no, don't tell me, let me guess!"

Here it comes again, from the other side, thought Freytag, in a second
of pure panic.  I can't sit here, either.  His stomach squeezed into a
tight knot, his right hand clenched until he forced it to open to pick
up the lunch card.  "Vegetable broth, salmon with cucumber," he told
the waiter, and then added in nearly the same tone to Lowenthal, "I am
almost sorry to have to say it, sorry for my own personal reasons, but
you are mistaken, if I understand what you seem to be saying.  I am not
a Jew."

Varying contradictory expressions rippled over Lowenthal's face like
pond water on a windy day.  "Something new every moment," he said, at
last, "that I should live to hear this from a Krist!"  The waiter set
before him a plate of hard-boiled eggs and raw cabbage salad.  He took
half an egg in his mouth, added a heap of cabbage, and chewing a while,
went on: "You don't have to say it to me.  What you want to do about
that is positively your business, I got nothing to add.  There's been
times when I was tempted, God forbid, to say it myself.  But I couldn't
get away with it--not with this map.  Why, babies barely

able to talk yell "Sheeny' at a hundred feet.  I will say this, you
don't look it-- I got a sharp eye, and I never took you for one of the
Chosen People, and that's a fact.  But in Germany there's all this
mixed marriage, good Jewish boys chasing out after these towheaded
shicksas, they should be ashamed, so a lot of us look more like the
blockheads than we should.  In Germany you see Jews with no back head
already, and that's not natural.  Plenty of the lowest-down
anti-Semites I know don't have to look further back than their
grandfather to find the good old blood... but they don't look if they
can help it-"

Freytag, trying to eat, nodded pleasantly as if in agreement. LOwenthal
was doing all the talking, and that made the right appearance.  Freytag
was seated with his back to most of the room; if he had turned his head
halfway round he could have looked directly at the Captain's table,
though a good distance away.  He felt that he was the object of stares,
whispers, scandals, mean bits of gossip; let them see then that he was
listening to Herr Lowenthal's talk with amiable interest, nothing in
the least disagreeable or even conspicuous was to happen; he intended
to preserve the very best of appearances to the end.  Sitting there
feeling as if the blood were about to burst through his pores,
suffering the tortures of a prisoner being crushed in the boot, he
listened to Lowenthal.

"Sometimes it gets tough, I don't have to tell you," he went on, "but I
don't know--I don't know," he said with a sudden deep sigh, "if I could
turn on my own people... I'd feel strange, being taken for anything
else.  Why, what else could I be?"  He seemed bewildered, as if he had
never thought of this before.  "But as I say, if you've got your
reasons, and you can get away with it, why, I don't blame you.  Me, I'm
a Jew, and if sometimes I think that's hard luck, why I just try to
imagine being a Goy.  Yarrrr," he ended, with a look of nausea.

Freytag's tone was so patient it visibly roused Lowenthal's resentment.
"My wife is Jewish," he said, "but I am not."  Being under compulsion
to keep the talk going for the mere look of the thing, he decided he
might as well bring the question out in the open.  "She belongs to one
of the very oldest Jewish families..."

Lowenthal's manner changed again at this.  His mouth pouched out and
down at the corners, he expressed disgust and disapprobation all over
his face, his very ears moved, and he said rudely, "All Jewish families
are old.  Everybody descended from Abraham, at least.  Question is, was
her family Orthodox?"

"No, Reformed, for the last two or three generations."

"Jewish boys can marry Gentiles, that's all right, who cares, what does
it matter?"  said Lowenthal, shrugging.  "But a nice Jewish girl to
marry a Goy!  Tell me, what kind of a family is it?"

"Rich," said Freytag, "most of them.  Father a lawyer.  Dead now.  Two
rabbi grandfathers!"  he boasted to this poor thing before him
descended obviously from a long line of peddlers.

' Fhat makes it worse," said Lowenthal.  "A low-life woman running out
I can understand, for her it's too good, maybe, but a girl from a
rabbinical family--that I can't take!"  He leaned forward and said in a
deliberately loud voice he hoped might be heard at the nearest tables,
or at least by the waiter: "That's the kind of Jewish girl that makes
disgrace for all the rest of us.  Any Jewish girl marries out of her
religion ought to have her head examined!... I never laid a finger on a
Gentile woman in my life, and the thought of touching one makes me
sick; why can't you Goyim leave our girls alone, isn't your own kind
good enough for you?... When I want woman company, I look for Jewish!
When I got any money to spend for an evening I take out a good Jewish
girl who appreciates it; and when I marry, I marry Jewish- and nothing
else do I understand!  Be ashamed, Herr Freytag -when you wrong a
Jewish girl, you wrong the whole race.  , ,

"Shut your foul mouth!"  said Freytag with odd ferocity, "or I'll knock
you away from this table!"  His whole body prepared itself instantly to
deliver the blow, yet stopped in time, arrested by Lowenthal's sudden
silence, and complete stillness.

He was not intimidated; he was aware, attentive, and ready; he did not
even seem surprised at Freytag's sudden violence.  Freytag, horrified
at what he had almost done, searched Lowenthal's face.  It was
curiously impassive, ffrave, the only sign of strain the twitching of
the small muscles around the eyes, which regarded Freytag with a look
very near curiosity, as if he were a species of animal it was necessary
to understand to learn to handle.

Lowenthal broke the silence and in some sort the tension by asking one
of: his perpetual questions that was no question at all, but a
statement; and his voice was reasonable: "Look, let me ask you one
thing--what did I ever do to you?  To you, or any of yours?  What did I
ask of this trip but only to get through it without trouble, or making
trouble for anybody?  Did I ask you to come here?  This table

they sat me down to by myself without asking me; where do I sit if not
here They put me here by myself because I am the only Jew -why then
must a Gentile come pushing in and make threats because we don't agree
on religion Why must..."

Freytag said, "Wait a moment.  Let me explain..."  Haltingly, bitterly,
he tried to tell what had happened at the Captain's table, and he
added, "It was the insult to my wife I could not endure... then I come
here, and you..."

"It is not insult to say a Jewish girl should not forsake her people,"
said Lowenthal, still in his reasonable tone.  "What I do not dream is
insult."  And Freytag saw that in that closed mind there was not one
trace of sympathy or understanding of his plight, or Mary's.  He gave
up in defeat, and at once felt stronger: it was not defeat at all, he
would simply move the whole question to another ground and go on
fighting from there.  He admitted his errors; he had been wrong all the
way, he had talked stupidly to stupid people, and he was being nicely
paid out for it.  He would take another grip on his affairs, and keep
his mouth shut.

"I am very sorry I lost my temper," he said, handsomely, leaning
forward a little stiffly.  "I wish to offer you my apology."

There was a short pause, during which Freytag felt cold sweat forming
on his forehead.  Lowenthal wiped his mouth with his napkin, and leaned
forward a little too, with an expectant air.  He said nothing.  Freytag
pulled himself together.

"I have said, I should like to apologize," he repeated, very formally.
"Well, then," said Lowenthal, matter-of-factly, "why don't you?  I'm
waiting to hear what you've got to say."

"No dessert, please," said Freytag to the waiter, hovering over them.
He got up, and nodded slightly to his table companion.  "I've said it,"
he remarked, almost cheerfully, "all I'm going to say."  And he took
himself out of the dining room at the proper speed without a glance
around him.

Captain Thiele, having, in the Freytag crisis, improved his opportunity
to perform still another of those little acts of authority which mount
up finally into a base of solid power, showed up for his midday meal
with an air not exactly of good humor so much as a kind of mollified
ill-temper.  He could do no better.  His big clean cotton napkin
snapped like a flag as he unfurled it and tucked it under his collar.
He

stretched his neck, turning his chin from side to side until his
wattles were comfortably disposed, and his gaze ran around his circle
of guests as if expecting their gratitude.  With a tight smile full of
crafty meanings, and a busy series of stiff nods, he said, "I am sure
you are all much more comfortable now that we are less crowded and
there are no discordant elements.  Now," he said, lifting his right
hand as if blessing them, "I have got rid of that person who was here
under false pretenses, and we are all the right sort of people
together.  I hope we shall enjoy the rest of our voyage."

The circle applauded this graceful little speech, patting their palms
together with genteel restraint, smiling at the Captain until their
cheekbones rose, their eyes narrowed and foxy.

"The test of true strength," remarked Herr Professor Hutten, "is in
action, sudden, decisive and, naturally, successful action, perfectly
timed, directed, and taking the enemy by surprise.  In this case, my
dear Captain, any hesitation on your part--and may I say, that is quite
unimaginable- would have resulted in a state of affairs false to our
true spirit, and weakening to the whole fabric of our society.  It
might seem quite an unimportant incident," he went on, earnestly, to
his listeners, "but it is these apparently minor decisions that help to
remind us most clearly of our principles, and to see whether or not we
are in harmony with the great pattern of our tradition..."

"And so tactfully done, too," said Frau Rittersdorf.  "Naturally! 
After all, style, manner, ah, how very important they are."

The Captain smirked and shook his head gallantly at Frau Rittersdorf,
who, encouraged, was about to speak again, when Lizzi leaned over,
stretched her long thin arms towards him and patted him rapidly,
violently on the arm.  "You were wonderful the way you received us
yesterday evening--" She glanced at Herr Rieber, who smiled until his
eyes almost disappeared.  "You are always wonderful, but with one word-
one!  to end as you did this horrid business that was worrying all of
us. I envy such power!"

The circle applauded again, and from the Spanish dancers' table, some
little distance away, but still too near to please the Captain, Manolo
said in a low but carrying voice: "I know!  They have thrown out that
Jew and are celebrating.  Well, let us celebrate too!"

"Bravo!"  called Amparo, clapping her hands and smiling and trying to
attract the Captain's attention.  Instead of looking their way, he
frowned straight ahead of him.  "Bravo!"  all of them called to him,

softly.  Ric and Rac beat on the table with their knife handles and
were Instantly quelled on all sides by the others, who still smiled and
fluttered their fingers towards the Captain's table.

"What business possibly can it be of theirs?"  he inquired at random,
scowling.  "Do you suppose they have been eavesdropping, or have picked
up some gossip which makes them venture on such liberties?"

' Those tramps," said Herr Reber, severely.  "Except for the ladies
present, I would name them more exactly.  But what do you expect of
them, after all?  Gypsies!"

"Gypsies?  With those beaks?"  asked Lizzi.

"Why not?"  asked Herr Rieber.  "They are supposed to be a rem nan of
the lost tribes of Israel..."

"That notion, I believe," began Herr Professor Hutten, "has been
relegated to the domain of myth, or folklore..."

"They are Catholics," ventured little Frau Schmitt, happy to contribute
something to this animated conversation.

"Just very low-class Spaniards masquerading as something else," said
the Captain, firmly.  "In my home place, we have a saying, "Scratch a
Spaniard, bleed a Moor'; which says all!"

At this moment Dr.  Schumann joined them, and they greeted him as if he
were returning from a long absence.  He was amiable and distant, said
to the waiter, "Just a little clear soup, please, and coffee."  When
Frau Hutten said to him, '"We have missed you!"  with the new tone of
familiar friendship established in his absence, he inclined his head
towards her, but in some surprise.  "Now," she went on, including the
Doctor in the charmed circle, "we are just seven-seven, for good
luck."

This was the kind of puerile nonsense her husband had never been able
wholly to eradicate from her mind, and had long ago learned to pretend
not to notice.  He now addressed the Captain: "Such as They," he
pronounced, nodding towards the spot where Wilhelm Freytag was seated
with Herr Lowenthal, "such as They should have special quarters on
ships and other public conveyances.  They should not be allowed the run
of things, annoying other people."

"But yesterday you seemed to defend them, I was astonished," said Frau
Rittersdorf.

"I was defending nothing, dear lady--I spoke in the light of the
history and the religious superstitions of an ancient people; I find
them

remarkably interesting, but I must say, their descendants a good deal
less so, do you agree, my Captain?"

"Let me say at once that if I had my way in the matter," said the
Captain, "I should not allow one even on board my ship at all, not even
in the steerage.  They pollute the air."

He closed his eyes, opened his mouth, turned the point of his large
spoon spilling over the thick pea soup and fried crusts towards him,
plunged it deeply into his mouth, clamped his lips over it and drew the
spoon out empty, chewed once, gulped, and instantly set about repeating
the performance.  The others, except Dr.  Schumann, who drank his broth
from a cup, leaned over their plates also, and there was silence for a
time except for gurgling, lapping noises while everybody waded into the
soup, and stillness except for the irregular rhythm of heads dipping
and rising.  The ring was closed solidly against all undesirables, ally
as well as enemy.  All the faces were relaxed with sensual
gratification, mingled with deep complacency: they were, after all,
themselves and no one else: the powerful, the privileged, the right
people.  The edge being taken off appetite, they fell to being charming
to each other, with elegant gestures, and exaggerated movements of
their features, as though they were in a play; making a little festival
to celebrate their rediscovered kinship, their special intimate bonds
of blood and sympathy.  Under the gaze of aliens as they believed--in
fact no one, not even the Spaniards, was paying any attention to
them--they set an example of how superior persons conduct themselves
towards each other.  Herr Professor Hutten ordered wine and they
exchanged toasts all around.  They smacked their lips and said, "Ja,
ja!"

Even little Frau Schmitt, who had wept when the Captain chastised her
publicly, though for her own good, and who suffered at the very thought
of the miseries of the world; who wished only to love and to be loved
by everybody; who shed tears with sick animals and unhappy children,
now felt herself a part of this soothing yet strengthening fellowship.
After all, no matter how right her sympathies may have been, she was
wrong to talk with that American Herr Scott about the poor woodcarver
in the steerage.  The memory of the Captain's rebuke, so well merited,
she now accepted with pride, and it gave her courage.  For a moment she
forgot her long life of petty humiliations, her fear of her superiors,
her feeling that she was only a humble poor

woman -even if a teacher and a professor's wife N that the butcher
could cheat and the clerks in shops could snub: a creature of no
importance that anyone could impose upon.  No more of this!  She was
tired of being crowded and fobbed off with the second choice in
everything.  She glanced at Frau Rittersdorf with narrowed eyes, and
resolved that she would claim her rights in the cabin.  She would teach
that woman a lesson!  Her heart expanded, and swam easily on the warm
wave of blood kinship with her great and glorious race, even though she
might be its smallest, its least considerable member.  Yet, observe her
many privileges.

She continued to beam mildly at the Captain, adoring him because he was
stern, strong, relentless, instant in administering justice, a visible
present incarnation of the mystical male force which rules not only the
earth and all its creatures but indeed, as God the Father, the
universe.  On every face around her she thought she saw the same
reflected light of glory.

She spoke.  "After all, my Captain, one must often do severe things in
self-defense?"

"Defense?"  the Captain echoed briskly.  "What nonsense, my dear Frau
Schmitt.  To put people in their proper places and keep them there
cannot be called severity, nor defense.  It is merely observing and
carrying out the natural order of things."

She winced but managed to smile bravely.  "Wrong, I am always wrong,"
she murmured.  The Captain gave her a sharp little grimace of approval-
women were almost first among those who must be kept in their place.
She warmed and palpitated under the male dominance of his eyes; still
smiling, she bowed her smooth little head and took a mouthful of
Hasenpfeffer.

Herr Rieber, after the first few moments of merriment, began to grow
more and more thoughtful.  As he ate, the cold sweat formed on his
temples; it collected in small rivulets on his bald head and ran into
his collar.  His breath began to come short and agitate his tight round
stomach.  He stopped eating and pushed back his plate, thinking hard,
his underlip pursed out like a sulky child's.  Wriggling a little, he
wiped his face and head with his napkin and stuffed it in his pocket.
Taking it out again at once he folded it neatly as if he were at home,
crossed his knife and fork carefully; knife across, fork up and down;
his grandmother had taught him he must leave the

sign of the Cross on his empty plate as a mark of gratitude to Our
Lord for his food, and he never forgot.

"Please excuse me," he muttered in fussy haste, sidling away and
breaking into a short-legged canter as he neared the stairway.  Action,
quick decisive- yes, the Herr Professor was right.  And he, Siegfried
Rieber, had through his own carelessness, yes through his own weakness,
allowed himself to be put in a false position on this ship, unworthy of
his dignity as a German: he was sharing his cabin with Lowenthal, and
this should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.  It
was an inexcusable offense against that natural order of things which
he, as well as the Captain, was bound to obey and to see that others
obeyed.  What could people have been thinking about him all this time?
That he was perhaps privately fraternizing with that Jew, treating him
as an equal?  Herr Rieber was as embarrassed and confused as he
remembered to have been in nightmares, where he found himself in a
public place, in a crowd, conspicuous for his nakedness in a clothed
world; or worse, found himself hideously exposed in some grotesque
forbidden act which had drawn upon him the condemnation of a horde of
ghostly spectators, not one face of which he recognized, though they
every one knew him well, all his vileness, his shameful history... Ach,
Gott!  ach Gott!  he told himself, speeding up as he approached the
purser's office, this can't go on, no, no- this must be set right at
once, all this must be changed now!

The purser was leaning back in his deep chair eating a large piece of
spice cake he had brought away from the table, a third piece of cake he
had seized guiltily as he was leaving.  He was enormously fat and
getting fatter all the time, and hunger gnawed his vitals night and
day.  When he saw Herr Rieber peering in upon him, he made a motion to
hide the cake under some papers, thought better of it and stuffed the
whole chunk in his mouth.

"Come in, then," he said grumpily, blowing cake crumbs and choking on
his mouthful.  He swallowed heavily twice and repeated, "Well, come in,
please," with some emphasis on the last word.  He felt undernourished
and regretted his cake.  He had meant to enjoy it slowly, and he
resented Herr Rieber's intrusion.  He had never liked the fellow
anyway, from the very first day out, and he resolved to do as little as
he could for him, no matter what his business.

Herr Rieber went at once to the point.  The purser, he was sure, would
see the situation at once and clearly.  "I have felt the honor of being
seated at the Captain's table," he said.  The Captain is a man very
particular in his choice of company.  If he will not allow a Jew to sit
there in his presence, why then must I share my cabin with one?  I must
ask you to regulate this mistake at once."

"He is not a Jew," said the purser mildly.  "It's his wife.  I have
heard about it."  He pretended to be, if not exactly sympathetic, at
least willing to fulfill his duties as purser, part of which consisted
of listening to the complaints of fellows like this one.  He must not
give the little nuisance any cause for thinking he was being neglected.
"You are right.  I shall see what can be done.  There is only one
proper place for Freytag, of course; with Lowenthal.  If I had known, I
would gladly have made that arrangement.  But I think now," said the
purser, "in the present case, we shall have to ask Herr Arne Hansen to
change into the cabin with you, since he is now quartered with
Freytag."

Herr Rieber heard a dim roaring in his ears at these words.  "Hansen
no!"  he almost shouted, then lowered his voice.  "No, that would be
almost as bad."

"Why?"  asked the purser, who knew why.  Hansen and Rieber had disliked
and avoided each other ever since the first day on deck, when they had
some sort of silly argument over deck chairs.  The purser took no
interest in this kind of nonsense--it was merely part of his job to
know such things.  Herr Rieber said, "That is a fellow I would not want
to have around me, that's all."

"Well, leave it to me," said the purser, "I will see what can be done.
Come back in an hour, please."

Promptly Herr Rieber returned and the purser, looking very cheerful,
had only bad news.  Merely for the sake of leaving nothing undone, he
had spoken to Herr Hansen about Herr Rieber's predicament.  "After
all," said the purser, soothingly, "a Swede is at least a human being."
"Not that one," said Herr Rieber, gloomily.  However, Herr Hansen was
not uncomfortable, in fact he expressed very friendly feelings for Herr
Freytag, and would remain where he was--so that part was settled.  But
if Herr Rieber would be willing to move into a cabin with three
occupants, no doubt Mister Denny or Mister Scott would be willing to go
with Lowenthal, and Herr tie her could then share the cabin with one or
the other and Herr Glocken the hunchback.  Herr Rieber objected
violently.  "No, I could never do that!"

Very well.  Then let Herr Glocken move in with Herr Hansen, who would
never refuse, the purser was certain.  Then Freytag could move in with
Lowenthal, and Herr Rieber could move in with Mister Scott and Mister
Denny.  Herr Rieber thought this over for a while, and at last with
deep reluctance decided that such an arrangement might be the least
objectionable of the whole series of painful choices.  Considering the
change as good as made, he went to pack his belongings.

Lowenthal was not there; he had got in the habit of spending all but
his sleeping hours on deck.  When Herr Rieber returned once more to the
purser's office, he received a brutal setback.

Under no circumstances whatever, said the purser, evidently repeating
verbatim, would Mister Denny or Mister Scott consent to any change at
all.  Herr Glocken, they said, was a very small man who took up almost
no room, they were used to him and he to them, they were nicely shaken
down and doing fine and saw no reason to disturb themselves.

The purser then leaned towards Herr Rieber and said in an insinuating
manner: "Let me tell you they were really anything but agreeable,

oh, I don't mean angry, or anything of that sort- no, just the
opposite.

You must have heard Americans make fun of people--you know,

they always laugh.  That makes it worse.  Well, that Scott fellow said
something in American slang, I think, I couldn't understand it, but at
any rate they both laughed- a jeer it is, you know, not really a laugh,
and it freezes the blood.  I should try to kill anyone who laughed at
me like that!  well at any rate, you don't want to get in there with
them.  God knows what would happen.  I do not trust Americans

-they all have Indian, or Negro, or Jewish blood- mongrels and savages.
They kidnap little children for money, and then murder them,"

said the purser, on the verge suddenly of tears.  "Imagine, even if you
give the money, they murder them just the same!"

Herr Rieber, who had been listening with his whole head on fire,

watching the purser's face with intent blinking eyes, was outraged by
this sudden detour from the subject.  He suspected the purser of all
evil.  It was no time to be sniveling over kidnapped children-
Americans at that!  No doubt he was in collusion with Freytag, who was
determined with the effrontery of his race to push himself in among his
betters whether they wanted him or not; for though Herr Rieber knew the
facts, he would not admit that Freytag was a Christian.  He had married
a Jew and he was a Jew, that settled it... or maybe

he was in criminal conspiracy with those foul Americans, who were
probably part Jewish themselves.  As for Arne Hansen, that big nose of
his was not Nordic, let him call himself a Swede if he liked.  The
purser, at any rate, was clearly a traitor with Jewish sympathies
himself; perhaps that Lowenthal had bribed him in the first place for
the privilege of sharing a cabin with a German, Herr Rieber fumed
himself into a fury, his face swelled and grew scarlet, and he shouted
at the purser, "So I am to be called names and laughed at by those
guttersnipes and you do not say one word to them?"

"What shall I say?"  asked the purser.  "I am not responsible for their
manners.

"You let them insult Germans on a German boat, do you?  Well, the
Captain shall hear of this, we'll see what he has to say to such
goings-on on his ship."

The purser raised one hand mildly.  "I advise you earnestly not to
mention any business of mine to the Captain," he said.  "Take my word,
you will find he does not take kindly to any passenger mingling in the
affairs of the ship.  I say this to spare you embarrassment," he added,
kindly.  And indeed, Herr Rieber seemed to be subsiding into something
like despair.  "They talk, they do stupid things, what do we care?"
asked the purser, largely, and somewhat vaguely.  "Try to control
yourself, Herr Rieber, this is not such a bad situation, it will all
end in a few days!  Things can't be settled in a day!"  he reminded
him, with an air of discovery.  "We may yet think of something.  Now
come," he said, with fatherly cordiality, "let's have a good glass of
beer, and ideas may occur to us."  Herr Rieber revived a little at
this, and seemed willing to cultivate patience for a time.

The purser heaved himself up and stood, breathing heavily.  It was the
hour for his nap, and yet he must be humoring this fool.  He said
politely, "Let us go," and restrained, no doubt to his own permanent
moral injury, a very pure, laudable impulse to spread his huge fat hand
over Herr Rieber's red, sweating face and push, hard.

It was Mrs.  Treadwell's birthday, not the first she had spent alone on
a train or a ship; she was feeling her age, forty-six, as a downright
affront to her aesthetic sense.  All the forties were dull-sounding
numbers, but forty-six was so hopelessly middle-aged, so much too late
to die young, so much too early to think of death at all.  The last day
of August was a nondescript time to be born, anyway the coarsened,

sprawling sunburnt afternoon of summer, not becoming to her at all;
and yet, here she was arrived at that age in human life supposed most
to resemble this insect-riddled month... when nothing blooms but weeds
in earth, and the soul puts out rank growths, too, according to dreary
popular opinion.  The lower instincts take alarm for fear they have
missed something, are hot for marginal enjoyments.  Hearts grow hard
and cold, they say, or go overripe and pulpy; women especially, one is
told, so often lose their modesty, their grace.  They become shrill, or
run to fat, or turn to bean poles take to secret drinking or nagging
their husbands; they get tangled up in disreputable love affairs; they
marry men too young for them and get just what they deserve; if they
have a little money, they attract every species of parasite, and
Lesbians lurk in the offing, waiting for loneliness and fear to do
their work; oh, it is all enough to scare anybody, said Mrs. Treadwell,
shaking her head and taking up her magazine again.

She was half reclining in her deck chair, partly reading an old copy of
Illustration in a comfortable drowse, partly thinking about her age,
which had never really worried her before, when without any warning at
all she felt Time itself as a great spider spinning a thick dusty web
around her life, winding and winding until it covered all- the light is
shut out and the pulse shrivels and the breath is slowly smothered
off--Death, death!  she said, and her fright was as simple and
overwhelming as her fear of the dark when a child.  Oh how absurd, she
told herself, and stood up, throwing aside the magazine, remembering
how her elders talked long ago some pleasant nonsense about growing old
gracefully; she had told them firmly then and there that she was never
going to grow old at all, no matter how gracefully.  And she had
believed it-that was what being a child meant.  But had she grown up at
all, then?  Had she simply gone without knowing it from childhood to
age, without ever becoming- unattractive word" mature Well, everybody
knows that melancholy brooding and a tendency to dwell in the past are
most certain signs of growing old.  She left her chair and walked to
the rail- such a little ship, like a prison almost, so few places to
go- and leaned there breathing in the sweet cool wind, assuring herself
that this late-summer day in mid-Atlantic was not going so badly--she
could easily remember worse birthdays.  The heat was lessening
gradually, the sunshine was paler; for the past two evenings great
motionless columns of cloud had reared up and shone red over the far
waters, full of muttering thunder and broad

slow lightnings; they were beginning to form again, on a sky-filling
scale.  "I wish I knew somebody to watch clouds with," she said, and
decided that she did not want a cocktail before dinner.

The thought of dinner reminded her of her tiresome cabin mate Lizzi
Spockenkieker, who had gone on excitedly making great mystification
about something that had happened in the dining salon, something about
a most significant change in seating arrangements.  "But it happened
yesterday!"  cried Lizzi.  "I was waiting for you to speak!"

"What about, though?"  asked Mrs.  Treadwell, idly, not caring.  "What,
you really did not see anything?"  demanded Lizzi.  "And something so
much before your very eyes?"

"I didn't look," said Mrs.  Treadwell.

"I am dying to tell you, but no, you must find out for yourself."

"Does it really concern me, or am I supposed to be peeping?"  asked
Mrs.  Treadwell.

"It concerns all of us," said Lizzi in an exalted lilting voice.  "It
is something so wonderful it makes me happy and I want to laugh."  She
did laugh and Mrs.  Treadwell heard it wondering, thinking that if a
hyena suffered from hysteria it would laugh like that.  This was the
moment she had left the cabin and decided on fresh air and the French
magazine for the rest of the afternoon.  What had Lizzi called out to
her as she closed the door after her?  "Ask Herr Freytag -he'll know."
In remembering it, Mrs.  Treadwell heard an insinuation in the tone she
had not noticed before.  Why not then look for Herr Freytag, who had
been quite pleasant during their hour in Havana over the planter's
punch, hear the newest scandal over cocktails, ask the band to play
"Ich bin die fesche Lola," and maybe even dance a little after dinner?
She began a search which ended in one of the writing rooms, with
Freytag just getting up from a desk with a sealed envelope in his hand.
He stood stock-still at sight of her, but she spoke too quickly, before
she had got a clear sight of his face.

"Do come out and watch the clouds with me," she said.  "This is my
birthday."

He came towards her, pale and frowning, and asked in utter incredulity,
"What did you say?"

"Well, what have I said?"  she asked.  "Herr Freytag, what is wrong?"

"Mrs.  Treadwell, will you please tell me what you want?  What are you
doing here, after your mean treachery to me, betraying my confidence,
gossiping about my wife to that hag Spockenkieker, making me all this
stupid trouble... ?"

His words were exploding in hot puffs of breath in her very face; she
shrank and began to tremble, not for fear but for dismay of conscience,
for she remembered everything and knew what Freytag was talking about,
saw that she had fallen into the trap Lizzi had set for her.  "Oh, tell
me what has happened," she said, in a low shaking voice, and she spread
her two hands flat, palms out, before her breast.  "She said you would
know!"

"How stupidly cruel you are!"  he burst out again, incandescent with
fury.  "Do you mean to ridicule me besides what you have already done?
Can you pretend--look, don't you know that I that---" he stumbled on
the brink of a foul name for Lizzi, drew back-- "that she babbled at
the table before everybody, how you were drunk..."

Mrs.  Treadwell sat with a slight stagger on the nearest chair, holding
her head.

" Drunk and oh shame on you repeated what I had told you in
confidence... and that swine of a Captain, that stinking swine--"

"Don't call ugly names," said Mrs.  Treadwell, raising her voice a
little, shaking her head as if she could rid her ears of his clamor.
"And I was not drunk, that is a slander-"

"He is not only a swine, but the worst sort of swine, the
self-satisfied swine who cultivates and loves his own swinish ness he
boasts of it, he imposes it on those around him; he thinks and talks
like a swine, he gobbles and guzzles like a swine, he is swinish ness
itself, he would look much better and be more comfortable on four
feet-"

Mrs.  Treadwell stood up again and put her hands over her ears.  "I
won't listen any more," she called through the words pouring like a
rock slide "unless you tell me what he did."

"He put me at the table with the Jew!"  shouted Freytag in a climactic
mystical spin of outrage, and stopped as if a hand had been laid on his
mouth.

"Is that so bad?"  asked Mrs.  Treadwell, gently, as if she were
humoring a madman.  "Do you really mind?"

Freytag, still furious and colorless, quieted somewhat, but stuck to
his point, which was to force her to see, acknowledge, and accept the
fact that she was to blame for the whole thing.  She could sidestep and
throw him off track as long as she liked, but he was going to tell her
the facts.

"What I mind is your treachery," he said.  "The Captain meant to
insult me, and to insult my wife through me, but he cannot insult us.
He is capable only of impudence, the filthy-"

"No," said Mrs.  Treadwell, shaking her head, "not that again."

"If you had been a dear friend," Freytag said, his voice now hoarsened
and full of pathos, "or a member of my family, or anyone I had loved
and trusted, what you did would not have surprised me.  But how could I
expect such treachery, such malice, from a stranger?"

Mrs.  Treadwell was silent as a prisoner on trial, turning this
unanswerable question over in her mind rather coldly, wishing the talk
might end, but knowing it must go on until the suffering man, her
accuser, had cleared his mind of her.

"Of course I do not mind Lowenthal, and I am sure he does not mind me,"
said Freytag, and was hypnotized almost into calm by the quite
civilized relationship he began inventing between Lowenthal and
himself.  "We would probably bore each other to death if we tried to
talk, so I imagine we won't try it.  He is obviously of low origin, but
I prefer him to the Captain and that dull crowd at his table --at least
he has decent feelings and--" he hesitated a moment' and really, quite
good manners--"

Here he paused, unable to go on with his fiction.  Mrs.  Treadwell had
sat down again, and was listening intently.  Freytag sat down too, and
leaned towards her to speak again, when she said, "But he sounds rather
nice!"

Freytag seemed to collapse as if he could no longer contest with such
an impermeable being.  "My God, nice!"  he said finally.  "No, he is
not nice, and I don't like him, and not because he is a Jew; if he were
seven times a Christian I should still not like him because he is the
kind of man I don't like.  Can you understand that?"  he asked her with
some curiosity, as if he were trying out a strange language on her. "It
is true, he is not even the kind of Jew I like, or is that going too
far?"

Mrs.  Treadwell heard the stagy sarcasm and decided she had let him be
rude long enough, out of deference to his sense of wrong against her.
Now she went back to the subject.

"I can't defend myself at all," she told him, choosing her words.  "But
why did you give me your confidence?  I did not want it.  I did not
even imagine it was a confidence.  If you had told me--but you accuse
me of such ignoble motives--" She stammered, repelled by

the almost unbearable, shameless pathos in the now puzzled mournful
anger of his face.  He looked as if his teeth were on edge; he had
frowned until a new set of wrinkles was already fixed between his
eyebrows.  He looked as moody as Arne Hansen.  He now turned this
alienated face straight to her as if it helped him listen better, but
the pale gray eyes with their sick look avoided hers at last.

"... not because I had any motive," she went on, rapidly, "but exactly
because I hadn't.  I wasn't your friend, how could I be?  If I had been
your friend I would have known about your life and there would be no
occasion to talk about it to anybody.  What did you expect of me?  I
was not your enemy either.  I just hadn't thought of you at all."

"Thank you," he said, with bitterness.  "you were quite right."

"Don't be childish," said Mrs.  Treadwell.  "I meant nothing personal.
I mean only to say, I didn't know enough about you to guard your
secret- though why you look upon it as one at this point I can't
understand."

Freytag said in perfect simplicity, "When I travel alone, I go as a
Christian.  When my wife is with me, things are different: we never
quite know... maybe you don't know Germany?  Things are very uncertain
there for us, and getting worse..."

"But if your secret was so important to you, why did you give it to
me?"

"It was on my mind, you seemed sympathetic.  I spoke without thinking
of consequences."

"Ah, so did I," said Mrs.  Treadwell, "and I will confess something.  I
had drunk a whole bottle of wine that evening.  Out of boredom, out of
stupor, out of indifference..  "

"You are worse than a treacherous friend," he said suddenly, harshly.
"You are worse than a worst enemy.  Out of your boredom!  What right
have you to be bored?  Indifference--what right have you to live in
this world and care nothing for the human beings around you?  You did a
mean treacherous thing to someone who trusted you and never harmed you,
and then you don't even care- oh you don't even know, what you have
done."

Mrs.  Treadwell felt anger flashing all through her.  She would not be
bullied any longer about this absurd episode.

"You betrayed yourself first," she told him, with a light, glib
inflection, "and you are carrying all this very much too far and you
are

quite wrong.  I do really, with all my heart," she said, wondering at
herself for the phrase, "care about what has happened to you-"

"About what you did," he persisted, maddeningly.  "Remember, it was
you, it was what you did that..."

"I have been amazed enough at myself," she said, "and perhaps you are
right, and you may blame me as much as you please; but you make it easy
for me to be frank with you now and tell you that, yes, you are right
again- I simply do not want to be annoyed with this business, I do not
intend to worry about it at all, and I shall not talk about it any
more."

She rose and turned away a few steps, then faced about again, waiting
for whatever he might want to say.  Surely in such a case, the last
word was his privilege.  She was trembling deeply with resentment; the
face before her was repulsive in its hardened expression of self
absorbed, accusing, utter righteousness.

"With all your heart," he said, "you have no heart.  And you do not
understand what is happening.  It is not just this one thing--no no, it
is a lifetime of it, it is a world full of it--it's not being able ever
to hope for an end to it--It is seeing the one you love best in the
world treated like dirt by people not fit to breathe the same air with
her!  If you could see her, you would know what I am talking about.
Mrs.  Treadwell, she is a little golden thin nervous thing, most
beautiful and gay in the morning, she is innocent, innocent, she makes
life charming where she is, when she talks it is like a bird singing in
a tree!"

He came very near to her and spoke urgently, so near that she could
feel his breath again, his face strained in anxiety, his eyes bright
with tears.  Mrs.  Treadwell, taken terribly by surprise, without in
the least intending to and with no warning from her own feelings, gave
way and consented to see him in his own light, understood his
sufferings as real and terrible, admitted her fault, and took on as a
penance her share not only of this pain but whatever other shapeless,
nameless endless human anguish chose to search her out and accuse her.
She dropped her hands to her sides and retreated a step.  Of course it
was her fault.

"Don't!"  she said.  "Don't say any more.  Listen to me.  Listen to me
for just a moment."  She drew a deep breath.  "I want to be forgiven.
You must try to forgive me."

It was his turn to be surprised, to be reversed with a jolt, rather
unpleasantly.  He had been enjoying the scene, easing the pressure of

his baffled fury on her; he had meant to insult her enough to satisfy
his desire for revenge, and to leave her well cut up without letting
her say a word.  And now almost Instantly, in spite of himself, a
generous warmth of feeling came over him, and he said, "Oh, no, please
not," almost in embarrassment, "don't say it.  I am sorry, too.  We
will have to forgive each other if we go on like this-"

"The thing that is so frightening," said Mrs.  Treadwell, her voice
shaking a little, "is this.  Here we are talking about this as if it
were real, and I expect it is, but it seems to me like a horrid dream,
I cannot believe it-"

"It's real, though," he said, and now he wished to console her.  "Oh
no, surely you are not going to cry?"

"How absurd," said Mrs.  Treadwell, quite in her usual manner.  "I

never cry."  She gave a bubbling little cough and burst into enormous,
helpless tears.  Freytag, with the presence of mind of a married man
used to feminine emergencies, glanced round to see if any witness had
entered the writing room, moved between her and the door to provide a
screen, and offered her a large white linen handkerchief.  "Now, now,"
he said soothingly while she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.  "Oh
that's better.  Do you know what I think?  What do you say we have a
good drink, a big cocktail?"

Mrs.  Treadwell said, "Wait a minute."  She took a little looking glass
and powder puff and lipstick out of her handbag, and for the first time
in her life applied make-up in public.  One witness was as damning as a
crowd.  She did not care.  She was exhausted, serene, unnerved, all at
once, this melodrama was the kind of thing she abhorred oh, the
dowdiness of making scenes, and she did not trust Freytag for a moment,
he was obviously a born scene-maker- yet, no matter how it came about,
she felt just for a moment, knowing even then it could not possibly
last, an airy lightness of heart.  In recklessness, or something like
it, she said, "I'd love a cocktail, a huge one," and they emerged into
the passageway together like two amiable well-disposed persons
apparently on the best of terms.

Freytag said, "I don't know if I am going to be able to sleep tonight,
thinking about what fun it would be to throw the Captain overboard,
drown the little rat off his own bridge.  But I'll resist temptation
now, thanks to you."

"Why I shouldn't mind what you do to the Captain."

"You've cooled my mind, somehow.  I have got to go to Germany and

leave again with my wife and her mother, and that's all I have to
think about, and I must do it without attracting any attention.
Drowning the Captain indeed," he said, "a pleasant daydream, but I
mustn't give way to it.  I must work things out."

When they were seated, he asked, "Is it really your birthday?  Is that
what you said when you came in?"

She nodded.  "The forty-sixth, imagine!"  He was obscurely offended at
her unfeminine frankness, and to hide it, he said, "How charming! 
Many, many more."

"Not too many, please.  I'll let you know if I want another."

He surveyed the bar, now beginning to be crowded.  Jenny Brown and
David Scott, climbing on stools, greeted him Mexican fashion, right
hands raised face-high, palms out, fingers fluttering.  He responded
with the same gesture, and Mrs.  Treadwell said, "I think it's pretty."
Freytag said, "They say it means "Come nearer," and continued to move
his look from face to face, as if he expected each one to notice his
presence, though he had never thought of such a thing before.  The
Lutzes and Baumgartners in turn caught his glance, and nodded to him:
the dullest of all the dull people on board, of course- they probably
wouldn't have worldly sense enough to understand what had happened.
Everybody from the Captain's table was there, apparently unconscious of
his existence.  Those appalling Spaniards, not even they turned an eye
towards him, though one of the girls, the little young Concha, had been
following him about lately, as if she had something on her mind.  Even
the young Cuban pair ignored him, though he had played games with their
small children, tootling on paper flutes, letting them shoot at him
with water pistols, walking around the deck with one straddled on each
shoulder; even the hunchback, even that ridiculous fellow from Texas,
Denny, somehow failed to see him; it did not occur to him to speak to
anybody first, nor did he remember that ordinarily he hoped that his
fellow passengers so-called would keep away from him.

"I forgot," he said, his frown deepening, "but do you want to be seen
with me?  I'm a pariah here, remember."

"Are you sure?  Have you counted your friends?"

"I hadn't got any to begin with that I know of," he said, quickly
irritable.  "It was rather more than enough to be on speaking terms."

"Then why do you care now whether anyone speaks to you or not?"  she
asked, and her feelings were slowly very surely retreating to their

hiding place.  "I have done it again," she reminded herself, and
thought quite coldly, holding the stem of her cocktail glass and fixing
her eyes at a point just under the knot of Herr Freytag's necktie, that
this man was as impossible in his way as that tiresome Denny was in
his.  Still, she added at once, for fear he would suspect her change of
mind and heart, that she had found several pleasant persons on board
--she did not name them- yet it was quite true, she would be as happy
if not a soul even looked at her for the rest of the voyage.

"I don't care at all either," he said, "certainly not.  But remember,
it can be a very different thing when people, and especially people you
despise, suddenly feel themselves capable of snubbing you."

"Quite," she said, and finished her drink and ate the olive.

"Another?"  he asked, and without waiting, "Do please.  I'd like
another."

"Of course," she said.  While they were waiting, Mrs.  Treadwell rested
her cheeks in the palms of her hands, elbows on table, and said in her
usual voice of one making conversation to scatter silence, and of which
one need not bother to remember a word: "Imagine, I used to think you
were a man without a single trouble in the world perhaps the only one;
and if only I had not said that silly thing to that awful Lizzi, I
should still like to be able to believe it.  It would amuse me, and I
shouldn't have to think of you.  And now, I suppose, we have a kind of
bond, we must be friends in a way, and speak to each other carefully
whether we are in the mood or not, just so all these strangers that we
shall never see again, or I hope not, will see that we are not at each
other's throats in spite of Lizzi and Reber and the Captain and all the
rest..."

Freytag was listening, and her words dismayed him to a degree.  It had
already crossed his mind that a scene so intimate as that in the
writing room might lead in her mind to notions of further intimacy. 
She must have been a very pretty girl she was not bad-looking now in a
discreet, rather too delicate style, but the very thought of going to
bed with a woman forty-six years old gave him such horror he was afraid
it would show in his face.  The one sure way to bring upon yourself the
inescapable devotion of?  a dog was to beat him regularly.  Certain
kinds of women were not so different.  This one had taken a good
thrashing in the proper spirit- she had earned it- but was he now going
to be, as the Americans say, "stuck" with her?  He must find out if he
could.

"But we are friends, are we not?"  he asked, warily.

He was to find later that he need not have feared her persecutions, and
was to be surprised at his own annoyance about it; but her answer to
his question did nothing to quiet his present uneasiness.  Mrs.
Treadwell, however, was herself again, wearing her way smilingly
through the second cocktail, waiting for the moment of escape.

"Naturally," she said in a tone of such reassurance he could not dream
that she meant just the opposite.

He decided that he needed only to be reasonably discreet, a little
watchful, to keep out of her way.  He finished his drink in a gulp and
set the glass down and pushed it away from him.  Mrs.  Treadwell set
hers down unfinished.  When they parted he was again in doubt: he did
not want her at all, and he was not willing to let her get away
altogether.  '"This has been delightful," he said, "after all the
unpleasantness.  I feel we know each other a great deal better?"

She smiled in his direction, looking through him as through a pane of
glass.  "Oh, much better, I'm sure," she said, and drifted away.  Anger
against her rose in him again, but a different kind, not fury, but
still a lively resentment.  He had so many reasons for anger in all
directions he could hardly fix upon the real, the main reasons.  One of
them, though, was the way his hand had been forced by the Captain, and
that woman--whose flat hips and slender legs, he noticed, as she
retreated from him, moved almost invisibly within her perfectly fitted,
expensive-looking linen frock--had been to blame for the whole thing.
In spite of her brief tears he did not believe she felt any true
remorse; in spite of what he had said, a fervent desire rankled in him
to humiliate her further, to put her to shame in some public way, to
teach her a good lesson.... At this point, Herr Lowenthal came in by
himself as usual and stood at the bar and beer was brought to him.
Freytag felt his throat closing as if he might choke on his sense of
injury; one thing certain, he would not sit at the table with that
Jew.... No, he explained to himself as if arguing with a disapproving
stranger, No, it is not because he is a Jew.  It is because of what has
been done to both of us.  But he will never acknowledge that any wrong
has been done to anyone but himself.  The thought was like a flash of
light in his mind- I have no prejudice against Jews- how could I?  Mary
is one, Mary--but why must he worry about this wretched little man,
with his comic trade- he would just be a laughingstock anywhere: "Has
he got any fragments of the True Cross, I

wonder?"  Jenny had asked, and Freytag had been maliciously cheerful
to be able to answer, "I've been told he has, in tiny hand-carved ivory
reliquaries, set with a piece of magnifying glass--and a sliver of wood
no bigger than a hair!"

"I can't quite say why, but I find that revolting," said Jenny, "Just
suppose a Christian tried to sell him a sliver of the Ark of the
Covenant, or a fragment of the Wailing Wall, or Abraham's toenail
cuttings?"

"He'd know better," said Freytag.  "He'd say, Tm overstocked with that
line myself!"  They had laughed easily, but now Freytag felt corroded
with guilt, heaping ridicule on one of Mary's people with this shallow
girl.  But that had happened before he had been kicked away from the
Captain's table.  He reminded himself fiercely that he must put up with
Lowenthal, must treat him decently no matter what he said or did if for
no other reasons, he owed it to Mary.  He also owed it to his own
self-respect... I will have meals sent to the cabin, he decided; I will
eat on deck sometimes.  I will speak to him when I have to.

Herr Lowenthal was in better spirits and a calmer frame of mind since
his encounter with Herr Freytag.  He always felt safer, indeed at times
there came over him a simmer of elation, when at last, and always
sooner or later, no matter where, the lurking enmities, the evil
designs, the formless miasmas of hatred took on shape, color,
direction, language; and Persecution by the heathen world, his
unescapable destiny as Jew, the one unanswerable argument for his
chosen-ness, was once more under way, with no more doubts, no more
waiting and watching.  It always turned out not to be so bad as he had
feared; even though he was never able to imagine the actual form the
persecution would take, yet he found he was never really surprised by
anything- never twice alike and always the same, yet no real danger,
nothing that could not be handled after all- words, what are they?
Insults, threats, names, low jokes--what of it?  They couldn't touch
him; he wanted only one thing from them, and that he had already-their
trade.  Why not sell graven images to the heathen if that's what they
want?  And get good prices for it too.  He was making money, and he
would make more; he knew well how many desirable places he could buy
with money.  It would be a positive pleasure someday just to see how
far he could buy his way into places where they wouldn't dare to throw
him out!  His mood grew almost festive; he gulped down

his beer and asked for another; he looked forward to seeing Herr
Freytag at his table that evening, and he would make him feel that it
was his, Lowenthal's, table, and that Freytag was there on
sufferance.... Herr Lowenthal lighted a good cigar and settled down
over his stein.  He had heard about how that pig Rieber had tried to
get him thrown out of the cabin, and had failed, because nobody wanted
Herr Rieber either!  That would be something to tell Cousin Sarah when
he finally thank God got to Dusseldorf.  When later at dinner Herr
Freytag did not appear, and he had to eat his dull tinned fish alone,
he was a little let down, disappointed.  He must persuade him back, if
only for the look of the thing.  He would say to him sometime on deck,
before a lot of people, loud enough for them to hear: "You mustn't take
wrong what I said, Herr Freytag.  You're more than welcome to sit at my
table, if you haven't got any place else."  He'd like to hear his
answer to that!

He was considerably put out and disgruntled when the steward, answering
his question, said simply, "Herr Freytag prefers to dine alone,
later."

Lizzi giggled and trilled at sight of Mrs.  Treadwell, who was sitting
on the side of her berth fastening her sandals, dressing for the
evening.  Mrs.  Treadwell glanced up, without inquiry, and Lizzi said
rashly, "Oh, I must hear what Herr Freytag had to say when you asked
him your question!"

"Nothing much," said Mrs.  Treadwell easily.  She stood up and shook
out her silvery pleated gown, slipped into it, and moved towards the
door, fastening her belt as she went.  "He seemed to feel, on the
whole, that it was a great change for the better- the company, he
seemed to mean..."  She gathered up her skirts and closed the door
after her gently.

"David," said Jenny, as they touched their cocktail glasses together,
"Salud, David darling!  Don't you find that business about Freytag
being put away from the Captain's table- do you know, imagine all the
things he has told me, and he never told me such an important thing as
that about his wife!  But he thinks she hung the moon!  don you find it
is the most utterly disgraceful episode you ever heard of?"

"No, I've heard of worse," said David, "and so have you.  But it's
pretty nasty."

"I think we ought to speak to Freytag and let him know how we feel!"

"Go ahead," said David darling, with blazing eyes and an icy voice.
"Since when do you need an excuse?"

"You are getting simply intolerable on this subject, David," she said,
in a low distressed voice.  "You know perfectly well he is a married
man crazy about his wife, he is sociable and lonesome, there aren't too
many people on this ship to talk to- oh, the whole thing is so silly
I'm ashamed to be talking about it!  I can't understand.  You were
never jealous before..."

"Wasn't I?"  asked David, cutting in like a razor blade.  "Are you
sure?"

"Well, you were wrong," said Jenny, "and you're wrong again- but I
don't care, if only-"

"If only what?"  asked David gently, for they both felt the same
treacherous tenderness, that melting of the heart that would lead them
further astray.  "Can't you just be a little flattered if I am jealous?
It must be that, don't you think?  Any other explanation of my conduct
is silly."

"No, I'm not flattered," said Jenny, "but do you know what I had in
mind?  You'll be furious, David.  I thought you might invite Freytag to
sit with us, he must be horribly uncomfortable sitting with that funny
little man..."

"No, I'm not furious," said David, "I am just overwhelmed at dae clear
and beautiful workings of your mind.  Maybe Lowenthal is unhappy
too."

"Why of course, David, why shouldn't he be?  But he was doing very
nicely before by himself, and if Freytag comes to us Lowenthal will be
just where he was- perfectly comfortable."

"what makes you think Freytag would enjoy our society and our
conversation any more than he does Lowenthal's?"  asked David.  "How do
we know he isn't perfectly contented with Lowenthal?"

"I thought you could find out," said Jenny.  "I was going to leave it
to you."

"Why?  He's your friend.  I've never spoken a dozen words to the
man."

"We ought to have friends in common," said Jenny.  "We ought to try to
like the same people.  But it's your place to ask him."  "i don't quite
know what you've got in mind," said David, and his

nose grew pale and sharp, "but I think you're trying to treat me like
a husband."

"I never had one," said Jenny, "so I don't know how they expect to be
treated."

"Invite Freytag to our table if you like," said David.  "And I'll he
delighted to go over and sit with Lowenthal."

Their hearts hardened again with a suddenness surprising to them both.
They exchanged glances of cold bitter obstinacy, each quite determined
that the other should pick up the pieces if any pieces were to be
picked up.  On the other side of the bar, plainly to be seen by them
both, the object of their quarrel, or rather the pretext for it,
Freytag, was having cocktails with Mrs.  Treadwell, the two of them
quite untroubled and good-looking, asking for nobody's officious help
or pity.  Jenny's composure, her assurance, her belief in her own view
of things, vanished at this sight.  She turned back to David and
stooped and picked up the first piece of whatever it was they had
broken, and then another, and began trying to put them together in
whatever shape they had been before.

"David darling, I'd like another drink- I'd like a lot of drinks. Every
day I learn about something else that is none of my business!"

The Baumgartners with their little son Hans were sitting near the
largest table in the bar, entirely occupied by the Spanish dancing
company, who were devouring great wedges of cake and swallowing pints
of coffee with milk and sugar.  Frau Baumgartner could not refrain from
mentioning this circumstance, with an appropriate moral reflection.

"What really sober people they are," she remarked, with a glance at her
husband's nearly empty goblet of brandy and water.  "Look, this whole
voyage, nobody has seen them take anything stronger than table wine,
and nearly always coffee!"

"There are coffee addicts as well as other kinds," Herr Baumgartner
reminded her.  'there are also those who are gluttons for cakes and
pastries, to the detriment of their health!"  He flicked a shrewd look
over the assorted pastries with whipped cream on her plate.  "Those
Spaniards are not people whose morals can be judged by their diet, my
dear, whatever it may be.  What good does mere abstinence from alcohol
do people who are so sunk in every other vice?"

"How do you know?"  asked Frau Baumgartner.  "I love to watch

them dance, and if the women do flirt, why, they are gypsies, after
all."

"Flirt!"  said Herr Baumgartner, with infinite meaning.  "Now then my
clear Hans, no more raspberry juice before dinner, it will spoil your
appetite."

He ordered another brandy, and a small cherry cordial for Frau
Baumgartner, who smiled at him reproachfully, then sat smelling the
liquor now and then, and taking a drop on her tongue.  But no, the
pleasure had gone out of it... ah yes, the pleasure had gone out of
everything in life!

Frau littersdorf had the deck steward raise the back of her chair to a
comfortable position, drew her red chiffon veil somewhat further over
her eyebrows for the double purpose of letting the slanting sunlight
throw a rosy glow on her face and to insure against intrusion while she
posted up her diary, neglected of late.

"Though it is no exaggeration to say there is not a moment of my
existence, waking or sleeping, yes even in my deepest dreams, that I do
not miss the company and conversation of my Otto, yet in the past few
days I have missed him if possible more keenly than ever cause of a
certain little episode we should have so enjoyed together-a comic
situation good enough for a play: The Christian man married to a Jewish
wife being set by mistake at the Captain's table!  A most misleadingly
presentable young man he is, too--one can only regret his appalling
lapse of taste.  Yet this is no time for making allowances in such
questions--quite simply, he must be rejected utterly from decent German
society.  We at the Captain's table were of course of the most charming
unanimity that he should be sent to his proper place, at the table with
the Jew.  I hear this has created some little commotion among some of
the other passengers.  Those dreadful Americans, together with the
vulgar Lutzes (Swiss!) and the even more vulgar Baumgartners
(Bavarians, I believe), are showing ostentatious sympathy for him.  I
am not surprised at the Americans, nothing too base for them, let them
find their own level; but even the lowest of Germans- one would think
their blood would make the proper responses to a thing of this kind,
without having to reflect for an instant.  Alas, this is not always so.
In Mexico I found it quite disturbing.  I knew there the purest Germans
of correct society who invited- not often, true- their Jewish clients
or business associates to dine in their

own homes.  They excused themselves to me"Oh, it's only a question of
business," they said; or roll know we would not think of such a thing
in Germany.  Here, what does it matter?"  But it does indeed matter, I
told them; I feel that God sees us, and our dead heroes at, looking
down upon us in distress and amazement!  My Otto had written this to me
once after a defeat in battle, and I shall never forget it.  How
unerring his instincts in everything!  It was his boast that no Jew had
ever set foot in his father's house, to the farthest known generations.
But I must not dwell on this- it is all too bittersweet.

"There is some light scandal about Herr Rieber having been put it the
same cabin with this Jew, and now he must stay there, becaus, there is
no other place to put him, imagine.  I cannot much care what happens to
Herr Rieber, hopelessly coarse and common as he is- it is a mystery why
he is at the Captain's table, except that he is a publisher of some
kind, and I suppose merits consideration in this respect--yet I cannot
be cruel enough to say he deserves this.  The purser is being blamed
for everything of course; he in turn blames the ship's agent in Mexico
City who gave incomplete or misleading data on many of the passengers.
I blame no one; but merely allow myself to be amused at this small
diversion which provides a tiny respite from this voyage which must
undoubtedly be described as somewhat on the dull side."

Frau Rittersdorf pushed back her veil, closed her fountain pen, ant
leaned forward stretching her neck and arms discreetly to ease the
strain of writing, unfortunately just in time to attract once more the
attention of one of those male Spanish dancers, the one they called
Tito, the supposed husband of Lola- the "star" of the zarzuela, the
putative father of those indescribable twins, though it was improbable
that they were of human origin; rather, little demons one expected to
blow up with a smell of brimstone and disappear before one's eyes
Still, this Tito- two evenings ago, when she had finished a delightful
dance with a most charming young ship's officer, this Tito with
ineffable impudence had come boldly up and asked her to dance with him!
Whenever she remembered what happened next, and she had not been able
to forget it for an instant, she began to blush, turning blood red all
over and breaking into a sensation of heat rash.  She tried again hard
not to remember, resolutely she had omitted all mention of it from her
diary, and turned from the thought: she even repeated all the prayers
she could remember, rapidly over and over as an incantation against
evil.

Instead of refusing him quite in the easy friendly tone she would have
used to a gentleman, so that he should not suspect her horror at his
indecent proposal, she stood transfixed, lips parted, unable to breathe
a syllable, with his black eyes like a snake's gleaming wickedly only a
few inches from hers; and had felt herself taken without her consent
and spirited away like a cloud, in the lightest, surest, gentlest
embrace she had ever known, in such a dance as she had not even dreamed
of since her innocent girlhood, herself again a pure sylph of the most
gauzy lightness--oh no, Frau Rittersdorf almost moaned to herself,
could I have done such a thing?  Oh, did I really allow that to
happen?

When it was ended, he kissed her hand quickly and darted away, leaving
her standing alone, dazed; Lizzi Sprckenkieker whirling by like a
merry-go-round with that puffball of a Herr Rieber called out
mockingly, " Where are your castanets?"  The young officer returned
then and asked once more to dance, and though he had seemed so graceful
and easy before, now they trundled along and could hardly catch step
together; and though he said rather gaily, "I dare not leave you alone
for a second, a gypsy will kidnap you!"  she knew she was being warned
and rebuked at once.  As she reflected on her unheard-of behavior, and
what would have been the retribution visited upon her by her Otto,
never a man to withhold justice, for one blinding moment she was almost
grateful for his absence.  Instantly right feelings reclaimed her; she
realized that if Otto were alive, oh if only he were alive, she would
be far from this wretched ship, far from this mean society.  She had
always had the look and deportment of a lady, and her husband had been
proud of her in any company!  Now she must make certain by her manner
that that Lizzi shall not dare to mention this incident of the
Spaniard's presumption at the Captain's table, nor would she tolerate
any familiarity on the subject from anyone else.  She grew quite rigid;
but it had not been necessary.  No one mentioned it--no one seemed even
to have heard about it.  Even Lizzi had never presumed to give her a
little conspiratorial smile the next day.  This in the end had made it
all the worse--their ignoring might be a form of criticism of her
conduct or morals--yet, she asked herself, what could possibly have
been said or done by anyone to make it better?

She must simply forget, as she was forgetting Don Pedro, as she was
forgetting the miseries of being a girl of a poor family who must
educate herself to be a governess in England; as indeed sometimes she

feared she was forgetting Otto.  Whenever she thought of him, and it
was very often, he was no longer solid remembered flesh and blood with
a resonant voice still speaking in her ear, no; he now appeared a
shining image a few feet off the ground like a visitant angel, in pure
white and gold uniform (though he had been an army officer, field
artillery, never the navy), with a rainbow aureole around his head that
quite obscured his features.  She had not been able to remember his
look for years; and now she often had to strive to see and feel again
that wonderfully shaped golden head that she had cradled in her arms
and kissed and sung to as if he were her little child, rocking him to
sleep, both of them molten with tenderness.... Frau Rittersdorf had a
sensation of drowning, she closed her eyes and gasped, her head swam
and rolled; she opened her eyes again and there was Tito bending over
her gracefully in his tight black dancing dress, red waistband, bolero,
frilled shirt and all: and he was saying --what on earth was he saying?
He was carrying what looked like a sheaf of small tickets of some kind
in his left hand; he slipped one out and held it towards her, and he
was not smiling but holding her gaze with his as if he meant to
hypnotize her.  Frau Rittersdorf reached out her hand to take the
ticket, at which it was withdrawn and he said, "Not yet.  Let me tell
you something..."

Frau Rittersdorf's head cleared, she sat up and listened attentively,
expecting to hear something sinister, forbidden, or at the very least
disreputable.  Instead it was disarmingly, childishly simple.  The
zarzuela company wished to promote a little fiesta in which everyone on
board could take part; a specially festive dinner in which everybody
would appear masked and change places at table.  There would be special
music, dancing for all, and the zarzuela company itself proposed to
give a full evening's show from the most elegant numbers in its
repertory: then there would be a drawing of numbers for beautiful
prizes; the prizes were to be purchased at shops in Santa Cruz de
Tenerife, a place known for its refined arts and handiworks.  It was
all to be offered as homage to the Captain, the evening before the ship
should reach Vigo, where the zarzuela company would disembark.

"We have said it is a pity to spend such a long voyage without one
public fiesta," said Tito, seriously, as one in all good faith.  Frau
Rittersdorf's head cleared another degree: her mercantile instincts
took charge.  "But you sound so businesslike, for an artist," she told
him.  "How can you be so practical?"

"I am the manager of this company," he told her, "also the director,

and my wife is my assistant."

"Lola?"  asked Frau Rittersdorf, with condescension.

"Yes, Dona Lola," he corrected her, haughtily.

The mists cleared from Frau Rittersdorf's mind at his tone.  "You must
let me think a little," she said languidly, making motions as if she
would open her diary once more.  "I am not a devotee of games of chance
in any form--" Her eyes wandered and she saw that Lizzi Spockenkieker
had taken up her station two deck chairs away, with a large-leaf
magazine she was not pretending to read.  This sight was so annoying to
Frau Rittersdorf she sat up and spoke with perfect firmness.

"How much are these tickets for your game of chance" she asked,
briskly.

"Four little marks," said Tito, curling his lip to show what a
contemptible sum they must both think it.

"I would not mind the money," said Frau Rittersdorf, noting with some
distress that this scene could hardly be more conspicuous.  People were
beginning to go by on their before-dinner parade.  The bride and groom,
oblivious of course; Dr.  Schumann, oh dear!  The Cuban students,
somewhat more subdued these days, but full of mischief, with evil
tongues, you might be certain; the dull Lutzes with their dull
daughter, nothing to think about but gossip!  The two priests- she had
always made a point of bowing to them, but now she wished she were
invisible.  That dreadful American Denny with his mean sneer and evil
eyes- the whole shipload of first-class passengers seemed to have taken
advantage of her predicament, which she could never explain; for Tito
was bending over her with the air of one very sure of his welcome, as
if she were about to accept his invitation to coffee, perhaps.  The
sheaf of tickets had disappeared from his hand.  Frau Rittersdorf
summoned all her powers, sat up straighter than ever, noting in the
same moment that Lola and Amparo, also in their ruffled dancing
costumes, were leaning together at the rail nearby; she spoke firmly.

"I must know more about this from others," she said.  "It is a little
vague, I do not understand yet precisely what it is you wish me to take
part in.  What you propose is far from customary.  On the best boats
you will find no such custom as this offering of a gala to the Captain
in mid-voyage, or nearly.  The proper moment for the Captain's dinner,
you will find I am right, is the second evening before reaching the
final destination.  Believe me, I have traveled always until now on the
finest ships and this is what is done by le beau monde... at earliest
the third evening out depending on the weather and other such things...
No, I cannot see the necessity for your rushing this occasion merely
because you must leave the ship at Vigo; most of us shall continue our
journey to the end.  Just before we arrive at Bremer haven, I shall be
delighted to join in any little plan to show our gratitude to our good
Captain for his pains and troubles with us on this voyage.  Not before.
You must be so good as to excuse me."

"But we who disembark at Vigo wish also to offer a little correct
homage to our noble Captain," said Tito, with great formality and in
pretty fair German.

"Persons of the best society do these things otherwise," answered Frau
Rittersdorf, now in full stride as mentor, an apostolic light in her
pale eyes.  "I see no reason for assuming that the Captain will not
know the difference if we offer him an entertainment which ignores the
accepted forms of social life... and also, perhaps you do not know
this, there is hardly ever--indeed, I can remember no such occasion,
where an element of the commercial or of the lottery has been involved.
One does not buy tickets for the Captain's dinner.  Indeed, in the very
last analysis, I am trying to explain to you that the Captain's
farewell gala is by invitation of the Captain himself to his
passengers, not the other way around.  The food, decorations, favors,
music, indeed everything but the champagne is provided from the
commissary, for all the passengers as well as the guests at the
Captain's table.  So," she ended triumphantly, for Tito was listening
sharply and she hoped her lesson was sinking in, "you and your Spanish
friends must do as you wish about this, privately, without engaging
others who have different ideas about such things!"

Tito exchanged a quick glance with Lola and Amparo, who moved a little
nearer draping their mantillas over their arms.  He gave a good
imitation of the German salute, clicking his patent-leather pump heels
smartly, and said, smiling, in a rattling fire of Spanish: "Whether you
like it or not, you stinking German sausage made of old women's
behinds, we are going to have our show and you are going to help pay
for it."  Lola and Amparo broke into screams of helpless laughter, and
applauded his performance.  He swung into step with them, they moved
away together and stood at some distance laughing, Tito bending over

and holding his narrow waist with both hands.  Frau Rittersdorf, who
had not understood, or could not believe what she had seemed to hear,
suspecting the worst, even a little frightened for she had seen in
dismay that he really was a maquereau capable of anything, flushed a
deep painful red and leaned back in her chair.

"God in Heaven," she said, turning towards Lizzi as to a known being
who could offer her reassurance, "God in heaven, what can one do with
such people?"

"One can always dance with them!"  said Lizzi, and Frau Rittersdorf
felt her malice flickering out of her very pores like electric
sparks.

Seeing Frau Rittersdorf's chin tremble at this, Lizzi went on in a tone
of false sympathy.  "They really are making fun of you, the little
pigs... Look at them, Frau Rittersdorf, did you ever see such
impudence?  They are all but thumbing their noses at you.  What could
that fellow have said, I wonder?  I did not catch it, but it sounded
frightful."

Frau Rittersdorf began at once correcting her terrible error in giving
Lizzi such a brilliant opportunity to display her peculiar gifts.  "I
am not the only one, perhaps," she said.  "It may be your turn next, if
you have not had it already!"

Lizzi fanned herself with her magazine.  "Oh, one of them--not that
fellow, the one they call Manolo--and one of the women, I don't know
which, approached me this morning--it seems their plan is well under
way... you really had not heard?"

"No," said Frau Rittersdorf, faintly, "no one told me."

"I was happy to bribe them for peace," Lizzi confessed smugly.  "It
cost me only four marks to be rid of them.  It would have been worth
twice as much."

"They can laugh at you for another reason, then," said Frau
Rittersdorf.  "At least, they cannot make a dupe of me!"

"Do you think I would really go to their low little party?"  asked
Lizzi.  "I gave them the money as I would give it to a beggar."

"I shall not go to their party, either," said Frau Rittersdorf,
recovering her spirits slowly.  "And I shall not pay a pfennig for my
right to stay away!"

The two women fell silent and watched with deep resentment the flying
feet of the Spaniards disappearing around the upper end of the deck.
Their magpie voices floated back only to deepen the gloom around the
two stiff figures stretched in the deck chairs.

Frau Rittersdorf opened her diary and went on with her account of
events.  After a little thought, pen suspended, she wrote resolutely:
"That little meal sack of a Frau Schmitt, my cabin mate, who has not
one claim to any consideration whatever from anyone, has within the
past few days commenced to show signs of a changed character.  She
monopolizes the wash hand stand and the looking glass.  She sits quite
coolly and powders her face and dresses that mouse-colored hair of hers
in a bun as leisurely as if she were not keeping me waiting.  I consult
my watch from time to time, remark how late it is getting, and that I,
too, must dress.  But it has no effect so far.  Incapable as I am of
rude behavior to anyone, I shall be forced to take steps to correct her
bad manners.  It is an offense against morality to overlook or condone
insolence in an inferior.  The effective practice of severity--I
learned this with those beastly English children- lies in ceaseless,
relentless, utter persistence, never an instant's letdown, but
vigilance, vigilance, all the way, or they will be upon you like a pack
of hyenas."  She considered this, and added: "Note Bene: I must be
especially on my guard with certain very low elements on this ship, who
mean no good to anyone, Vigilance, vigilance."  Frau Rittersdorf felt
very tired, famished as if she had not eaten for days, she longed for
the dear homely sound of the dinner bugle.  Her mind was full of
thoughts that did not belong there, strange ideas were bumping around
colliding and threatening her with a headache.  She added a line before
closing her diary.  "All this can be very wearing, but I must suppose
it is necessary, and that the meaning of it will become clear later."

"Those greasers are up to something," Denny remarked to David.  " They
got a plan on foot."  He was examining three new pimples on the
underside of his jaw in his shaving glass, which magnified the
disasters of his skin fivefold and kept him in a state of perpetual
alarm.  "My God, look.  at these things!"  he said to his cabin mates,
holding up his chin.

Herr Glocken was curled up in the lower bunk, waiting for the two young
men to change their shirts and ties before dinner.  "From here I can't
even see them," he said, meaning to reassure.

"Maybe you're nearsighted," said Denny, who did not intend to have
anyone make light of his afflictions.  Herr Glocken reached in his
jacket pocket and put on his spectacles.  "Even so," he said, peering
keenly, "I can barely make them out."

David, buttoning his shirt, did not turn his head.  "What 'greasers'?"
he asked.  He detested Denny's vulgar habit of calling all
nationalities but his own by short ugly names; yet even for his own he
had a few favorites--"cracker" for example, but that applied strictly
to people of the state of Georgia; "white trash" was another,
specifically applied to persons of low social station combined with
financial insolvency, and in general to anybody whose attitude towards
him or his point of view he found unsympathetic.

"Those Spanish dancing greasers," said Denny, suspecting an implied
rebuke in David's tone; Denny suspected often that David Scott
disapproved of any number of things, though he could never be quite
certain what they were.  But this hoity-toity voice about the word
"greaser," now

"Well, what do you call 'em?"  he asked.  "Wops?  Dagos?  No, that's
Italians.  Polacks?  No.  Guineas?  No, they're from Porto Rico, ain't
they?  Or is it Brazil?  They're not niggers.  Nor kikes.  Kike is the
name the Jews made up for a low-life Jew.  Like that Lowenthal, for
instance.  But he's not a bad guy.  I've talked to him.  Did you know I
never saw a Jew in my life until I was fifteen and went away to school?
Or if I did see one I didn't know what he was.  We didn't have a thing
against Jews in our town- we didn't even have any Jews!"

"Maybe you were so busy lynching niggers you couldn't take time out for
Jews," remarked David in a tone so remote and unheated,

Denny's mouth dropped open and he shut it with a snap,

"Where are you from?"  he asked, after a loaded pause.

"Colorado," said David.  Denny tried to remember what he had ever
heard, if anything, about Colorado except silver mines.  He could not
recall any traits of character of the people of that state, and so far
as he knew, they had no nickname, like Hoosier or Cajun.  You couldn't
hardly call him a Yankee.

"Mining?"  he ventured.

"Sure," said David, "timekeeper in a mine in Mexico."

"I thought you said you're a painter," said Denny.

"I am.  Timekeeping in a mine was the way I made my living, so I could
work," said David.  Denny thought this over a while, and then said:
"Look, that's something I can't understand--you spend time working at
something you can't make a living at, and then you take a job so you
can make enough money to go on working at the work you can't live on-
it gets me down," he said.  "And you call yourself a

painter, but why aren't you just as much a timekeeper in a mine?  Why
can't you call yourself a timekeeper?"

"Because I really am not one," said David, "I just make my living that
way, or did.... Now I'm going to try to make a living painting, but if
I can't, why, I can always get some kind of job, to keep me while I
paint."

Herr Glocken uncurled himself, ran his hand over his face and hair
before the looking glass, pulled his tie knot a touch to center, gave
himself a slight shake to straighten his rumpled clothes, and was ready
to go.  "Ah well," he said to Denny, "that is the heroic life!  That is
the way men who trust themselves can afford to live!  Me--I never had
courage.  Me, I run my little stand, my newspapers and magazines and
birthday and Christmas cards, yes and ink and pens and writing paper,
and every day I have the small change running through my hands, and
every night when I close shop I have made my day's living, yes and a
little more, and that I invest so a few more pfennigs- centavitos will
be coming in always, a little more and a little more, for I have had no
life--I only exist!  And I have no existence coming except old age, and
if I am not careful, I shall die under a bridge, or in a pauper's
hospital..."

"Maybe I shall too," said David cheerfully, though Herr Glocken's
madden flood of confidences chilled him.

"Maybe," said Herr Glocken.  "No man knows his end!  But you will not
have to die in despair because you never had courage to live!  You have
taken hold of your own life, for that no man can ever make you
sorry!"

He spoke with such fervor the two young, straight-backed, lucky men had
perhaps their first emotion in common: a twinge of apologetic shame, as
if they owed him some reparation for the misfortune of his body, some
explanation of why it was easy for them to have courage-for Denny felt
that he too was launching out, taking hold; it was a fact that a
trained engineer had forty good jobs waiting for him, but he had the
right to choose the one that would take him farthest from home and
deepest into adventure--that freedom at least he had.  He couldn't see
the point in being plain foolhardy, though- David Scott struck him as
just being plain foolhardy, and that poor hunchback was buttering him
up about it as if he envied him; he spoke up:

"It's not the shape of your body but your mind that shapes your life,"
he said, and he heard his own philosophical statement with

amazed delight--he hadn't known that he thought that.  "I'll bet no
matter what, you'd have wound up with a newsstand," he said.  "I tell
you something, I believe we get what we want!"

"Oh!"  said Herr Glocken with a groan, and he began moving towards the
door.  "Oh no, excuse the strong word, it is not for you, but for this
so-false belief- it is one of the great lies of life!  Ah no, no for I
wanted only one thing in the world--" He paused to make his effect.

"What was that?"  asked David, obligingly.

'to be a violinist!"  said Herr Glocken as movingly as if he expected
them to shed tears.

"But why was that impossible?"  asked David.

"you can wonder in such a way, after one look at me?"  Herr Glocken's
eyes were stricken... "Ah, well," he ended, "it is impossible to make
one understand.  But I had the soul," he said, patting himself lightly
on the pointed misshapen ribs of his chest, "and I have it yet, and
that consoles me a little."  He smiled his painful jester's smile, and
vanished.

"Well," said Denny, "that's that, I hope," and not another word was
said about Herr Glocken.

"You never did tell me the nickname for Spaniards," said Denny.

"I don't know what they call each other when they want to be insulting
in Spain," said David, "but in Mexico, the Indians call them Gaehupn.
It means a spur, really, or a boot that stings like a viper, the Aztec
roundabout for the spur."

"Too good for them," said Denny.

"What do you think they're up to?"  asked David, returning to the
zarzuela company.  "I see them about buttonholing people and talking
but they haven't come near me yet.  The gossip is they're getting up
some kind of show, and a raffle with chances, and so on: a kind of
old-fashioned feria on shipboard, which will be a novelty.  I can't say
I like their looks or ways..."

"That Arne Hansen has blown his top about that Amparo," said Denny,
with unconcealed envy.  "They've got something I could use right now.
That Pastora..."

He stopped, teetering dizzily on the edge of giving himself away by
telling the true story of his encounter that very afternoon with
Pastora.  He thought better of it, for he wished to maintain the view
of his character he hoped he had built up in David Scott's mind, of
himself

as a man not to be taken in by women, who were every last one of them
after nothing in God's world but money.  And it should be the positive
pleasure of any man in his right mind to see that she didn't get a
nickel she hadn't earned the hard way... But he drew back into himself
and saw it happen again: Pastora, who had never bothered to hide her
contempt for him, met him head-on in the promenade around the deck, and
suddenly stretched her arm at full length towards him with a frank
graceful gesture, and stopped him in full stride, her hand on his
necktie.  Her deep eyes wide open, she smiled in the most inviting way,
and said in childish English: "Come help us make our fiesta!  We will
dance, we will sing, we will have games, we will kiss, why not?"

"How much?"  he heard himself asking, but he felt like a bird gazing
into the eyes of a serpent.

"Oh nothing almost!"  said Pastora, winsomely.  "Two dollar, three,
five- ten- what you like."

Denny had broken into a light sweat, he felt he ought to say, "Make it
two dollars then, that'll suit me," but he was afraid if he let this
chance slip, he wouldn't get another.  "Have a drink?"  he asked
recklessly.  They sat together in the bar for a good while over a
bottle of German imitation champagne, at twelve marks a bottle, he
noticed; but Pastora sipped with great pleasure, their feet nestled
together under the table, and Denny, who thought champagne, even the
best, tasted like thin vinegar with bubbles in it, was so wrought up
and full of anticipation he could hardly swallow.  Pastora also wanted
cigarettes.  "Have one of these," offered Denny, producing his Camels.
Pastora could not smoke that kind of cigarette.  She wanted a slender
gold tipped jasmine-scented cigarette in a purple satin box stamped in
gilt lettering: "La Sultana."  Denny hastily figured out the exchange
from marks to dollars- one dollar ninety cents a box of twenty.  He
bought it.  And then Pastora sold him two tickets for the raffle, at
five marks a ticket--one mark more than the printed price.  Denny paid
for them and did not notice the deception until much later.  Pastora
had slipped her foot out of its narrow black shabby little satin
slipper, and her tiny foot ran cares singly up within his trouser leg,
the little toes pressing and twiddling delicately as fingers on his
calf muscles.  "When- when is this party going to come off?"  he
inquired, trying not to squirm in mingled pleasure and embarrassment.
"Oh not until just before Vigo," she told him.  "But when are we toto-
get together?"  he stuttered.

"Why, we are together now," she reminded him, disingenuously.

"Yes, I know," he said, trying to pull himself together, all his
deepest suspicions rushing back upon him, "but this can't go on like
this, you know perfectly well what I'm talking about..."

"I no understand Enlish very well," she told him, "but you mean you
want sleep with me?"

Denny was delighted with this turn of the conversation.  "You bet," he
said, "now you're talking.  I want to know when!"

"No," said Pastora seriously, "first, mo nee how much mo nee

"Well, how much?"

"Twennee dollars."  Denny, in the act of swallowing his last mouthful
of wine, now choked violently and spewed it back in the air above her
head.  She was liberally besprinkled, wiped her hair with her paper
napkin, and said, with some dignity: "That is not nice.  Now I go."
Denny took her wrist as she stood up and said, desperately,
"Tonight?"

"Not tonight," she said coolly disengaging herself.  "Tonight, I am
tired."

"Tomorrow?"

"Maybe.  Let my arm go.  People will think you are going to try to make
love to me here on the table."  She drew herself away with finality,
and left him.  It was all he could do to pay the bill and get out with
everybody staring at him, or so he believed.  He hadn't dared to look
around to see.

Now he decided to tell David Scott a reconstructed story of the event.
"Cost me a bottle of that lousy champagne," he admitted, rather
shamefacedly, omitting to mention the cigarettes and the raffle
tickets.  "She doesn't drink much, but she wants only the best mI mean,
she wants champagne.  She's got the cutest little feet I ever saw, no
bigger than a baby's and soft as a bunch of feathers.  She took off her
shoes and we played footie the whole time, like two school kids.  But
she wants more mo nee as she calls it, than she's going to get, from
me."  And he wasn't going to cross her palm with silver until after the
ball was over.  He knew better than that, he hoped.  A few drinks now
and then and he would string her along, but that was all.  No bed, no
board, that was his policy.

"You sure had better get what you're going to get before you start

crossing her palm with silver," said David.  "She'll never put out
afterward, let me tell you- I know the type."

"Well, in a way, that's fair enough," said Denny.  "If i can get it
before I pay her, and I'm going to, well, I won't pay her, either!"  He
brooded on his words a moment, surprised to find he had made this
drastic decision.  He'd never tried to do a girl out of her money yet.
He had always simply been careful not to pay her too much.  But there
was something about the way this one was trying to play him for a
sucker that made him want to get back at her.  "Listen!"  he said, with
indignation as hot and real as if the cheat had already taken place,
"If I give her any money before, she'll put out all right or it'll be
the last white man she'll ever gyp."  David said nothing, and after a
moment Denny added, "Lip till now I've never had anything to do with
anybody but white girls."

"These girls are white," said David.

Denny was plainly baffled.  "Well, I mean white- American girls."
David, who had spent a long hard apprenticeship learning to be a man
among men in the mixed society of the Mexican mining camp, took his
bottle of genuine sour mash, Old Cedar Rail, out of the Gladstone bag.
"Have one?"  he asked.  Denny nodded and watched him pouring into the
thick cabin tumblers.  "Get the champagne out of your mouth," David
said.

"One thing," Denny pursued his single idea in a worried tone, after a
good swig of his drink, "one thing is, there's no place on this boat.
She's got that pimp of hers in with her, and of course, I know that
Amparo's pimp dodges around the ship all hours of the day and night
while Hansen is in their cabin, but that kind of stuff gives me the
jitters.  It just wouldn't work, that's all.  I see Rieber and that
long-legged road-runner of his crawling around into dark places on the
boat deck and anywhere else, but I don't think they really mean
business.  I think they just like to tickle each other.  And besides,
Pastora didn't say a thing practical except about money.  She never did
say where, or when."

"Why don't you ask her?"

"I did.  She said, tomorrow, maybe.  But where, that's what's on my
mind."

"In the mining camp," said David, pouring another round, putting the
stopper back and bracing the Bottle between his feet, "up in the
mountains of Mexico where I had my first job, the whorehouse, the

only one, was just one big room, big as a barn, with rows of cots so
close together you could barely squeeze your way in between them, and
it was dark in there except for a red light in one corner.  You and
your girl just fumbled around among the cots until you got one that
wasn't busy, just ran your hands along until you didn't feel a leg or a
rump, and then you piled in..."

"Gosh, I'd a went limp," said Denny, appalled, sitting on the floor and
taking off his shoes.

"It wasn't so bad," said David.  "In fact, for what it was, it was all
right."  And slowly there poured through all his veins again that deep
qualm of loathing and intolerable sexual fury, a poisonous mingling of
sickness and deathlike pleasure: it ebbed and left him as it always had
before, merely a little sick.  Once in the early days with Jenny, he
had confessed to her, haltingly, after their fresh gay love-making in
the cool spring morning, the strange times he had lived through in that
place; somehow he felt, and expected her to understand, that this
aftertaste of bitter disgust had cleansed him, restored him untouched
to the wholeness of his manhood.  He was glad to be able to say he was
sick of the thought of sex for a good while after such nights.  He had
felt superior to his acts and to his partners in them, and altogether
redeemed and separated from their vileness by that purifying
contempt.

Jenny, sitting up in bed, had leaned over and taken his face between
her hands and said blithely, "Never mind, darling.  That's a normal
Methodist hangover.  Men love to eat themselves sick and then call
their upchuck by high-sounding names... I... Oh, I do hope you won't
make yourself sick on me!"  He had never forgiven her for that.  He
never would.

"Another?"  he asked, pouring.  Denny nodded.  "Well," he said, "hot
chance there is for any loose piling in bed around this tub!"  He
inspected his ingrowing toenail with deep alarm.  "Gosh," he said, "I
think this thing is infected!"  He forgot everything else in his search
for the iodine.

Until they came on the ship, Hans had never seen his parents dressing
and undressing together.  He could remember when he was very little,
they would take him into bed with them in the morning and play with
him.  But one day, he did not know just when, his mother said to him,
"No, Hans, you are a big boy now, time to stop all this babying." Until
then, he had been able to open their door and come

in when he pleased.  Afterwards when he tried the knob now and then,
the door was always locked; his father and mother came instead into his
room at night to say evening prayers with him,

In their close, crowded cabin, there was nothing for it, nowhere to go.
When the time came, his mother would fold a handkerchief over Hans's
eyes, and say, "Now, don't take this off until I tell you!  and don't
peep!"  But he did peep of course.  To his disappointment.  there was
nothing much to see.  He could not quite understand what all the
mystery was about.  With their backs turned to him and to each other,
they would remove their clothes a garment at a time, slipping their
night clothes on a little at the same time, so they were never really
undressed at all, and he caught only an occasional glimpse of his
mother's plump shoulder, or his father's lean ribs.  This secrecy was
all the more mysterious to him because he had many times seen more of
them in broad daylight at the beach.  So he was certain there was
something about undressing for bed that was different from undressing
at other times, and he meant to find out what it was if he could.
Before Hans could quite see how it happened, they would face about
fully covered again, his father in a long skinny nightshirt edged with
red cotton braid, his mother in a billowing, long-sleeved white
nightgown.  She would say "Now!"  as if it were a game, and whip the
handkerchief from his eyes, and Hans would try to look sleepy.

The air of the cabin was thick, even when the porthole was open; but it
was closed at night, for night air was always dangerous, but night air
at sea was deadly.  While his parents were undressing they loosed
smells from their skins that made Hans long to beg to have the porthole
opened, but he would never dare--his father's smell, bitter and sharp
like the drugstore in Mexico City where his father often went with a
little paper his doctor had given him; his mother's smell, sickly
sweet, like the mixed-up smells of the fish stalls and the flower
stands right next to each other under the hot noon sun of the Merced
market. He knew which smell was which, his father's and his mother's,
for he often got a whiff of them outside, in the garden in Mexico or at
the table, or even on the deck of this ship.  It made him sick, it made
him feel sometimes that his mother and father were strangers, he was
afraid of them, there was something wrong with his father's breath and
his mother's armpits, and it made him wonder if there was something
wrong with him.  Now and then he would turn his head towards his own
shoulder and breathe in, or even pull open his shirt front and

take a good sniff of himself from below.  He always smelt just like
himself, nothing wrong at all, and he would feel easier for a while.

His mother knelt beside his bed, and Hans got up and knelt by her.  The
arm she put around his shoulders smelt of sweet freshly washed linen.
His father knelt on the other side, and they said their prayers
together in a murmuring chorus.  They both hugged him and kissed him
good night; and at once he felt so near to them, so full of confidence,
he said, sitting up again: "Mama, today Ric and Rac told me they were
going to throw me overboard, but I wasn't scared!"

His mother said sharply, "Hans, you are not supposed to talk after you
have said your prayers."  But his father almost leaped out of his
shirt, and said, "What did you say?"  and to his wife, "Didn't you hear
what he said?  That those terrible Spanish children threatened..."

"Nonsense," cried his wife, and to Hans, "What do you mean, running off
to play with those children?  Haven't I told you to keep away from
them?"

His father said to his mother, "Well, where were you, that you lost
sight of him?"

"I was at the hairdresser's, and I told him to sit still and wait for
me in his deck chair.  Blame me, of course- I am not to have a moment's
peace for anything!"

"Look after your child, and stop tormenting your husband," shouted his
father, and Hans saw they had forgotten him entirely.

"I didn't leave my chair," he said almost tearfully, "they came and
stood there, and they said, "We are going to throw you overboard.  And
everybody else too, and the bulldog."  That is what they said, and it
is not my fault.  I said "Go away, or I'll tell my father."  And they
laughed and made fun of me..."

"Monstrous!"  said his mother, deeply shocked.  "That good innocent
helpless dog?  Oh Hans, if you are ever so cruel as to mistreat a poor
dumb animal, never let me hear of it."

"I wouldn't hurt Bebe, not for anything," said Hans, piously, having
got his mother's attention again.

"I shall speak to them, or to their shameless parents if necessary,"
said his father.  "After all, it is not exactly a joke, they have
threatened to throw Hans overboard as well, remember."

"My advice is to say nothing to them, to ignore them as if they do not
exist, and Hans, stay near me always and do as you are told- don't let
me have to speak twice."

"Yes, little Mama," said Hans in his most submissive voice.  The
lights were turned out and all was quiet.  Hans fell asleep after a
short time of worry because his mother had not seemed to hear at all
what he was trying to tell her about how very nearly he had come to
being drowned off the ship while she was having her hair washed,
without a thought for him.

Herr Rieber had wound himself up to a state of decision regarding
Fraulein Lizzi Spockenkieker.  First, she was not a Fraulein at all,
but a woman of worldly experience; and though Herr Rieber liked nothing
better than a proper amount of feminine coquetry and playful
resistance, still, carried beyond certain bounds, they became mockery
and downright insolence which no man worthy of the name would endure
from any woman, no, not if she were Helen of Troy herself!  In this
frame of mind he took her arm after dinner and guided her for their
stroll.  While listening to music, he drew her up the stairs to the
boat deck, and led her, with the silent intentness of a man bent on
crime, to the dark side of the ship's funnel.  He gave his prey no
warning, no moment in which to smack his face or flee, he seized Lizzi
low around her shoulders, hoping to pin her arms to her ribs, and
snatching her to him, he opened his mouth for a ravenous kiss.

It was like embracing a windmill.  Lizzi uttered a curious tight
squeal, and her long arms gathered him in around his heaving middle.
Her thin wide mouth gaped alarmingly and her sharp teeth gleamed even
in the dimness.  She gave him a good push and they fell backward
clutched together, her long active legs overwhelmed him, she rolled him
over flat on his back and for a moment her sharp hipbones ground his
belly cruelly.  Herr Rieber had one flash of amazed delight at the
undreamed-of warmth of her response, then in panic realized that unless
he recovered himself instantly, the situation would be irremediably out
of his control.

He braced himself to reverse the unnatural posture of affairs, and
attempted to roll into the proper position of masculine supremacy, but
Lizzi was spread upon him like a fallen tent full of poles, her teeth
now set grimly in his jowl, just under his jawbone.  Pain took
precedence of all other sensations in Herr Rieber's being; silently
with tears in his eyes he fought to free himself.  Yet there was a
muted exhilaration in the struggle.  When, if ever, he got the upper
hand of this woman he would have got, he felt, something worth having.
Meanwhile she showed no signs of surrender, but gripped him with her
knees as if he were an unmanageable horse, her arms folded him in
almost intolerably, with long thin tough muscles like a boy's working
in them.

Never before had he encountered a woman who would not let herself be
overcome properly at the correct moment: her intuition should tell her
when!  In despair, his jaw by now benumbed, his eyes wandered as if
seeking help.  The half-darkness showed a white blotch which proved to
be the motionless form of Bebe, who had found the Hutten cabin door
ajar, and had wandered aimlessly alone until at last he stood there not
three feet away from them, openly gazing.

"Lizzi, my dearest," gasped Herr Rieber, "Lizzi, the dog!"

His agonized tone brought Lizzi out of her carnivorous trance.  Her
teeth parted, she breathed "Where?"  Herr Rieber snatched his face out
of her reach.  Her arms loosened and he seized her wrists, at the same
time rolling over until he was at least lying beside her.  At last by a
series of resolute disentangling movements, for now Lizzi seemed quite
inert in his hands, he brought them both to a sitting position once
more.

Bebe, balanced on his bowed legs and wavering slightly with the roll of
the ship, the folds of his nose twitching, regarded them with an
expression of animal cunning that most embarrassingly resembled human
knowledge of the seamy side of life.  Plainly he could see what they
were up to, their intentions were no secret from him, but because of
their strange shapes, and the weird sounds they made, he was puzzled
--puzzled, and somewhat repelled.  Indeed he was not at all
sympathetic.

"Go away, get out," commanded Herr Rieber, in as deep a growl as Bebe
himself could have fetched up; but because Bebe wore a hairy hide and
was on all fours he was therefore sacred, there was no question of
using sterner measures.  Herr Rieber was the soul of sensibility on
this question: as a child, he had cried his eyes out on seeing a horse
fall in the icy street, tangled in his harness, prisoner to a beer
truck.  He wanted to beat, to kill the cruel driver who had let him
fall.  Nc tenderness could exceed Herr Rieber's for the entire brute
kingdom-indeed, he still believed hanging too good for any person who
abused even the humblest member of that mystical world.  When for the
most unavoidable reasons of discipline he was forced to beat his own
dog, his heart almost broke, every time.  He spoke now to Bebe in his
most wheedling tone.  "Go away, there's a good doggie," he said,
looking around hopefully for something weighty to throw at him.  "Good
doggie!"

Lizzi began to laugh uncontrollably, her head between her hands.  "Ah
hah aha she uttered in a voice thin as a twanging wire.  Bebe went away
then in silence, padding softly on his big feet, dismissed but not
minding, full of his own business.  He had ruined the occasion, though.
Herr Rieber had not the heart to take up again at this perhaps more
promising point with a now somewhat chastened Lizzi.  He contented
himself with taking her hands and saying soothingly, "No, no- there
now, there!"  She scrambled to her feet talking incoherently, gave Herr
Rieber a weak little poke in the chest, and ran ahead of him down the
steps without looking back.  Herr Rieber followed but more slowly,
thoughtfully fingering his jaw.  He must not for a moment admit
discouragement.  After all, this was only another woman- there must be
a way, and he would find it.  He thought with some envy of the ancient
custom of hitting them over the head as a preliminary mnot enough to
cause injury, of course, just a good firm tap to stun the little spirit
of contradiction in them.

Earlier in that evening at dinner, Herr Professor Hutten, still lacking
his proper appetite, barely refrained from pushing away his loaded
plate, rising and seeking fresh air; but his wife was eating well, and
though the sight was faintly repugnant to him, still that was no good
reason for interrupting her.  The other guests seemed as usual, the
Doctor amiably silent, Herr Rieber and Fraulein Lizzi exuding their
odious atmosphere of illicit intimacy, Frau Schmitt unremarkable as
ever; only Frau Rittersdorf was chatting away lightly in the direction
of the Captain a frivolous woman, with what a vanity at her age!  and
even if Herr Professor Hutten had no hope of hearing anything in the
least edifying or enlightening, he listened in the wan hope of some
distraction from his inner unease.

Frau Rittersdorf noted his attention, saw the other faces beginning to
take on a listening look; without loosing her hold on the attention of
Captain Thiele, she turned clever glances upon the others and raised
her voice a little to include them in the circle of those who had been
lately amused or annoyed or both with the antics of the zarzuela
company and their outre notions of the etiquette of social occasions on
shipboard- if such a word could be used even remotely in such a
connection.  There was above all that impudent creature they called
Tito, who

had tried to sell her some tickets of one kind or another for some
sort of petty cheat they had thought up among themselves, who knew
what?

"Ah yes," Lizzi broke in, "for a raffle!  I bought one and got rid of
them."

"You should have told me!"  cried Herr Rieber.  "For I bought two- you
must give one of yours away!"

I'll return it to them and get back my money!"  whinnied Lizzi, tossing
her head.

"Oh," said Frau Rittersdorf, "that should be something to see, anyone
getting back a pfennig from those bandits, for I know they are that!
No, dear Fraulein, good businesswoman, that you are, everyone knows,
but you will want to be better than that!"

"But wonderful dancing partners, don't you find, Frau Rittersdorf?"
asked Herr Rieber, gleefully.  Lizzi slapped his hand, annoyed, because
she had meant to say that herself.  "Shame on you," she said, "you are
not very kind.  Dancing partners are sometimes scarce, one cannot
always choose too delicately."

Frau Rittersdorf, shocked at this turn of talk just when she was ready
to give a sparkling account of that unusual incident, cried out in a
high yet ladylike soprano, "Ah, but there are effronteries so utterly
unexpected one is taken off guard, one is defenseless, it is better to
follow one's instinct- yes, as well as training!  and to behave as if
nothing out of the way were happening--how could I dream of such a
thing as that?"  She sat back and held her napkin to her lips, staring
over it in distress at Lizzi, whose laugh was a long cascade of falling
tinware.

"Ah, but that is just what ladies are supposed to dream about," called
Herr Rieber in delight, leaning forward to make himself heard over
Lizzi's clamor, "What is wrong with that, please tell me?"

Pig-dog, thought Frau Rittersdorf, her dismay turning in a flash to a
luxury of rage, at least I am not reduced to dancing with you!  She
bared her teeth at him and lifted her brows and narrowed her eyes: "Are
you sure you would know what ladies dream about, Herr R ieber?"  she
inquired, dangerously.

These tactics impressed Herr Rieber, who had got his face smacked more
than once by easily offended ladies, and at that moment Frau
Rittersdorf resembled every one of them, in tone and manner.  A man
couldn't be too cautious with that proper, constipated type, no matter
how gamey she looked.  He wilted instantly, unconditionally.

"I meant it as a pleasantry, meine Dame," he said, with rueful
respect.

"No doubt," said Frau Rittersdorf, turning the knife-edge of her voice
in his wounded vanity.  "No doubt at all."

Herr Rieber could not quite give up, but floundered and floundered. 
"It was a roundabout allusion to a theory of Freud's on the- ah he
meaning of dreams..."

"I am well acquainted with his theories," said Frau Rittersdorf icily,
"and I see no connection whatever between them and our present
topic!"

Herr Rieber sat back, his underlip pouched, and began loading his fork,
sulkily.  Frau Rittersdorf turned to the Captain with her most
sparkling smile, full of confidence after her plenary chastisement of
that presumptuous fellow- Freud, indeed!  and said: "We are all of us
taking these Spaniards very lightly, and indeed, we may as well, seeing
there is no help for it, we must endure their presence until Vigo, I
believe.  But tell me, how can it happen that such people are traveling
first-class on a respectable German ship?  One finds oneself in unheard
of situations which they invent...."

The Captain did not relish hearing his ship called "respectable" in a
tone implying she was barely that; he did not like hearing the quality
of his passenger list criticized, though privately he respected none of
them except La Condesa, and she was turning out to be a grave
disappointment in a personal way.  His chin jerked forward irritably,
he spoke as bluntly as possible: "The Mexican government paid their
fares; no doubt it was worth it to be rid of them."

"No doubt at all," agreed Frau Rittersdorf, gaily, "and what a relief
it will be, to see them really going ashore at Vigo, and the rest of us
going on in quiet and safety... for Captain, I believe those people are
dangerous criminals.  They are evil people, the kind who need to be
controlled by the police, they are capable of anything."

Lizzi fired an instant barb out of loyalty to Herr Rieber: "Even to
dancing with you?"

A small ripple of shock ran around the whole table--even Dr.  Schumann
seemed startled at this reckless attack.  The Captain intervened
instantly as was his right and duty, and dealt the deciding blow.  He
favored the opened-mouthed Frau Rittersdorf with a glint of steel from
the corner of his eyes, and said: "Dear lady, aren't you flattering
them?  It requires a certain force of character to be really evil, and
these

seem to me rather ordinary little people of the rubbish-born class,
not worth mentioning.  My ship, like any other, carries all sorts.  I
am invested with every disciplinary power.  Please, may I beg of you?
allow me to be the judge of how dangerous they are."

Little Frau Schmitt could not help but observe with some mild glow of
satisfied justice that it was Frau Rittersdorf's turn to flinch amazed,
ready to burst into tears, blushing a clear bright becoming red from
the edge of her hair to the depths of her modestly exposed front.  Yet
even as she observed, Frau Rittersdorf straightened up with great
dignity, raised her chin, turned her head, and surveyed the other
diners haughtily, then returned to her dinner and ate in a mannerly
silence, the only sign of discomfiture being that her blush had
vanished and left her pale as unborn veal.  The silence began to weigh,
even on Herr Professor Hutten, who suffered numbly at trivialities of
any kind, especially rash unbalanced expression of ill-understood
ideas.

He seized a text out of the floating confusion of words, "criminals
--evil- capable of anything," and spoke to the Captain with that mild
deference and moderation which masked his sense of utter rightness,
always soothing to the Captain because he did not have to listen or
pretend to reply to the Professor, who was not interested in
discussion, but in speaking his own thoughts aloud in company.  As a
public lecturer, the Professor had long since learned that a silent
audience is an attentive one.

' Whole systems of philosophy are based on the premise of the total
depravity of mankind," he began, putting the tips of his fingers
together before his chest, spreading and flattening them from time to
time, then drawing them all together at the very points, "no need to
name them, perhaps?"  He glanced about him, thinking it would be quite
useless.  "And I must say some very superior minds have given us some
very closely knit arguments in favor of this thesis.  It is also
undeniable that they can point, by way of powerful illustration, to
aspectg of mere human behavior proving that human nature is entirely
and un redeem ably evil.  Yet, yet," he said, "in spite of cogent
evidence to the contrary, or say, rather, manifestations which the un
philosophical mind (or, minds insufficiently supported by sound
religious training) might be impelled to regard as evidence to the
contrary, I cannot help but believe unshakably--call it sancta
simplicitas if you must," and he tucked in his chin and huddled the
tips of his fingers together in humility, "unshakably in the
fundamental goodness of human nature as a

principle; the God-intention, you might call it, irradiating the
flesh.  Men who do evil, who seem by nature inclined to evil, willfully
following evil, are afflicted, abnormal- they are perverted from the
Divine Plan; though it does not necessarily follow in the least that
they may not be every one redeemed in God's good time.... "

Frau Schmitt surprised everyone by speaking up with some firmness.
"Only if they repent and ask God's forgiveness," she said.  "Any
Catholic knows that no man may lose his soul except by presuming on
God's mercy, or by denying it--"

She quailed under Herr Professor Hutten's interruption.  Fhat is not
quite what is under consideration, dear Frau Schmitt," he said, with
awful blandness.  "I was about to say, if men do evil through
ignorance, they must not be condemned.  It is because their education
has been neglected, they were not subjected to good influences in their
youth, in such cases, it is often enough only to show them the good,
the true, the beautiful--the Right, in fact, for them to embrace it
eagerly."

Truth is sometimes hideous and cruel, thought Frau Schmitt, it is the
truth that my husband is in his coffin in the hold, and I am a widow
going home to nothing, and I have tried to be good and love God and
what has it got me?  For she was apt to stray off into such confusions
if she was too long away from her confessor and spiritual adviser.  She
said nothing more, only thought sadly that she shouldn't be exposed to
Lutheran doctrines.  Not that they tempted her, no no- it just made her
unhappy to think of so many people, really good people like the
Professor, going astray like that.  In spite of knowing two languages,
she had never been very clear about the meanings of words.  Truth was
anything that had happened, and a fact was anything that existed.

'"Very little in my experience," continued the Professor, now in
excellent health and spirits, "has occurred to disturb my confidence,
founded firmly on the tenets of my childhood faith, in the absolute
benevolence of God.... "

That is not Lutheran, though, thought the Captain, frowning.  I am just
as much Lutheran as he is, and even I know better than that.  For he
had been hearing in spite of all he could do.

"Generally," continued the Professor, "I have found that even the most
unenlightened obstinate man may be approached, persuaded, won over to
right feeling and irreproachable conduct if only you first demonstrate
to him your own intention of dealing honorably with him in

every smallest particular.... As for children," he went on, his
spirits rising with the pleasant thoughts flooding his brain, driving
out imaginary ills, his ample face beaming with the virtues he
extolled, "they respond most remarkably to the steady hand, the
unwavering point of view, the firm but reasonable methods of dedicated
teachers, who can nevertheless, when discipline demands it, wield the
rod without mercy, for true justice is stern and must be administered
sternly.  We do better in the long run to leave mercy to God, who alone
is powerful and wise enough to use it rightly.  Yet I say still, from
one day to the next, yes, even from hour to hour, moment to moment, we
must lead our little charges in the hard path of virtue and
learning."

Frau Hutten flattened her hands at the edge of the table on either side
of her plate and twiddled her fingers ever so slightly; her husband's
tricks with his hands while talking made her nervous--they always had.
Everybody looked as if he were listening to a sermon- a dull one.  He
was boring them to death again, she could feel it like vinegar in her
veins.  All in one vast drowning movement she remembered those many
years when she had interposed herself, literally, bodily, between her
husband and the seamy, grimy, mean, sordid, tiresome side of life that
he simply could not endure.  All those stupid details, all those
endless errands, all that long war with the trickeries and the cheats
and the slacknesses of the dishonest, the unscrupulous, the lazy and
insolent, the ignorant, the wayward, the greedy people of whom the
entire workingclass from top to bottom seemed to consist; she had dealt
with them all, with that endless parade of them through the days of her
life, without once disturbing her husband or asking for his help.  The
superiority of his mind, the importance of his profession, required
that his energies and dignity be saved for the higher things of life,
and so she had saved them.  No one had ever seen the professor carry
even the smallest parcel in his hand- not even a book to and from the
school.  She carried everything, his books, paper parcels, suitcases,
string bags, and even pushed a market cart before her like a baby
carriage.  She had done it with pride and love, for everybody who saw
her knew that her husband was a distinguished professor and that she
was a good devoted wife who did everything well.  "The ideal German
wife," she had been called by persons she had reason to trust and
respect.

Yet--more had been required of her.  How often there had been brought
in and turned over to her for final discipline the most

irreconcilable of the younger students, embittered, tenacious,
rebellious beyond their years; and their strength as well, as Frau
Hutten had been more than once able to prove to them.

It was her pride- and her weariness- to remember in spite of her
resentment at the extra task put upon her, how, once a rebel was in her
hands, how entirely she was able to convince him, sooner or later, that
his punishment was to be unremitting, tireless, and daily increasing
until at last- no matter when, that was his business!  -he arrived at a
willing, complete, even eager submission.  She had never failed to
subdue even the most recalcitrant spirit, and she knew well that not
one of her initiates ever set eyes on her again without a shudder.  Why
had this sacrifice been demanded of her?  She who had asked God only
for children of her own to love and bring up tenderly as birds in a
nest?  She who would never have beaten or starved or terrorized with
threats a child of her own, no more than she could have laid an unkind
hand on her poor Bebe.  Even as a little puppy he had taken training
like an angel, needing nothing but a few simple words and tones of
voice, a touch of the fingers, a morsel of biscuit, to guide him in the
right direction.  So would her children have been loving, intelligent,
obedient children- why not?  Consider her own character, and her
husband's; why should not their children have been noble examples to
others?

She knew that her husband was a saint, too good for this world, and she
loved him for it.  If these stupid people could only listen to him,
they would hear something for their good.  Ah well- even if through her
fault some small crudity got through to him from time to time, he
blamed no one, least of all herself, and never remembered anything
about it.  He even, and this was so sweet the tears almost came to her
eyes, seemed honestly to believe they had never had a quarrel.  She
encouraged him in this.  If he had forgotten their first five years,
well and good, let him.  For herself, she could never forget, for the
many lessons taught her then had gone into her blood and bones, and
changed her almost beyond her own recognition.  By now she remembered
these hard lessons dimly and without that secret fury against her
bridegroom which even at its hottest she had known for what it
was--treachery to her marriage vow.  She knew well that upon the woman
depends the whole crushing weight of responsibility for happiness in
marriage.  At times this had seemed to be just one more unbearable
burden which fell to the lot of wives.  Other moments brief and
delightful, such as weddings, birthdays, anniversaries of friends,
Christmas, Easter, or even

simply days of bright weather, of fine health, or good news, indeed,
whenever her husband's face shone with domestic content and enjoyment,
she could feel her very soul growing wings.  Her constancy would
revive, flourish, grow strong, her faith could almost match her
husband's, who was unwavering, even stern, in his doctrine of their
perfect marriage.  Never had he admitted a shadow or a flaw, but always
spoke, and taught her to speak, of their past together and their daily
life through the endless years with unfailing, lying tenderness.

Frau Hutten leaped innerly as if she had been struck by lightning.
Lying?  Where in God's name had her thoughts got to?  She glanced about
her tingling with shock, with the helpless feeling she had known too
often, not only in sleep, but in all too waking moments like this, the
fear that her thoughts had been exposed in their misshapen nakedness,
their puerile infamy, and that public disgrace must follow--her own
disace and her husband's with her, for how often had he not charged her
to remember that any discreditable act of a wife, even the slightest
indiscretion, redounded to the discredit of her husband, thereby
exposed as a man unable to control his household.  "You are responsible
to me, my dear," he used to lecture her in those early days when she
showed signs of childish rebellion against him, "unless of course in an
unimaginable situation you might find yourself in direct conflict with
the law itself; but I am responsible to God for you, as well as for my.
self, and, in many particulars, to the secular law also, founded as it
i: on divine decree.  Ah, my dear child," he would say in those farawa
times, tenderly, his voice beginning to thicken and shake, his hands to
tremble, "how important it is for you to accept life as it truly is,
to, understand it, with my help and my love," he would say, with a rus'
of feeling that broke them down and carried them both away; and where
did they end, always, these little scenes, these forever unfinished
homilies.  In bed, always in bed, melting together in long loves so
delicious and shameless it felt sinful, not like marriage at all.  She
had never dared to confess this to her husband, who in their daylight
life never mentioned their dreamlike life of the night, as if they we
changed by day into different persons, or that making love was a secret
they must keep even from each other.... Frau Hutten began blushing all
over, but not with shame, -guilt, with repentance.  Oh how could she
even for a breath of time have thought the word "lie"?  For how well
she knew--how had I forgotten?  -that this anxious preservative
tenderness, this resolute casting out of the flaws and sediments of
human nature, this striving for perfection, was the very thing, the
only thing, they had made together, it was their child, that child of
perfect goodness she dreamed of?  In a round soft gesture she lifted
her hands, covered her face, and put them down again beside her
plate.

"Have you a headache, my dear?"  asked her husband, interrupting
himself, for he was still talking.  "Oh, no," she said, "please don't
worry.  I am perfectly well."

He turned again, this time to Dr.  Schumann.  "The problem of good and
evil is by definition insoluble.  Do they really exist, except as
concepts in the human mind?  Even if so, how and why did they
originate?  Philosophically this is unanswerable.  I ask it merely for
the sake of the argument."

"It is not for me a question of philosophy," said Dr.  Schumann, "and
even if it were, I am not a philosopher.  I rely on the teachings of
the Church and I am sorry I cannot argue the matter.  I am a poor
sinner," he said, good-temperedly and dryly, "who needs divine help
every day.  I agree with the Captain, it takes a strong character to be
really evil.  Most of us are too slack, halfhearted, or
cowardly--luckily, I suppose.  Our collusion with evil is only
negative, consent by default, you might say.  I suppose in our hearts
our sympathies are with the criminal because he really commits the
deeds we only dream of doing!  Imagine if the human race were really
divided into embattled angels and invading devils--no, it is bad enough
as it is," he said, crossing his knife and fork, "with nine-tenths of
us half asleep and refusing to be waked up."  His tone had become
slightly muted and apologetic, as he heard his voice drawing out and
going on and on, like the Professor's.  He drank the last of his wine
in silence.

Frau Hutten had not listened particularly to her husband, for she knew
his speeches by heart, but for years she had brooded on his theories of
human nature, so far removed, so infinitely above and beyond the actual
she had never dared to hint to him her conclusions on the subject,
after her life's daily battle with evil incarnate in its working
clothes.

She spoke aloud, astonished to hear her own voice: "I do know well
there are many evil people in this world, many more evil than good
ones, even the lazy good ones; evil by nature, by choice, by deepest
inclination, evil all through; we encourage these monsters by being
charitable to them, by making excuses for them, or just by being slack,
as

Dr.  Schumann says.  Too indifferent to be bothered so long as they do
not harm us.  And sometimes even if they do harm us.  They don't in the
least care that we are being scrupulous to treat them fairly and
honestly- no, they laugh up their sleeves at us, and call us fools, and
go on cheating us even more, because they think we are too stupid to
know what they are doing to us!  And we do not punish them as they
deserve, because we have lost our sense of justice, and we say, "If we
put a thief in jail, or a murderer to death, we are as criminal as
they!"  Oh what injustice to innocent people and what sentimental
dishonesty and we should be ashamed of it.  Or we go on blindly saying,
"If we behave well to them, they will end by behaving well to us!" That
is one of the great lies of life.  I have found that this makes them
bolder, because they despise us instead of fearing us as they should-
and it is all our own weakness, and yes, we do evil in letting them do
evil without punishment.  They think we are cowards and they are right.
 At least we are dupes and we deserve what we get from them.... "

She ran down slowly at this point, in despair and something like
prostration, hearing herself with frightful clearness in the clammy
silence.  The others were thoughtfully arranging their plates and
fiddling with their napkins.  Dinner was over, they were ready to leave
the table, and were waiting for her to finish her talk.  Her husband
sat like something molded in sand, his expression that of a strong
innocent man gazing into a pit of cobras.  After her instant glimpse of
his face, she dared not look above his hands, folded across his
stomach.  She thought, Now, I have mined his life; and it did not occur
to her until later what she might have done to her own, which depended
so entirely on her husband's well-being.  She had offended not even
recklessly, just thoughtlessly, so intent on giving out her own
opinions she didn't care for anything else, against her husband's main
conviction on which everything else in their marriage was based
soundly: that a wife's first duty was to be in complete agreement with
her husband at all times, no matter on what questions, from the
greatest to the smallest; more especially, the faintest shade of public
dissent was a most disloyal act.  She need not hurry to support him
positively- that would give the air of compulsion to her manner.  No,
hers was the amiable part of that silence which gives consent.  In any
case, it would never be her opinions that counted.  The important thing
is her unquestioning constancy to her husband, which often can be shown
all the more eloquently without words.

Frau Hutten expelled an enormous charge of breath like the last
exhalation of a dying person, straight up from the bottom of her very
being.  Resolutely then she faced her lifetime of expiation, and her
soul seemed to take flight into a region beyond suffering, as if it had
escaped the pains of punishment by consenting to them.

"I agree with you," said little Frau Schmitt, unexpectedly, "we must
not encourage people to behave badly to us.  If we let them run over
us, it's our own fault "

"Oh, I didn't say that!"

"Then what did you say?"  asked Frau Schmitt, baffled.

Herr Professor Hutten stood up at this, reaching for his wife's arm,
and Frau Hutten rose, grateful for being rescued from a foolish
discussion with another woman.  It was an article of faith with her
husband that all associations between women, even of the most casual
and passing kind , were unnatural, morbid by nature, hotbeds of
complicity against men, leading to divisions between husband and wife.
Married women "compared notes" on their husbands' marital practices and
faults, and gave bad advice to young girls.  A woman's loyalty must
not, cannot ever be, to her own sex, but to her men- to father, to
brother, to son, finally above all and before all, to her husband. They
have no understanding of true friendship in the high noble sense as it
exists so naturally between men; they are incapable of it, they are
born rivals and not to be trusted with each other.  There is always
something tainted, hysterical, in the associations of women; nor can
they be admitted to the great hermetic male society, for they have no
reverence for the Truth, nor for sacred rites.... Oh, how often Frau
Hutten had listened to her husband expounding these doctrines to a
mixed company in her very parlor, while she sat silent under
instruction, but with an almost wordless protest" But there are so many
other things about us he doesn't seem to know!  This is not all there
is to this--" helplessly inarticulate and strangely- this was strange,
she could never explain it- fearfully lonely.  Still, the other women
seemed to agree, or submit, and most of the men she knew talked that
way, and she had read it more or less in a number of books by respected
writers; her father had said it, and so did some ministers of the
Gospel.  In the end, she was bound to admit that this bitter judgment
was just another of those great truths she was by nature unfitted to
grasp.

They made their bows and escaped.  "Not so fast, please," she said, on
the stairs, breathing heavily and limping.  Her husband slowed his

step immediately.  "Ah," she said gratefully, then hurried on to speak
before the silence full of danger could widen between them, "my dear,
why I spoke as I did, I cannot think!"

The Professor's tone was measured as his step.  "Save your breath for
the stairs, my dear," he said coldly.  "When a wife contradicts her
husband, at some length, in public and before strangers, on a subject
to which he has devoted some thought, and about which she knows nothing
may I remind you that if she cannot think why she speaks, she may have
done better to keep silence?"

"Oh God, oh God!"  cried Frau Hutten, falling into a moral huddle
before the awful traps of life, her life which was like walking in the
dark with wires stretched across the path.  "Oh God, I didn't mean
id"

The Herr Professor almost stopped in his tracks, then lunged forward
again abruptly.  "You did not mean it?"  he asked in amazement.  "You
were then only talking frivolously?  Like a woman?  When you say such
things, it is unpardonable not to mean them.  Only a mistaken sincerity
can excuse such wrongheadedness!  What am I to understand then?  That
you merely wished for your own reasons to put your husband to shame?
What disloyalty!"

"Oh God, no!"

"Disloyalty to my ideas," said her husband, resuming his reasonable
tone after his brief outburst of righteous wrath, "to my whole mind, to
my humble career as scholar, to the entire inner meaning of my life,
which I had so foolishly confided to your hands--merely that," he
assured her, with dreadful gentleness, "nothing, nothing at all!"

They were in the passageway leading to their cabin, and both of them
saw at once that the door was wide open.  Each felt the shock in the
other's body.  The Professor recovered first.

"How could you have done that?"  he asked his wife, still in that
reasonable voice whiich nearly drove her distracted when there was no
reason at all in what he was saying.

"I didn't do it," she said, and the tears came up, "why must I always
be blamed for everythingg"

"This is not a time for self-pity," said the Professor, "you came out
after me and closed the door, or so I supposed.  I remember your hand
on the knob."

"No, I can't bear that," she told him, tremulously, "whenever in your
life did you go through a door before me?  You know you hold the door
for me and close it after us."

At this, the Herr Professor stood and studied his wife's face as if he
had never seen her before, and was ready to dislike her on first
sight.

"I do that?"  he asked with sarcasm.  "You are sure I have always been
so courteous to you?"

"Yes," she said, "you have always been."  She met his eyes with perfect
obduracy.  The Professor was shaken somewhat- in some devilish way she
had got him in an awkward fix, because of course he did serve courtesy
with her; habit had become second nature and he no longer remembered
his acts; but no doubt he had held the door, and... "Thieves, perhaps,"
he said, as they entered, and pretended to examine the lock.  His wife
was stooping over slightly, peering with crinkled lids in every
corner.

"He is not here," she said in a small childish voice, "my dear, he's
gone.  He has wandered out by himself because you left the door
open!"

"I forbid you to say that!"  he almost shouted.

"He is lost and looking for us.  He is wondering why we deserted him.
Somebody will beat him or kick him if he wanders into some place he
shouldn't be.  Oh, let's go back quickly and find him, oh why couldn't
you think of Bebe when you left the door open?  He is like a child, he
wants to go everywhere with us.  Oh how could you?"

"You are still not thinking, that is clear," said the Herr Professor,
pulling himself together with a mighty shrug and a sudden upward and
outward gesture of his right hand.  "Come, let's look for the beast
before you become entirely unhinged.  Has it not occurred to you that
this could be a matter of breaking and entering, theft may have been
the object, where are your garnet necklace and your grandmother's
diamond earrings?"

"With the purser," answered Frau Hutten, the tears running freely by
now.  "Please, let's go find him?"

The Professor, hand on knob, stood aside for her to pass, and drew the
door closed firmly after him.  "Can you not see, my dear, how securely
it is closed when I close it?"

"This once," she answered implacably.  Not for the first time did the
Professor dwell with warm sympathy on the wisdom of the fathers about
women: they were merely children of a larger growth, and needed a taste
of the rod now and then to keep them in order.  In gnawing silence, arm
in arm, they set out again, pacing up and down

the closed corridors of the lower decks, asking everybody, passengers,
sailors, officers, stewards, whether any of them had seen their dog.
"Surely you remember him?  a white bulldog--the only dog on the ship."
Several claimed to remember him, but no one had seen him that evening.
They turned and climbed upward once more.  Frau Hutten felt her
husband's shoulder rise and his elbow thrust out giving her a slight
impatient nudge in the side, as if her weight were a burden to him. 
She was so frightened she almost let go of his arm, and then dared not
for fear he would take her sign of wounded feelings as resentment. 
This new fear caused her to cling tightly, knowing at this point that
anything she did, or left undone, would only offend him further.

The after-dinner waltz music was thumping along vigorously on the
port-side deck, a beat regular as a clock striking, mingled on the wind
with the wandering current of a wilder strain from the accordions
below, where the men of the steerage were dancing in circles, clapping
hands, snapping fingers, clacking heels, clattering castanets and
shouting "Old!"  while the women and children watched in stillness,
massed in the shadows.

"Oh, Papa," said Elsa, pleadingly, "I don't want to dance... always
those same old waltzes..."

Her mother said, "Now Elsa, you know that is no reason not to dance.
The waltz is very pretty and becoming to a lady.  What do you want, to
dance that indecent jazz?  What would they think of you in St.
Gallen?"

"No, Mother, just a fox trot, maybe..."

"Well, my Elsa," said her father, "you are just being shy, so now let
me tell you that when you go to a dance, you dance first with your
escort.  Now I am your escort, so you will dance first with me and
then, who knows?  You haven't danced with your papa since your last
birthday dance."

"And then when you are seen dancing," said her mother, "someone else
will invite you."

Elsa at her first glance round had seen her student dancing with that
Spanish girl called Pastora, and her heart, which felt bruised all the
time, was crushed again.  She put her hand on her father's arm,
dreading the coming ordeal.  No matter what the music, her father
danced a funny little hopping and whirling dance, swinging her out and
bringing her in again on the turns, stamping his feet in pauses while
she hung suspended waiting for his next move.  She dared not even look
around her for fear of seeing people making fun of them both.  She was
taller and larger than he, and he pranced like a little bantam saying
loudly, "Lift your feet, Elsa, my girl, move, move, can't you hear the
music?"

Elsa longed to cry out, "I am not a meal sack I am not a broom, this is
no way to dance, you are making us ridiculous, nobody but you would
dance like this!"  Her father's face was merry and full of love as he
stamped and romped and hauled her about against her will, and she went
with him, suffering numbly because a girl must obey her father.

One white-clad young officer standing near said to another who was just
moving into the fray for the evening: "One of us must do something
about that girl.  Now which?"

The other took a small coin from his pocket, said, "Heads or tails?"
"Heads," said the other.  The coin fell tails.  The spinner said, "It
is all yours," and picked up his coin.  "Your time will come," said the
other.  They both laughed, and the loser moved in gently at the end of
the dance and spoke to Frau Lutz with the deepest respect.  "I should
so enjoy dancing with your daughter," he said, bowing, "with your
permission."

"You may invite her," said Frau Lutz, with the highest elegance as if
she were conferring a priceless favor.  Alas, Elsa was taller and
larger than the dapper little officer, too, and felt it bitterly, and
could not catch step with him, either.  He felt moisture on the back of
his neck, seized her more firmly, asserted himself, pushed her
unresisting but unresponsive bulk here and there as long as the music
lasted, always managing to avoid her feet and to keep almost in time
with the band.  At the end, he thanked her profusely and handed her
back to her parents and fled.  "You see?"  said Frau Lutz.  "One thing
leads to another.  We are going in to play chess, but we are not far
away. Stay here and enjoy yourself.  We will come for you in an hour." 
Elsa looked about desperately for a place to hide, or failing that, to
sit. The stewards had left several deck chairs about, and one of them
was near the chair of the poor sick man, the poor sick man who believed
he could cure others even though he was dying himself.  She went near
to him, timid and uncertain of her welcome, made tender and charitable
by her own sufferings and feelings of being shut out

from natural life.  She was still several steps away from him when he
lifted his hand eagerly and motioned towards a chair near him.  "Bring
it closer," he said, "and let us talk."

She drew the chair towards him, and sat so awkwardly her knees nearly
touched his.  She veered around and her sad gaze roamed over the
dancing pairs: Jenny Brown and Herr Freytag; Mrs.  Treadwell and the
best-looking of the young officers, a gold-braided one, too; hers had
had only silver.  Herr Hansen always always with that terrible Amparo
-and, hard to believe but there they were, turning and swaying with not
a rift of light between them, the sulky boy Johann and that girl called
Concha.  Nobody for Elsa--nobody, and there would never be; she would
always sit and watch her love dancing with someone else, and always
someone like Pastoral  Her blood surged so hard in her veins she began
to ache all over with real pain.  Herr Graf saw her distress and asked
kindly: "How are you feeling tonight?"  before she remembered to
inquire about his own health.  "Why are you not dancing, a fine young
girl like you?  You should be dancing with my wild nephew instead of
that strange girl he is with..."

"I have a sore throat, I think," she said, not knowing very well how to
lie fluently.  "My mother says it is better for me to be quiet."

"Come nearer still," he said, "lean towards me, I will cure your
throat.  You need not be sick so long as God lends me His power to heal
you."  His hand was lifted ready to reach out and touch her.  She
leaned away instead, slow mind and honest flesh repelled by his
corpselike nearness, death itself" But then, first make yourself well,"
she said, softly but forthrightly.  " He saved others, let him save
himself," Herr Graf rejoined instantly, for he had heard this speech
many times before.  "If he be Christ," remember?  He gave the power of
healing to his chosen disciples and apostles, yet not one of them could
save himself, either, nor can we of the holy descent, even to this day.
Why should I heal myself?  God does not will it, and so neither do I.
Listen to me, my child- if I could heal myself I should become selfish
like the others; I should go about my own pleasures and forget my duty
to the suffering ones.  God wills it I should stay and suffer with
others in houses of pain and death.  Only in my own pain am I useful to
Him, He has given me His word.  It is not so hard," he said in a weak
whisper almost drowned by the sound of the waves, the wind blowing past
her ears.  She inclined deeply to him to catch the words, respectful of
the

holy speech, and he said, "Don't pity me.  It is easy.  It is my
visitation of God's love."

She was silent, on the edge of tears.  The music rose piercingly, the
lighted deck looked so festive with its floating dancers, even those
dreadful Spanish twins seemed happy for once--the stars seemed so near
and the rushing wind was so sweet, so pure, so cool and clean and good
"I must go now," she said, uneasily, "I wish you a very good night,
Herr Graf.  Thank you for offering to help me... but I am not really
sick, not really "

"I have taken the pains of the world, the diseases of all the diseased,
upon myself," he told her, "into my own flesh, and so I will take your
sore throat, too, and your unhappiness..  but I must touch you," he
said.  He drew himself forward, straightening his neck a little,
pointed thin beard rising from his chest.  "Let me touch your throat,"
he said, "and say a prayer for you, and you will be truly well, body
and soul."  Before she dared to draw back, not wishing to be rude, he
stretched out his arm and clasped her throat with his long cold bony
hand, the curved fingers clung feebly for an instant and slipped away,
sliding over her breasts and falling back upon his lap rug.  He saw her
face of horror, felt the firm flesh shudder keenly.  "God forgive you,
you hard-hearted girl," he said sternly.  She stood up and turned away,
but not before she saw the tears sliding out and down his cheeks into
the scanty dirty-looking beard.  In desperate haste she ran up the deck
past the dancers, dodged the white bulldog Bebe, who appeared at that
moment coming down the steps from the boat deck, and plunged into the
lighted salon.  Her father and mother were so engrossed in their chess
game they barely nodded to her as she sat down near them.  She was
gasping a little.

"You seem out of breath, Elsa?"  asked her mother.  "Have you been
dancing so hard as all that?"  They both then favored their daughter
with beaming warm intimate little family smiles of approval.  "Ah,
good, good," said her father, "our Elsa must not be the kind of girl
who sits against the wall.  Now go to bed," he instructed her, "and get
your beauty sleep."

Mrs.  Treadwell was dancing with her young officer, who had got in the
habit of inviting her almost every evening.  He had long since

mentioned his name, even the name of the town where he was horn;

at first she had confused them, and then could not remember either of
them.  When not looking directly at him, she could hardly remember:

his face, and often did not recognize him at once when he appeared
before her.  Since her late entanglements with Lizzi and Freytag, she
wished more than ever not to touch or be touched, neither with hands or
words.  Speech of their sort could be a pawing and prying not to be
tolerated.  She liked her young officer's style of holding her by the
mere fingertips, his right hand resting--no, not resting, poised
weightlessly at the most neutral spot on her entire person, that
harmless area just below the right shoulder blade.  Her hand in turn
hovered lightly just above his bent elbow, keeping the stipulated
distance between sides which, at school dances, it had been the
undivided responsibility of the girl to maintain.

"If you are uncertain whether you are at the proper distance," her
dancing teacher told her earnestly, "mentally raise your right arm
crooked at the elbow, straight out from your shoulder, and if it barely
touches your partner's chest, rest assured you are entirely correct. If
your partner seems to be encroaching, simply hold yourself away firmly
but gracefully without losing step until he takes the hint.  And
remember this, if he is a gentleman, he will take the hint.  If he does
not, then you will not dance with him again " This voice from the
pre-Flood era of her youth so delighted her, its ghostly sound drifting
through endless spaces of forgetfulness, she turned upon her partner a
dazed, tender smile, and came wide awake when she saw him respond with
a faintly puzzled, if not quite disturbed, frown.  At the same moment
his hold tightened even so slightly, and ever so gently he drew her
towards him.  Mrs.  Treadwell mentally raised her right arm, crooked at
the elbow.  The young officer slacked his arm at once, and remarked
thoughtfully, seeing Bebe blundering about among the dancers, "I wonder
what that dog is doing out by himself?"  Mrs.  Tread well couldn't
imagine, and they drifted along in easy silence and harmony until the
music stopped.  "Thank you," he said.  "Delightful," said Mrs.
Treadwell smiling just over the top of his head, "good night," and she
left the deck at once.

Amparo, still teaching Hansen to dance, trundled him about joylessly,
her face the mere image of boredom.  In spite of her efforts to direct
him he managed to lunge them into the swiftly spinning Johann

and Concha, who veered and flew away like birds.  "Oaf," said Amparo
intensely, the first word she had spoken to him that evening.  "How
long do you expect me to keep this up?"

Hansen, who had not spoken at all, said nothing but renewed his
oppressive clutch and tramped forward as if he were following a plow,
almost running them into the band.  "Idiot!"  she said.  Hansen brooded
as he stumbled onward.  "I pay you, don't I?"  he inquired at length,
heavily.  "Not for stepping on my feet, no," said Amparo.  "Goat!"  she
said in fury, "watch your big hoofs!"

Freytag and Jenny, who took pains to assure each other that they had
met on deck quite by accident, lingered wondering whether they dared to
dance together again.  David might decide to be awkward at any moment.
Jenny had come upon Freytag standing alone, leaning slightly at the
waist, one hand in pocket, watching the dancers, or pretending to, his
features set in the strange frowning blind stare, the whites of his
eyes sometimes showing all round the iris, that look Jenny had seen
often by now, at first with perfect belief and indignant sympathy, and
of late, always of two minds about it o first that his suffering was
real, and second, that he was perhaps being a touch theatrical about
it.  Yet she could always feel again, as ever, the same light blaze of
indignation against the vulgar insult offered him by the Captain.  She
put the blame squarely on the Captain because he was the only one who
could have stopped the nonsense with a word; instead he had given it
shape and direction.  It was simply cowardly and low to hit someone who
had no way of hitting back.  Poor Herr Lowenthal was mistreated too,
and Freytag never seemed to give this a thought; --that was wrong of
him.  She believed in hitting back, blow for blow and as many extra as
you could manage to get in.  --Not to resist and punish an injury, to
oneself or to anyone else, was to consent to the wrong, plain moral
cowardice in her view, and there was nothing she despised more.
Thinking these thoughts, which grew more and more dispersed and vague
as she came near Freytag, when he roused himself at sight of her and
smiled as if pleased, she forgot them altogether and asked, "Wouldn't
you like to dance?  I'm tired of catering to David's suspicious mind!"
"How flattering," he said, "of course!"

As they swayed together a measure or two then moved into step, he said,
"Did I tell you how I first saw my wife?  We were in a huge expensive
Berlin night club, a kind of high low-life place, where anybody could
go."  He paused as if he had bitten off the end of that

phrase.  "That is, if you were dressed right and smelt of money.  I
was dancing with one of the girls, one of those bare-backed ladies who
showed off their figures and agility by playing innocent little games
such as handball among themselves between dances.."  and this beautiful
little creature who came in with a small party of excessively
rich-looking young men and women- I wish you could have seen her then-
looks over her partner's shoulder with a face full of mischief and the
boldness of a spoiled, well-protected girl and calls out to me as if
answering something I had said to her before, "Why of course you may
have the next!"  You can imagine that I went looking for her, and I
asked her if she meant it."

Brassy little wench, thought Jenny, but it works, it works quite
often.

He began again on some equally famous souvenir, Jenny listened with
patience while he went on tormenting himself, wondering if he realized
that at last he was talking about his wife in the past tense.  "She was
really a quite conventional girl, she didn't do that sort of thing,
usually.  Later, much later, when I asked her why she had done it, she
said she had fallen in love with me on sight, and had made up her mind
to marry me before she was near enough even to know the color of my
eyes!  Quite mad, wasn't it?"

"Utterly," said Jenny, "really suicidal."  He seemed somewhat disturbed
by this word, but decided to let it pass.

"She was so clever," he said fondly, "she'll be cleverer than her
mother when she comes to that age... she used to tell me exactly how
things would be, she couldn't be fooled, she could just take a breath
of air in a place and say, "Come along, this isn't for us!"  Sometimes
I didn't believe her or didn't wish to believe, I'd lose patience with
her being so self-conscious about her Jewishness and I'd tell her that
she was just another persecuted Jew, determined to be hated and
persecuted no matter what.  She would say in my very face--"All Goyim
hate the jews and those who pretend to like us are the worst, because
they are hypocrites."  And I'd tell her that this notion just made her
feel important one of the Chosen--the most unpardonably conceited and
utterly beastly selfish idea that ever got into the brain of man!  "I'd
think you'd all be ashamed of yourselves," I'd say.... Not that we
quarreled, no, not at all.  But these things did come up now and again,
and she'd get furious and cry out, "The same old Goy talk... didn't I
tell you?"  and then we'd fly into each other's arms in a

fright, and say, "Let's not turn on each other!"  and it would all
blow over, because we were really in love."

His talk went on as if he were hypnotized by the swing of the waltz and
the sound of his own voice running along under the music.  Jenny
wondered if he remembered other things he had said about his wife, all
those words of pure admiration, the romantic tenderness, the rosy
honeymoon illusions, the protective, defensive, constant praise-why
not?  It was all true so far as it went; but after one went so far it
was always necessary to go back and touch base and start again on a new
set of truths.  There is a dream and it is one kind of reality; a
waking up and that is another kind; or it is all the same reality under
its endless aspects.  Now she knew that all along he had been talking
about his wife as people talk about their dead, and in this constant
reminiscence of her, he was visiting her grave with flowers and reading
there the inscription he had composed for her himself.

"... and oh God," he said almost in a whisper, his mouth close to her
ear as they drifted easily in a circle near the music, "I wish I could
just take her, without her mother, who never lets us forget for a
minute that she has lost nearly all her friends on our account, and
find a country--there must be one somewhere--to live like human beings
like other people, and never to hear the words Jew or Gentile again."

"You might go to Africa," said Jenny, "you might look for one of those
fascinating surviving tribes of cannibals and head-hunters where you
would both be hated on exactly equal terms, because you're another
color.  And you could despise them comfortably because they stink
horribly and scratch themselves all the time, and bow down to sticks
and stones and wear gaudy blankets; and they love and admire themselves
with the same passion that all the rest of us adore ourselves, and our
color reminds them of ghosts and death and they say our smell turns
their stomachs.  Would you like that any better?"

Freytag drew back his face a few inches and his offended, self- pitying
eyes rebuked her severely.  "You are being frivolous," he said, you are
ridiculing a dreadful human tragedy."  Their dancing slowed down almost
to a standstill.

"I sometimes sound more frivolous than I am," she said.  "It's just
very unfortunate manners.  It has caused nearly all my troubles..."
Over his shoulder she saw David appear in the doorway a moment,

take in the scene at a glance, and disappear without a sign of
recognition.  "There goes David," she said, without surprise.

"Where?"  asked Freytag, turning too late for a glimpse.  His face
cleared and a curious thin smile tightened at the corners of his mouth.
He drew Jenny closer to him with a conspiratorial quick gesture of
familiarity and put his cheek against hers.  "Is he still there?  Is he
still jealous?  Ah, why didn't we give him something to be jealous
about?"

"He doesn't need anything," said Jenny, brightly, repelled by his
impertinence, and stiffening against his arm, "he's doing beautifully
on his own, thank you."

Freytag laughed outright, and Jenny observed that it was becoming to
him.  He wasn't meant to be a hero of drama, much less tragedy.  "Do
you mean, you cruel creature, you are going to leave him shadowboxing
for all the rest of your life together?  It's wicked of you not to give
him just cause when he needs it so badly--"

"Oh no," said Jenny, "you're quite wrong.  He doesn't want me to be
unfaithful to him.  He only wants to feel there is always the
possibility, that I am desirable to other men, and he wants the right
to accuse me of things- things that if he really believed, he wouldn't
be on this ship with me now!  But do you mind?  Let's not talk about

David.  That is one of the things he hates, and I don't blame him!"

"I have talked to you about my wife," Freytag reminded her.

"In not quite this way," said Jenny, feeling she was splitting hairs.
They were both of them being quite stupid and vulgar, and for her, that
would not matter for one moment if only somehow somewhere on that
wretched crowded ship they could find a place to spend a few nights
together.  She wished nothing else of him, but she wished for that with
the quiet fury of high fever, and the abandonment of a dream.  She
wondered at him- was he so insensible he could not feel her through his
pores?

"That's true," he agreed, "not at all the same, but she isn't here, and
that makes all the difference.  What are you going to do, my dear?"  he
asked tenderly.

"I don't know," said Jenny, "I only know it must end."

Freytag folded her into his arms with sudden warmth and waltzed her
rapidly over to the band.  "Play "Adieu, mein kleiner Garde-Offizier,"
please," he called to the man drooping over the rattly little piano,
who nodded, soothed at even the smallest acknowledgment that he

was alive.  When David paused for a second time in another doorway,
farther down, he saw them doing a romping improvised dance with long,
swooping, drunken steps, both laughing like maniacs.  He went back to
the bar.

"Oh, take care," said Freytag.  "There's Bebe, what's he doing here?"
and there he was indeed nearly underfoot.  He dodged too, they avoided
each other and he wandered on.

Ric and Rac, outside the traffic of dancers, were doing a dance of
their own.  Facing each other, as always teeth to teeth, their toes
almost touching, they clasped hands, and leaning backwards from each
other at the farthest possible stretch, they whirled round and round
like planets fiercely, the tips of their shoes clattering delicately as
castanets.  The game was to see which one would be exhausted first,
relax his hold and get a good rolling fall.  Even better, one would let
go of the other, at the same instant throwing himself forward, keeping
balance while the other got his head bumped.  In fact, however, such
triumphs were largely theoretical, since they were evenly balanced in
body and soul.  When one loosened and hurled himself forward, the other
took a firmer grasp and hurled himself forward also; the most that
could happen was a head-on standing collision, with, on luckier days,
maybe bloodied noses for both.

This was an indifferent day.  They did not enjoy their game and they
were too stubborn to stop until they succeeded in hurting each other in
some way, it hardly mattered how.  So they turned on their axis,
shoulders far out, chins tucked in, eyes staring into eyes as balefully
as two infant Gorgons intent on turning each other to stone.  Neither
gave way, but whirled more furiously, digging their claws in each
other's wrists, stamping carefully on each other's toes, working up to
that moment when by perfect unspoken consent they would break and fly
apart and see which one got the fall, or the worst one.

Concha, dancing with Johann, shuddered and hid her face as they drew
near his uncle's chair, and said: "Ah, God, how dead he looks-let's not
go nearer.  Take me away.  Why is he not dead?"

Johann said bitterly, "God knows I wish he were."  He laid his smooth
cheek on the top of her beautiful calm-looking little head with its
young sleek black bands of hair, his own hair golden and

glittering even in the dull light, and Dr.  Schumann, passing on his
way to the steerage to attend another birth, paused to look at them
with pleasure and pure generous joy in their freshness of beauty-how
could such beauty come out of such dinginess and poverty as theirs? For
he knew their origins, and no doubt their natures were as poor and
shabby as their lives, yet there they went, as perfectly formed as
champion-bred race horses, the look of longing and uncertainty in their
faces as touching as the tears of a wronged child.  "It is of the
Devil," he said finally, turning on his way to help bring another lump
of mortal procreation into the world, "of the Devil, that beauty, and
he will desert them presently---even now he is going, what a pity!"

When Concha danced with Johann, or any man, she did not just dance
close, or press herself against him, she melted softly into him from
top to toe, warm, solid, yet without weight; her breath came and went
lightly on his cheek with a small simmering sound; she purred warmly in
the hollow of his ear, nuzzled him cheek and neck, with the tip of her
tongue discretely and invisibly she left a moist shivering-hot trail of
miniature kisses under his jaw.  "Stop that!"  he said, clutching her
desperately around the neck instead of her waist.  "Do you want to
drive me crazy?"

"Oh, you talk, you talk like that, but you do not really love me you do
not even really want me very badly."  She leaned her head far back on
his arm and looked up helplessly.  "What should I do, then?  You say
you have no money- well, neither have I. You have your uncle to take
care of you, but I have nobody but myself.  I have not asked you for
much, but I must have something!  You are stronger than he is- why do
you not just make him give you some money?"

Johann said desolately, "He is nearly dead, that is so.  And he is
going to leave me his money, and he tells me often it can't be long,
for me to be patient.  I hate him when he says that--I hate him for
knowing all my bad feelings, for talking about it when he knows how
miserable he is making me!  But he is not dead yet, and I must wait."
His voice almost broke, he closed his eyes and gripped her as if she
were his one hold on life.

"Not so tight, please," said Concha, with a pretty smile of
appreciation of his strength.  "Well, do you love me a little, or not?
Do you take me for one of those creatures who stand in doorways at
night?"

"Aren't you a dancer?  Can't you make a living at that?"

"Not a very good one," said Concha, coolly, "not until I am famous. Not
enough.  But you are shameless- do you want to be my 'manager' instead
of Manolo?  He beats me if I do not give him all the money. Would
you?"

"If he gets all your money, what good does it do you to make it?' asked
Johann, his German merchant blood warming to the financial aspects of
her trade, curiosity almost overcoming his other feelings.

"He does not get it all, not by any means," said Concha.  "And if he
did, how are you any better than he?  He wants me to sleep with men for
money to give to him; you want to sleep with me for nothing --a cheat
both ways!  And you talk about love!"

"I never did," said Johann, furiously, "I never said that word!"

"Well," said Concha, her light contemptuous laugh stinging him to the
marrow, "you are just a coward, after all- you cannot face anything,
even the word love.  You are just not a man yet.... "

"I'll show you, I'll show you," Johann raged, charging forward and
pushing her back so rudely they almost lost balance.

"No," said Concha, "that is not what I mean by being a man... it is
something much better.  Yes.  Let's dance away from the others and I'll
tell you."  She pressed the palm of her hand against his cheek and said
sweetly, "Don't be angry, my love."  Turning in step and rhythm with
him, yet guiding him, she said warningly, "Oh, take care!"  as they
almost stepped on the fat white bulldog wandering aimlessly by himself
through the dancers.  He sniffed at them and went on indifferently.
They leaned on the rail and Concha said, "I cannot think how you can
put up with such miseries when none of it is necessary, not in the
least.  It would be so easy, and so safe, to end it- no danger at all.
Look at him-"

They watched Herr Graf for a moment, far down the deck, head on chest,
eyes closed" That big ugly girl is gone," said Concha, "why, he is not
really alive even now.  He hardly breathes.  Just a pillow, a soft one,
over his face for a few minutes- Un momenti to she said, seriously,
measuring the smallest fraction of time with thumb and forefinger--"oh,
it has been done often successfully.  Then you would have the money he
carries with him, and when you get home, you will be rich!  Ah, have a
little courage, my darling.  No one would ever know--not even I!  If he
should die tonight, I shouldn't be surprised, or ask any
questions--neither would anybody else.... What we all wonder about is,
Why is he still alive at all?  How does he keep on breathing?  So you
see... ?"

Johann, listening in horror, kept turning his head and swallowing as if
he were being strangled.  He who had so often wished his uncle dead was
nearly stunned at the proposal that he should murder him.  He could
swear that thought had never entered his mind.  His ears roared, he
felt a great charge of electricity flash through him.  He could not in
that second even see the small hand on his wrist, slipping into his
sleeve up his arm.

"Do that," she said, with urgent tenderness, breathing upon his face,
"do that, and you will know what it is to be a man."

"You mean tonight?"  he asked, forcing his voice through his closing
throat.

"Why not?  Is tomorrow any better?"

"I never dreamed of it," he said with a great burst of anguish, "never,
never!"

"It is time you did, then," she said, "and now, oh, how I wish we could
celebrate with a bottle of champagne.  We must drink champagne
together, can't you buy us even one little bottle- even the German
kind- this evening?"

Johann groaned in a shame so deep it seemed to poison his bones.
"Wait," he stammered in the voice of one begging for mercy, "wait!  I
haven't a pfennig--tomorrow, I promise, I promise, I will buy you
champagne!"

"Well, then, let me buy it for us tonight, and you may pay me back
tomorrow.  Only, you must do what I tell you, you must not be a timid
child any more.  Now I will give you the money---" and she reached into
the bosom of her flimsy black bodice.

"No!"  shouted Johann, the wind carrying his voice over the water. 
"You will give me nothing.  What are you trying to do?  Do you take me
for that pimp of yours?  You will see what kind of man I am... do you
dare to say such things to me?  Well, tomorrow you try saying them!"

"I dare now," she said, leaning lightly upon him and stroking his hand,
"and I dare tomorrow.  Don't threaten me.  I am not afraid of you, how
could I be?  You will never harm me?  I shall be so pleasant to you,
you will never want to harm me!  Let's not quarrel, it's so dull, let's
dance.... "

"I don't want to dance," said Johann with honest brutality, "I'm

sick of dancing.  I want something more, something real, the real
thing, you've fooled me long enough.  The next time, there'll be
something different!"

"Oh, I hope so," said Concha, "or what are we talking about?  Are you
going?"

"Of course," he said.  "It is late and I must put my uncle to bed."
"What will you do?"

"Put him to bed, what did I say?"  he asked.  "What else do you
think?"

"And then you put him to sleepy..."

He brushed her hand off his arm and gave it a good wrench as he threw
it from him.  "If he should die tonight you would accuse me," he said,
"you would say I did it.  I'll show you, he won't die tonight -you
don't get me that easily!"

"Tomorrow night, maybe?"  she called after him, as he took off towards
his uncle's chair like a man running for his life.  She stood watching
him pushing the chair through the doorway, rubbing her wrist, her face
entirely expressionless.  Then she went in the bar, where Manolo sat
before a half-emptied bottle of red wine, with two glasses.  She sat
across from him and their eyes met briefly; she pushed her glass
towards him and he poured for her.  They lit fresh cigarettes and sat
smoking as if each were alone, or they were strangers.

Bebe halted for a moment, and sniffed politely at the extended hand of
Herr Graf, who patted him on the head and blessed him as he went by.
"We are all God's children, safe in His loving hands," he assured the
dog, who wagged faintly in response to the benevolent tone, but shook
his head and blew the odor of the hand out of his nostrils as he
waddled around the bow and disappeared just as Herr Professor and Frau
Hutten emerged from the door of the bar and began inquiring of the
dancers, "Have you seen our white bulldog?  Do you remember him?"  Ric
and Rac, having spun slowly to a stop, bored and ready for a good
fight, saw as if with one pair of eyes Bebe's dignified rear end
walloping away from the sick man's chair.  Without even exchanging
glances, they turned and loped through the ship to the deserted lee
side to head him off.  They ran full tilt up deck to meet Bebe, who saw
them coming and stopped uncertainly, his nose working.  Ric and Rac
whirled down upon him, fell upon him fore and aft, clutching him at

random but with utter purpose, and carried him instantly to the
rail.

Bebe was again somewhat seasick, he could not resist, but he deeply
resented being hauled around in this fashion.  He rolled his eyes and
growled and muttered under his breath, waggling feebly.  They managed
to lift him, limp legs dangling, helpless soft belly heaving, up to the
rail, where his hind quarters stuck for a moment, but they pushed hard,
together, and over he went, with a dolorous yelp.  He hit the water
like a sack of sand, went down, the sea rolled over him, he came up at
once, took a good breath and stayed up bravely, keeping his nose and
his frantically working front paws above water.

Denny loitered about pretending to watch the dancers, though his sole
constantly baffled aim was to catch a glance from Pastora.  One of
those Cuban students had latched on to her and they had settled down
for the evening together, dance after dance.  Denny was forced to admit
at last that his prospects were gone, and in his disappointment even
the desire for liquor had abandoned him.  Getting drunk was not the
answer to this one.  From mere habit he stood at the bar and absorbed
three or four quick ones, then carrying a double bourbon with him he
took himself away, to the other side of the ship where he might brood
unseen, staring into the monotonous waves streakily lighted from the
portholes and decks, sulking corrosively and consoling himself by
spitting through his teeth and repeating under his breath short nasty
names for women- all women, the whole dirty mess of them, not just
Pastora.  Why pick on her out of all the millions?  One as much a bitch
as the other, he decided, noticing a bulky white bundle strike the
water about midway of the deck- a bale of garbage from the galley he
supposed--as Ric and Rac scurried past with wild eyes and open mouths,
tongues strained out of the corners, crazy as ever, he observed; and
almost instantly he saw another long dark bundle hit the water near the
white one and there rose from the steerage a long hoarse bloodcurdling
howl like a pack of coyotes.  The sound rose, died down, renewed itself
with shrill high women's screams running above it.  Denny spilt his
whiskey, dropped his glass without noticing, scurried to the rail
overlooking the lower open deck and saw the shapeless dark mass huddled
and heaped, leaning far out and over, working madly within itself as if
the people were all entangled and could not break apart, but the
anguished howl had become human and was full of tears, and Denny in his
drunken fog was filled with

tears too.  He put his hand over his mouth and began to cry, and raced
back to the side again to see, now falling in the ship's wake, a half
dozen life-rings floating near a man and a white dog struggling in the
sea, both swimming, the man holding the dog by the collar, a lifeboat
with small white figures rowing hard towards them, leaping and falling
with each bound forward.  He felt an abrupt halt in the ship's
progress, an internal shock as if her engines had been stopped
suddenly.  He saw the course changing, felt the ship swinging around
with a heavy churning and commotion at her prow, circling slowly around
the lifeboat and the floating ring.  A hard white searchlight showed
the swimming man, still wearing his boina, reaching for the nearest
ring; he missed and sank once more.  The dog was seized over the side
of the lifeboat, and as he came up again, the man.

Herr Baumgartner appeared, in more than usual distress, and asked
Denny, "Why were those people howling?"

"Man overboard," said Denny with authority, his tears dried.  Herr
Baumgartner responded with gratifying intensity, grimacing so deeply
his ears and scalp moved, slapping himself on the forehead, uttering a
loud groan and rushing to view what was left of the spectacle.  He was
joined presently by Herr Freytag, and then the alarm, or diversion,
became general.  The dancers left the music, the members of the band
put down their instruments, all flocked to the rail to watch the
rescue.  Officers began moving among them asking them not to crowd the
side, to keep away from the boat when it came up, please to stand back,
there was, they declared, nothing to see; the rescue had been effected.
The passengers glanced about as if they were listening, but no one
moved or answered.  Frau Hutten, who had been growing more and more
frantic in her search, was almost in despair.  She began to be
resentful of the indifference shown by everyone, nobody sympathized or
wished to help her.  She was by now dragging her husband along by the
arm, her limp had almost disappeared.  Seeing that disreputable young
Denny, the nearest person to her, she forgot all reserve and rushed
upon him, close to tears.  "Oh Herr Denny, please- have you seen my
good Bebe, my white bulldog Bebe?  Oh we cannot find him anywhere!"

Denny turned his head with a leer meant to be full of ridicule, turned
back to the sea pointing, and asked, "Is that him, down there?"

Frau Hutten looked down and saw the boat being drawn up with Bebe
sprawled in the bottom.  She gave a shriek, fell back against her

husband's chest so violently he almost toppled, then fell forward as
he seized her waist; he could feel by the surge of her body that if he
had not been holding her, she would have gone forward full length upon
her face.

The sailors lifted the long narrow body of the man over the side, limp
as seaweed, his bare feet with crooked toes dangling, the shabby black
wool scarf still knotted around his neck; the water streamed from his
clothes as they carried him carefully back down to the steerage deck.
Two sailors hoisted Bebe into Frau Hutten's opened arms.  She tottered
under his nerveless weight, let him down on deck, and kneeling beside
him, wept aloud like a mother at the graveside of her only child.

"How really revolting," said David Scott to Wilhelm Freytag, who
happened to be near.  Herr Baumgartner heard and could not refrain from
protest.

"But grief is grief, pain is pain, Herr Scott, no matter what the
cause," he said, his mouth wan and drooping.

"Ah, the drooling German soul," said Freytag in pure disgust, moving
away, remembering with an unpleasant start that this was a phrase of
his wife's, and one he had always resented from her.  Herr Professor
Hutten, in a heavy sweat of humiliation, finally got his wife to her
feet, a sailor came forward to help him carry Bebe, and the mournful
little group disappeared.  At this point it occurred to Herr Lutz to
suggest to one of the young officers that perhaps Dr.  Schumann should
b e sent for to attend the nearly drowned man.  "They are already
giving him resuscitation exercises," said the officer, as a rebuff to
officiousness.  But he did send for Dr.  Schumann as, to be sure, he
had intended to do without advice from a passenger.

Dr.  Schumann walked slowly down the passage on his way to the main
deck, not being able to decide by the sounds what sort of panic or
emergency it was, and met La Condesa at the first turning, strolling
like a ghost, in a black nightgown and a long old brocade wrap trimmed
with monkey fur.

"Ah, there you are," she said in a dreamy childish voice and reached to
touch his face with her fingertips as if she did not expect to find him
solid flesh.  "What is the strange noise?  Is the ship sinking?"  "I
think not," he said, "what are you doing here?"

"I

am walking about, just as you are," she answered.  "My stewardess ran
away.  Why not?  The steward told her something was happening."  "Maybe
you had better come with me," said Dr.  Schumann, taking her arm.

"I'd like nothing better," she whispered.  He saw that the drug he was
giving her was beginning to lose its effect; by this hour she should
have been unconscious.  no shipwreck could wake her.  His heart gave a
perilous leap of rage when he thought of her abandoned there by that
cowardly stewardess, and yes--yes, abandoned by him, who had caused her
to be made helpless and then had left her to her fate.  In this moment
of possible danger he had not given her a thought.  "God help me," he
said, almost terrified at the evil he was discovering in his own
nature.

"Let's walk a little faster," he told her, "the ship seems to be
turning.  There is surely something gone very wrong."

"How can you tell if the ship is turning?"  asked La Condesa, moving he
thought as if she were already under water.  She leaned until her cheek
touched his shoulder and spoke in a wavering chant.  "Imagine, if the
ship should sink, we should go down together embraced, gently, gently
to the bottom of the sea, quiet dark love in the cool sleepy
water...."

Dr.  Schumann's hair moved crinkling upon his crown, he had a savage
impulse to strike her from him, this diabolical possession, this
incubus fastened upon him like a bat, this evil spirit come out of her
hell to accuse him falsely, to seduce his mind, to charge him with
fraudulent obligations to her, to burden his life to the end of his
days, to bring him to despair.

"Hush," he said, putting into that mild word a weight of command that
arrested her roving attention, and even lighted a small flicker of life
in her voice: "Ah yes, I do talk too much, you always said so!"

"I never said such a thing," said Dr.  Schumann, flatly.

"Oh never--not in words," she answered, lapsing once more into her
half-stupor.  On the stairs she roused a little and said, "Isn't that
my stewardess coming back?"  It was, and behind her came the steward.
"You are needed below, sir," he said.  "Man overboard, half drowned."

Dr.  Schumann said to the stewardess, "Take this lady to her cabin and
don't leave her again without an order from me."  Returning to his own
cabin to pick up his black case, he reflected on the expression on the
face of the stewardess as she acknowledged his rebuke--an

unpleasant mixture of furtive insolence and false abasement, the all
too familiar look of resentful servility.  He reflected uneasily that
she could not be trusted, and La Condesa, who knew well how to deal
with her sort, was now in no condition to control her.  His agitation
grew as he felt the oppression of the increasing millions of subhuman
beings, the mindless grave-stuff not even fit to be good servants, yet
whose mere mass and weight of negative evil threatened to rule the
world.  Sweat broke out on his forehead, he slipped a small white
pellet under his tongue, picked up his case, and set out walking as
fast as he dared, in the hope of saving a nameless, faceless fool in
the steerage who had been stupid enough to fall overboard.  "Jesus,
Mary and Joseph!"  he prayed, to chase away the stinging swarm of his
thoughts, and crossed himself openly as he emerged on deck, without
caring who saw.  Frau Rittersdorf saw, and crossed herself
responsively, saying on impulse to the Lutz family, "Ah, the dear good
man, going with prayer on his errand of charity!"

"Charity?"  inquired Herr Lutz, who considered that Frau Rittersdorf
gave herself airs above her station in life- she was no better than he
was!  "Charity in what way?  He is only doing a duty that he is paid
for, after all!"

Frau Rittersdorf gave him a bright stare of amused curiosity as if he
were a kind of strange insect, and moved away in silence.

Father Garza, surrounded by weeping women and gloomy men huddled on the
floor in the stinking cabin beside the bunk where the drowned man lay,
rose from his knees and turned when Dr.  Schumann stood in the doorway.
A weak naked light hung from the ceiling, and a single candle burned on
the small collapsible table the priest had brought with him for the
Viaticum ceremony.  He blew out the candle and assembled the sacred
objects, and shook his head.

"Too late, I'm afraid," he said, smiling rather cheerfully, "for
materia mediea."

"Still," said Dr.  Schumann, "there is something to be done," and he
advanced with his stethoscope and sat on the edge of the grimly dirty
bunk where the dead man, naked to the waist, washed and purified by the
salt sea, lay at perfect ease in the state and dignity of his death.

Dr.  Schumann in his long experience as unwilling witness of death in
nearly all its aspects had never lost his awe and tenderness for

that Presence.  He felt it now, again, an almost visible shade
hovering over them.  He knew by all the signs and all his senses that
the man was dead, yet he continued for some time to listen intently
through his instrument for some flutter or whisper of life in the gaunt
rib cage and the sunken famished belly of the long body with its great
knotted shoulder joints, the skeleton arms, and big warped hands, now
curled inward like a child's.  Nothing.  He rose and took a last
glimpse at the dark melancholy exhausted face now closed in a secretive
faint smile.  The women, huddled together near the dead man's feet,
began praying aloud, their rosaries clicking, and one of the men came
forward and crossed the limp hands on the breast, and tenderly covered
him up.

"Can you imagine anything more absurd," said Father Garza to Dr.
Schumann in his atrocious German as they walked back slowly and took a
turn around the deck together, "than this, that a man jumps from a
moving ship at night in mid-ocean and is drowned, a deed of
carelessness reprehensible to the last degree, not suicide certainly,
but a blamable disregard for his life, which is not his to throw away
so lightly- Imagine, my dear Doctor to save the life of a dog?"

Dr.  Schumann considered his own rash act in leaping to save the ship's
cat from Ric and Rac, and wondered what the priest would think of that.
He felt he did not have to imagine anything, the man's impulse seemed
almost too crudely natural.  "I have seen him down there, on the deck,
carving little animal figures with his pocket knife," said Dr.
Schumann, after a pause.  "He was a Basque," he added, as if that might
explain some mystery.

"An unbalanced savagely individualist people," said Father Garza, "with
their weird untraceable language and their pagan Catholicism... what
would one expect?  His name was Etchegaray," he pronounced, rolling the
word with sensuous pleasure.

"I must remember," said Dr.  Schumann.  "Thank you.  Sorry, I have a
call to make."  He turned away, then retraced a step and asked, "Oh
Father- who do you think threw that dog overboard?"

"Those devil-possessed children with the zarzuela company, of course,"
answered Father Garza.  "Who else"

"I wonder if anyone saw them," said Dr.  Schumann, pleasantly, "or are
they real devils who can take any shape, or make themselves invisible
for their deeds of darkness?"

"A sound whipping and three days' penance on bread and water

would drive out their devils," said Father Garza, "they are only
rather dull little sinners.  I do not believe in making them feel
self-important by calling them devils.  A series of good whippings on
an empty stomach is all that is needed."

"I wish it might be so simple," said Dr.  Schumann, a lively sparkle of
impatience in his eyes.  Seeing the priest's frowning glance ahead, and
his mouth pursing to pursue the topic, Dr.  Schumann said "Good night"
hastily and turned aside.

He found the Huttens kneeling on the floor of: their cabin, bowed like
a sculptured Piet over the prostrate form of Bebe, who now and then
raised his head, retched and drooled more salt water.  They raised
their heads towards him with the same burdened, sorrowful air of the
men and women beside the dead man, and Frau Hutten, against all her
rules of domestic discretion, spoke first: "Oh Doctor, I know it is not
right to ask you, but oh, what can we do for our Bebe?  He is suffering
so!"

Dr.  Schumann said dryly, "I have dogs at home."  He spread his hand
under Bebe's head, lifted it, put it down gently and said, "Go on
kneading him strongly and keep him flat on his belly.  He will recover.
But the man," he added, "the man who jumped overboard to save him is
dead."

Frau Hutten sat back on her heels and covered her ears flatly.  "Oh no
no!"  she cried out with a note of anger under the shock, then
remembered and went back to digging her clenched fists into Bebe's
lower ribs and spine, heaving him forward and back, fetching a low
grunt from him and a rush of frothy water.

"Let us hear what the Herr Doctor has to tell us," said Herr Pro f
essor Hutten with the utmost formality.  With some barely disguised
struggle he got to his feet and faced the Doctor as man to man, leaving
his wife to her humbler duties towards their wretched beast, who, the
Professor could not help but see plainly, would become a more and more
onerous burden as time went on.

"Do you wish me to understand, sir," he asked, "that a man leapt into
the sea to save our dog?"

"I should have thought you knew this," said the Doctor, "there was a
rescue with a lifeboat," he said, "with all shipboard on deck.  No one
told you?"

"I was occupied with my wife, who was on the verge of fainting,"

said Herr Professor Hutten, almost regretfully.  "Yes, I was told, but
I did not believe it.  Who could be such a fool?"

"He could," said Dr.  Schumann.  "He was a Basque, his name Etchegaray.
He was the man who carved those little animals from bit of wood..."

"Ah," said Herr Professor Hutten, "so!  Yes now I recall- he was among
those dangerous agitators- those whom the Captain ordered to be
disarmed..."

They took away his pocket knife, yes," said Dr.  Schumann, sighing on a
wave of weariness and hopelessness.  "He was quite harmless, and
entirely unfortunate--"

"Ah, of course he expected a reward!"  cried Frau Hutten in a voice of
revelation.  "We would have been glad to pay him well!  What a pity we
can never shake his hand and thank him."

"At least," suggested Herr Professor Hutten, consulting gravely with
the Doctor, "at least we can offer some little financial relief to his
family..."

"He has none, or none on this ship," said the Doctor, observing the
look of relief that passed like a beam of light across the Professor's
face.  Frau Hutten's face also lightened as by reflection.  "Well, it
can't be helped," she said, almost cheerfully, "it is done now, it is
out of our hands."

"Yes," agreed Doctor Schumann.  "So good night to you.  Keep him warm,"
he said, bending his head towards Bebe, who was showing signs of
recovery.  "Give him some warm beef broth."

Frau Hutten held up her arms to her husband, who drew her deftly to her
feet.  She stole out after the Doctor, motioning him to stop as if she
had something secret to tell him.  Yet she only asked, "What was his
name?"  something mysterious and wondering in her half-whisper, the fat
aging face suddenly childish.

"Etchegaray," pronounced Dr.  Schumann, carefully, "a very common
family name among the Basques."

"Oh," said Frau Hutten, not attempting to repeat the name, "just to
think he gave his life for our poor Bebe and we cannot even let him
know we are grateful!  I can't bear it," she said, her eyes filling
with tears.

"The burial will take place tomorrow morning at the first Mass," said
Dr.  Schumann, "if you wish to attend."

Frau Hutten shuddered and shook her head.  "Oh, how can I?  But

thank you," she said hastily, turning away biting her lips and winking
her eyes.

"What did the Doctor say his name was."  asked the Professor, standing
where she had left him, his attention fixed not on Bebe, but on some
point beyond the cabin wall, beyond the ship, as if somewhere there
were bounds, a limit, a shoreline to his perplexity.

"A strange one," she said, "almost comic, outlandish... EtchegeEtchege
--"

"Etchegaray," said her husband.  "Ah yes.  I remember several Basques
of that name in Mexico City.... I confess, my dear, to being deeply
puzzled as to the motives of the unlucky man.  The hope of reward of
course, but that is almost too simple.  Did he wish to attract
attention to himself, to be regarded as a hero?  Did he--unconsciously
of course--long for death, and so took this way of committing suicide
without being actually guilty of it?  Did he--" "Oh how do I know?"
cried his wife, ready to seize her own hair with exasperation; but Bebe
saved her from this rash gesture by starting to retch and vomit salt
water again, and went on with it for some time as Frau Hutten and the
Herr Professor took turns rubbing him with brandy and drying him with
bath towels until the stewardess, beady-eyed and simply crackling with
indignation, brought them the beef broth they demanded, a quart of it
in an ample bowl.  She handed it to Frau Hutten at arm's length and did
not wait to witness the desecration of good broth meant for human
beings- think of all the innocent starving poor in the world, the
little babies--down the gullet of a worthless dog!  And who in that
stinking steerage was beside him when the man who saved this beast was
strangling to death on sea water, what did he get but a little dry
wafer from that hypocrite of a priest, and a wicked parody of God's
word?  The stewardess felt herself strangling too in a wild sea of salt
rage; her very joints stiffened with it, she began hobbling like a
cripple down the long passageway.  Divine Providence sent her the
chance to explode her wrath in the face of an under grown cabin boy
rushing somewhere with an armload of linen.

"One should be a dog in this filthy world!  A rich man's dog drinking
broth made from the bones of the poor.  What is the life of a man
COmpared to a dog's, tell me that?  A rich man's dog, naturally!"

The fourteen-year-old boy, himself the pallid growth of a lifetime of
underfeeding, recovered Instantly from his fright when he realized her
fury was not directed at himself.  "A dog, Fraulein, please if I may

ask?"  he said with his ritual air of servility towards his betters,
which included everybody on the ship, and without any hint of
self-respect which they one and all would have taken for pure
impudence.

"Broth for that dog!"  she broke out again, almost choking.  "And the
man is dead!  Dead to save the life of a dog!"  she screamed, lashing
out around her with her long flail of an arm.  The boy, extremely
uneasy, sidled past her and ran, his knees trembling.  "I would have
let them both drown and you too," said the cabin boy to himself, "you
crazy old mule."  He liked the feel of the words in his mouth so well
he went on repeating them under his breath until his feelings of injury
were soothed.

No matter what the efforts of Herr Professor and Frau Hutten, Bebe went
on being violently agitated--convulsion racked his awkward frame.  He
raised himself at last and sat stupefied and passive under their
anxious hands.  Frau Hutten said, "He makes me feel so guilty!"  for he
seemed to be asking her a terrible question, with doubt in his bleared
eyes.  Even his silence seemed to be accusing her of some wickedness
against him.

"He is by nature silent," her husband reminded her, "this is not new.

"Oh but it is not the same!"  she said, appalled.

She forgot that she had displeased her husband deeply, that she was not
in his good graces.  She leaned towards him confidingly as ever, head
bowed and tears flowing again.  She reached for his hand and he
responded at once.  "He trusted us," she wept, "H was part of our past,
our happy past," she said, "of our life together."  She sat on the side
of the bed, disheveled and forlorn, and her husband moved over and sat
beside her.  "Mexico!"  she cried out, sobbing with a depth he had
never heard in her.  "Mexico!  Why did we leave it?  What sent us on
this terrible voyage.  We were happy there, we were young together
there... why have we thrown it all away?"

For the first time in years, the tears rolled unrebuked down Herr
Professor Hutten's face.  "Try not to grieve so, my poor child," he
said.  "It puts a great strain on your heart, and will seriously upset
your nervous system.  You are not," he reminded her, drops forming on
the end of his nose, "exhibiting your usual characteristics here of
late-that discretion, that foresight, that stability of temper which
have been the admiration of all who know you..  "

"Forgive my weakness, forgive me, I need your help.  You are goodness
itself.  I am certain I left the door open, it is all my fault, you are
always in the right," she implored; and though the Herr Professor drew
out his handkerchief and dried his tears and mopped his brow, resolving
to be firm in this crisis, and not let a flood of emotion sweep from
his mind the truly important events of the day, and his just grievance
against her, yet he could not control or deny some melting in his whole
being.  The sore spot in his mind was eased, his hurt self-esteem
ceased to throb, as if some magic balsam had been poured into the open
wound of his soul.  Benevolence, magnanimity, Christian charity,
uxorious warmth, even human tenderness itself marched in bravely to
reoccupy their rightful place in his bosom, all in perfect order and
called at once by their right names.  The Professor had not known such
luxury of feeling in years; a bliss exuded again from this indwelling
potpourri of virtues which, in her simple words, his wife acknowledged
and invoked once more.

He kissed her full on the mouth deeply, as if she were a bride,
thrusting his tongue almost into her throat, and seized her head in the
old way, pulling her hair painfully as ever in his eagerness.  They
began to fumble awkwardly at the more obstructive articles of each
other's clothing as if they meant to tear each other apart, and slumped
over in a heap grappled together like frogs.  After inordinately
prolonged labors, floundering, groaning, grunting and rolling in a
savage wrestling match, they collapsed melted together into nerveless
quivering and long moans of agonized pleasure; then lay joined for a
pleasurable time in a triumphant glow of exhaustion, their marriage
mended almost as good as new, their feelings fresh and purified.

"My little wife," murmured the Professor, as he had done after the long
exhilarating siege of deflowering her on their wedding night.  "My
husband," she had replied then, with perfect propriety, and by now she
spoke the word occasionally as part of a ceremony.

From his rug in the corner, in his haunted sleep, Bebe uttered a long
hoarse sobbing terror-stricken howl which brought them out of their
sensual inertia with a sickening shock.  Frau Hutten began to weep
again almost by habit.  "Oh, he knows, he knows they tried to drown
him," she cried accusingly, "his heart is broken."

The Professor's nervous system, somewhat mangled by his unusual
exertions, now rebelled.  He groaned again, this time in real anguish.
"I forbid you to shed another tear about this matter," he said,
resonantly,

all his manly authority restored and in working order.  "And what do
you mean by They?  Be careful of reckless speech, my dear."  He gave
her an affectionate little shake, and she enjoyed pretending to fear
his anger, for this never failed to please him even when his anger was
real and not pretended as now.  It occurred to her that the only time
in her life she had ever been afraid of him, just a few hours ago, when
she believed she had offended him mortally, she had no power at all
over him, no charm for him, no wile to play.  How strange, how
terrifying--it must not happen again.  "Please let me go to him," she
said, drying her eyes on his shirt sleeve.  "I meant those
indescribable children," she told him, in a carefully moderate tone.
"Surely only they could do such a thing?"

"I agree," said her husband, "but still we must not say so, for we
cannot prove it.  And besides, it is perhaps no crime, legally, to
drown a dog?"

"Ah, but they caused the death of a man!"

"In what way?"  asked the Professor.  "Was he forced to his rash act
Did anyone, even those children, dream of that?"

Frau Hutten said no more, but knelt slowly: her knee was paining her
again: took Bebe's big sorrowful face between her hands, and said, "It
was not us, not your little Vail and Mutti, remember?  who did this to
you.  We love you," she told him earnestly, fondling his ears and chin.
"He understands perfectly," she told her husband.  "Go to sleep, my
darling," she said, laying his head down on his rug.

"Ah, I could sleep too," said the Professor, helping her to rise.  They
got off the rest of their clothes and into night dress as if they were
already asleep, and the movement of the ship under them, so hateful
before, was like the rocking of a cradle.  Half asleep, the Professor
whispered, "What did the Doctor say his name was?  Odd now I cannot
remember."

"Oh what would be the use?"  breathed Frau Hutten wearily.  "Let's not
try to remember."

Elsa, lying flat, arms under her head, gazed sleepily at the bright
blue sky which seemed just outside the porthole.  "So early?"  she
asked without curiosity, seeing Jenny washing and dressing in a hurry.
"Oh, I couldn't, I'm too lazy."

"They are going to bury that poor drowned man this morning," said
Jenny, "just think of him being left here all by himself."

"Why, he doesn't know," said Elsa, quite sensibly.  "So how could he
mind?  My father said last night it was a very foolish thing for him to
do.  He said it is stupid thoughtless people like that who make all the
trouble for others.  He said-"

"He meant saving other stupid people's stupid dogs?  Things like that"
asked Jenny in a chilling voice.  Elsa sat up, her features gave a
little twitch of distress.  "My father did not mean that," she said
anxiously.  "He is a kind man by nature, he would never harm anybody. 
He did not mean he was not sorry for the poor man.  It is something
hard to explain-"

Jenny coldly finished doing her hair in silence and let Elsa struggle.
"It is just that he is too practical sometimes, like my mother, almost.
He says life is for the living, that the dead need nothing, that we
must not let our feelings run away with us when it doesn't do any good!
And my mother says-"

Jenny melted into laughter.  "Oh Elsa, won't you be glad when school
lets out?"

Elsa eyed her distrustfully, as she did more and more often of late.
Her cabin mate seemed like anybody else, yet--and she couldn't quite
put her finger on it- there was something odd about her.  "I am not in
school," she said.

Jenny wrapped a dark silk scarf around her head.  "Never mind," she
said.  "I'm going down to say good-by to him when he goes, whether he
hears it or not."

The early sunlight reflected in the water danced and glittered in
Father Garza's eyes as he stood at the rail on the steerage deck near
his altar, but his dazzled glance upward took in the row of curiosity
seekers on the deck above--vultures who smelled death and could not
keep away from it.  Father Garza through a long experience of his own
human nature and that of others had learned to doubt the purity of
gratuitous sympathy or pity in any form.  He dared to venture there had
not been a Christian thought among them, nor a pray ex uttered.  Before
him, the body was ready to be sent over the side at the right moment, a
long stiff narrow mummy shape wrapped in dark can.  was balanced
outward on the rail, held in poise by several tow haired young sailors,
their rosy faces ceremonially solemn above their whit, cotton garments.
The steerage passengers in their rags and dirt ant darkness stood back
respectfully, massed and humming like a swarm of

bees, rosaries swinging, hands agitated in ceaseless signs of the
Cross, eyes fixed, lips moving.  Only the fat man, wearing a bright
orange shirt, stood somewhat apart with his small party of followers,
all of them set and brightly ready for trouble.  Now and then the fat
man would let out a loud belch, and with spread fingers would make the
sign of the Cross with his thumb on the end of his nose.  He was quite
aware that a number of the men saying their prayers were also watching
him closely with murder in their eyes, and it seemed to stimulate him
to fresh feats of imaginative blasphemy.

Father Garza saw all this as he saw everything around him in spite of
his absorption in the Burial Service, reading it to himself as if it
were his breviary.  "Come to his assistance, ye Saints of God, meet
him, ye Angels of the Lord, receiving his soul, offer it in the sight
of the Most High... Eternal rest give to him, O Lord, and let perpetual
light shine upon him.  Receiving his soul, offer it in the sight of the
Most High... Be merciful, O Lord, we beseech Thee, to the soul of Thy
servant Juan Maria Etchegaray, for which we offer up to Thee the
sacrifice of praise, humbly beseeching Thy Majesty that, by these holy
peace-offerings, it may be found worthy to win everlasting rest.
Through our Lord."

The rhythmic smash of the waves, the steady drone of massed voices, the
nervous perpetual movements of the crowd, the obscenities of the fat
man, had no effect on the silence and stillness of the disciplined
group gathered around the dead.  With every due prayer and ceremony,
every movement of respect, with holy water, bell, book and candle, with
incense and the sign of the Cross, the sealed and weighted body that
had contained a human soul was released, tilted slowly downward, and as
it slid forward was given a decisive thrust that sent it dear of the
side, falling straight, striking the water feet first and sinking at
once without haste even as the ship moved away from it.  "God receive
his soul," whispered Frau Schmitt, and the young Cubans, and Dr.
Schumann, and Seniora Ortega the Mexican diplomat's wife, all secretly
uttering the same words, and even Frau Rittersdorf crossed herself; and
the body was still visible to them a good depth under the water in the
long slanting rays of sunlight.  Even as it disappeared, the ship had
moved far: before Father Garza could reach the upper deck, the dead was
left behind.

Pausing only to pocket their rosaries, the devout men fell upon the
blasphemous men with fury.  They fell in a milling thrashing heap

upon the fat man and his friends--though these did not so much
matter--and before the sailors had succeeded in dragging them off, they
had done a very creditable job of destruction upon the enemies of
religion and decency with their bare hands.  Only, one man had got hold
of a small monkey wrench, where or how nobody ever found out, and he
managed to put an end to the active career of the fat man, at least for
the voyage, with one well-placed blow on the crown of his head, a
little to the fore.

Jenny found David at once, leaning forward on his elbows, coat collar
up around his ears, hands cupped over his half-closed eyes, trying to
bring the scene below into focus.  He was extremely nearsighted but
could not persuade himself to wear spectacles except when working
alone.  Yet it was an amiable conspiracy between them that his
nearsightedness was becoming to him, and a special advantage.  When
they walked in the woods he always found the minute strange flower, or
the tiny plant that turned out to be a botanical curiosity; on the
beach he found shells that gave up their beauties only under the
magnifying glass; in the Indian markets he went straight to those toys
so small they could be made only by the fingers of very young children.
He had just lately showed her several times, with possessive pride, his
latest treasures- a pocketful of inch-long animals carved in wood he
had bought from the man whose funeral was then going forward on the
steerage deck.  She stood silently by him until he became aware of her,
and he said, "Why, Jenny angel!"  but it was plain he was locked up in
himself, in his own feelings, he would turn to stone if she touched him
or uttered a word.  She retreated at once, trying to turn her attention
away from him, chilled with the familiar famished hollow in her
midriff, suffused with the kind of suffering, so blind, so senseless
she despised herself for it, that he could inflict upon her at any
moment by his terrible trick of not-being.  In her distraction she
barely avoided catching Denny's eye, who was hurrying towards them,
carrying a stein of beer.  Arne Hansen followed, frowning deeply
without a glance for anyone; looking, Jenny thought again, as she had
often thought, as a man might look if he were alone on a desert
island.

Ric and Rac, more than usually savage and unkempt, climbed to the rail
and straddled it as it they were riding a tree branch, leaning out
perilously to get a better view of things, mouths open, eyes sharp and
wild.  No one paid any attention to them, not even a sailor passing
by

took the trouble to order them down.  Each pair or individual of the
watching group kept strictly apart without any acknowledgment of the
others' presence, and each had found a vantage point of his own; yet
all of them gazed at a certain spot, like persons being photographed
together.

Jenny stood with her hands clasped breast high, and gazed too, at the
ritual grouping below, observing the composition of the foreshortened
figures with the long bluish shadows running sideways from them,
storing it in her mind to sketch the instant she got back to pencil and
paper, wondering why she had not brought them with her; and wondering
too at her lack of feeling.  It was quite unreal, a pantomime by dolls
worked with strings, there was nothing that had ever been alive in that
dark swaddle of canvas; and even as she wondered at her callousness,
she felt her eyes filling with perfectly meaningless tears, tears for
nothing at all, that would change nothing, that would not even ease the
pain of her emptiness; and through a mist she saw the canvas leap
outward and strike the water.

She was so absorbed in trying to follow its path into the depths, she
almost missed the commotion of the battle, it happened so quickly and
was so summarily ended.  While Denny was shouting quite close beside
her, "Well, I be dog.  They got him!  Well, I be dog!"  she saw several
sailors hauling the fat man into the clear, while others were
industriously breaking up the formation of attackers, who fell back
easily and made no further disturbance.  They could see at a glance
their work was done, they were quite eased and satisfied and perfectly
ready for all consequences.  Arne Hansen raised both fists and shook
them in rage, shouting, "Cowards!  Fools!  Slaves!  Kill your enemies,
not your friends!  Fools!  Fools!"  he went on shouting convulsively as
if he could not stop, and at last the group near him began to exchange
uneasy glances.  Below deck, several of the attacking crowd glanced up,
their faces tough as pickled walnuts, and one of them shouted back
contemptuously, "Shut your big mouth, you cabrrn of a Swede!  Keep out
of our business!"  and all of them burst into galling jeering laughter.
Hansen took off in his long lumbering stride, head between his raised
shoulders.

The fat man lay sprawled on his back, bleeding sluggishly from a
shocking-looking wound that glistened and gaped in the sunlight.  Dr.
Schumann did not wait to be called for, but appeared almost at once on
the lower deck, spoke to Father Garza, who was departing with his

characteristic promptness and detachment, but took time to say, "It's
nothing serious, Doctor D you won't need me!"  with a sardonic hoot
that was nearly laughter.

David had come out of his fit of self-absorption rather abruptly, and
though his face had not changed expression, his eyes had a curiously
pleased, excited fire in them.  "Well," he said, "they've done it!  I
always thought they might."  "That's just what Denny said," flashed
Jenny in sudden anger.  He peered at her closely then and saw the tears
not yet dried on her face, and he said bitterly, "My God, is there
nothing you won't try to take part in?  What on earth have you got to
cry for now?"

"Everything," said Jenny, her voice shaking.  "Everything in the whole
world.  That lets you in, somewhere..."  She saw in his eyes the
beginning gleam of pleasure it gave him to be able to work her up into
a temper in which she would say anything and everything and have to be
sorry for it afterward.  And no matter how sorry she was, she knew she
would never be forgiven.  It would be just one more thing, jenny peered
at him in turn as if she were as nearsighted as he, and said very
sharply in a quick low voice, "No, David, no you don't --not again not
this time!"  Rather slowly, so he might see that she was in perfect
control of herself, she started to walk away from him, then turned back
and said savagely, "Don't you follow me- don't you speak to me!"

"Don't worry," said David, his whole face cold and sharpened, "I
shan't."

Ric and Rac, still straddling the rail, began screaming shrilly one
word over and over, waving their heads and their arms frantically
towards the open sea.

"Whales, whales, whales, whales!"  they screamed in pure ecstasy; and
so there were indeed whales passing, as everyone present could not help
but see in a reluctant glance; there was a common thought in every
mind, that this was frivolous, inappropriate: and yet, after that first
glance, they all stared with enjoyment: not too far away for a good
view, three enormous whales, seeming to swim almost out of the water,
flashing white silver in the sunlight, spouting tall white fountains,
traveling with the power and drive of speedboats, going south-not one
person could take his eyes from the beautiful spectacle until it was
over, and their minds were cleansed of death and violence.  "Whales!"
screamed Ric and Rac, rising on their perch, losing their

balance, and almost going overboard.  They balanced dizzily, teetered,
recovered, and dropped to the deck again, unharmed.  Not a single hand
had been stretched to aid them, though a dozen were near.  No one
moved.  They all regarded the peril of Ric and Rac not precisely with
indifference, something a little more positive perhaps, as if their
going overboard would have been accepted with entire equanimity as some
unexplained but not disastrous freak of natural law.  Deeply, deeply
not one of?  them but would have found a sympathetic agreement with all
the others that overboard, the deeper the better, would have been a
most suitable location for Ric and Rac.  Any one of them would have
been indignant if accused of lacking any of the higher and more
becoming feelings for infancy; but Ric and Rac were outside the human
race.  They were outside undeniably, and they had known it for a good
while; it was where they chose to be and they could more than hold
their own.  So they recovered their balance, hung on firmly and lithely
as monkeys, shouted and screamed and enjoyed themselves; enjoyed their
funeral of the man they had killed- the crazy old man in the wheel
chair had told them so, to their delight--their fight on deck, their
whales.  It was a fine day.  The only thing lacking was, they had not
been able to ride on the whales' backs.

About halfway down the deck Jenny stopped to watch the whales, and
forgot her grief.  David went straight to her, and took her arm, and
said, "Haven't we had enough of this?  Let's go get some coffee." "Yes,
let's," she said, and as they walked she began, "David darling, I
remember once I was swimming far out in the Bay of Corpus Christi, on a
beautiful day, and I was coming towards land again, and a whole school
of porpoises came straight at me, oh they looked like mountains rising
and dipping in the waves, and I thought I might die of?  fright; but
they just divided around me and went on, sweeping out to the Gulf of
Mexico.  And I was suddenly very happy, and thought, "Oh, this is the
pleasantest thing that ever happened to me!"

"And was it?"  he asked, very tenderly and a little teasingly.
"Nearly," she said.

"No knives, thank God, due to the firmness and foresight of our
Captain," Herr Baumgartner was heard to remark in the bar a few hours
later.

"They didn't need knives," said the purser, his satisfaction with
events making him recklessly indiscreet.  Not that he cared what
happened to Catholics, their mummery was their own business, but it
was high time for somebody to stop that Bolshevik in his tracks, and if
the Catholics did it, why, a worthy deed all the same.  "They had
something as good," he said, smiling deeply into his morning beer.
"That Bolshevik those Catholics!  Let them all kill each other- a good
thing!"

Father Carillo, normally a lover of peace and an un contentious man,
happy to say his daily Mass and leave the rough work to Father Garza,
who enjoyed it, was sitting at a small table some distance from the
bar, sherry glass in hand, but he heard the purser's few and foolish
words.  "He is a very ordinary type of low Spanish syndicalist," he
said, "not a Bolshevik at all.  That is a careless use of terms on your
part," he said, mildly, "a mistake many persons make."  His
self-possession nearly deserted him, his face was illuminated with
fury.  "And if you wish others to respect your religion, whatever it
may be, you will do better to speak decently of the faith of others."
He rose abruptly, left his untasted sherry and walked away.

The purser, dismayed at his own breach of discipline, scrambled off his
stool and stood at attention.  "I beg your pardon, sir, I beg your
pardon," he called after the rigid figure of the priest.  "Sir, i am
deeply sorry!"  But the title Father refused to pass his Lutheran
teeth, and the priest went on as if he had not heard him.  The purser,
still standing, turned unusually red and swollen in the face and neck
and emptied his seidel down his throat as if it were into a drain.

"I'o hell with him," said Denny, sympathetically.  The purser, who had
even a lower opinion of Denny than he had of the Catholic religion,
ignored him ostentatiously: it was entirely safe to be rude to him. One
of his most important duties was, of course, to be impartially polite
to passengers, one and all, no matter how disgusting any number of them
might be to him personally.  It was a sacrificial daily task, for in
every voyage for going on thirty years he had fought and conquered the
natural deepest impulses of his very being to beat the head off at
least twenty persons, all passengers and nearly all of them males.  His
utter contempt for the female sex, mixed with a dash of wholesome lear
and an entire inability to fathom its motives or cope with its
vagaries, found expression in a false front of indulgent good humor
which deceived or at least placated most women; they all of them only
wanted to be flattered, he had found out for himself long ago, and that
simplified matters immensely.  Without a word but a glare of pig like
malice for Denny, and without waiting to order his second beer, which
he had

been looking forward to pleasurably even while in the middle of the
first, he heaved himself into ponderous motion, belly rolling,
backsides heaving, the cushion of fat across the back of his neck
quivering.

Denny gave a muffled snort.  "Kraut!"  he said, into his empty stein.
He waved it at the barman.  "Here!"

Arne Hansen was sitting three stools away, bowed over, head in hands,
his beer untouched.  He now turned a face of monstrous despair to
Denny, and spoke in a low moist growl like a sick bear.  "If I believed
in a God I would curse him," he said.  "I would spit in his face.  I
would send him to his own hell.  Oh, what a foulness is religion! Those
people down there in the steerage.  They cringe and they bow and they
give their money to priests and live like mangy dogs kicked by
everybody and what do they get?  A string of beads to fumble and a
scrap of fish bread in their mouths!..."  He pulled the hair on top of
his head and wrung it.  Denny decided this speech was meant for him and
he was not only embarrassed but shocked.  "Aw, take it easy," he said,
for he felt dimly it was all right to curse and damn around as much as
you pleased just so long as it was understood that you didn't mean it.
It was all right to make jokes about religion, there's a funny side to
everything, a man has got to laugh off a lot of things in this world or
he'd go nuts, but still that didn't mean he didn't believe in
something.  He had been brought up scared to death of the Old Man With
Long Whiskers Lip Yonder, a real fire-eater who in the long run sent
nearly everybody to hell.  There was a heaven of course, but Denny had
never heard of anybody going there, or at least not in his time, and
not from his community.  An older cousin of his, a big bully twice his
size and age, grabbed his hand one day and held a lighted match to the
palm.  While Denny danced and screamed and licked the scorched place,
the cousin said, "Well, I just wanted to show you what you're going to
get all over, all the time, soon's you die and go to hell!"  Denny had
yelled back, "You're going to hell yourself!"  but it hadn't done him
much good.  He felt like a boob when he remembered how long that hell
business had worried him.  He'd got over it though, good; religion was
about the least of his troubles, but just the same, funny, he couldn't
stand atheists.  This fellow sounded like an atheist if Denny had ever
heard one.  He wasn't joking, either.

"Take it easy," he said, "what you got against religion- i mean, well,
religion?  I don't mean beads and fish bread and mumbo-jumbo, I
mean-well, I just don't understand, that's all."

"No, you don't," groaned Hansen.  "Do you know what happened this
morning at the funeral of that poor man who gave his life for a
worthless dog, a pampered pet of those fat middle-class people
who---"

"I nearly missed it," said Denny, "I just got in for the scrimmage.

Why, hell, man, I was standing right next to you!"

"I did not see you," said Hansen.

"Well, I damned near didn't make it," said Denny, having lost the
thread of his argument, whatever it was.  Hansen, glowering knottily
into his beer, said nothing further and seemed to forget that Denny was
there.  Herr LSwenthal sidled over to the bar, with a face of distress,
and nodded to Denny, one of the few passengers with whom he still felt
on speaking terms.  He grimaced and laid his flattened hand on his
midriff.  "It still makes me feel sick," he said.  "Think of being
sewed up in a sack and thrown overboard like a dog!  Makes me
sick..."

"Well, I can't think what else they could do with him," said Denny,
reasonably

"Why, they could put him in a box with ice and keep him until we got to
dry land," said Lowenthal, "and bury him like a human being."

"It wouldn't be practical," said Denny.  "Too expensive.  And besides,
that's a regular custom... If you die on board ship you get buried at
sea, don't you?"

"I've been back and forth, back and forth, how many times already, and
never till now did I see a thing like this.  It looks like heathens."

"Well, yes," agreed Denny reluctantly, "those Catholics.  But what do
you care?"

"I don't," said Herr Lowenthal, "I should worry about what Christians
do to each other--I got enough trouble without.  But it made me
sick."

It was Denny's turn to brood.  He was in a bad position.  Here was an
atheist on one side, talking like a Bolshevik.  And here was a Jew on
the other side, criticizing Christians... that is, Catholics.  Well, he
didn't like Catholics any more than he did atheists, on the other hand
he didn't like the idea of a Jew talking against Christians.  Suppose
he Denny, said to Lowenthal, "I think Jews are heathens," how would he
take it He'd accuse him right away of persecuting Jews... Denny began
to feel tired in the head.  He began to look forward to the end of his
stay in Germany, and to getting back to Brownsville once more, where a
man knew who was who and what was what, and

niggers, crazy Swedes, Jews, greasers, bone-headed micks, polacks, wop
Guineas and damn Yankees knew their place and stayed in it.  That fa
guy in the steerage got what was coming to him, treating a funeral like
that, and he acted like an atheist too, but it stuck in Denny's craw
that a bunch of those spic-Catholics had conked him.  "Wops," he said
loudly, to nobody, "just a lot of wops."

"Wops?"  asked Herr Lowenthal, uneasily, a red spark glowing deep in
his eyes.  "What wops?"  He did not wait for an answer, but walking
away rapidly, carrying his drink.  "I don't know any wops," he said
over his shoulder.

"Kike," said Denny to himself, in a confidential tone, "that's all."

Freytag and Lowenthal, though they would never know it, or if they had
known, would never admit it, shared a common cause for thankfulness in
the diversion of the passengers' attention towards such dramatic events
as the drowning and burial at sea of the reckless Basque whose name
even now no one remembered, except perhaps an equally nameless few in
the steerage.  Freytag's rage and resentment at the mean little scandal
at the Captain's table had swept him away inte postures he had not
intended; had exposed him in a peculiarly false, unbecoming light, no
less false because the incident was only a variation of many that had
happened before, and would happen to hire again and again, so long as
he was married to Mary.  The sinister thing about this episode was, it
was the first time any unpleasant thing of this kind had happened to
him when he was traveling without Mary.  He had to admit that he looked
forward to the few occasions that separated them for even a few days,
when he enjoyed again, with a great lightness of heart, the privilege-
and what a divine privilege it was, how ever had he taken it so for
granted in the old days?  -of being a member of the ruling class of the
ruling race of the world, capable of extending his career as far in any
direction as his own talents could carry him; free to rise without
challenge to any level of society he chose.  Oh, what had he thrown
away in this insane marriage --yes, and what had he done to Mary, whose
life was as threatened as his own?  Suddenly without any care for
appearance, for he was sitting in his deck chair, he doubled his fists
over his eyes and groaned, "Mary, darling, forgive me."  He heard her
light pretty voice saying Instantly "Why of course I forgive you- what
have you done?"

The whole thing from start to finish was his own fault; he could only
accept this hard fact, writhing with wounded pride- how could he trust
himself for anything if he made such a fool of himself in this matter
of his whole life and Mary's?  His rage rose again in its first
freshness against everyone who had witnessed his humiliations, those
who presumed to pity him, to make apologies--that wretched Baumgartner
and those who presumed to share his wrong but that Jenny Brown, with
her sentimental habit of trying to get into everybody's skin.  Really,
he liked Mrs.  Treadwell better, with her complete insensibility.  And
as for the rest of them, especially the dullards at the Captain's
table, who would take pleasure in snubbing him if only they could catch
his eye, he wished deeply that Mary were with him: she would have made
them positively entertaining with her ruthless humor and charming
utterly heartless malice.  "Why, Mary!"  he said to her once, shocked
and admiring, "How can you be so cruel?  Don't you belong to the human
race?"  She had paused briefly, shot him a keen sidelong glance, and
said: "No, not really- I am a Jew, remember?"

Lowenthal, in spite of the unpleasant state of affairs- it was nothing
new to him- was still quite willing to engage in a little conversation
for sociability with almost anybody who came along, just so they kept
off the subject of religion his religion, for he did not admit the
existence of any other; all religions except his own were simply a lot
of heathens following false gods.  It didn't matter what they called
themselves.  He had been reminded more than once by some Goy who wanted
an argument that there were something like two billion human beings in
the world, all presumably created by the same God, and only a matter of
some twenty million Jews.  So what had God in mind, showing such unjust
partiality?  Such nonsense never fazed Herr Lowenthal for an instant.
"I got nothing to say on the subject," he would answer, "you should
argue with a rabbi.  I take his word he knows God's business."  But the
mere pronunciation of the Name, even in a heathen language, even only
the Name which stood for the Name which must never be uttered, made him
uneasy.  He always changed the subject if he could, or walked away if
he couldn't.  It didn't matter to him what the Goyim thought of him,
whether they liked him or not.  He didn't like them, so he was a jump
ahead of them from the start.  He didn't want them to do him any
favors--he would get what he wanted out of them by himself, and no
thanks to anybody.

All he wanted in the world was the right to be himself, to go where he
pleased and do what he wanted without any interference from Them -what
right had They?

That no race or nation in the world, nor in all human history, had
enjoyed such rights made no difference to Herr Lowenthal: he should
worry about things none of his business.  He simmered and seethed like
lava boiling underground, turning upon itself with no way out.  He
distrusted all Goyim, but he distrusted most of all those who plagued
him with talk about how they disapproved of all racial prejudice, how
they had none themselves, and how they hated what the Captain had done,
and how they had good Jewish friends, and how everybody knew that some
of the most talented people in the world were Jews.  And so
generous--always helping somebody.  Herr Lowenthal pursed up his mouth
and made a spluttering sound, almost in the very face of that American
shicksa who carried a drawing book everywhere, the one traveling with a
man she wasn't married to, as if it mattered!  Who without even saying
good morning came up from the back and started walking along with him,
chattering about how she thought the whole thing was a perfect
disgrace, and she wanted him to know that she shocked at it.

"At what shocked?"  he asked, not looking at her, feeling his face curl
up with distaste at her nearness.  She kept bending her neck around
trying to look him in the eye, but one quick glance was all she got
from him.  He couldn't stand shicksas at any distance.  "What happened
you got shocked?"

She didn't take the hint, but went on saying she couldn't bear for him
to think that everybody had felt the same as the Captain, or Herr R
ieber orwell, people like them.  Nearly everybody she had talked to had
hated the whole thing; but the Captain, she pointed out, was running
the ship, so what could a passenger do?  i just wanted you to know,"
she ended, rather timidly, as if that settled something, as if he cared
what she thought, as if what she said would make any difference to him.
The nerve of her!

He said, "Well, what I got to do with all this?  I'm not worrying, I
just sit where they put me, minding my own business; maybe Herr Freytag
is the one you should sympathize with.  He's the one got kicked out,
not me.  I been out all along," he said, "I got no complaint, I'm used
to being a Jew."

The shicksa stopped in her tracks and asked him in a blaze of

temper: "Are you always so stupidly rude, or is this a special
occasion?"  Without waiting for an answer, she spun about and made off
in the opposite direction.  Herr Lowenthal noted that her legs were
like a stork's.  In a pleasant glow of satisfaction he lighted a good
cigar and stretched out in his deck chair.  He snapped his fingers at a
passing steward.  "Beer," he said, briefly but not unkindly.

One of the Spanish dancing girls stopped beside his chair, and offered
two oblong bits of cardboard with printing on them.  "Here are your two
tickets for our fiesta," she said, her harsh voice toned down to a
rough murmur.  Herr Lowenthal on inspiration decided to pretend he took
them for a gift.  "Thanks just the same," he said in a patronizing
manner, making a motion to put them in his pocket.

"Two dollars," she said, holding out her palm slightly cupped, rubbing
thumb and forefinger together.

"What?  You selling them?  What for?"  Herr Lowenthal was in a waggish
humor.

"A fiesta."

"What kind of fiesta?"

"We dance, we sing, we eat and drink and then we have a little lottery
for beautiful prizes--maybe one of your tickets win?  Maybe both!  Who
knows?"

Herr Lowenthal's good humor lapsed.  "Who knows?  I know one thing, I
got this kind of luck--if I had a winning number in my pocket, by the
time I got to the place to claim it, the number would have changed, all
by itself... Now don't argue," he said, thrusting the tickets back into
her hand.  "Take these and go away."  "Filthy pig," she said in a
Romany dialect.  "Whore he said in Yiddish.

Manolo bowed to little Seniora Ortega, bent over her deck chair
offering tickets and a shattering fire of explanations.  The Indian
nurse, sitting near holding the baby, glanced quickly at the tickets
and away again, face calm, eyelids lowered.  She could not read words,
but she could smell a chance-game at a great distance, she knew numbers
when she saw them, and bought a fraction of every lottery that came
along, because she knew one more thing very well: for her kind, born on
the straw mat, barefoot from dirt floor to grave, there was only one
hope of fortune- to hit the lucky number, just once!  Her dead mother
often spoke to her anxiously in dreams: "Nicolasa, my child, listen now
to me carefully- listen, do you hear me, Nicolasa?  I am about to

give you the winning number for the next lottery.  Buy the whole
ticket, look until you find the seller who has it.  He is in Ginco de
Mayo street.  His name is.  " and always, as she began to recite his
name, the number, the serial, all, her words would run together, her
face grow dim, her voice die away, and Nicolasa, waking in fright,
would hear herself calling out, "Oh wait, Mother!  Don't go... tell me,
tell me!"  Seniora Ortega smiled at the expression on Nicolasa's face.
She knew it well, and what it meant.  She bought the two tickets from
Manolo and gave them without a word to the Indian girl, who would have
kissed Seniora Ortega's hand if she had not instantly taken it back.
She then dismissed Manolo without a glance at him as if he were a
stupid servant, and said to the girl, "Let me hold the baby awhile.  He
is so sweet this morning."  Manolo was touchy and impudent: he had the
money and it would take more than a Mexican halfbreed to insult him. In
fact he was so elated with success where he had not expected it, he
sold tickets to the Baumgartners and to the bride and groom before his
spirits flagged; they didn't put up any sort of fight.  He observed,
however, in the two pairs of eyes, light blue and dark blue, of the
American painters a glint of pure, implacable hostility which did not
waver as he came nearer.  He had no words to express his contempt for
this colorless, sexless pair, no more juice in them than a turnip,
sitting around with their drawing boards pretending to be artists.  He
did not pause at their chairs, just the same; he would leave them to
Lola or Amparo, especially Amparo, who could tame tigers.

Jenny and David, sitting together amiably, watched Manolo prance by
with an extra flip of his behind for their benefit.  David said, "i
liked them better before they began mingling social consciousness with
their blackmail.  Did you happen to see the bulletin board this
morning?"

"I was so furious with that Lowenthal I couldn't see anything," said
Jenny.  "What are the dancers up to now?"

"I could have told you not to say anything to Lowenthal," said David.
"It'S none of your business, to begin with, and even if it were, he
wouldn't think so--you're just another Goy, so far as he's concerned,
the Enemy."

"I should think he'd be able to see when a person is really friendly
to him," said Jenny, and her melancholy expression began to settle on
her face.

"You mean you'd think he'd make an exception for you?  He just couldn't
help seeing how sincere you are?  Well, Jenny angel, he might hate you
worse for that very thing!  Oh, can't you ever see?"

Jenny said carefully, cross-hatching a hasty sketch of Manolo's back
view: "I don't think that is what I felt at all.  I somehow wanted to
have my part in the business straightened out.  I wanted him to
know..."

David said, "Angel, get it in your head that he doesn't want to know.
He knows what he knows already."

"All right, David darling," said Jenny, "let's not run this into a
quarrel.  I feel lovely with you today.  Please let me sit here near
you and don't scold me.  I'm tired of quarreling... only, my feelings
are real, and my thoughts are part of me, I can't just throw them away;
I can't go all my days not saying this, and not doing that, and not
feeling what I do feel, anyway, no matter what I might pretend to you
just to keep the peace!  Well, I'll see you dead and damned first." She
kept her voice low and never stopped drawing.

David went on drawing too, without a word.  His face was taking on the
paleness and coldness that Jenny dreaded and was seeing more and more
often.  She loved David's roseate flush, a fresh masculine young tone
of coloring, thin-skinned and healthily tough.  If he didn't look out,
all that food and alcohol would catch up on him someday, he'd wake up
some morning to find that fatal ruby network on his nose and cheeks.
This treacherous thought having come of itself expanded at once into
action.  David sat very still and intent on his work, and Jenny,
stealing slant-eyed glimpses at him, began a prophetic portrait of
David, say at fifty.  She draped forty sagging pounds on David's
familiar bony framework, added jowls, thinned his hair back level with
his ears, doubled the size of his unbelievably handsome acquiline nose,
extended his chin so extravagantly he began to resemble Punch, and as a
last satisfying luxury of cruelty, she added a Teutonic roll of fat
across the base of his skull.  She was so happily absorbed and soothed
in the execution of her little murder, her features assumed the sweet
serenity and interior warm light that David loved to see, and saw only
when he surprised her really sunk in work.  Of himself, by no means
could he bring that look to her face.  When Jenny faced him, she was

always under tension, poised for the encounter, full of contradictory
emotions, her eyes always seeking, wandering, gazing, flickering,
dilating and wincing.  She had got in the habit of expecting trouble
from him, no matter what.  He thought grimly, "And she won't settle for
less now, won't have anything else.  That's what it has come to, it is
simply no good any more, no matter if we can fool ourselves into
thinking so a little while every day.  And what a rotten painter she
is!  Why can't she see it for herself and give up?"  He studied her a
few seconds longer.  Her knees were drawn up to make a table for her
drawing pad, her graceful slender ankles were crossed, and a smile
curled delicately at the corners of her mouth, not ecstasy, but
something tender and pleasant and happy.  He could not resist breaking
it up.  He reached out abruptly to seize her drawing.  Jenny jumped
violently, snatched it out of his reach, crumpling it.  He rose out of
his chair and took hold of the drawing and was surprised at the
ferocity of her resistance.

"What is this you're so pleased with?"

"No, David, let go- let go- you shan't see it---"

"Look out, Jenny- you're going to tear it!"

"I mean to."  She stuffed the drawing down the front of her dress and
held the sketching table over it with her crossed arms.  "Do I go
peeping and snatching at your papers?"

"Oh," said David, offended, and he gave way sulkily.  He detested
Jenny's obstinate insistence that there was any comparable connection
between his ways with hers and her ways with him.  She fought with him
bitterly about his habit of opening her letters- he had no such right,
she said.  "I don't open your letters," she argued.

Certainly not--why should she?  "Do you suspect me of getting love
letters?"  she inquired indignantly.  Of course not- or rather, well,
no.  That was not the point.  It was just that he could not admit that
Jenny had any privacies he was bound to respect.  At least that was her
view of the matter.  His own boundaries and reserves were inviolable,
and Jenny was little by little finding it out; but she had not found
out, nothing could teach her, what it was a man really wanted from a
woman.  At this point, he felt lost in a fog, as usual.  A man, a
woman, meant nothing to him.  Jenny was the question and he could not
find the answer.  She had got back into her chair, knees up, ankles
crossed, hugging her drawing close.  She met his eye gaily and
cunningly.  "This is one thing you'll never see!"  she assured him, and
burst out

laughing all over, shaking from head to foot, wriggling her bare toes
in her flat thonged Mexican sandals.

He gave up his grudges and his bad temper as useless, charmed again by
Jenny's laugh, always so fresh and merry; you couldn't call it a belly
laugh exactly, proceeding from that flat little midriff, but it was
right out of the cellar, every time.  He said, "Look, tell me the joke,
I'd like to laugh, too."

"No, then it wouldn't be funny," said Jenny.  Still smiling in high
good humor, she said gently, "David darling, if only you could know how
beautiful you are to me this minute.  Let's never get old and fat."

"All right, grasshopper.  Not fat, anyway."  They were agreed that to
grow fat was the unpardonable sin against all the good in life, from
ethics to morals to esthetics and back again.  "Not like the
Huttens."

"Not like Bebe," said Jenny.  "What was that you said about those
dancers having social consciousness?"

The Cuban students, deprived of the society of La Condesa by her
jealous lover the Doctor, somewhat bored with their secret society into
which no one had attempted to intrude, and their newspaper, read by no
one but themselves, took to chess tournaments and ping pong Their style
however continued the same, implying that fascinating sophisticated
secrets were to be read by initiates into their symbolic speech and
ritual.  It was coming over them gradually that really, nobody cared;
they were not annoying anyone enough to make a difference.  They
decided to attack directly.  Where the zarzuela company merely stared
bitterly at their victims and uttered their jeering laughter, which
never failed to raise a responsive blush of anger or shame, the
students thought of a method they believed more subtle and deadly. 
They consulted with each other gravely, then turned to regard some
chosen subject with clinical detachment, saying to each other
audibly:

"A serious ca seT

"No hope," the other would reply.  They would shake their heads, glance
piercingly again at their patient, and go on with their chess.

On deck, in passing, they exchanged critical medical views.  "Chronic
skeleton ism they said of Lizzi, gloating over the instant look of
fright in her face.  "No hope."

"Congenital albondigitis," they called loudly to each other as the
Huttens approached with weighty tread, Bebe waddling laboriously on a
leash.  "No hope!"  Professor Hutten glanced swiftly at his wife to

see if she had heard.  Of course she had, and her feelings were hurt
again.  The Professor recalled that from the beginning he had expressed
his disapproval of these savage boys, and his astonishment at hearing
them bandying about, in their unintelligible gabble, the noble, the
revered names of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kant; did his ear mislead him
or had they dared also to take in vain the name of Goethe?  Besides
lesser yet still venerable names such as Shakespeare and Dante.  Their
faces even in relative repose were never serious: their voices not
thoughtfully modulated.  They chattered like mon.  keys while daring to
utter the name of Nietzsche, no doubt misinterpreting and dishonoring
him to their own base satisfaction.  N reverence, no proper humility in
the presence of greatness- these were the failings of all the
non-Nordic races, Iberian, Latin, Gallic especially; indeed, frivolity
was endemic among them, a plague they had carried with them to the
whole New World, truly appalling in its lack of intellectual sobriety.
Professor Hutten felt he could despai once for all of the human race if
there did not remain some hope of the survival of the old Germanic
spirit.  Rallying bravely, he tried to comfort his wife.

"Don't listen to them, my dear, they are mere ragamuffins, natura ll
stupid, and stupidity is always evil, it is not capable of anything
else.  These words dismayed him, they sounded like an echo- from where
-in his mind.  Surely he did not believe that any human being, no
matter how sunk in sin, was irredeemable?  What had come over him?  He
could not imagine, but he could not deny either that this strange ploi
of view struck him powerfully as revealed truth.  There was such thing
as incurable love of evil in the human soul.  The Professor taste such
bitterness in his mouth he wondered if his gall bladder he emptied
itself suddenly on his tongue.

"I heard them, though," said Frau Hutten, like a grieved child.  "They
called us meatballs."  She had not expected anything better of that she
was only tired of the unkindness of people to each other.

"In fact," said the Professor, resolutely, "they said, in their medical
student dog-Latin, that we are hopeless cases of congenital
meatballitis --an inflamed state, as you know.  If you must hear
unpleasant things, at least hear them right.  In any case, such
clowniness can do us no harm."

"I think they are clowns," agreed Frau Hutten, gently, "yet I ridicule
them.  Why should they ridicule us?"

This was a topic for the Professor to get his teeth into.  He took up
the whole morning walk, and the round of beer that followed, explaining
to Frau Hutten the mysteriously variable distribution of common traits
in human nature which created the individual being--yes, in four footed
beasts, also, and in every living thing, insect, fish, flower, bird-
even no two leaves on any tree are exactly alike!  causing all these
endless and incalculable points of view and needs and desires, the
limitless kinds of personal satisfactions to be fought for even to
death, in many instances, ranging from the vilest forms of abuse,
cruelty, crime, to the very heights of sainthood and martyrdom itself.
This group of Cuban students was a lamentable example of naturally base
minds incapable of the higher understanding, exposed to education above
their capacities, who naturally could make no good use of it, being
constrained with their monkey paws to pull every superior thing down to
their own level.  They were unable to endure, indeed they hated, the
very thought of nobility or greatness on any plane.  "They think that
if they should spit on Michelangelo's Moses they shall have proved it
to be no better than they are," he said, triumphantly.  "That is their
great mistake," he ended, soothingly, "and they will be given their
lesson, in time."

Frau Hutten concealed her astonishment at this change in her husband's
viewpoint, now so exactly agreeing with her own, and waited a
respectful interval of consenting silence before going on with what was
on her mind.

"They are publishing some kind of paper again," she told him.
"Something for those Spanish dancers.  I saw them all reading a printed
sheet together and laughing."

Professor Hutten's train of thought was not interrupted.  "It does not
concern us, that is certain."  He went on further to expand and
elucidate his convictions on his subject.  "Our attitude is indicated
clearly, we need have no doubts.  We shall ignore their existence as
heretofore, do not give them the satisfaction of even the slightest
response, neither in word or look.  If they persist in their savagery
to a point where this is no longer possible or commensurate with our
own dignity, then--retaliation, swift, painful, and certain.  I shall
find a way to let them feel the sharpness of my rebuke.  Don't be
troubled, my dear.  We have dealt with intransigents before."

Frau Hutten fondled Bebe's ears and smiled at her husband.  "Of
course," she said.  She could not help thinking, looking towards the

future, that her husband was already beginning to miss his classes ant
his lecture room.  It was obvious that a whole series of new lectures
was forming in his mind.  She resolved to offer to take them down at
his dictation, and began to speculate on the possibility that some
special appointment might be found for him in a small educational
institution of some kind in the Black Forest, or perhaps even
publication in a journal or philosophic magazine.  Or maybe when he got
back to a desk with his papers and books around him, and she would be
so busy with housework, he would be glad to write his lectures for
himself and give her a moment's peace.  Frau Hutten admitted finally to
herself that she was tired to death of Ideas.  If she never heard
another she would be perfectly happy.  She went on petting Bebe and
smiling at her husband.

"It is not a fracture," said Dr.  Schumann to Captain Thiele, choosing
his words for a layman's ears, "but a long and deep head wound, to the
skull, with some concussion.  He has not regained consciousness."

The Captain stirred his coffee once, took a gulp, and said measuredly,
"It will be all for the better if he never does."

Dr.  Schumann stirred his coffee but did not drink.  "It could be
fatal, but not necessarily.  He has an enviable heart--like an ox, I
should say."

"Such swine always have," said the Captain, falling in easily with the
barnyard images appropriate to the subject.  "What interests me," he
said irritably, "is this.  Where did the weapon-"

"The monkey wrench," said Dr.  Schumann, helpfully.

"The monkey wrench," said Captain Thiele, accepting the correction with
dignity, "where did it come from?  Who struck the blow?  That is the
man we must find."

"The monkey wrench was found lying near the scene of the struggle,"
said Dr.  Schumann.  "No one seems to know anything at all about it."

"As if it were of the slightest importance," said the Captain.  "Let
them decimate each other if they like, but not on my ship.  I am
astonished that Father Garza, who was so near, did not notice and
identify the criminal."

Dr.  Schumann smiled and drank his coffee.  "Father Garza does not know
one face from another," he said.  "He sees only souls."

After a moment's consideration, the Captain decided it would not

be unbecoming for him to share this pleasantry, since it seemed to
contain a slight belitement of the priestly office.

"He will want sharp eyes to see a soul in that rubbish heap," he said
almost cheerfully.  He leaned towards the Doctor and remarked as if
making some generous concession not required by the rules: "I admit
that with the crowded condition of this ship, and the peculiarly
hostile elements fermenting in the steerage, with the possibilities of
a breakout of the lowest forms of violence and disorder, I am not
readily able to proceed with such disciplinary measures as might be
most effective."

He thought this speech over for a while and added: "After all, the
first-class passengers have fights that must be considered."  He
considered them with an expression of distaste fleetingly, and went on,
"Frankly, I get no help from the priests.  My officers have of course
done admirably in every, way, but they cannot be everywhere at once!
The habit of the ship lines overloading their second-class passenger
ships in cases like this--"

He stopped, amazed at the word "second-class" hanging in the ai before
him, at his indiscreet reference to the land lubberly character who ran
the shipping business and had no decent respect for ships or ships'
officers--such crosses were his own and none of Dr.  Schumann's
business.  He closed his lips and frowned deeply.

"It is reprehensible in every way," said Dr.  Schumann, too readily'
perhaps.

The Captain shook off the subject.  What shall I do with this scum
until I can empty it out into the ports of Spain?"  he asked frankly.
"My dear Doctor, what do you advise?"

Dr.  Schumann said, "I should want a little time, dear Captain,
consider that question fully, but my first thought is to say, Do
nothing at all.  The worst of this is most certainly over, the one real
trouble maker is disposed of for the voyage.  I have no doubt he is a
professional agitator of some underdog political movement, the
disturbance always occurred where he was.  Yet generally, I believe
those are good, harmless people--nothing at all wrong with them except
they born unfortunate..."

"For them to have been born at all is everybody's misfortune," the
Captain.  "There is nothing left for us but to conceal their well as we
can and keep their plague from spreading."

The Doctor maintained that silence which the Captain regarded as

a dubious way of avoiding honest controversy: at times it had the look
of tacit consent to those evils the Captain was so quick to observe and
so keen to suppress.  In any question of mere discipline, the Captain
had long since discovered the Doctor was not a man to be depended upon,
and his indifference to graver problems began to impress the Captain as
a dangerous moral inertia.  Yet he was of the good old Junker class;
his instincts, training, natural point of view must surely support the
great old society in which both of them were born to take their
rightful places, perform their destined duties, reap their timely
reward -rigorous, unflinching, Junker to the last.

"When we weaken in our exercise of authority, slacken in our moral
fiber, we betray our class and our country," he said, severely.

Dr.  Schumann rose.  "Quite, quite," he said amiably.  "Our
responsibilities are endless."  Bidding the Captain good night, he
absented himself from the scene and the argument-not for the first
time, either, the Captain thought, sourly.  He remembered too late that
he had neglected to inquire about the health of La Condesa, who did not
seem to be thriving under the Doctor's care.

The bulletin board was the object of uneasy curiosity.  It had bloomed
out in a number of boldly printed notices, each printed separately and
posted flat with thumbtacks.

Sorebelly cannot afford to buy a ticket to the Captain's party, because
he is already afraid he cannot pay his bar bill, yet he sits drinking
brandy after brandy.  Long life to his ulcers!

"What indecency!"  exclaimed Frau Baumgartner, warmly taking her
husband's arm.  "Don't pay any attention, my dear!"  for she was
touched at the grief in his face.  He smiled bravely at her, blowing
his nose and wiping his eyes as they walked on, Frau Baumgartner
silently and deeply wishing the cruel words were not true.  "I'hey have
said worse about others," she reminded her husband, who tried to appear
consoled.

Herr Lowenthal read: If a Jew is invited into the society of human
beings he would do better to take advantage of his opportunity.  It may
not haFpen twice.  He wrote carefully on the margin with a thick
pencil: What human beings?  and strolled on looking very pleased with
himself.

"This is what I mean," David said to Jenny, glancing over the morning
display of insults.  "Look!  The American artists so-called are

afraid if they take their noses out of their sketchbooks, someone will
discover that they draw caricatures for each other because they can't
read."  "Somehow that doesn't get to me as much as they hoped," said
David.  "My feelings are not really hurt."

"Mine aren't hurt, either," said Jenny.  "Let's make a few caricatures
of them and post them here."

"Why?"  asked David.  "It would just be a nasty row.  What's the
point?"

"It's just the kind of row I'd like to make," said Jenny.

"Well, leave me out of it," said David.  "It's not worth it."

Jenny's temper began rising in her like a newly lighted bonfire.
"Passive resistance," she said, contemptuously.  "Superior silence.
Toploftical reserve.  Stiff upper lip.  Turn the other cheek but with
dignity, mind you.  Don't let them ever dream we are too yellow-livered
to answer back.  Just don't look now and they'll get tired of spitting
in our eye.  Never let it be said "

David turned on his heel as squarely as a soldier on parade drill, and
walked away from her.  Jenny clenched her eyes tight, drummed both feet
on deck, and screamed after him: "Coward, coward, coward, you always
were- coward, coward!"

She then opened her eyes and there was Wilhelm Freytag standing not ten
feet away, watching her with a real sparkle of interest.  Jenny tried
to change her scream into a peal of merry laughter, but Freytag was not
deceived.  He came straight to her and looked very closely into her
eyes, smiling handsomely.

"But you are wonderful," he said, "I never imagined you had so much
fire in you.  I thought you were a self-possessed, cold sort of girl.
Tell me, what does a man have to do to get you into this state?"

Jenny said, "You'll not believe me, but David does nothing; nothing, he
won't talk, he won't stay to listen, he won't answer, he won't give in,
ever, he won't believe anything I say, he won't--"

"If he won't, he won't, Jenny," said Freytag, very gently reasonable
"Didn't your mother tell you that?"

"Nobody told me anything that was of the least use," said Jenny, all at
once feeling quite restored and good-humored.  "And I wouldn't have
listened if they had."

"Will you listen to me?"  asked Freytag.  "Would you like some,
coffee?"

Not particularly," said Jenny, "I'd like some company."

"Anybody special?"  he asked, full of self-confidence.  She walked
along beside him without answering, and he saw by the guarded look on
her face what she thought of that gambit.  This made it easy for him to
decide again that she was not an attractive girl, or at least not to
him, and apparently, not to her young man, either.  A girl in her
situation hadn't got any business being so stiff-necked and hard to
handle.

Herr Rieber and Lizzi stopped to laugh again at the funny things those
Spaniards had posted against other people, and saw this:

If the pink pig would stop guzzling beer and ogling the peahen, he
might be a brighter social asset on this voyage.  Scribbled next to
this in red crayon were the words !Arriba Espaha!  !Arriba la
Cucaracha!  ! Mueran a la Indiferentistas --!

"But what has that to do with us?"  asked Lizzi, trembling with anger.
"What do we care for their savage politics"

Dr.  Schumann entered the bar for his eleven-o'clock glass of dark
beer.  One of the Cuban students was fastening a new notice to the
board, with little Concha standing by watching.  The Doctor paused, put
on his spectacles and read: The fake Condesa with her glass jewelry and
bead pearls loves to dance, but does not like to pay the piper a
typical anarchist attitzde.  Perhaps her devoted doctor should change
her Izrescrilotion from drugs to a ticket for the Captain's party.

Dr.  Schumann blinked, his face contracted as if dust had blown in his
eyes.  He pinched the slip of paper off the board and carried it
between thumb and forefinger to the corner table where the dancers were
seated at coffee.  "I suggest," he said with the careful firmness he
would use with a patient who might be a homicidal maniac, "that this is
carrying your stupid comedy a little beyond bounds.  I advise you to
change your methods, and your manners, if possible, at least for the
rest of the voyage."  As he tore the notice into strips and placed them
on the table, he looked into the half-circle of staring, hard faces
with an impression that he was gazing into eyes that had got misplaced:
they belonged to some species of fierce beast peering out of a cave or
ready to leap in a jungle, prowling and sniffing for blood; the same
expression, only older, more intensely aware and ready, that had
dismayed him in the eyes of Ric and Rac.  Not one of them spoke, and
move less as lurking wildcats, they did succeed in staring Dr.

Schumann down.  Involuntarily his glance flickered aside.  He spoke
sternly: "Be good enough to drop this nonsense."

A chilling burst of laughter followed him down the deck.  Dr. 
Schumann, not intimidated but repelled and indignant at the immunity of
such insolence, reflected on the so-called lighter side of life, the
merrier arts and their practitioners; cabarets and beer halls where one
went in relative innocence for a pleasant evening of listening to
popular music, watching the pretty young dancers, drinking a little
wine or beer, clinking the glass with one's wife across the table--how
had it happened that this side of life was almost entirely the work of
such creatures as these, a criminal league organized and managed by the
lowest of the criminal world?  Yes, even the outdoor, health-giving
sports?  They were all run by the same people who dealt in drugs and
packaged sex and murder and every possible sort of monstrous cheat and
forgery.  The gauzy glittering surface of gaiety lay lightly over the
foulest pools of evil.  Yet how dull life would be without the dancing
and the music and the drink and the lovemaking and all that ecstatic
confusion!  God bless the comedians, just the same- are we not all
sinners?

He knew well that the next time that gang of hoodlums chose to put on
their dancing dress and bring out their instruments to sing and dance
and clatter and strum in their enchanting way, he would be there; he
would not be able to resist, he would drift into their rhythms without
a thought or care for what they were in truth, for in truth what were
they?  He would take for truth only what they appeared to be at that
moment, when they had no more humanity than a flock of bright plum aged
birds, just a pretty sight provided for his enjoyment.  Dr.  Schumann
had always loved the circus, the music hall, the cabaret, or any little
half-lighted cellar full of queer goings-on.  As he grew older his
sense of professional gravity, of obligation, had restrained him. Often
his wife, who seemed a more severe character than she was in fact,
would persuade him in his moments of fatigue: "Come along, my dear,
let's go to see the vaudeville.  We need a change!"  And she was always
right.  Dr.  Schumann admitted, but only to himself that if hyenas were
beautiful and could sing and dance, he would forgive them for being
hyenas.  But would they ever forgive him for being human?  And then,
who was he to presume to offer forgiveness even to the least of God's
creatures?  And what indeed was he?  He loved La

Condesa because she was perverted, strayed, a taker of drugs, a woman
who lived outside religion, outside law, outside morality, who was
beautiful, willful, and he had no doubt, a born liar.  In what way had
he tried to help her?  He had subdued her, caged her, shut her off from
those ambiguous students- even at moments half believing the scandals
about them that seeped like filth under the surface of the ship's talk;
not by any medical means or by human sympathy, but by abuse of his
power, and by using against her the vice that harmed her most-drugs.

Dr.  Schumann faced an aspect of his character he had not suspected
until that hour.  He had lived on flattering terms with the delusive
wickedness of his own nature; comfortable in the doctrine that no man
may be damned except with his own consent, and that man's desire for
redemption is deathless as his own soul; and when he does evil he knows
what he is doing.  How could he have wronged that unhappy creature so,
when he had believed he meant only to help and comfort her?  He was so
horrified his words of denial took shape, sound, he could hear himself
speaking within his skull.  "No," he was saying, "I did not harm her, I
did what I could in an emergency.  Father Garza assured me that what I
have done was not wrong.  That I must treat her severely as a
responsible doctor towards an incorrigible patient... "Otherwise in one
way and a dangerous way you are yielding to her seductions," Father
Garza said.... " He was not consoled or reassured, and knew that he
could never be by any means he was able to imagine now.  She was a
burden on his conscience he was condemned to carry to his death.  He
gave a great deep-drawn sigh, but not of resignation, and said most
cheerfully, "Griiss Gott" to that poor wretch Herr Glocken, who was
strolling along by himself as usual, with a face more desolate than
ever.  "How are you this morning?"  Dr.  Schumann asked, rashly.

Herr Glocken brightened at this combination of human kindness and no
doubt professional medical interest.  "I am not feeling very well," he
said, eagerly.  "I have a kind of strangling feeling in my chest, all
the time."

"What are you doing for it?"

"Well, nothing much," said Herr Glocken.  "It just came on lately."

"Maybe you'd better come down to my office and let me look at you,"
said Dr.  Schumann, his mind clearing a little at the prospect of

serious work.  Herr Glocken looked amazed and pitiably hopeful. 
"Now?" he said, unbelievingly.

"Now," said Dr.  Schumann.

Herr Glocken needed not only materia me dica his soul was shattered.
Lola had come towards him, swinging her skirts, her left hand spread on
her hip.  She looked down smiling, holding out her right palm to him
like a gypsy fortuneteller.  "Cross my palm with silver, little man,"
she said, "and I promise you a ticket with a lucky number, that will
win you a beautiful lace fan to take home to your pretty German
sweetheart!"

Herr Glocken shuddered and could not control the convulsion of pain and
horror in his face.  He turned his head away and closed his eyes.  She
bent over him intently and struck at his hump cruelly with her sharp
fingers.  "For luck, that's the only thing you're good for!"  she said,
then whirled on her heel to join the others, waiting nearby.  They
closed about her silently and drifted along together, lighting
cigarettes.

The next morning, there was another bit of paper tacked on the
wallboard in the bar: If you are a hunchback, symbol of every kind of
degeneration, you may be excused from behaving like a nor nal human
being.

Herr Glocken, who had been seen to smile with deep satisfaction over
some of the other bulletins aimed at other victims, stood motionless
reading the dreadful words over and over; then, after a quick glance
around him, he snatched the shabby little scrap and crumpled it in his
pocket, then walked on, face raised, hands clasped and dangling below
his knees in the back, his thin legs carrying him safely out on deck,
where no one had witnessed his humiliation.  The passengers, whoever
they were, had always each one taken pains to treat him well, to greet
him and give him the time of day.  They now greeted him again kindly,
smiling over their morning cups of broth, noting in a brief incurious
glance his face passing their line of vision stiffened in its look of
perpetual grief and pain.  They observed him without thinking of him,
the moment he had passed they forgot him with the easy indifference of
those who view a misfortune from which they feel themselves in no
danger.  They need never hate or fear him, his disease was not
contagious, his bad luck was strictly his own; "But how terrible,"
said little Frau Schmitt to Frau Rittersdorf, "how fortunate I feel
when I see him!"

Frau Rittersdorf responded with the look described by many of her f
ormer suitors as "cryptic," lifted one corner of her mouth, wrinkled
her nose a trifle, and wrote rapidly in her red leather book: "Query,
whether it would not be a benefit to the human race if there were a
well-enforced law providing that all defective children should be given
the blessings of euthanasia at birth or as soon afterwards as it might
become evident that they are unfit?  Let me think seriously about this,
and read all the arguments in favor of it.  I have never heard one
against it that seemed to me at all valid."  She closed the book, which
now had very few remaining blank pages.

Amparo, seeing Jenny enter one of the small writing rooms alone, bore
down upon her under full power, stepped before her without hesitation
and spoke abruptly as one who had no time to waste: "You have not yet
bought a ticket for the raffle- why not?"  Her voice and manner were so
righteously censorious Jenny was almost thrown off guard.  Amparo stood
solidly fixed, waiting, right hand extended holding a bit of cardboard,
head up, left hand flattened on hip, toes turned out as if she were
about to begin a dance.  Jenny's refusal to admit the existence of the
woman now turned to a deep resentment that somehow she must be dealt
with and disposed of, unpleasantly- a nonexistence not to be ignored.
She said, with a good sharp voice and a stare she hoped was as steely
as the other's: "I shall not buy a ticket and I do not wish to be
annoyed about it."  She stepped in turn around Amparo, whose gaze held
and followed her own.  A thug's eye if ever I saw one, Jenny decided,
and wondered what character her own expression might suggest to an
observer uninstructed in the meaning of the situation.  "Let me alone,"
she said furiously.

Amparo slapped her inner thigh and whirled about.  "No money, no man,
and nothing here," she said, slapping herself again, "Jesus!"  and went
her way superbly.

Jenny, who felt she had escaped from a real hold-up, pistol and all,
had no vanities that Amparo could have recognized.  After her first
brief anger, she went looking for David to tell her little story, and
rounding the bow from port to lee, she saw David, back to the sea,
elbows on the rail, seeming to lean away from Lola, bending towards
him, her face almost touching his.  David did not seem unhappy, he

was looking Lola straight in the eye and smiling, a watchful little
smile, but pleased, too- Jenny, whose first impulse was to interfere,
or, as she said, "rush to the rescue," had leaped forward one step,
then slowed down at once and strolled past, pretending not to see the
absurd tableau at the rail.  She saw that David was not saying much,
but he was keeping his hands out of his pocket, too; yet she did not
quite trust him, and resolved clearly that if he should buy one of
those ridiculous pieces of pasteboard, she would lay hands on it, tear
it into bits and cast it into the sea.  She passed by resolutely not
giving the pair a glance.  But soon David was beside her, and said, "I
think we're through with that question.  It's all settled that I am a
man with no mother, no entrails, no human feelings; in Lola's country
they keep creatures like me in cages-"

Jenny laughed and David joined in.  "Oh that isn't so bad!  Amparo told
me I had no money, no man, and nothing here," and unselfconsciously as
a cat washing itself, Jenny slapped herself high up on the inner thigh.
David turned instantly so bright a scarlet his eyeballs flushed too,
and he said quite desperately, "Jenny angel," with such violence the
words sounded like a curse, "do you ever think how you look?"

She studied his face silently, in a smiling sort of detached wonder
--"I never saw you actually bare your teeth, before," she said.  "We
used to have a horse that was always trying to bite people, and you
looked just like him there for a second-- I could hardly believe my
eyes "I can hardly believe mine, some of the things you do," said
David, getting hold of his temper heroically.  When Jenny began
ridiculing him she was out of control and reckless.

"I think it is a wonderful gesture," said Jenny.  "You used to think it
fun when two Indian women started a fight over a man, trailing their
skirts and stomping nearer and nearer each other, all slit-eyed and
showing their teeth, slapping themselves there, right in the middle,
each one bragging about what she's got that the other hasn't --"

"Yes," said David, in spite of himself, "and the man they're fighting
over just stands there looking like a fool-"

"Why, David!  I always thought he looked proud and fatuously pleased
and full of curiosity as to which one would get him--how would you feel
if I got into a cat fight with, let's say, Mrs.  Treadwell over you?"

David broke down and laughed nearly aloud over this notion.  "Like a
fool, of course," he said.

"I can't see why," said Jenny.  "Those women are proving to the world
he really is a man worth having, they don't tear each other's hair and
eyes out and skin each others noses for a dildo.  And the other men all
stand back respectfully pretending they're not there, but they don't
miss a lick.  And the women all huddle together staring, their mouths
moistened, and they give each other warning hard looks as if to say,
"Look out, take care!"  and the whole air around is so thick with sex
you can lean against it- you see, David?"  cried Jenny as if she had
explained everything to him and proved something on her side.  "You
should have seen that Amparo.  She was wonderful.  I had to see if I

could do it too!"

David said clearly and flatly, "You don't have to prove anything to me,
Jenny angel."  He took her arm and they moved to the rail, and their
blood surged up so hotly between them, they leaned together there
speechless and breathless, feeling as if their flesh melted and fused
where they touched each other.

,

Denny went by at speed as if he were really on his way somewhere, flung
up his arm at David and Jenny, calling out excitedly, "Landfall,
landfall, this evening, the purser told me!"

The news had got about, though it was not unexpected.  Mrs.  Tread well
and the Baumgartners and the Lutzes came on deck with their field
glasses and other passengers began borrowing them for long staring at
sea and sky.  The Cuban students hung cameras around their necks, made
a procession blowing tin bugles, shouted "Arriba Eslaha N Mueran los
Anti-Cucaracheros!"  ("Up Spain- Death to the Anti Cockroach Party"),
then quite suddenly settled down to chess in a corner of the barroom. 
The bulletin boards were swept clean of landlubbers' irrelevant doings,
and curt, sparsely scattered notices informed the passers-by that land
had been sighted- the Vera was approaching Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the
first island of the Canaries for eastbound ships. Other scraps were
forthcoming in rather a grudging tone in language suitable to those
persons ignorant of their whereabouts and the seagoing tongue.  They
expected to dock early in the morning, all ashore for the day who
wished to go, the ship would sail again at half past four.  It was
Wednesday the ninth of September, two days before the full moon.  Frau
Schmitt remarked this on a calendar in one of the writing rooms, and
said thoughtlessly to Mrs.  Treadwell: "The first

quarter was on Wednesday the second.  That was the night Etchegaray
was drowned."

Mrs.  Treadwell, standing at a table turning over the pages of a
fashion magazine, said absently without raising her eyes: "How long ago
that seems."

Ric and Rac, on their routine patrol of the ship, found themselves at
the end of a long corridor, empty except for that crazy woman with the
necklace Lola and Amparo were always talking about.  She was all in
flimsy white and her feet were bare.  She came along slowly, with her
eyes half closed, and Ric said, pretending terror, "It's a ghost!"
Their eyes met once, they seized each other's hand and dug their nails
in, waiting to see what would come up, what they might do.  As La
Condesa approached with a slow, weaving step, they both saw in the same
glimpse that her pearl necklace had loosened itself, had slid down her
front and caught in a pleated fold of her sash, where it hung at full
length, gently swaying outward and falling back with her step.  She was
quite near before she noticed them, and waved them out of her path with
an absent-minded circling of her hand outward.  Instead of turning
back, or falling to one side, they rushed past her jostling her rudely,
and Ric being nearest snatched the necklace as he went, stuffing it
down his collar as they careened for the deck.  La Condesa, at the
sharp jolt of their passing, put her hand to her throat and knew at
once they had taken her pearls.  She spun round and ran after them
until the ship's rocking brought her to her knees; and there she sat
back on her heels, holding her throat with both hands until the
stewardess found her.  While putting her back in bed, the stewardess
said, in the hard voice of one who has gathered desperate courage:
"Meine Dame, I will not serve you any longer if I can help it.  You are
going to do yourself harm and I shall be blamed."

La Condesa said: "Do what you like.  But meantime, send for the purser.
Those children have snatched my pearls."

The stewardess said, "Where?  When?"

"In the corridor where I was walking, just now."

"I hope racine Dame will pardon me, but I must tell you, you were not
wearing your pearls today, not since early morning.  I noticed this and
thought it strange when I asked to be absent for a few minutes.  You
were not wearing your pearls, meine Dame.  They are in this room and
will be found."

La Condesa said, "The curse of my whole life has been that I must
always deal with fools.  Come, and bring the purser.  And wait until I
ask you for your opinion."

Elsa, walking with her father and mother, almost collided with Ric and
Rac, who seemed to be more in flight, or pursuit as it might be, than
usual.  They dodged the Lutzes, but not quite enough; Ric jogged Mrs.
Lutz's left elbow and hit that mysterious nerve that makes one shudder
all over.  Mrs.  Lutz seized him Instantly by the arm, all her maternal
instincts for discipline of the young aroused.  "Someone must teach you
a little decent behavior," she told him in her GermanMexi can Spanish.
"I will begin."  She slapped him soundly, and he scuffled so
energetically the necklace dropped out of his shirt, Rac sprang to
retrieve it, brought it up dangling in her hands.  Herr Lutz then tried
to seize her, but she escaped and ran to the rail, climbed up and
dropped the pearls into the sea.  Mrs.  Lutz released Ric, who joined
Rac at the rail.

Little Frau Schmitt, wandering about rather aimlessly, worrying about
her husband, or rather, about his body and how it was faring in his
coffin in the hold, noticed the rather agitated scene a little farther
down the deck, but when she saw the twins, she asked herself no
questions.  Trouble went where they were, confusion and ill doings.
Possibly it had something dimly to do with the will of God, His great
mysterious plans.  But what were they throwing overboard now?  She
greeted the Lutzes pleasantly as she passed, noticing they looked
somewhat flushed and disheveled, but, as Frau Schmitt was learning on
this ship the great lesson life had been preparing for her all this
time -and to think she had never once suspected what it would be!  -she
must be quiet, keep to herself, express no opinions, bear no witness,
carry no tales, make no confidences, nobody cared, nobody cared, there
was nobody- this was the unbelievable thing!

All her resolves about standing up to Frau Rittersdorf had come to
nothing.  Frau Rittersdorf pushed her toilet things to one side and
said, "Please keep your things out of my way!"  and she, Frau Schmitt,
had tucked them into one small space on the dressing table.  She said
once, trying to sound firm, decisive, "I do not like the porthole open
at night."  "Well, I do," said Frau Rittersdorf, and the porthole
stayed open.  Frau Schmitt took a long breath, and wondered what those
children had thrown overboard, though it was none of her affair.

The stewardess asked the Furser to go to La Condesa.  He went and
listened to her story, noted her drugged speech and manner, decided the
whole thing was a dream, and sent for the Doctor.  Dr.  Schumann
believed what she told him, and explained to the purser that he
understood her temperament and that her fantasies did not take such
forms.  He advised the purser to report the theft to the Captain, who
would no doubt order a search and investigation.  The purser took the
liberty of informing the Captain, who was much put about with this
latest piece of awkwardness on his ship, that though Dr.  Schumann took
the lady's word for it, he, the purser, did not.  The Captain at once
ordered a search, a good thorough one, the criminal might have
accomplices in the steerage, and meantime he would be pleased to ask
Dr.  Schumann a few questions.

Dr.  Schumann asked La Condesa: "Are you sure?  It was the children --
?"

She took his hand between hers and held it loosely, stroking the
fingers, and said, "You are no better than the purser!  What a
question."

"Do you always get up and wander about by yourself this way" "Whenever
the stewardess goes, yes."

"Tell me," he said, anxiously, "if your pearls are not found, what will
you do?"

"I still have the emerald," she said, "and a few other little things."
She touched her forehead to his for a moment, then drew back smiling.
"What can it matter now?  What I love about this is, you are thinking
about me--you are troubled, you would help me if you could!  But you
can't," she told him, in triumph.  "Nobody can."

A cabin boy brought him a message from the Captain.  Dr.  Schumann rose
and kissed her hand.  "Where are you going?"  she cried in distress.
"Don't leave me!"

"I am going to help the Captain look for your necklace," he said, "and
I could wish you might stay here quietly and I could know you were
safe.  Please can you not do this?"

"For you," she said, "for you, and for nobody else."

"There goes La Condesa's doctor," said Herr Lutz.  "Let us ask him if
she has missed her pearls."

Frau Lutz said, "You will only go making trouble for yourself, only

you can be so indiscreet!  How do we know they were pearls?  They
could have been beads, for all we know."

Herr Lutz said, "There was a diamond clasp on them.  And hidden in his
blouse?"

"How do you know they were diamonds?  Where could he put things except
in his blouse?"

Herr Lutz drew a deep breath and expelled it in a sigh of monstrous
despair.  "Look, my poor wife, stay where you are while I speak to the
Doctor."  Going straight towards Dr.  Schumann, and cutting across his
path, he brought him to a pause, and spoke only a few words.  Dr.
Schumann nodded very gravely, and went on.

The search for the lost pearls turned out to be a rather cut-and dried
affair: the four staterooms of the zarzuela company were mined out
rather thoroughly, a few suspicious characters in the steerage, known
to be antireligious, were harried about enough to make them sullen and
insolent, even the fat man was hauled up to sit in his bunk while three
sailors searched the mattress and inside the pillow cases.  He snarled
bitterly, "What are you looking for?"  One of the sailors said, "You'll
know if we find it" and left him dangling so, cur shag luxuriously.

The purser sent for Lola and Tito, but as all the dancers had been
turned out of their cabins by the sailors making the search, they went
in a body to the purser's door, where all but Tito, Lola, Ric and Rac
were turned away and asked to wait outside.

The purser asked without ceremony, "Are these your children?"  glancing
from Lola to Tito to the twins, who stood back huddled together
shoulder to shoulder facing out like wild cattle in danger.  His look
was a mixture of repulsion and incredulity--surely these creatures
could not really exist.  But yes, there they stood, their snake eyes
glittering.  He turned back to the parents.

"Of course they are ours," said Lola.  "Whose do you think they are?"
"You might be glad if they were somebody else's before this is over',"
said the purser.  He bawled suddenly at Ric and Rac: "Did you steal the
lady's necklace?"

"No," they said in one voice, instantly.

"What did you do with it?"  asked the purser, keeping his voice harsh
and loud.  "Answer me!"

They stared at him in silence.  Lola took Ric by the nape of the neck
and shook him.  "Answer!"  she said, fiercely.  The purser noticed
that

her face had gone a strange yellow, her lips were pale, she looked
ready to faint.  In truth, Lola had not known why the sailors were
searching the ship.  The zarzuela company had planned to rob La
Condesa, but not until the last moment, perhaps as she left the ship or
just afterward; and here these unspeakable brats had mined everything.
The purser might have doubts, he might just be trying the old game of
scaring somebody into confession by surprising and bullying them, but
she, Lola, knew already that the worst was true and Rac had done it, no
matter what it was, and they had almost caused her to show fright
before that fat pig of a purser.  "I.  esfis!"  she said devoutly under
her breath.  "You wait!"

Ric said very clearly and deliberately, "I don't know what you are
talking about," and Rac nodded her head at him, not at the others.

The purser said to Tito and Lola, "Let them alone until later.  If you
do not know, really do not," he said, insinuatingly, "I will tell you,"
and he did tell them the fragments that had been assembled about the
incident--what the Doctor had heard from La Condesa, what Herr Lutz had
told him first, and later, unwillingly, Frau Lutz and even Elsa- yes,
it was a necklace in Rac's hand and she had thrown it overboard.  Lola
and Tito had no trouble expressing horror and dismay, as well as their
belief that it could all be a mistake, and a hope that their accusers
could be proved in the wrong; and a severe promise to question the
children further in private and to find out the truth.  The purser did
not for a moment believe anything but that they were doing a fair job
of acting, but not good enough to fool him.

"Do what you please," he said, dismissing them coldly.  "We will go on
with our investigation."

The sailors were gone from the cabin when Tito and Lola returned,
having put back everything in decent order; but they found waiting
there, crowded together in silence, Amparo and Pepe, Manolo and Concha,
Pancho and Pastora; they rose in silence and converged upon the pair,
who were each holding a twin by the arm, high up near the shoulder.
Their breaths were hot in each other's faces.  "What is it?"  whispered
Amparo.  "Is it about us?  Those students say so, but nobody will tell
us anything."

"Get out of my way," said Lola, 'get me alone."  She elbowed her way
into the cabin and sat down on the end of the divan with Ric held
firmly between her knees.  Tito stood by holding Rac.

Lola said, "Now tell me," and wrapping her legs around him, she took
both of his hands and began pressing the finger nails down bitterly,
one at a time, steadily and coldly, until he was writhing and howling,
but she only said, "Tell me, or I'll turn them backward, I'll stick
pins under them!  I'll pull your teeth out!"

Rac began to struggle in Tito's hands and scream incoherently, but she
did not confess.  Lola began turning Ric's eyelids back with thumb and
forefinger, so that his screams turned from pain to terror.  She said,
" II tear them out!"  and Manolo lowered his voice to a croak: "Go on,
give it to him, don't let up!"  The others kept moving restlessly,
calling out to her in a ragged echo not to stop, but to go on, make him
tell.

At last Ric collapsed between her knees, his head rolling back
helplessly in her arms, tears flooding, strangling, crying, "You said
they were only beads, not worth the trouble.  Only beads!"

Lola abandoned him at once, adding a slap in his face for good measure,
and rose up in fury.  "He is an idiot," she said, "why do we keep him?
I will leave you in Vigo," she told him, "and you can starve!"

Rac shrieked at this, jerked and bounded in Tito's grasp, until he
flailed her head and shoulders with his fist, but she still cried out:
"Me too!  Leave me, too.  I won't go with you- I stay in Vigo- Ric,
Ric," she squealed like a rabbit in the teeth of the weasel, "Ric,
Ric--"

Tito let go of Rac and turned his fatherly discipline upon Ric.  He
seized his right arm by the wrist and twisted it very slowly and
steadily until the shoulder was nearly turned in its socket and Ric
went to his knees with a long howl that died away in a puppy like
whimper when the terrible hold was loosed.  Rac, huddled on the divan
nursing her bruises, cried again with him.  Then Manolo and Pepe and
Tito and Pancho, and Lola and Concha and Pastora and Amparo, every face
masking badly a sullen fright, went away together to go over every step
of this dismaying turn of affairs; with a few words and nods, they
decided it would be best to drink coffee in the bar, to appear as usual
at dinner, and to hold a rehearsal on deck afterwards.  They were all
on edge and ready to fly at each other's throats.  On her way out, Lola
paused long enough to seize Rac by the hair and shake her head until
she was silenced, afraid to cry.  When they were gone, Ric and Rac
crawled into the upper berth looking for safety; they lay there half
naked, entangled like some afflicted, misbegotten little monster in a
cave, exhausted, mindless, soon asleep.

PART III.

The Harbors.

For here have we no continuing city... St.  Paul

In the evening, late, with the reflected sunlight still faintly green
and golden in sea and sky, the voyagers' long day's waiting, hovering
and staring at the horizon was rewarded with a distant sight of
Tenerife, a jagged, rock-shaped, rock-colored fortress of an island
rising abruptly from gray water, misty at the base and canopied with
sagging violet clouds.

David spoke quietly to Jenny after a long silence together leaning on
their arms at the rail so as not to disturb the gentle mood between
them; the deep shining satisfaction in his face surprised her.  "That's
my notion of Spain," he said, "that's my kind of country.  Toledo,
Avila, not Sevilla.  Orange groves and castanets and lace mantillas-
not for me!"  "I'hey're got them in Spain too, though, for those who
prefer them," said Jenny, tenderly, "but no, not for you, David
darling.  Granite and sand 'and faces of the finest Spanish leather,
and bitter bread, and twisted olive trees--where even the babies are so
tough they won't wear diapers.  I know that is really your idea of
heaven, isn't it?"

"Yes," said David stoutly, "something tough and grand--Toledo steel,
and granite, and Spanish leather, and Spanish pride and hate, and
Spanish cruelty--they're the only people who know how to make an art of
cruelty... I'm sick of things all runny at the edges.... "

"Couldn't there be something between a runny edge and a knife edge?"
asked Jenny, hearing herself sound wistful and hoping David did not
notice.  "There are palms and flowers even in Tenerife, I'll bet you
anything, and a lot of people who are very soft on each other; and the
boys serenade the girls on moonlight nights just as they do in Mexico-
you'll hate it!"  He said nothing more, gave her a blue-eyed look that
she loved, and that quieted her entirely, because no matter what came
up for them to fight about, she still believed that she was willing to
make peace with him on his own terms, if only she could find out what
they were.

The gulls came out to meet them and circled about screaming furiously,
pumping their stiff mechanical wings and turning their wooden heads as
if on hinges to eye the scene severely, falling like stones to the
waves, snatching at lumps of galley refuse.

"Same old story," said Herr Lutz, pausing alongside, "all looking for
something to eat, and they don't care where it comes from."

"It will be nice, hearing the last of him," whispered Jenny,
hopefully.

In the morning, the engines gave three loud thumps, and stopped.  Jenny
put her head out, and there at her very porthole was Santa Cruz de
Tenerife, a jagged long rock indeed, sown with palms, smothered in
bougainvillea, the flat square houses perched and huddled on cliff
steep levels hacked out as with chisels.  The wharf was on a wide
beach, the longshoremen were gathered and ready, a small crowd waited
without much expectation.  Two policemen came among them and began to
wave them back towards either side of the wharf, until there was a wide
path opened between them.  Jenny heard the anchor going down.  By the
time she reached the deck, the gangplank was settling into place.
Almost everybody was there before her, she observed, and nearly all in
festive, going-ashore dress.  The breakfast bugle sounded, but almost
nobody stirred from the side; a loud gruff voice, the purser's maybe,
began bawling good advice through a megaphone: "First-class passengers
will please be so good as to go to breakfast, which is now waiting for
them.  In any case, will the ladies and gentlemen of the first class be
so good as to clear the decks: a part of the passengers of the third
class are now about to be disembarked from the main deck.  Attention!
First-class passengers will please be so good..."

They began straggling away reluctantly, David among them; Jenny started
towards him, but was intercepted by Wilhelm Freytag, who gently put out
an arm to bar her way.  "This should be something to see, he said. "Who
wants breakfast?  David does, thought Jenny, watching him disappear. 
"Let's go over here," said Freytag, taking her elbow, "where we can see
them start up."

The people in the steerage who were about to go were gathered at the
foot of the steep iron stairway, packed solidly together, their lumpy
sack bundles on their shoulders, the smaller children riding above
them, all the faces turned upward waiting for the signal that would
bring them to the wide freedom of the upper deck, for the blessed
word

that would give them permission to cross the gangplank and set foot
once more on their own earth.  Every face wore its own look of private
expectation, anxious joy, tranced excitement; and as they stood each
body inclined, straining upwards in perfect silence and stillness,
their breathing made a small moaning sound and there was a tight
trembling of the whole mass.  A short young fellow with black-jawed
blunt easy-going features, a wild shock of hair, his bare feet
clutching into the steps, rushed uncontrollably up the stairs to the
rail of the upper deck and poised there on his spread toes, his gaze
soaring out from him like a bird to the little towns lying at the foot
and climbing up the sides of the stony island.  Oblivious, smiling, the
round instinctive eyes filled with tears.  Even as Wilhelm Freytag saw
him and envied him his homecoming, even as Jenny said, "It must be
wonderful to cry for joy!"  a young officer dashed at the man as if he
would strike him, stopping short three feet away, mouth open and squre
and noisy with outraged authority.

"Get back down there, you!"  he shouted, but the man did not hear. 
"Get back down!"  bawled the officer in an indecent fury, his bad
Spanish almost failing him, his face turning purple.  Mrs.  Treadwell,
passing the door on her way to breakfast, paused to glance at him with
some curiosity.  Yes, no doubt about it, that was her young dancing
partner who had practiced such downright pretty manners.  She went on,
one eyebrow slightly raised.  The man at the rail blinked, heard and
under. stood at last, and turned upon the frantic officer the same
tender smile, the bright film of water covering his eyes; still
smiling, he turned obediently as an unoffended dog and dived back down
into the crowd, swinging his hemp bundle.  Even before he had turned
about again, the officer leaned over and shouted at the waiting people:
"Come on, you, come on up, hurry up there, get on up here and get off
this ship!  Don't crowd, come three abreast, come on, get off, get
off!"  As he heckled and nagged, several sailors below herded the crowd
and urged them on.

The young fellow leaped ahead instantly and led the people upward. 
They approved of his boldness, and they had found new heart.  They
scrambled and stumbled and shoved each other about in good-tempered
play, laughed aloud in a ragged chorus of free voices calling out jokes
and catchwords to each other, no longer oppressed and intimidated, but
home from exile, back to the troubles they knew, in their own country
where a man's life and death were his own business.  They ignored the
little yelling angry man with the purple face and the comic Spanish;

nothing he could do, or say in any language, could make any difference
to them any longer; they could hardly wait to leave his ship.  They
turned back and shouted blessings and farewells to those left behind,
who shared their joy and shouted back hopefully.

Seven women who had borne children during the voyage came up slowly in
a group, some of them supported by their husbands or leaning upon other
women, carrying their young in tightly wrapped bundles.  They were
flabby and pale, some of them with brassy spots on their foreheads and
checks, their bellies still loose and soft, with their milk staining
the fronts of their faded clothes.  Their older children, with sad,
disinherited eyes, clung determinedly to their skirts.  A boy of about
twelve years with a fierce, burning smile turned about as he reached
the upper deck, and saw them.

"Old, Old," he called out, raising a clenched fist and shaking it in
the air.  "We are many more than when we started!"

One of the mothers lifted her worn dark face and called back in
triumph, "Yes and men, too, all of them!"  A great rollicking torrent
of laughter rolled through them all.  Shouting they rose and poured
like a tidal wave upon the deck, spreading, forcing the officers and
the other passengers back to the rail and within doors, thinning out in
good order at the gangplank and flowing off the ship without a backward
glance.  The officer turned aside, his face writhing with nausea.  He
looked straight into the eyes of Dr.  Schumann, on his way to say
good-by to La Condesa and to help prepare her to go ashore.  "God, how
they stink," he said, "and how they breed- like vermin!"

Dr.  Schumann said nothing, and the young officer calmed down a little,
interpreting the Doctor's absent glance as sympathy.  The Doctor
watched two sailors helping the fat man up the steps.  He was wearing
the same cherry-colored shirt he had come aboard in at Veracruz, but he
was dazed and leaned heavily on his escorts.  Dr.  Schumann had been
down to change the dressing and re-bandage his head, and the wound was
doing very well.  No doubt he would recover and get into more mischief.
As the man passed he looked out from under his huge helmet of surgical
dressings directly at Dr.  Schumann, but gave no sign of recognition.

Dr.  Schumann noticed as he turned the knob of?  the door that his hand
was bloodless, the veins a sunken greenish tracery.  He felt weak and
tired and wished he had stopped for coffee.  He found La Condesa

dressed and ready, even wearing a tiny rosy velvet hat with a short,
coarse-meshed black veil over her face, lying almost flat as if posing
for her effigy, ankles crossed, handbag on one arm, a pair of short
white leather gloves in her left hand.  She turned her head towards him
slightly and smiled.  The stewardess, who had long since made up her
mind about the odd goings-on between this pair, who were certainly old
enough to know better, bowed with an air of great respect to the
Doctor, and swiftly closing the small hand valise she had been packing,
left at once.  The rest of the luggage had been taken away, the lights
were turned off, and the place was altogether empty, gray and
desolate.

He stood beside her with such grave, rueful depths of concern in his
face, she shrank from him with the slightest quiver of her eyelids, and
asked with an edge of fright in her voice:

"Have they come for me?"

"Yes, they are here.  No, please listen.  The Captain and I have talked
with them to find out their orders for you.  They have been instructed.
They will not touch you, or even come near you.  They are only to be at
the foot of the gangplank- don't look around you, you need not even see
them- to make certain you leave the ship, and that you are on the
island when the ship sails again.... "

"When the ship sails again," she said, "just to think, for me this
voyage will have ended."

"You have nothing at all to fear," he said, taking her wrist and
feeling for her pulse.  Even now he refused to doubt that he had done,
not right, perhaps--who could be certain of that, ever?  N but the only
thing possible.  La Condesa drew back her hand and said, "Oh, what can
a pulse matter now?  That is all over too.  You may say I have noth hag
to fear-how easy for you, who are going home!  But I am going to be a
prisoner here.  Never think once I am left here at their mercy they
won't put me in a dark dirty place by myself."

He sat on the side of the bed and held her hand firmly.  "you are not
going to be a prisoner except on this whole island," he told her.  "A
most beautiful place, and you may live where and how you choose i
it."

"As I choose?"  she said, her voice rising but not in a question.
"Alone?  Friendless?  Without a centavito?  Without my children, not
even knowing where they are?  And how shall they ever find me?  Oh, my
friend, have you gone mad with virtue and piety, have you lost your
human feelings, how can you have forgotten what suffering is?"

"Wait," he said.  "Wait."

He brought out the needle and the ampule and prepared deliberately to
give her another piqu re  She watched him, not with her familiar
expression of clever mischief, but passively, her eyes scarcely moving
to follow him.  She sat up in silence and took off her jacket,
unbuttoned the cuff of her shirt and rolled the sleeve up for herself
very slowly and said with a short intake of breath as the needle
pierced the flesh, "Ah... how I shall miss this!  What shall I do
without it?"

"You are to have it when you need it," he reassured her.  "I am giving
you a prescription and a special note to show to whatever doctor you
choose there.  I believe any doctor will accept it.  I do not think you
will be allowed to suffer."

She took his hand between both of hers and clung with imploring
inquiry: "Why will you not tell me what it is?  Or better, give it to
me and let me use it for myself- I know how to use a needle."

"I don't doubt it," said Dr.  Schumann, "but I cannot.  You are much
too reckless, I can't trust you- remember?  You told me so yourself."

"That was then," she cried, gaily, putting on her jacket again.  "I am
altogether changed now, as you see- reformed by your good example!" She
put her feet over the edge of the bed and sat beside him.  "Tell me
something," she said, "you know we shall never see each other again.
Why then may we not talk like friends, or even lovers, or as if we two
were meeting again on the other side of the grave.  Ah come, let's play
that we are two little winged, purified souls met in Paradise after a
long Purgatory!"

"But you have told me you do not believe in the other side of the
grave," said Dr.  Schumann, smiling, "much less in souls and
Paradise."

"I don't, but it shall make no difference--we shall meet there just the
same.  But why not tell me something now?"

She leaned towards him until he felt her light breath and asked very
simply without any special feeling in her voice:

"Did you come in here late last night and kiss me?  Did you put your
arms around me and almost raise me up from my pillow, and call me your
love?  Did you say, Sleep, my love, or was I dreaming?  Tell me... Dr.
Schumann turned towards her and took her deeply in his arms, and laid
his head on her shoulder and drew her face to his.  "I did, I did," he
groaned, "I did, my darling."

"Oh why?"  she cried, "Why, when I didn't know waking from sleeping?

Why did you never kiss me when I could have known surely, when I could
have been happy?"

"No," he said, "no."  He raised his head and folded his arms around her
again.  She began to sway a little, from side to side, as if she were
rocking a cradle; then releasing herself very gently and sitting back
from him with her hands on his shoulders she said, "Oh, but it was only
a dream then--oh, do you know what it is, coming so late, so strangely,
no wonder I couldn't understand it.  It is that innocent romantic love
I should have had in my girlhood!  But no one loved me innocently, and
oh, how I should have laughed at him if he had!... Well, here we are.
Innocent love is the most painful kind of all, isn't it?"

"I have not loved you innocently," said Dr.  Schumann, but guiltily and
I have done you great wrong, and I have mined my life.... "

"My life was ruined so long ago I have forgotten what it was like
before," said La Condesa.  "So you are not to have me on your mind. 
And you must not think of me as sleeping on stone floors and living on
bread and water, for I shall not ever- it is not my style.  It is not
becoming to me.  I shall find a way out of everything.  And now, now my
love, let's kiss again really this time in broad daylight and wish each
other well, for it is time for us to say good-by."

"Death, death," said Dr.  Schumann, as if to some presence standing to
one side of them casting a long shadow.  "Death," he said, and feared
that his heart would burst.

"Why of course, death," said La Condesa as if indulging his fancy, "but
not yet!"  They did not kiss, but she took his hand and held it to her
cheek a moment.  He trembled so he could hardly write the prescription
and the note he had promised.  He opened her handbag and tucked the
papers inside.  They did not speak again.  He walked to the gangplank
with her, and handed her the small valise.  She did not raise her eyes.
He watched while she stepped into an elegant white caleche on the
wharf, drawn by an inelegant shaggy small horse, and then noticed the
two quite ordinary-looking men who took the next available equipage and
drove away slowly after her, at a discreet distance.

"Have you any plans?"  Freytag asked Jenny as they lingered while the
students formed a line and went leaping down the gangplank shouting the
chorus of "Cucaracha."

"Aren't they tiresome!"  said Jenny, watching them.  "No plans at all.
I'm waiting for David."

I'll be getting along, then," said Freytag, easily, "maybe we can all
meet somewhere for a drink on the island."

"Maybe."  His retreating straight back and manly stride reminded her of
an actor, a good-looking leading man used to taking the stage whenever
he appeared.  He veered expertly around a straggling little crowd of
frowzy-looking persons, men and women with a child or two, coming on
board with odds and ends of stuff to sell, bits of linen and silk,
clumsy small objects not worth a glance.  A very dark young gypsy woman
stepped before Jenny as if she had been looking for her to give her
good news.  "Stop," said the gypsy, in Spanish, "let me tell you
something strange."  She came so close Jenny smelt the pepper and
garlic on her breath, the weathered animal reek of her skin and great
gaudy red and orange petticoats.  She took Jenny's hand and turned the
palm upward.  "You are going to a country that is not for you, and the
man you are with now is not your real man.  But you will go soon to a
better country, and you will find your man.  You will be happy in love
yet, don't be troubled!  Cross my palm with silver!"  She held Jenny's
hand firmly, her eyes were shrewd and impudent, she smiled with her
teeth closed.

"Go away, gypsy woman," said Jenny, in English.  "You don't know
enough.  You've got a one-track mind.  I don't want any other man, the
very notion gives me the horrors.  I'll stick by the trouble I know.
There are going to be a lot of other things much more interesting in my
life than this man, or any other man," she assured the gypsy with the
utmost seriousness.  The gypsy stared, her eyes glinting with
suspicion; she held Jenny's hand, refusing to go without her coin.  But
their hands had changed positions- Jenny was now holding the gypsy's
palm upward examining it studiously.  "Those are the things I'd like to
hear about!  Now as for you," she added in Spanish, "you are going to
take a long journey and meet a dark man..."  The gypsy snatched her
hand away violently and stepped back.

"What are you saying to me?"  she asked in a fury.

"I was telling your fortune, free," said Jenny, in Spanish, putting a
one-dollar note in her hand.  "You are born lucky."

"Valgame Dios," said the gypsy, suddenly mild, crossing herself.  Her
dark fingers closed over the crumpled paper, and instantly, a look of
complete contempt, triumph, a quite astonishing play of hatred,
twisted

her mouth and paled her skin under its patina of dirt.  As she spun
away with a wide swing of her many ruffles, she flung back over her
shoulder a word Jenny did not understand, except by the tone and look.
She called back clearly in her best Spanish, "And you, too!"  with all
confidence.

"Do you really know what she called you?"  asked David, materializing
at her side.

"Something apt, something appropriate, no doubt," said Jenny.  "Anyway,
she got it back."

"Must you go on brawling with gypsy women?"  asked David, though
without curiosity.  "Did you pick up any new tricks?"

"Wait and see," said Jenny merrily.  "Mind your own business."  In dead
silence they walked down the gangplank, just behind the Huttens and
Bebe, just before Elsa and her parents, the Baumgartners with Hans
following closely.  Herr Freytag had disappeared, Mrs.  Treadwell,
wearing an enormous flat black hat, and carrying of all things a
parasol, stepped into a second waiting caleche and was carried away as
if for good.  The students piled into a larger conveyance, in a tangle
of arms and legs, their heads clustered like a nest of noisy birds.

The Spanish company went off together in an unusual silence, eyes fixed
ahead, faces closed and hard.  Ric and Rac, still looking somewhat
battered, lagged and sulked.  The women all wore widely fringed, large
black silk embroidered shawls, the children wore short jackets with
deep pockets, the men wore, for the first time during the voyage, quite
ordinary sack suits except they were somewhat too snugly fitted.  They
all managed without any trouble to look most disreputable.  Once on the
dock they closed ranks and walked away up the stony street towards town
as if they were late for an appointment.

Following them closely, each one intent on his own interest in their
movements, Hansen and Denny found themselves jostling elbows somewhat
at the gangplank.  "There they go," said Denny, spiteful and baffled,
trying to keep ahead of Hansen, who just the same shouldered past him
rudely with thunderous brow, bawling: "Is it your business?  Why not
they go where they please?"

Keep your shirt on, you big bastard, said Denny to himself, and aloud:
"Dirty work at the crossroads, I bet," but without contending further
for the right of way.  The big Swede looked like a tough customer, no
use tangling with him, anyway not now.  He tried to pick out

Pastora from the huddle of dancers, who were keeping well ahead of the
crowd now straggling through the dock; by the time Denny and Hansen
reached shore, they had vanished.

The steerage passengers left on the ship, those who would go ashore at
Vigo, crowded to the rail and leaned at ease, watching intensely but
without envy their shipmates on the dock being rounded up and counted
once more by the officials who had come to take charge of them.  On the
upper deck Johann wheeled his uncle's chair near the gangplank,
steadied it against the rail, and tried with flickering vision and
leaping heart to pick out Concha from the black-shaw led dancers as
their graceful backs swayed and retreated.  He fetched from his depths
such an explosive breath of despair, Herr Graf roused and spoke: "What
is your trouble, dear boy, are you in pain?"

Johann kicked the near wheel of the chair, jarring the sick man, who
flinched and groaned loudly, glancing about him to call any chance
passer-by to witness the behavior of his shameless nephew.  "It's none
of your business," said Johann, also glancing around and speaking in a
low voice.  The silence of the nearly deserted ship in harbor disturbed
them, as if a protective wall had been torn away.  Dr.  Schumann,
walking slowly, hands clasped behind him, meaning to go to his cabin
but dreading to be there, stopped a moment beside them.  "You are
looking very well, this morning," he said to Herr Graf.  "I hope you
are enjoying your voyage.

"My soul is at peace," Herr Graf assured him, a little sulkily, "here,
or anywhere.  It does not matter where i am."

"That is most fortunate," said the Doctor, amiably, "most enviable."
"It is a question of God's grace," said Herr Graf, whose grudge against
doctors and surgeons was soundly based on professional jealousy, the
inspired knowledge that they were standing in his light, preventing his
free exercise of God's will in the matter of the cure of souls and
bodies.  "What good is all your materia me dica if the soul is sick?"

Dr.  Schumann said mildly, "That is one of materia me dica thorniest
problems.  For myself, I try to do my human part, and leave the rest to
God," for he always gave a respectful answer even to the most afflicted
minds and misguided beliefs; and at this moment his own suffering in
his own guilt drew him slowly into a vast teeming shapeless wallow of
compassion for every suffering thing, a confusion so dark he could no
longer tell the difference between the invader and the invaded, the
violator and the violated, the betrayer and the betrayed, the one who
loved

and the one who hated or who jeered or was indifferent.  The whole
lgeat structure built upon the twin pillars of justice and love, which
reached from earth into eternity, by which the human soul rose step by
step from the most rudimentary concepts of good and evil, of simple
daily conduct between fellow men, to the most exquisite hairline
discriminations and choices between one or another shade of faith and
feeling, of doctrinal and mystical perceptions- this tower was now
crumbling and falling around him, even as he stood beside the little
dying fanatic gazing up at him with a condescending smirk on his
exhausted face.

Miracles are instantaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of
themselves, usually at unlikely moments and to those who least expect
them.  Yet they make use of some odd assistants, and the Doctor's
rescuing miracle took advantage of Herr Graf's all-too-human glance
meant to tell the Doctor what a poor, inadequate, ill-informed and
poverty stricken sort of Christian he was, and the message went home
like an arrow.  The Doctor suffered the psychic equivalent of a
lightning stroke, which cleared away there and then his emotional fogs
and vapors, and he faced his truth, nearly intolerable but the kind of
pain he could deal with, something he recognized and accepted
unconditionally.  His lapse into the dire, the criminal sentimental
cruelty of the past days was merely the symptom of his moral collapse:
he had refused to acknowledge the wrong he had done La Condesa his
patient, he had taken advantage of her situation as prisoner, he had
tormented her with his guilty love and yet had refused her-and
himself-any human joy in it.  He had let her go in hopelessness without
even the faintest promise of future help or deliverance.  What a
coward, what a swine, Dr.  Schumann told himself, calmly, bathed in the
transfiguring light of Herr Graf's contempt; but not only, not
altogether, if he did not choose to be!

With a pleasant "Good morning" he dispersed the hovering miasma of
theological discussion with Herr Graf and went to one of the writing
rooms, where he wrote a short letter to La Condesa, which he entrusted
to the purser, who would know how to convey it to the care of the right
police agent.  Dr.  Schumann wished to convey his respects to Madame,
he gave her his own office address, in his home city, with his
telephone number, the address of the International Red Cross
headquarters in Geneva, with an earnest request that Madame write to
him at once and let him know where a letter might find her at all
times.  He renewed his anxious inquiries for her health, hoped for a
reply to the ship before it would have sailed at four o'clock.  He
signed himself her assured and devoted servant.  He then made a round
of the sick bay, where he found two sailors, neither of; whom needed
further attention, and a tour of the steerage, where a newly born
baby's navel showed faint signs of infection.  This occupied him for a
few minutes, cleansing, anointing, and binding, but at last the day was
on his hands, and he did not know what to do with it.  He walked slowly
around the deck, noting with some relief that Herr Graf had disappeared
with his bad tempered nephew; but walking tired him.  At last he gave
way, and returned to his cabin to rest.  Lying there, in his habitual
posture of early medieval effigies, feet crossed, hands crossed over
his midriff, his perverse infatuation began to fade, and with it his
distrust and hatred of his love- it had been only a long daydream.  A
warm surge of human grief for that creature who was doomed maybe beyond
his or any human help filled him like a tide body and mind, bringing
its own healing.  What nonsense to say anyone was doomed until his last
breath!  Gently , clearly, steadily, his long plan of reparation
unfolded in its simple, sensible, practical perfection; he was to
provide for her and see that she was cared for and protected, that
medical treatment should be available: she was to be watched and
guarded and saved from her own suicidal romantic folly.  It would be a
blameless charity which could call for no explanation, could be carried
on at a distance, and his wife need never know.  He thought of his wife
with habitual fondness, of her known strength, always the same, her
unexpected and constantly changing weaknesses and whims.  She was the
center, the reason, and the meaning of his marriage, around which his
life had grown like an organism; she was not to be disturbed for
anything.  He would make his reparations for the wrongs he had done, in
silence, as part of his penance.  Dr.  Schumann, soothed, eased, felt
himself blissfully falling asleep in the divine narcotic of; hope, and
reliel; of conscience.

He waked to the familiar creaking, pounding, shouting commotion,
rolling and heaving of the old Vera getting out to sea again, and lay
quietly a few minutes enjoying the absurdity of his situation, the
combination of homely domestic muddle and the rigors of nautical
discipline on an old tub like this, where God knows, anything could
happen.  The Doctor felt refreshed, full of a gentle, smiling delight.
He looked out of his porthole and saw the island at a little distance,
already shrouded in mist, its scattered lights twinkling like Christmas
candles.

His darling was there, and she would know by now that she was not
alone, not deserted, not left to her fate, the wayward little soul who
should never have been treated with severity.  He would feel better to
know she was on that island for a while, until he found a way to have
her set free; meantime, why had the steward not brought him her answer
to his letter?  He would go up.  Indeed the dinner bugle was sounding;
in the Captain's absence the Doctor should always appear at the table.
He stopped by the purser's office to inquire about a message.  The
purser of course was already at his dinner, but the young assistant had
been instructed and had an answer for Dr.  Schumann.  The police agent,
he said carefully, standing very straight, had delivered the Herr
Doctor's letter to Madame.  She had read it there in his presence, and
the police agent said he would be pleased to wait for an answer.

Dr.  Schumann took a short step forward and extended his right hand
slightly curved.  "Where is it?"  he asked, his voice contracting.

The assistant purser spoke his piece as if he had memorized it.  "Sir,"
he said, "Madame thanked the police agent, and said there was no
answer."

"David darling," said Jenny, "let's be tourists again.  Oh look, look,"
she said in rapture, "at all the things here we never saw before."

"Such as..?"  asked David idly, without turning his head.  "Palms, you
mean?  Burros?  Red tile roofs?  Barefooted, unwashed peasantry?  We
had all that in Mexico, we'll have all that in Spain..."  They found
themselves again in their most familiar difficulty, being quite unable
to agree what to do next.  They were sitting on a bench on the edge of
a small plaza halfway up the hill beside the stony ascending narrow
street shaded with palm and mimosa.

"Well, camels, you idiot," said Jenny patiently, "for example.  Camels
with great loads on their humps and barefooted unwashed peasantry with
turbans driving them."

"Just variations on a theme," said David.  "Why don't we sit here and
let the scenery pass us?"

Jenny would not have this for a moment.  She was restless and looking,
David knew, for something besides scenery.  She sat stiffly forward on
the bench, her eyes roving, feet planted exactly for a straight leap up
and away on a second's notice, and leap she did, waving her hand and
calling out, as if they were old friends and delightful company, to sad
Elsa and her dull parents laboring up the path towards the market

center of town.  Elsa waved back sedately.  Herr and Frau Lutz waggled
their heads with solemn faces, for Frau Lutz was not reconciled to
Elsa's view that Jenny behaved like a nice woman in the cabin.  Jenny
said briskly, "All right, David, you stay here and sprout mushrooms;
I'm off with the raggle-taggle gypsies O!"  David was left to mull over
in his mind again the fact, the incomprehensible fact, that Jenny at
times seemed to prefer any company to his own.

A small procession traipsed past him, Jenny and the Lutzes, Freytag and
Mrs.  Treadwell a few paces back, followed at a short distance by
Fraulein Spockenkieker and Herr Rieber, randy and rowdy as usual,
swinging hands and cackling.  The Baumgartners lagged somewhat, with
Hans between them.  The bride and groom walked rather far back, arms
around each other, their bowed heads touching, their faces in a trance
of sensual bliss.  David felt a violent surge of sexual envy; they were
always so discreet, and obviously they believed they were not seen; but
they were in full honeymoon swing now, that was plain.  The bridal
shyness was little by little being overcome; they both had circled
eyes, the bride had a rash on her cheek.  If they stayed on deck in the
morning, they fell asleep in their chairs, hands clasped.  They
disappeared in the afternoon, and showed up for dinner exhausted,
silent, faces closed and secretive except for their eyes when they
exchanged glances.... David stood up suddenly, shaking his head, going
hot all over with a rush of blood to all his vital strategic
points--his nerve centers raged and his mind was a reek of spermy
violent images and sensations which he loathed for the pleasure they
gave him.  He stepped forward, meaning to follow Jenny.  The bride and
groom saw him then; their arms dropped away at once, the bride slipped
her hand into the crook of the groom's elbow, and they walked by rather
stiffly.

David felt like a fool.  He had unfathomable contempt for all those
unsavory imaginations roused to concupiscence by sexual scenes, music,
certain words or reading matter, by dancing, by dirty stories--the
peepers, the eavesdroppers, the feelers, the footie-players, the
neckers, the strip-tease chasers, or just the daydreamers who could
bring it on by sitting still and staring into space.  His own method
had been clear-cut, at least.  When the fit took him, he had gone out
and found an object.  Once or twice he had tried the risky business of
having a regular girl in the mining camp.  But that could get very
sticky in no time at all; he wondered at women.  There wasn't a whore
on earth, he was willing

to bet, who didn't believe that some fellow would come along, fall in
love with her, and take her away to a life of luxury, or at least
idleness.  Some of them even dreamed of marriage- it had been known to
happen.  A little grubby half-Indian girl with black finger nails and
lice in her beautiful thick glossy hair had attracted him.  He put
kerosene in her hair (she distrusted the stuff, did not know how to
apply it) and then had heated gallons of water in a pot in his narrow,
walled patio, and had given her a good scrub from head to foot, outside
in the sunshine, including hairy parts and fingernails.  He had
finished the job by showering her with his West Indian bay rum.  After
having prepared the dish so carefully, he found his appetite gone.  He
ended by giving her five pesos and sending her away, to her entire
mystification.  While she was putting on her petticoats, she asked him
matter-of-factly, "Why do you not marry me?  I would make a good wife-
I know how!"  He explained that he was not ready to marry yet, and she
went away quite cheerfully confident, but from her look and manner it
was clear she regarded him as a species of eunuch or one of those
foreigners with strange tastes, for she said as she went: "When you
feel like a man, you let me know!"

Well, what a roundabout his mind had gone to get out of this mess.  He
waited until the bride and groom passed, and fell in to the straggling
pilgrimage.  He could not help but notice that Jenny was now walking
with Freytag and Mrs.  Treadwell, and he was offended when Jenny
suddenly jumped for joy and pointed excitedly ahead.  Everybody paused
and turned their heads.  So did David and he saw something strange and
new and beautiful; after that day, he would not see it again, or ever
forget it.

A young slender girl, limber and tough as a ballet dancer, in a short
tight black dress showing her bare brown legs, her head swathed in a
small square black shawl with a tiny hat no larger than a doll's
resting on her forehead, secured somehow under the knot of her covered
hair, hurled herself across their path and leaped up the rocky incline
ahead of them, turning sharply to the left on a narrower path,
sure-footed as a deer and as wild.  On her head she carried a great
flat tray loaded with battered metal water cans, and under this weight,
in her worn tennis shoes, she went at flying speed uphill, in a
half-run with rigid shoulders, raised chin and extravagantly swaying
hips, her arms spread like wings.

Looking about them, the travelers saw that the girl was not alone,

From all directions in every place for the rest of the day, they saw
it, water-carriers, up and down the island, young beautiful girls with
fin noses and tender mouths, and the wonderful Spanish pale cream skin
A few older women, perhaps as much as thirty, still had this beauty of
athletes in training--"It would kill two longshoremen in a week;
remarked Freytag, admiringly, after watching them run so endlessly and
apparently without effort or fatigue.  "They can't last long."

All the strangers were enchanted, they wanted it explained.  There was,
they might have known, no mystery to it.  They hailed in a common cause
the first Islander they saw passing, a rough-haired man, barefooted,
with his cotton drawers rolled to the knees, a large shapeless bundle
on his back, and Herr Professor Hutten questioned him about this
phenomenon.  The Islander began, as he always did, for he made a
business of meeting boats, and he knew these foreigners well, by
remarking simply that those girls were very respectable young persons
employed in making an honorable living.  He was familiar with the
strange views of tourists, and not only the men, on the subject of the
conduct of young women in foreign lands.  He could not however after
long experience overcome his amazement that boatload after boatload of
tourists passing through could never understand the simple, natural,
everyday task of young girls carrying water.  It was part of woman's
household work through all ages, who else would be supposed to carry
it?  They were all under the strict family rule young girls must
observe... They were employed by the company that controlled water
carrying, they wore a uniform, of course.  At this point he always ran
again into the one thing they wanted to know--what, what was the
meaning of that little black doll hat every girl wore flat on her
forehead just under her tray?  This he did not know, nobody knew; it
was not a question any Islander had ever been heard to ask.  It was a
custom, nothing more.  A part of their dress.  If a girl did not wear
that hat, she would not be allowed to carry water.  It was all so
simple, yet they could never understand it.  And when Freytag asked the
inevitable question: "Why are they all so beautiful?"  the rough-haired
man was happy to give his familiar answer-- "We have no choice on this
island.  We take what God sends.  All our girls are beautiful and
chaste."

This was invariably received with respectful silence.

The Baumgartners with Hans, Freytag and Mrs.  Treadwell, the Lutzes and
Jenny, the Huttens, who had overtaken them, and Herr

Glocken, wearing his red necktie, were now clustered around the
Islander.  Tourists, therefore barbarians all, the Islander knew them
well, and offered to show them the sights, with appropriate histories,
at so much a head.  This was the last thing anybody in the group
wanted, so they scattered somewhat and walked on at discreet distances
from each other, but all in the same direction and bound, sooner or
later, to meet in the same places on pretty much the same errands. Herr
Glocken had straggled along hopelessly, but in the pause made up his
lost time.  He waved genially to David as he went past, flashing his
painful smile.  "Hurry!"  he called, helpfully.  "You'll be left!"

David followed along, keeping them in sight but not trying to overtake
them.  He thought with some satisfaction how grotesquely out of place
everybody looked with their makeshift shore clothes and wrong kinds of
shoes.  All sizes and shapes; even Jenny looked awkward in that sagging
hop sack bag she insisted on wearing all times and places, on the
grounds that it was hand-woven.  If she could see herself!  It took
this kind of perfectly clear air, the palm shade and the dappled
sunlight along the crooked narrow old streets, for they were coming
near the town, to show them up in their awful dullness, Jenny among
them.  Father Garza and Father Carillo flapped by in their billowing
soutanes and old-lady shoes with elastic sides; their flat-topped
side-rolled hats stiff as boards over their grim faces; striding like
ostriches they caught up to and passed the dawdling sightseers.

David meditated a little on his situation, and admitted that it looked
hopeless- yet had it ever been anything else?  He had never been
anywhere but that he wanted to be somewhere else; never in any kind of
fix that he wasn't planning all the time to get out of it.  He had
never known a girl he could trust, and Jenny was the last straw.  But
he couldn't hate her--or not just yet, or not except in fits and
starts.  Whatever their feeling for each other had become, it could
even now be a kind of love, he supposed, but if it was, they'd both be
better off without it..  How better, or in what way, he had no idea. As
if it mattered.  Having arrived at this tolerable mood, he set out in
haste and caught up with Jenny, took her arm, greeted Freytag and Mrs. 
Treadwell and some of the others as he passed them, and unfolded his
plan of action: "Jenny angel, let's look for a nice little joint and
drink the wine of the country, with those red bull meat sausages? I'm
hungry, let's eat and then go looking around."

Jenny said, "Let's go," and gave a little skip.  They put on such a

burst of speed they left the others at a safe distance, and came into
one' of the small plazas of shops and wine rooms.  Trying to choose,
for they all looked and smelled much alike, they lit on a sign over a
door, El Quita Penas.  "That's ours," said Jenny, "come along, David
darling, let's forget our troubles."  As they took the little table
near the small dark window, they saw the zarzuela company entering the
plaza on the other side.  They streamed into a doorway festooned with
embroidered silk shawls and lace-trimmed linen and swooped upon the
merchandise displayed, while Ric and Rac fumbled and pulled and hauled
at the rolls of stuff on the counter outside the shop.  The shopkeeper
rushed out to shoo them away, and back to keep an eye on her customers.
David said, "It looks more like a raid than a shopping expedition," and
Jenny said, "It probably is a raid--" but they spoke idly and went on
sampling the Canary wines from the barrels along the wall: along with a
very copious, savory platter of Spanish peppers and sausage, they
tasted Malaga, Muscatel, Malavasia, an Islands brandy called Tres
Copas, and afterward with their coffee an orange liqueur which reminded
them distantly of Curacao.  Denny came in, greeted them almost fondly,
and sat down with them as if he had been invited.

"God, I'm bushed," he began.  "I've been nearly all over this island at
a dead run.  You know those girls with water cans on their heads? Well,
one of them give me the eye, can't tell me, I'd know the kind if she
was wearing mule's harness--so I took out after her, thinking she meant
to let me know she was knocking off soon and would be ready for
a-for--" he swallowed and looked at Jenny, "for a little sociability,
and honest to God, she went stomping up and down those rocky ridges and
paths like a mountain goat, and every once in a while she'd come to a
house, and practically without stopping, she'd hold her tray steady and
bend her knees and a woman would come out and lift off a can of water,
and put on an empty, and away she'd go bucketybuckety, me trailing
after with my tongue hanging out.  A couple of times she doubled on her
tracks and passed me, and every time she'd give me that look- she
didn't smile, she just sparked her eyes at me... What's that you're
having?"  he asked David.  "Get me some, will you?  I can't talk the
lingo, I don't know the names--and finally I figured she was about
through, couldn't have anything but empties by now, so I followed her
on down a good ways, and there she came to a kind of long shed full of
barrels--great big water kegs they were, and there were a lot of the
girls sitting round resting, and a lot more

were getting fresh cans set on their trays.  My girl wasn't resting
though.  She got a Fresh trayful and went by me like a runaway wildcat
and this time she just cut her eyes at me and said 'vaya, vaya!"... I
know what that means.  The old runaround.  Well, I looked over the
situation down near the waterworks, and decided it was no deal..."
"Just as well," said David.  "Wait till your luck changes."

"Look at that Pastora, now," said Denny, holding up his glass for
another Malaga.  "This stuff's too sweet, ain't there any hard liquor?"
"She's right across the street, in that shop," said Jenny,
encouragingly.  "Let her stay there," said Denny, "For the time being.
I don't mean look at her actually.  Right now I wouldn't care if I ever
saw her again.  I'm beginning to think Spanish women are just plain
skittish," he said, "you can't seem to get 'em to keep still long
enough to get anywhere."

"Well, you've seen the sights," said Jenny, "so David and I are going
out to be tourists for a while."  David paid in American money, and
received a handful of Spanish coin.

"You'd better hurry out and spend that," said Denny.  Waving his glass
to signal a third drink, he said almost plaintively, "What's the name
for brandy?  I wish you all wouldn't go off and leave me here by
myself.  I'll get into some kind of a mess.  I don't feel good.  If I
get a few more drinks I'm liable to go out and beat the pants off that
Pastora --"

"Unless she beats you first," said David, cheerfully, "she's tougher
than she looks and has a tough gang with her."

"Why don't you pick on a Guardia Civil' asked Jenny, who had noticed a
great burly pair of them, at the wharf, in their varnished cocked hats
and tight uniforms, looking solid as walnut.  "Why do you want to pick
on a girl?"

Denny unexpectedly showed logic and even dimly, remotely, some hint of
a deep-buried sense of justice, even morals, even to strain a point,
ethics.  Or at least, common sense.

"Because she's the one I'm mad at," he said, simply.  "What did the
Gardia Civil ever do to me?"

Jenny gave him a deep, Friendly smile, which faded instantly when she
remembered he might take it as an illicit invitation, but said, "How
right you are!  David, did you hear that?  Mr.  Denny has just uttered
a most important rule from the code of honor."

"No... what is that?"  asked David uneasily, but Jenny was quite
harmlessly silly, after all.  "Why, don't fight with anybody you're
not

mad at," she said.  "Don't get your grudges crossed... use your
judgment."  They both waved a hand to Denny as they went.  He was
frowning into his half-filled glass.  He wondered if that sassy piece
was poking fun at him.  Well, it would be a hot day in January when
he'd make a pass at her.

Frau Rittersdorf, somewhat uneasy at being alone at a table under a
tree in a strange place- in spite of a surly old man setting a cup and
a ragged cotton napkin before her, and the greasy smells pouring out of
the barracks-like house, she could hardly call it a cafe- pulled her
rose-colored scarf a little over her eyebrows, flattened her notebook
beside her coffee, and wrote: "The innumerable heterogeneous elements
so freely mingled on that ship naturally have brought on a series of
most sinister occurrences, the logical consequences of such lack of
discipline, the insolence of the lower classes when allowed the least
shade of liberty--" She read this sentence over and decided that her
indignation had got the upper hand of her style, and the paragraph was
getting away from her.  She drew thin lines through each sentence, not
enough to conceal it but only a reminder that she had rejected it, yet
kept it as a disciplinary example of something to avoid in the future.
She began: "They are all over the shops, everywhere, like a pack of
invading rats.  I have watched them, and I know they are stealing right
and left.  I cannot quite make out the objects, nor precisely their
method, but then I could not come close enough for a clear view.  I
feel they carry a kind of pestilence with them, they shed around them
the true metaphysical odor of evil."  Frau Rittersdorf paused to read
this sentence with surprise and delight.  Where had it come from?  Was
it hers?  Had she read it somewhere?  She could not recall ever having
had such a thought, but then, certainly she had never heard anyone say
such a thing.  Indeed, was there such an odor?  She had always adhered
to the maxim that dirt is misplaced matter.  It offered a powerful
scientific argument for keeping the inferior orders in their place.
This did not answer her questions but it brought her around to her
subject again.  The zarzuela i company, as well as a number of other
persons in first class on this voyage, were most certainly misplaced
matter, and the consequences were beginning all too obviously to be
seen.... "The unhappy Condesa," she wrote, "where is she now,
abandoned, a prisoner on this Island of the Dead?"  Frau Rittersdorf
raised her chin and swung a glance in a half-circle, taking in quite a
busy scene, men,

women, children of all ages, an assortment of domestic animals,
obviously going about their particular business, full of unimaginable
interests.  What had such poor shabby tired-looking beings to live for?
This was her great question, could they be called alive at all?

A woman sitting on the ground, not ten feet away, with her baskets of
wilting market stuff around her, laid her baby in her cradle of a lap
between her crossed knees, and put him to her great naked breast with
in brown nipple big as a thumb, while she ate voraciously of onions,
tomatoes, sausages, apricots, all wrapped in a disk of tough half-baked
unleavened bread.  The baby suckled and kicked in bliss, she put her
food down now and then to wait upon her customers, they holding their
woven palm leaf bags to receive the vegetables, she counting out change
from the small flat basket beside her.  Frau Rittersdorf was so
revolted by the spectacle she was unable to take up her pencil.  The
baby was fat, and should obviously have been weaned months ago.  The
woman's neck, face and hands were like old leather, all her side teeth
were gone, she mangled and tore her food with her front teeth, yet ate
like a wolf.  The baby climbed out of her lap, and stood up.  He wore a
single dirty shirt that reached barely to his navel.  He squared
himself off on his feet and spread legs, his infant male tassel rose
and pointed acutely skywards and a very energetic spout of water
ascended in a glittering arc, pattering in the dust not three feet from
Frau Rittersdorf's immaculate light-colored shoes and gossamer
stockings.  She was so startled she almost cried out, but stood
quickly, backing away and drawing in her skirts.  The mother did not
understand either her movement or her stare, for she reached out and
patted her baby encouragingly on the back, with utter love and
tenderness, while the baby finished his proper business with
deep-breathed joyous noises of satisfaction.  The mother pulled him
back and covered his adorable shame with her bare hand, smiled gaily at
Frau Rittersdorf and called out with pride.  "Es hombre, de ver
as--He's a man, all right!  as if that explained everything and made it
a happy secret among women.  Frau Rittersdorf gathered up her things
and walked away in a chill of horror as if a bony hand reached out of
the past clutching her coldly and drawing her again into the awful
wallow of ignorance and poverty and brutish living she had escaped oh
barely- barely!  The dirt-floored hut of her grandparents, with the
pigpens and the cattle stalls and the chicken roosts all opening into
the one room where the whole family lived: the dull mean village
cottage of her shoe making father and her

seamstress mother, who felt they had risen high in their world; their
ambition for her to become a teacher in the village school- Oh, oh, oh,
cried the whole frightful memory, not only in the voices and faces of
those dead and gone people she had tried all these years to forget, to
deny; but the very animals, the smothering wails and the dirt floors
and the stinking shoe leather, the taste of lard on the slice of sour
bread she took to school with her--the very bread itself, all rose
again out of that deep pit in which she had buried them, and one was as
alive as the other; in a terrible voiceless clamor they cried and
lamented and accused her, soundless as screams in a nightmare.  The
floors, the pigs, the bread, her grandfather and grandmother, her
parents, all cried in the same voice the same terrible words she could
not understand, though she knew what they meant to tell her.  Frau
Rittersdorf stood swaying somewhat, her right hand flattened on her
forehead.  The old man in the dirty apron spoke to her politely,
holding out his hand.  "Oh yes," she said, "I owe you something," and
carefully she counted the exact sum into his palm in Spanish coin that
she had got from the ship's exchange, with a few coppers over.  There
was a roaring in her ears, and the ground under her swayed like the
deck of the Vera.  "I must be having an attack of some kind," she said
aloud, in German, and the waiter answered agreeably, "Si, si, Sefora,
natural mente  which struck her as being rather uncalled for.  As she
walked, she recovered rapidly; still she was puzzled as to what exactly
had happened to her.  She decided to go back to the Vera, and have
lunch there.  As she picked her way carefully over the stones, she saw
Seniora Ortega with her nurse and baby leisurely rolling along (with
not a care in the world, on her way to Paris and her husband, a
successful diplomat!) in one of those rather absurd but chic miniature
conveyances called a caleche, or they could be chic if they had proper
horses and drivers.  She realized she was tired, and might hail one for
herself.  An uneasiness about the expense halted her.  Such
extravagances, she foresaw, would be preparing for her an old age of
loneliness, a servile existence in middle-class houses, a superannuated
governess on board and keep with an occasional holiday tip, putting up
with insufferable children in common families no young, able woman
would look at.... If Otto could have dreamed she would be left to such
a fate, would he have gone with never a thought of her to a hero's
death?  What had he left to her?  An iron cross and his dress uniform
and sword.  If it had not been for his parents' leaving her his modest
inheritance, where would

she be today?  But oh, Otto, Otto, if you could see me now, if you
could have dreamed what was to become of me, oh surely you could not
have thrown away your life for nothing.

She was greeted pleasantly by a young officer or two.  On her way down
to her cabin she met Frau Schmitt on her way up, carrying her lnitting.
"Back so soon?"  Frau Rittersdorf asked.  Frau Schmitt said gloomily,
"I saw enough, just the same."

Frau Rittersdorf meant to go on, but this remark stopped her in her
tracks.

"There was, then, something to see?"  she asked, in the tone of
condescension Frau Schmitt found so infuriatingly unanswerable.

"For those who can see," she said, "there was something."  Feeling a
touch light in the head from such boldness, she did not wait for Frau
Rittersdorf to rally, but went on her way to the peace and comfort of
the empty lounge.

Frau Rittersdorf did not overlook this saucy speech of her cabin mate,
but decided to ignore it for the moment.  She had crossed some line in
her thoughts she had not known was there, but already she had left it
behind, and she was strangely easy as if her mind had thrown off some
great load that had been exhausting and hampering her all this time....
She opened her handbag, took out her passport case, searched its
compartments for a moment with two fingertips, and brought out a small
photograph of her husband in a flat silver frame.  Ah no- he was not
like that.  His splendid image in her imagination got a blow as always
at sight of this rather staring, lifeless army photograph, no light, no
color, the clear eyes empty, cold as agates.  No, no -never again,
never again.  She replaced the picture and put her handbag away.  She
would forget this hero who had forgotten her, had left her to whatever
fate might come- what a selfish cruel thing to do to a wife who adored
him!  No no.  She would forget, and she would find another husband, a
real one this time.... When this stupid voyage was over, she would stay
at home where she belonged, she would be among her own people, the kind
of men who would appreciate her qualities.... Names and faces began to
drift into her mind.  She opened her notebook and began to write them
down.... "First things first," she gently admonished herself.  Her
imagination began wandering over a new, spring like landscape, full of
likely encounters with eligible persons, some known, some unknown, all
delightful encounters full of possibilities.  Scenes began to enact
themselves before

her eyes.  Don Pedro intruded at one point, but was instantly and the
charming pantomime of herself in an endless promenade with
ever-changing partners went on and on while she brushed her hair
hundreds of strokes, not counting.  She forgot about lunch.  She had
been rather dreading her welcome at home, among her friends and her
husband's family after what they must regard as her failure in Mexico:
for her Mexican circle had been painfully eager to keep them inform el
of every stage of her romance with Don Pedro--yes, even to the last...
and then, there was always the haunting shade of Nemesis who would
materialize, one fine day, on her doorstep in the shape of some clumsy
oaf of a relative, a nephew, a second cousin, looking for the fabled
member of the family who had got an education and gone out in the great
world and become no doubt rich and would be glad to help them do as
much.  Her fears had lessened as time passed and no one came, but the
danger was real, just the same.  She pored over her red and gold
address book, turning the pages slowly, marking a name here and there:
circumstances change, so do telephone numbers: people find new homes,
and hearts new dwelling places too; she must not expect miracles, but
just the same, she would write half a dozen discreet notes to older
admirers she felt she could trust to be pleased to hear from her again,
and there was one in Bremen: to him she would announce the ship, the
date, the place, the hour of her arrival, and unless she had lost her
womanly intuition altogether, he would be at the ship side to greet
her, yes, even with flowers as in a happier time.

"Why David, I hadn't realized," said Jenny, when they were safely out
in the open.  "How on earth do you put up with that fellow in your
cabin?"

"It isn't my cabin, altogether," said David, reasonably.

"Don't split hairs," said Jenny, "you know perfectly well what I mean.
It's an outrage."

"That's what I thought too, at first.  Now it's just a bore.  But he
was really on his best behavior just now.  I was surprised."

"Exhausted after the chase maybe," said Jenny.  "Let's look for
something to buy.  We didn't buy a thing in Cuba.  What kind of tourist
is that?"

"What do you want?"  asked David, as they walked towards the row of
shops on the far side of the plaza.

"I don't know, let's give each other a present."  Something of the

charmed mood of Havana was in them both again; they caught hands for a
moment, and peered into the doorways of shops.  "No baskets," David
said, and "No dolls and animals," said Jenny, as they passed, "no
pottery, no jewelry, yet, David, it should be a piece of a native local
art, shouldn't it?"

"Maybe," said David doubtfully, "but no sandals, no leather or
woodwork."

"No lace or embroidered linen?"  asked Jenny.

"Not for me," David assured her, firmly.

"Let's not think about it," said Jenny, rather wearily, "let's just go
on looking around now and then, and see what happens."

Suiting their actions to her words, they looked around, and saw what
happened.  Mrs.  Treadwell and Wilhelm Freytag, stepping out of a shop
two doors away, wiggled their fingers in greeting and David, to his
surprise, wiggled his fingers back at them with no reluctance whatever.
Freytag asked, "Where are they?  Did you see them?"

"He means our friends the zarzuela company," said Mrs.  Treadwell, also
with unusual animation.

"They're in there," said Jenny, pointing, "or were, a few minutes ago.
Why?"

"They promised to buy the prizes here in Santa Cruz, rememberS" Freytag
asked David.  "Well, they're picking them up at a great rate n it's
something worth seeing!"

"Let's see it then," said David, but as they moved to enter the shop
Ric and Rac rushed forth, and their elders followed them in a
gracefully composed group, chattering freely among themselves, turning
as one body to their right away from their observers, moving swiftly to
a shop three doors away, and swarming in, the children running ahead.

The woman whose shop they had just left came outside to give her
opinion of them.  "Look out for your back teeth!"  she shouted to the
listening air.  "Count your fingers!  That kind don't come to buy!"
With a grieving face and shaking hands she sorted over her tumbled
disordered merchandise, then spoke dolefully to the Americans: "Pure
linen," she told them, "real lace, all hand-embroidery, fine beautiful
things, cheap."  but it was plain she had no hope, her luck was gone
for that day, she made no real attempt to attract them.  She was too
distressed trying to find out what had been stolen from her.

Jenny and David, Freytag and Mrs.  Treadwell entered the next

shop after the dancers.  Pepe, on guard at the door, stepped aside
bowing slightly.  The shopkeeper was waiting on Frau Schmitt, who was
looking for real linen handkerchiefs, with a plain black mourning
border.  The sudden entrance of this mixed mob of strangers, whom she
divided at a glance into respectable and lowlife, unnerved her.  She
had shown Frau Schmitt box after box of perfectly correct mourning
handkerchiefs, but they were all too large or too small, too thick or
too thin, the black borders too narrow or too wide, all too expensive
or too cheap.  In a panic she gathered up the handkerchiefs and spoke
shrilly to Frau Schmitt: "Seniora, I can do nothing for you!  Nothing!
Nothing!"  for she saw in despair that the respectable strangers were
standing back, and the thieving flock of crows was descending upon
her.

Frau Schmitt, shocked, deeply hurt at such a change of manner, backed
away, and saw with happy surprise her shipmates--not the Spaniards, she
did not count them- the odd Americans, odd but nice, after all.  She
could not help but remember Herr Scott and his good feeling for the
poor little woodcarver in the steerage- it was all very well to be
stern and cold and right about everything, as the Captain most
certainly was, but it was also touching to be human, to love one's
fellow creature, to have mercy on the poor and the unfortunate.  In a
single thought, she was glad to see Herr Scott's face here in this
unfriendly spot, even if it was like a wax face with blue marble eyes.
The young woman with him she could not understand, the widow she did
not trust, and Herr Freytag had most surely done wrong to pass himself
off as a Christian when he was in fact married to a Jew ... "Yet, oh
God," said Frau Schmitt plaintively, and made the sign of the Cross
with her thumb and forefinger, "what shall I do?  Die of my
loneliness?"

She moved nearer the group, and they all spoke to her, and smiled, so
that she stood near them, and they all saw the same thing, each with
his own different way of seeing.  The zarzuela company went through
their well rehearsed act with their unswerving attention to the
business of the moment, with the same bold contempt for the bystander
they had shown on board ship, and it was like a play: Amparo and Concha
went to one side of the shop, calling to the shopkeeper, distracting
her attention by holding up objects and asking the price loudly, both
at once.  Manolo joined Pepe outside.  Pastora and Lola kept up a noisy
conversation on the other side of the shop with

pancho and Tito, now and again flurrying their way across to the sholy
keeper, carrying some object, turning her eyes from Amparo and Concha,
whom she rightly suspected as the ones worth watching.  But the whole
company was in constant movement, all over the place, running to the
door to show Manolo and Pepe what they were thinking of choosing and
asking their advice, then back to the shelves to pull down and scatter
more stuff and turn it over.  Ric and Rac bustled about, always at
their best when playing in a show, begging and tormenting: "Please,
Mama, buy me this, buy me that," brandishing whatever they had been
able to pick up.  Stern Lola then would threaten to smack them, order
them to put everything back where they found it, and in a few minutes,
sure enough, the whole company surged out of the narrow door, bitterly
protesting there was nothing in the place worth having after all, or
that they would never pay such bandit prices!  This shopkeeper too was
left in her little corner burning with helpless fury, all her goods in
such disorder she would spend hours searching and folding and counting
before she might miss what had been stolen.

It went on, in other plazas, with other witnesses.  Herr Professor and
Frau Hutten met them piling out of a little cubbyhole jeering and
taunting a wild-eyed little man who cursed them for thieves.  They
laughed their bloodcurdling laugh, and flaunted on.  Frau Hutten said
to her husband, "They are just the same as they are on the ship!  Is
there nothing we can do?  Where are the police?  The Guardia Civil?
They look so very able.  Where are they?  Should we not call them?"

Herr Professor Hutten gave her arm an affectionate squeeze; no doubt
about it, what he had found most endearing in her, that quality which
outlasted youth, beauty, slenderness, blue-veined breasts, hollow,
sweet-smelling armpits and a firm rosy chin was this: her eternal
female imbecility of faith that there was a power in this world
existing soley for the purpose of rushing infallibly when called upon
to the rescue of the innocent and oppressed... "Call the police," she
said, the dear idiot.

"Listen, my love," he said, "this is not any country we know, and its
customs are strange to us.  They cannot like us, we are from another
country and speak another language-"

"We speak Spanish as well as they do, and maybe better," said Frau
Hutten, with girlish vanity.  Her husband made love to her often now,
she was confident as a bride with him.  Ever since the night the poor

Basque had been drowned rescuing Bebe, her husband had seemed restored
to his first manhood again.  It made her feel like a young woman, too:
she was beginning to look at herself, and to plan what she must do to
keep herself attractive; the first thing, to grow thin.  The streaks of
gray in her hair must be tinted.  Her husband would undoubtedly find a
professorship in a good German college.  She would demand that he have
a secretary to free her from the slave-work of research, typing,
correcting proofs, the whole tedious existence of a professor's wife.
She would save herself for love.

"You are right," she said, taking his arm, "it is not our affair, not
in the least."

Frau Schmitt followed Herr Freytag and his friends a few steps into the
street, but stopped when she heard him invite his party for a drink.
All too obviously she was not included, in fact they seemed to ignore
her.  It was not of course, could not be, that they intended a rudeness
to her; they were lighthearted careless people, thinking only of
themselves.  Frau Schmit had her proper pride and it never failed her
when she needed it most: wounded she might be, newly widowed and
tender, but she would die rather than force her presence where it was
not wanted.  She returned to the ship after stopping to buy a little
sack of candied fruits.  She ate morsel by morsel as invisibly as she
could, knowing well that only persons of inferior breeding would be
seen eating in the streets.  She could only hope she was not seen.

Herr Glocken, looking about vaguely for some article of attire to
brighten up his shabby suit, fingered with envy the wide scarlet
waistbands to be worn only by male dancers, the delightful white
pleated bosoms, the coquettish narrow collars of shirts made for
bullfighters.  The neckties seemed to be either narrow black strings,
or so gaudy they could only be intended for masquerades or other fancy
dress events.  He fingered covetously a fine silk scarf in his favorite
color, bright red, and was gathering courage to ask the price, knowing
without asking that he must not afford to buy it, when the shopkeeper,
a woman riddled with anxiety, spoke to him kindly: "Come inside-I have
much better things inside, not expensive-"

Herr Glocken was not such a fool as to think her hardbitten face had a
trace of coquetry.  She wanted something, but what?  Then he heard the
all-familiar hateful sounds of the zarzuela company, and

the woman said urgently: "Come inside, please.  Help me watch them!"
He followed her not so much to be of help as for protection, and he
backed his hump against the folds of shawls and mantillas.

He saw that the woman was shrewd and wary.  She greeted the invaders
with a harsh voice, and commanded them all to stay out but one, one
only, whoever they chose to come in and buy.  As if she had not spoken
they rushed and crowded into the little cubby, began pulling at things
and asking prices, arguing among themselves.  Concha saw Herr Glocken
trying to hide.  She called in delight, "Oh, look, here is our little
luck piece!"  and flew to touch his hump.  Then each in turn added to
the confusion by struggling to reach him.  He defended himself by
backing more deeply into the shawls and flattening his hands on his
shoulders.  But they touched him anyway, anywhere they could reach,
slapping him sharply with open palms, until he could bear no more.  In
a panic he broke through and got to the open air, where Ric and Rac, on
guard, shrieked and chased him to get their share of good luck, too.
Blindly he careered into the Baumgartners, and just beyond them, the
Lutzes.  Mrs.  Lutz again rose instantly to her duties as a mother: all
in a breath, she tripped Ric with her foot and sent him sprawling,
seized Rac by the arm, smacked her most satisfyingly, and spoke sternly
to Herr Glocken: "Why did you not defend yourself?  What were you
thinking of?"

Herr Glocken, much grieved and ashamed, said meekly, "I did not think.
It was like getting caught in a hornets' nest."

They went nearer the shop but did not venture in.  The Spaniards were
everywhere, the shopkeeper could not watch them all at once, she could
not drive them out because they did not listen, but finally Lola, to
fix her attention, with immensely prolonged haggling and fast talking
and high contempt for the object, bought with hard money a small square
of embroidered gauze with lace.  Meantime the children had got back to
their station; the desperate shopkeeper, wedged in a corner, shouted to
them all to get out.  Even as Lola handed over the money, and the woman
was counting change, they all surged out into the street, and very
plainly the watchers saw that the shapes of the company were all lumpy
in odd places, and from under Amparo's black shawl there dangled the
fringed corner of a pure white one.

They dashed across the plaza and hailed a large open conveyance drawn
by a big sad bony horse.  The women and children piled in

upon one another first; Manolo, Pepe, and Tito squatted on the steps
and Pancho crowded in beside the driver.  "Hurry," he said, "hurry, we
are late!"

"For what," inquired the driver.  "Look, Senior, this carriage is for
six persons, you are ten; you will pay me for ten.  I charge by the
passenger."

"That's mere robbery," said Pancho, "I will not pay it."

The driver drew his horse to a stop.  "Then all must get out," he said
convincingly.  Lola leaned forward and said, "What are we stopping for"
an edge of panic in her voice.

"We are being robbed," said Pancho, though without much force.

"Tell him to drive on, drive on!"  screamed Lola.  "Goat, mule!  Drive
on."

Pancho said, "Who are you talking to?  Shut your big mouth!"

Tito said, "Listen, Pancho, you're not talking to Pastora.  Lola's
running this, don't forget.  Get on there now."  and he said to the
driver, who seemed to have gone to sleep along with his horse, "How
much do you want?"

The driver roused to full life instantly and named his price.  "And I
want it in hand, now, Senior," with the self-possession and readiness
of a man long experienced in human trickiness.  "Now," he said, without
lifting the reins, holding out his hollowed hand so that whoever had
the money could put it where it belonged.  Tito paid.

The Lutzes and the Baumgartners had wandered about, enjoying such
pastimes as the island afforded, including the sweet heavy aromatic
wines of the country, so festive and so soothing.  Herr Baumgartner had
taken two or three more than he should have, and had bought a bottle of
Malavasia, promising his wife he would drink it instead of brandy. They
now being chance-met at this place, Mrs.  Baumgartner remarked that it
seemed to be a fate that they were not to be free of those sinister
characters the dancers for a moment--they had spoiled the voyage until
now and they would go on spoiling it to the

"No, they leave at Vigo, thank God," said Herr Lutz, "and so do the
rest of the steerage people."

"It will be a pleasant ship then," said Frau Baumgartner to Frau
Lutz.

"i cannot think improvement will go so far as that," said Frau Lutz,

quelling all hope, "but we have the right to expect at least decency.
Those creatures," she said, bobbing her chin towards the old carriage
lumbering away like an overcrowded bird's nest, "should be left here in
jail, if there were any such thing as justice--"

"Instead of that poor Condesa," said Herr Baumgartner.  "I am sure she
was an innocent afflicted lady, suffering and not strong enough to bear
her pains without the relief of drugs-"

"I never approved of that woman," said Frau Lutz.  "I cannot find one
argument in her favor, still I think it injustice that she should be
punished for her faults--not that she doesn't deserve it--but that
these worse criminals than she should escape without a scratch... Well,
what do you expect of this world?"

Herr Glocken, who dimly resented Frau Lutz's tactless intervention in
his favor, saving him but making him ridiculous, spoke up to get the
talk down to facts.  "They were stealing everywhere today, they have
been cheating on the ship all the time--that raffle!  those children,
those little monsters, stole La Condesa's pearls and threw them
overboard-"

"It was never proved," said Herr Lutz.  "It is not known whether they
were real pearls, even- nor whether the object thrown overboard was her
necklace or a string of beads--"

Frau Lutz broke into cold indignant speech.  "My husband is very
nearsighted," she said, "or at least, he does not see well.  He cannot
possibly know what went on when those children collided with us on
deck.... I did see, and I do know now, though I doubted at first, that
it was a pearl necklace with a diamond clasp, and those unnatural
children stole it and the girl threw it into the sea.  That is all,"
she said, with sarcasm.  "All.  It is by no means enough to disturb
anyone, we are wrong to concern ourselves with such peccadilloes."

Herr Lutz rebuked his wife by speaking in turn to the others as if she
were not present: "My poor wife has the highest principles, and no
misdeed is too trivial not to call for hanging at least; I have never
known her to overlook the slightest fault in anybody's character but
her own, and it is no good to tell her that no matter what appearances
may be, what circumstances may indicate, we must not rely on them as
positive evidence, no, not even in the lightest cases."

Frau Lutz spoke up firmly: "Elsa!  You saw it too, did you not?"  Elsa,
who had stood silent and lumpish, looking away from her elders and
hardly listening, started and answered instantly, "Yes, Mama."

Herr Baumgartner roused and reached to Herr Lutz to shake his hand,
saying, "But you talk like a lawyer, like a good defense man, it is
rare to find a layman who has any grasp at all of the great principle
ruling evidence, that crux of all legal procedure..  Congratulations!
Did you ever read, perhaps, for the bar?"

"No, but I have good friends in the profession.  In my business, I have
needed them.  They gave me good advice."

Herr Glocken was suffering from his sense of failure, of having run
away when he should have stood his ground, to witness the zarzuela
company do their thieving, to denounce them, to have seen them all
arrested and dragged away to the juzgado and instead of this heroic
conduct, he had run, cravenly.  He had let that Frau Lutz even defend
him from children- children; what humiliation!  He had then seen the
dancers leaving with their loot, and so had all the others, and yet
they stood there, gossiping all around the subject and never once
admitting guilt or complicity.... "We should have done something, that
I know," he said to them all, and they all looked down at him with
varying degrees of condescension.

"Can you think of anything?"  asked Herr Lutz.  "In my business, we
take no notice at all of petty pilfering, what we lose on one customer
we make up on another.  We have a budget for replacing all sorts of
portable objects- you'd hardly believe what magpies tourists are; it
does not matter how respectable they look.  So I do not take it
seriously --"

Herr Lut'z glanced at his watch and then at the sun.  The great dark
clouds were rolling up again from the east, just as they had yesterday.
The others glanced too at their wrists and Mrs.  Baumgartner said, "It
is late.  If we walk, we may miss the ship."

"It will wait for us," said Herr Lutz.  But in all of them, the fog and
glow of the wine they had drunk seemed to fade.  Each face showed
uneasiness to the others, and in a mild state of common panic, they
hailed a row of caleche, and drove in unexpected state to the very foot
of the gangplank, which was indeed prepared for rising.  They scrambled
up out of breath with only minutes to spare and joined the other
passengers, who were lining up to witness the commotion of sailing.
There were rumors of rising seas outside the harbor.  The band started
playing, "Adieu, mein kleiner Garde-Oizier!"  and the shoals of
Syrians

prowling the docks trying to sell sheepskin rugs and opium scattered
away.

As the strip of water widened between pier and ship, with Santa Cruz at
the right distance taking on again its first beauty, the zarzuela
company huddled at the rail in silence but with intent bristling
attention, watching a frantic weeping woman on shore who shook her
fists, screaming desperate curses and accusations at the upper deck of
the moving ship.  One of the invincible-looking Civil Guards left his
patrol partner to quell this unseemly disturbance.  He turned the woman
round by her shoulders and marched her briskly out of sight of the
foreign ship and its passengers.  It was part of his duty to guard
against such bad propaganda.  This kind of behavior gave the town an
inhospitable appearance.  "Keep away from here," he instructed the
woman, harshly.  She covered her head with her shawl and went away
without looking back.

Jenny and David rested their elbows on the rail and Jenny said,

"That's one station past.  Now--David, I'm going to try for a French
visa at Vigo --"

"If we stop at Vigo," said David.

"There's talk now that they will stop.  All those dancers... and then
I'll leave the ship at Boulogne."

"If we stop there," said David.

"We're going to stand out and a tender will come for us," said Jenny.

"We'll make it."

"Who said so?"

"The purser."

"Who are

"Mrs.  Treadwell, and I, and those silly students.  Oh David, do please
come with me.  It makes me sick even to think of your going on.  What
will you do in Spain by yourself?"

"What will you do in Paris?"

"That's a question," she said.  They strolled around to the other side
of the deck.  "We're setting out tonight off the coast of Africa...
there was nothing new or strange in Santa Cruz, was there?  It could
have been Mexico, crooked old streets and the sound of Spanish and the
little markets and the colors of the plaster--but did you notice how it
seemed strange in the new part of town where the real

international business is?  Did you notice that brass plate on the
brick wall saying here is a branch of the Bank of British West
Africa?"

"Why, no," said David.  "What about it?"

"Just for a second, I felt far from home, in a strange, strange land,
and I didn't want to be there."

"Where is home, Jenny angel?"  asked David, with the always unexpected
tenderness that could dissolve her at her highest melting point; her
eyes glistened, she blinked at him and smiled carefully.

"I don't know," she said, "I still don't know, but it is very far
away."  They leaned together and rubbed cheekbones and nuzzled a little
and then kissed.  David said in an offhand, take it or leave it tone,
or even somewhat as if he did not expect to be heard, We'll get French
visas at Vigo and we'll get on that tender outside Boulogne harbor, and
we'll land in Paris next day.  I'm through with the argument, Jenny."

"Would you like me to cry on your neck, rubbing my nose on your necktie
and dribbling tears down your collar, darling?  I don't care who sees
us," she said, wrapping her arm around his neck, nudging under his chin
with the top of her head.

"Stop it, Jenny," said David, "where do you think we are?"

She straightened up and took her powder case out of her pocket.  "We'll
go to Spain a little later," she promised, "to Madrid and Avila and
Granada and everywhere there is.  David, if you want, let's go to Spain
first and then to Paris... really, darling, I don't mind.  I shan't
care where we go, after this.  Let's land at Gijon?  And go on to
Madrid."

Anger came up in David as if it had been patiently ambushed nearby
waiting to be recalled to its natural place.  It was her old trick of
holding out until he gave way, then turning on him suddenly by yielding
everything, pretending it was what she really wanted all along, leaving
him bare and defenseless.  But first he must give way.  "I'll stop if
you will."  "I'll do anything you want if you'll do what I want first "
Now having won, again, she was all for giving him the victory, for
showing him how easy it was to be generous, to drift along with him in
happy agreement- everything she should have done from the beginning
without all this pull and haul.  Now, of course, she was all set to
take over the Spanish trip, to manage everything, starting with Gijon,
a port he had never for a moment considered as a landing place.  My
God, now it was all to do over again, in a kind of reverse.  His
silence worried Jenny.

"David?"  she asked, leaning gently and speaking in her "melted"

voice.  "What do you think?  Wouldn't it be nice to go somewhere we'd
ever even thought of going, and just stroll through the country until
we got to Madrid?"

David said, "Why Madrid, particularly?  I hadn't thought of Madrid.

I should like to stay along the coast awhile--Santander, maybe, or

San Sebastian, or up to the French border, to Irun --"

"Well," said Jenny, feeling chilled, "anywhere you like."

"You seem to forget we're going to Paris," said David, "Spain's out,
remember?  We're going to Paris together, and then we'll see-"

Jenny turned upon him a severe, censorious face, not angry, nor
wounded, nor intimidated, nor resentful- just a regard of critical
disapproval, and she spoke evenly in her normal voice raised to the
north, David thought with a sour little humor.

"I wish you'd just make up your mind once, David, just once, and then
keep it made up until we could get one thing finished, or one thing
decided, or just even- well, this is like all the times you walked me
two miles to a certain restaurant for dinner at nine o'clock, and then
changed your mind at the door, and walked me off somewhere another
mile, and more than once we wound up eating green tamales out of a tin
boiler on a street corner... and is this whole trip going to turn out
like that, too?  Why don't we just jump overboard now and call it a
day?  David, what do you want?"

David let her words pour over his ears like rain off a tile roof.  When
the fishwife streak in Jenny's nature took hold, and her entire being
fused all its elements into pure mindless femaleness condensed into
words having no thinnest thread of a hold on reason, David's central
knot of tension loosened, he felt pleasantly released from the burden
of taking her seriously, of trying to answer, to explain or placate:
any quarrel lost its edge, any question of love its meaning; no man
owed one iota of his manhood, one moment of attention, one shred of
consideration to a woman who was all the same as jabbing him with a
hat' ping  With relief he saw Jenny, that so-special creature, the
woman like no other woman, merge into the nameless, faceless, cureless
pestilence of man's existence, the chattering grievance-bearing
accusing female Higher Primate.  Jump overboard?  What for?  He noticed
that the waves were rising, the boat was beginning to plunge a little.
That was a speech silly for Jenny even when she was talking like a
woman.

"My mind is made up," he said.  "You weren't listening, Jenny angel.

We are going to Paris, and that is settled, once for all."  It seemed
as good a place as any to run through this business and make an end of
it--Berlin, Madrid, Paris, what would be the difference?  "Let Spain
alone for a while.  It's time to begin arranging France."

"you arrange it," said Jenny, as amiably as if she had never spoken a
bitter word.  "We'll see what happens at Vigo."  Then she said almost
shyly, "You are a dear love not to take me up when I fly off the way I
did.  David, I don't expect you to believe it, but I'm perfectly happy
perfectly.  Please don't think about what I said-"

"I won't any more," David said reassuringly, with good-tempered malice
spreading like an inner smile all through him.

The dinner bugle sounded, but they delayed a few minutes.  The ship was
leaving the harbor, and the sea was so wild the pilot launch was almost
swamped.  The man at the wheel was drenched and had hard work to stay
on board.

The pilot came down the rope ladder like a spider dropped down his web,
and swung into the launch, which almost capsized.  He took the wheel
and nosed her away.  After a good sharp tussle, the engine died.  For a
moment the pilot stood there, steadying the wheel, looking up at the
tall bow of the ship lou ring over him.  Jenny said, "Oh David, look at
him!"  She leaned far out, took off her square red scarf and waved at
him in great circles until she caught his attention.  He removed his
sober pilot's hat with a beautiful sweep and waved back.  David
clenched the rail with both hands and leaned away, arms stiffened to
the shoulders.  He shuddered.  Jenny lingered, her scarf dangling, her
face softened and full of gaiety and tenderness.  David took her arm
and drew her away.

"Let's wait and see how he does," she said, but David had had enough of
Jenny for one day.  "He'll do very well, and now it's dinnertime," he
told her, and she came along with one of her rare entirely fraudulent
but well-played acts of complaisance.  It usually meant she had thought
of something else to do later that would amuse her more.

Jenny, tilting her first glass of wine towards David's, felt, she could
not say why, that she was having the loveliest, most charming time of
her life.  David was somewhat wrapped up in himself about something,
the ship was rolling right long, swooning swoops enough to chili the
pit of her stomach, yet she was not chilled.  The same tables were
occupied by the same passengers, yes, nearly all of them present,
looking much the same.  She was sober, so it wasn't that delightful

maze of Canary wine.  The zarzuela company came in a little late, and
seated themselves in silence with frowning faces; even Ric and R ac
were not showing their usual spirits.  Jenny said to David: "I heard
they beat those children terribly about the pearl necklace--they beat
them senseless.  But they seem to be all right, don't they?"

"Who told you?"  asked David.  "I didn't hear about it."

"Wilhelm Freytag," said Jenny, "and the purser told him.  And those
students followed La Condesa to the little hotel where she went, and
then took a carriage load of flowers from the market and stood them up
against the walls under her window and got the servants to hang them on
her balcony.  But she would not come out, she would not speak to
them."

Who told you this?"  asked David.

"Freytag," said Jenny, "while we were walking up the hill and you were
lurking along behind."

"Lurking," repeated David, thoughtfully.  Then he asked, "How had
Freytag learned that, so soon?"

"One of the secret police who saw it came back to the ship before we
left."

"I give up," said David, "I can't see where there was time for all
this."

"There was, though," said Jenny, "it did happen."

David changed the subject.  He observed the Spaniards with some
curiosity.  They were eating quite seriously without talk and hardly
raising their faces, taking large mouthfuls.  "They might as well be
Germans," said David, "but I suppose an afternoon of shoplifting makes
you hungry."

Jenny poked lightly at the wilted lettuce leaves before her.  "Wouldn't
you think they could have got some fresh salad on the island?"

"Typhoid, maybe, or cholera," said David in a verbal shorthand, not to
delay his mouthful of Eisbein mit Sauerboht and Erbsenpuree to say
nothing of a stack of fried onions.

"Fuddy-dud dies said Jenny, whose life in Mexico, far from intimidating
her on the subject of germs, had given her a hearty contempt for
foreigners who boiled every, thing they ate or wore, and missed all the
lovely fruit and the savory Mexican food from the steaming clay pots in
the Indian villages.  Now she was not hungry, or not for all this
substantial, overfilling stuff.  She wondered again at David's appetite
that never failed no matter what, like a particularly voracious bird

rearing up its gaping beak with blind punctuality to swallow whatever
was dangled before it.  At least, he had fairly good manners; he did
not wolf or gulp or gobble or crunch or talk with his mouth full. Those
stingy old aunts may have starved him out but they had taught him how
to eat civilly what little they gave him.  Still it was astonishing; he
went on methodically reducing his plateful of food to the bare surface,
then he took more.  He could not leave a crumb or morsel of anything
before him, and this was not only at breakfast, lunch, and dinner but
midmorning broths and teatime sandwiches.  Yet when his eyes strayed
looking for another mouthful, downward and sideways, his eyelids had a
pathetic, famished tightness, his mouth opened slightly in a spurious
air of neglected orphan hood that hardened Jenny's heart every time she
saw it.  Her joyful mood turned into mischief and she began revising
David's personal history.  A changeling, of course, that is what he is.
Those playful little pixies came and stole a mother's own boy out of
his cradle and left one of their monsters instead.  You've got all the
signs, my poor David.  That child eats and eats and never gains an
ounce and is always starving; no matter how much he is loved he can't
love back again; he can't feel pain either in himself or for others; he
can't cry for anything and he doesn't care how much trouble he makes
for everybody; and he takes all he can get and he never gives anything,
and then one day, he disappears without a word, he just goes.  "That is
what becomes of those no-good fellows," said the old Scots nurse when
Jenny was six.  "And so many poor mothers think their willful boys have
run away to sea, or gone to roam the world in India or Africa, or the
wild deserts of California, and they wonder, poor souls, after all they
have done for the ingrates. But they don't know they've been warming a
viper all that time- no, and those creatures aren't anywhere in human
life any more, they've gone back to their own Bad People, and forever
after they help to steal children and put changelings in their places!"
A question occurred to Jenny at last, but years afterwards when it was
too late: "What did they do with the children they stole?"

The steward took up David's plate at last and set down a huge apple
tart covered with whipped cream.  "I'm famished," he said to Jenny in
friendly confidence, squashing into the mess with his fork.

What did they do "with the children they stole?

Jenny glanced around and said, "Everybody looks tired.  It's just the
same as we were in Veracruz, or in Havana.  We all remember we're

strangers and don't like each other.  We're all on our way somewhere
rise and we'll be glad to see the last of each other.  God, I'd hate to
think I'd ever get even a postcard from anybody on this ship again, as
long as I live!"

David speared another forkful of apple tart.  "You mean even
Freytag?"

Jenny put down her idle fork and picked up her napkin and dropped it.
"All right, David.  Sleep well.  Good night," she said, blazing.  She
rose with her flying lightness as if she had springs instead of muscles
and took off at top speed in her tight little walk but as if she were
on skates.  David finished his dessert and drank his coffee.

The voyagers straggled out of the dining room and took a turn or so
about deck and disappeared.  Portholes were darkened early.  The
Captain on the bridge swallowed his bismuth and went to bed, abandoning
the fiction that he and not the second mate was getting the ship to sea
after the pilot left.  The purser doing his paper work sent for coffee
and cake, nodding and waking as he ate.  Dr.  Schumann, as i f walking
in his sleep, made a round of the steerage, treated the baby with the
infected navel, gave paregoric to a man with cramps, dressed the cut
forehead of a man who had taken part in the steerage brawl, and did
what he could to pass the hours of this disastrous night, as he felt
the sea and distance and time itself piling up between him and the
island he would never see again, had not in fact seen at all, except as
a steep road from the dock with a small white carriage climbing away
slowly taking with it all the vanities and illusions of his life.
Father Garza could say as much as he liked "Deal with her as with a
scarlet woman, an incorrigible heretic, do not set foot in her snares,"
but these words changed nothing, meant nothing.  He walked around the
deck and waved a greeting to the ship's band, folding up for the night
after a token tune or so; stepped round the sailors who had the ship to
themselves, such healthy fine young animals, with not a shaky nerve
among them, lucky dogs; in the whole crew there was not a sick man
among them except the boy with the floating kidney, who still presided
over the deck games, and seemed to be no worse for it, though no
attention had been paid to Dr.  Schumann's recommendations for his
treatment.  Dr.  Schumann resisted his impulse to ask the boy how he
was getting on, and barely glanced in passing, without his habitual
twinge of commiseration, at the handsome young man, a perfect
specimen

of pure mindless well-being, wheeling the crotchety little dying man
for a last breath of evening air.  Noticing again the sulky, scowling
face secure in its instinctive self-righteous resentment, Dr.  Schumann
felt the swift sting of a strange envy of that preposterous cruel
innocence.

They seemed to be setting out along the coast of Africa, Herr

Glocken decided, following the end of his finger across the map of an
atlas he picked up in the library.  He was troubled with his
recollections of the day just past in Santa Cruz, not the town nor the
people in it, but himself and his own unhandsome part in events
witnessed by passengers who would be sure to despise him for lack of
presence of mind, for cowardice, even.  The very shape of the word in
his head gave him cold shudders.  He ached steadily all over, in his
veins and in his bones, his teeth throbbed, and a double dose of his
medicine did very little to ease him.  He ate his dinner to keep up his
strength and went to bed early to be free of his cabin mates for an
hour.  He tucked himself in on his side under his blanket, doubled the
pillows under his head, and opened his big flat unwieldy book full of
facts that might help put him to sleep.  "Latest maps," the foreword
announced, "... all countries.  All states... the heavens... voyages
discovery... statistical information on oceans, lakes, rivers,
islands,

mountains and stars..."  Herr Glocken could see plainly on his map
under his finger that indeed even now the ship must be reeling along
the indifferent coast of Africa that had no port on that shore.  What
was the difference to him where he was, or what doing?  He fell
asleep.

David sometime later found him there breathing slowly, the light still
on, the open atlas spread over his face.  David removed the book and
turned out the light without disturbing him.  He then remembered seeing
Denny in the bar, by now so sopped in alcohol David half expected him
to ignite spontaneously every time he lighted a cigarette.

No such luck, though; he would come in late falling over everything in
the place, stinking and sweating and mumbling; on second thought,

David drew Herr Glocken's curtain close, turned on the light again as a
guide to Denny, went to bed and drew his own curtain.  The very top of
his mind seemed to be the only part of it that was working at all, or
at least, any voice he could hear, and that kept stupidly repeating
like a parrot: "To hell with it.  Jump ship.  Just get off at Vigo and
keep going.  Jump ship.  To hell with it...."  The clamor went on

until it came to him that he might as well be counting sheep.  He
counted sheep slowly and breathed very deeply at the same time, an
exercise his mother had taught him at five years, when songs and
bedtime stories could not quiet him any longer.  The old trick worked
again, good as new; he waked next morning much refreshed to Denny's
loud yawns and groans, Herr Glocken's pleadings for someone to give him
a glass of water, and the peremptory call of the breakfast bugle.

Jenny woke early and looked out of the porthole for news of the
weather.  The sky was pale, sunless, the water was gay and silver
speckled for the first time.  She was chilled and pulled on a sweater
when she dressed.  The ship had crossed some line in the night, it was
not summer any more, but early fall.

Elsa opened her eyes and stretched and got up to the porthole to
breathe in the dampness with delight.  "Oh, look," she said, in gentle
wonder, "oh, it is like Europe now, all misty and dim and soft, I
remember it now.  It is like coming home already.  It seems strange I
ever lived in Mexico...."

"But Switzerland is all sunlight and color, or so I have heard?"
remarked Jenny.  "I thought they had nothing but sunny weather.  And
snow.  All the travel folders say so."

Elsa brought her head in and around from the porthole.  Her un girlish
face was softened in a near-smile, not very becoming, perhaps, b ut a
change from her habitual bewildered sadness.

"Oh no," she said with a queer earnest pride, "in St.  Gallen we have
fogs and rain like anywhere else.  Oh," she breathed out
despairingly,

"maybe it will be better there."

The bulletin board once again bristled with seagoing information: ship
departures and arrivals, maritime strikes and other disturbances in
world ports; troubles in Cuba, troubles in Spain, troubles in Germany,
knots, latitudes, longitudes, sun risings and settings, phases of the
moon, today's prophecies of weather for tomorrow; besides the games and
horse races and moving pictures and the ship's pool; and an
announcement by the zarzuela company that the long awaited gala evening
in homage to the honored Captain of the Vera would take place this very
evening, with a dinner, music, and dancing, a brilliant performance of
comedy by the members of the zarzuela company, hosts of the evening;
and a final drawing of numbers

for the splendid prizes offered to the fortunate holders of tickets
for raffle.  Fantasy costumes and masks.  Seating arrangements at all
to be changed for the sake of festive novelty.  A few tickets remained
unsold; Dona Lola or Dona Amparo would be happy to oblige wished to
purchase.  A special view of the prizes would be offered the morning
refreshment hour in the bar.  All cordially invited.

Several of those who had been targets of rude remarks on this subject
now drifted by with wary side glances--Herr Glocken, the: Baumgartners;
Herr Rieber, taking advantage of Lizzi's absence, no telling what those
guttersnipes might think of next; and even Freytag, moved by curiosity
only, stopped to read.

"Quite a change of tone," he remarked to the next corners, Frau and
Herr Professor Hutten, "sinister, I should say.  Isn't it a little late
for them to be practicing manners on us?"

"Good manners, yes," said the Herr Professor, carefully, "after all the
other kinds they have been giving us.  But a change for the better, I
should say dear sir, even if only superficial, temporary, and for
unworthy motives--"

"What other kind could they have?"  asked Freytag, feeling cheerful all
at once.  There was something about the way the Herr Professor took on
any subject or situation, on a moment's notice, poured it into the mold
of his own mind and handed it back to you all in one piece, without a
seam, that put Freytag in a good malicious humor.  It took genius to be
such a bore as that.

Frau Hutten signaled to Bebe by a small pull on his leash.  Her husband
took the hint and they went on to the bar.  Frau Hutten could hardly
wait to see what those thieving dancers had managed to bring on board.
She was not the only one.  Lola and Amparo, looking remarkably fresh
and somewhat less scornful than usual, stood on each side of a narrow
trestle table with a kind of display rack above it, a makeshift got up
for them by the barkeeper and the commissary stores man together, and
they had a quite presentable show of loot; somewhat on the feminine
side, perhaps, as if meant for women to win for themselves or men to
win for them.  "It's all right if you like lace," David said to Mrs.
Treadwell, and she smiled vaguely as she passed and said, "I do like
lace usually, but not today."  There were a number of fine carved tall
tortoise-shell combs, an assortment of lace tablecloths, a gauzy black
lace mantilla, a large white embroidered shawl, bright-colored scarfs,
a rather coarse lace bedspread, an assortment of black and white lace
fans, two ruffled petticoats, and a length of airy white embroidered
linen.  Frau Schmitt could not decide whether this linen was meant for
altar cloths or petticoat ruffles.  In any case, she refused to covet
it, or even to admire it, for it was stolen, and those people should be
denounced and punished.  But who would denounce them?  And to what
authority?  Who would listen to her?  She

had troubles enough, griefs enough, she could not bear the thought of
one more snub or piece of neglect from anybody about anything.  This
was a terrible, evil world and she was helpless in it.  She reached out
and rubbed the linen tenderly between thumb and forefinger. "Beautiful,
beautiful," she said in German to Amparo, almost under her breath. 
Amparo instantly extended her right hand full of tickets and pulled one
from the pack with her left.  "Four marks," she said, as if Frau
Schmitt had asked for one.  "Wait," said Frau Schmitt, rather
breathlessly, fumbling in her change purse.

Denny, a good deal the worse for wear, had nonetheless succeeded in
overtaking Pastora for a moment.  They were at a table near the bar. 
He was drinking restorative beer, she was sipping a cup of coffee and
watching him acutely over the rim of her cup.  He later reported to
David that he never had really caught on to what they were up to, but
Pastora made it all sound like good clean fun" just a regular baile,"
he said, "sounds like one of these hoedowns the greasers are always
having around Brownsville.  Well, let's go.  Anyhow, I'm collecting off
that gal tonight or I'll damn well know why not."  Meantime, he decided
to lay off the liquor, take a good sleep and get himself in shape for
the hoedown.

Herr Baumgartner's favorite theory was that a social occasion was a
sacred duty, to be performed as well as one was able no matter what
one's private condition of mind or body.  His parents had observed this
at first with some approval as the normal fun-loving spirit of
childhood, later with some dismay as they saw that he would leave any
family task undone, all study hours neglected, all household rules
ignored, even defied, to run after the most trivial fleeting pleasures,
often in most undesirable company.  Frau Baumgartner, after long
experience with her husband's vagaries, agreed with his parents that
there was an incurable streak of frivolity in him.  In spite of all,
she had never succeeded in refraining from wifely warnings and
cautions, not against

innocent pastimes, who could disapprove of those?  but the late hours,
the drinking, the prolonged card games with inevitable loss of money;
all the male amusements of the Turnverein, bowling, singing the night,
steins in hand; running off to the street fairs with a set cronies to
shoot at clay targets and make himself sick on Mexican food, bringing
home an armload of trashy dolls and vases and mechanical toys too
childish even for Hans, who dutifully pretended to be pleased with
them.  Ah well, she had done what she could, and yet- was it her fault
that her husband, who loved her, she was sure of it, who had been so
delightfully merry-hearted in their first years together---.  who, she
could never deny, had been until late years a devoted husband, father,
provider--was it her fault that he could not find any satisfaction in
the joys of home, the gentle domestic habits, the company of his dear
family?  She began to fear that she would never know.

She was therefore not surprised, but unpleasantly impressed, when in
midafternoon he began rummaging in the crowded cabin, fishing out
oddities of costume suitable for Mardi Gras or shipboard parties.  He
tried on her red and white plaid jacket, which sat on him with just the
right misfit for comic effect.  "What are you doing?"  she asked,
knowing the answer before he spoke.

"But I cannot understand!"  she cried.  "What have we to do with those
terrible people, who cheated us out of our money and then stole
everything they could lay hands on in Santa Cruz... we saw them.  Why,
why should you go to their party?"

"It is a party, just the same," said Herr Baumgartner, seriously, tying
on the shaggy whiskers that had frightened the little Cuban girl.  "I
feel we should not be skeletons at the feast.  At least the children
should be allowed a little enjoyment."  He smiled at Hans, whose face
was shining happily as he watched his father's preparations.  "They are
innocent," he said unctuously, "why should we punish them for the guilt
of their elders?"

"What innocent children?"  asked Mrs.  Baumgartner, with a severe
glance at Hans, who winced.  "Innocent?  You mean those criminal twins
who threw poor Bebe overboard and caused that poor steerage wretch to
be drowned?  Do you mean them, too?"

"Why not?"  asked Herr Baumgartner, with the irrelevant piety his wife
always found so exasperating.  "God must be their judge, not we.  It is
not even proved that they did it, you know."

"Not proved!"  said his wife, purposely keeping her voice down.

"What proof was needed?  Who else on this boat, who in the wide world
but that pair would have been capable of such a thing?  Oh, but you are
the innocent one, after all."

"I hope I have managed to preserve a little of that blessed quality
after all these years," said her husband smugly, putting on a huge red
papier-mache nose by means of wire hooks over his ears.  "What I am
doing is quite simple.  I shall get some toys for the children, and try
to amuse them a bit--that is all.  But my dear, I wish you would be a
little kinder sometimes about these happy little occasions."

"I don't mean to be unkind," she said, stricken, "it is just that
sometimes I do not quite understand..."

"Please dress up a little," said her husband, "wear your pretty Ba
varian peasant dress you used to wear to our parties in Mexico.  Do
that for me," he wheedled, his eyes glazed with tenderness over the
clownish red nose.

I'll think about it," she answered, and her husband understood at once
that she would do it.  Hans, sitting by with a large paper cowboy hat
on and a small drum hanging around his neck, waited patiently as always
for the dispute to end and the next thing to begin.  When his father
said, "Now, my Hans," he leaped up and took a step towards the door.
His mother's voice with the familiar warning note in it chilled the
back of his neck and stopped him in his tracks.

"Come and kiss me," said his mother.  This done, he and his father
escaped together, his father frowning as if he had a stomach ache
again.  Before they appeared on deck, Herr Baumgartner paused, and
fished out of his back pocket a paper brownie cap given him by a
steward, and pulled it down over his ears.

"Now," he shouted gleefully, bending down to Hans's face, "tell me,
what is my name?"  And he did a hop-skip-jump sort of dance in a
circle.

"Rumpelstilzchen!"  shouted Hans, at the top of his voice.

"Right!"  bawled his father heartily, and they hurried forward, feeling
that the party had already begun.

Jenny sat on the edge of her chair in the late afternoon light,
sketching a sea gull in flight, from memory.  She had filled several
pages, everything from a half dozen hasty dashes that might be a bird
of mine sort in flight to a tight drawing of a sea gull's head encased
in a

design of feathers that resembled chain armor.  Everything wrong,
usual.  David sat near, reading Don Quixote again, perhaps for the
dozenth time--"Nothing like it to warm up your Spanish," he his
sketchbook tied with a tape was propped beside his chair.  she had made
the scene about showing him her drawing, he no longer sketched in
company with her, and never asked to see what she was doing.  Jenny
pretended not to notice, wondering how long he would hold out.

"I think I'll go now, time to change," she said.  The steward may be
able to get me an extra shower."

David without raising his eyes from his book inquired carefully: "Are
you really going to dress for this fool party?"

"No, change," said Jenny, "I always do, every evening.  Hadn't you
noticed?"

Herr Baumgartner appeared at the head of his parade, twirling a stick
like a drum major, doing the goose step, the children goose stepping
after him in shrieking disorder.  The commissary had distributed
trumpets, drums, maracas, whistles, which they rattled, struck, beat,
blew as they pleased.  Hans marched beside his father, the small Cuban
boy and girl came after, and Ric and Rac drew up in the rear, knocking
dried gourds together and beating a drum, with a strange look of almost
childish pleasure in their faces.  Jenny stood smiling as they
approached, and applauded lightly.  Herr Baumgartner glared at her over
his false nose and called out with joyless vehemence: "Why don't you
join us?  Why don't you help?"

"You don't need it," answered Jenny, but she followed them, just the
same, and David held his breath for fear she would break into a goose
step; she was more than capable of it, she could not be depended upon
one minute not to make a holy show of herself.  He had a horror of
female clowns, and it came over him miserably in moments like this that
Jenny had more than a streak of low comedy in her nature.  He watched
her disappear into the bar in the wake of the miniature carnival, still
walking sedately but clapping her hands in marching time, for Hans and
Herr Baumgartner were now singing breathlessly, "Ist das Night ein
giilden Ring?  Ja, das ist ein gulden Ring..."  while the twins and the
Cuban children simply shrieked more or less in rhythm.  They marched
around tables swinging their legs straight up and out, the drinkers
seizing glasses out of the way as they passed.

Herr Baumgartner stopped singing long enough to admonish the gathering
to right and left, with his anguished frown and grieving voice: Wh y
don't you join us?  Why don't you help?"  and though the little
merrymakers were favored with the kindly glance and sweet smile
customary to such occasions; the all-too-brief joys of childhood were
of course sacred, no matter how boring they could be, sometimes; yet
nobody stirred from his place, nor turned his head after them when the
disturbance passed.  Herr Baumgartner concealed his despair, and went
stamping out on deck, keeping up the spine-shattering goose step he had
loathed all through his military service.  He led them once around, and
turned them loose near the bar, where each child might find his family-
except Hans, who was sent back to his mother as if he were being
punished for something.  He went, carrying his toys, ready to cry; what
had happened, what had he done?  The other children separated at once
without a word or glance exchanged, each hugging his loot, and
forgetting Herr Baumgartner instantly.  Herr Baumgartner wanted only to
be forgotten, and to forget: he longed only for privacy, invisibility,
and a bottle of brandy.  Failing all, he asked for a stein of beer, and
sat over it with a face of guilty apology, not daring to drink brandy
until his wife came; she had made him promise solemnly he would never
again drink except when she was with him.  After a few minutes'
brooding, he remembered to take off his whiskers and nose and brownie
cap.  When his wife joined him, with Hans, just before dinner, wearing
her lacy headdress with ribbon streamers, her ruffled blouse and
abundant skirts, freshly powdered and smelling of eau de Zilas, he set
down his third stein of beer and leaned toward her gratefully.  "My
Greta, how lovely you are--my same little girl.  You have not changed
since our wedding day!  All these years."

"Ten," she said, with good-tempered abruptness, "and you are very
forgetful.  You promised not to drink except-"

"Ah," he said, jovially, for his stomach was eased and warmed, "I
thought that meant only brandy!"

"No" she answered, "nothing was said about brandy.  You were never to
drink alone!"

He chose to be whimsical.  "Not even lemonade?  Not water?  Coffee?"

"Nonsense," she said, a little edgily.  "You are talking like a
lawyer.

We both know what you promised.  And I do wish you wouldn't wear my
jacket.  You are stretching it out of shape.  I do not think a man

should wear women's clothes, even in a masquerade."  She looked around
uneasily, but the bar was nearly empty.  "People talk," she "I'll find
something else," said her husband, miserably.  "Why?"  asked his wife.
"It's too late now- everybody has seen you... I think I'll have a beer,
too."

Hans sat elbows on table, chin in hand, waiting until one or the other
of them would remember to ask for his raspberry juice.

Freytag went in, thinking of a bath and shave, and found Hansen,

half dressed, sprawling in the upper berth with his bare feet dangling.
"What's the matter?  Seasick?"  Hansen's great worried face hung out
over the edge.  "I, seasick?"  He seemed ready to take offense.  "I was
born on a fishing boat."

After this personal confidence, if it was that, he rolled back and
gazed upward.  "I am thinking."

Freytag stripped off his shirt and started the warm water in the hand
basin.

"I am thinking," said Hansen, "about all the things people everywhere
do to make each other miserable-"

"What was your mother doing on a fishing boat?"  asked Freytag.  "I
thought no woman was allowed to set foot-" "It was my father's boat,"
said Hansen, gloomily.  "Look, the big trouble is, nobody listens.
People can't hear anything except when it's nonsense.  Then they hear
every word.  If you try.  to talk sense, they think you don't mean it,
or don't know anything anyway, or it's not true, or it's against
religion, or it's not what they are used to reading in the
newspapers..."

At this point Freytag stopped listening and devoted his whole attention
to brushing lather on his face.  Balancing expertly with the roll of
the ship, he proceeded to shave himself with a straight razor, a feat
of which he was proud.  If any witness remarked on this, he was certain
to say it seemed to him the only way to get a real shave.  Not once
during the entire voyage had Hansen noticed Freytag's way of shaving;
he rubbed on ready made lather out of a tube and scraped his cheeks and
chin briskly with a small safety razor, and appeared to be quite
unconscious that there was more than one way of shaving.  When next
Freytag heard Hansen's voice he was saying: "No.  They won't.  In
France, for example- all the bottles, white wine, red wine,

pink wine, everything but champagne--the bottles have shoulders,

"Quite," said Freytag, rolling up his socks and putting them in a brown
linen bag with the word WASCHE embroidered in green.

"But now, you go to Germany--yes, just barely across the line,

not even to Germany, just to Alsace- and what do you find?  All the
bottles without shoulders, bottles like bowling pins!"  His wrathful
voice shook Freytag's nerves.

No wonder people don't listen, he thought unkindly.  What is it now, I
wonder--that Spanish woman or Herr Rieber, or what?  For he had
discovered about Hansen something he had surmised a good while ago
about most persons--that their abstractions and generalizations, their
Rage for Justice or Hatred of Tyranny or whatever, too often disguised
a bitter personal grudge of some sort far removed from the topic
apparently under discussion.

This elementary fact of human nature came to him as a personal
discovery about others, he did not once include himself in it.  His own
plight was unique, peculiar to himself, outside all the rules.  His
feelings about it were right beyond question, subject to no judgments
except his own, and not to be compared for a moment to such shabby
little troubles as Hansen's,

"It is such things," said Hansen, "men insisting to make bottles with
shoulders on one spot; and not fifty feet away, on the other side of a
purely imaginary line which would not exist except for the stupidity
and greed of mankind, just to show their independence they make bottles
without shoulders!"

Freytag felt patience settling and weighing down his spirits like a
fog.  "But the line is not imaginary, it is there to define something,
to give shape to an idea, to express the language and ways of a certain
kind of people, look," he said, with a glance at the knotted,
impenetrable face above him, "nobody fights about the shape of a
bottle.  They fight about the differences in their minds that shaped
the bottles differently in the first place...."

Hansen sat up and roared: "But yes, yes, that is just what I am trying
to tell you.  That is what I am saying."

"I didn't quite catch that," said Freytag, folding his razor.

"Naturally not," said Hansen, his face so closed in despair his
rudeness gave Freytag no offense.  "Nobody listens."

Hansen sat up, put on his socks and shoes and hurled himself out of
the berth, reached for his shirt hanging on the top bar, and said: "All
is crooked, everything--look at these Spaniards!  You know they are
whores and pimps, nobody wants their party--but here we are, we all pay
and we all go, like sheep!  They blackmail, they cheat, they lie, they
steal from everybody all over Santa Cruz, everybody sees, knows--what
do we do?  Nothing.  And that poor fat man below---.  what was his
crime He said the word Freedom in front of a priest!  So --then they
break his head open and sew it up again so it cannot be said they did
not take care of him, yes, even such an outcast as him.  Religion and
politics--what did I tell you?"  His hoarse dull bellow rose almost
intolerably.

"Ah, yes, so you did," said Freytag amiably, thinking what a restful
cabin mate Lowenthal might have been if only he could have disposed of
that Richer, whom nobody wanted.  Yes, even Reber himself might be
preferable to this obsessed suffering man.  Suffering should be
strictly private, he decided; it was part of the human privilege for a
man to enjoy his own afflictions without having them mixed with someone
else's--above all, he knew of nothing worse than to be offered sympathy
for the wrong reason from someone who had no right to offer any
sympathy at all'.  He was of course thinking of Jenny, who took the
high ground that racial prejudice or any sort of prejudice was the
symptom of psychic and moral disease, especially anti Semitism, which
was inexcusable and unpardonable on any grounds.  He had been strongly
tempted to interrupt her rhapsodic little homily by saying, "Why, I
know lots of people who don't care for Jews, but you couldn't call them
anti-Semitic--they're some of them very fond of Arabs!"  She would
never understand his joke on the precise meaning of a word, and it
would be merely silly to shock and offend her.  She was pleasant to
dance with, and it was rather piquant, the way a curious innocence,
naivete a priggish little moral earnestness rose now and then to the
surface of her light chatter, like cloudy bubbles on a pool, causing
you to wonder what strange fish swam below, or what drowned thing was
sending up gaseous signals from the bottom.  Mary would size her up in
a glance, and dispose of her in a phrase--some shrewd and murderous
flick of the tongue that need not be in the least true, or even near
the mark, but it would be deadly and would make him ashamed of his
interest in such a girl.  Mary would never hear of Jenny--why should
she?  As he knotted his tie, he

began to feel a tingle of excitement that rose to exhilaration, as if
it were Mary he would find when he went on deck; as if the ship were
even then being warped into the dock and Mary was there on the pier
waiting for him, already looking for him with her field glasses.  His
fantasy so lifted his spirits, so carried him away, that not until he
was brushing his hair full speed with the pair of English whale-bristle
brushes Mary had given him for his birthday did he realize that Hansen
had fallen silent, and hastened to try to give him some sort of decent
attention.

"They were certainly wrong to bash his head in," he said, carefully,
"but I'm not so sure he deserves much sympathy.  There must be
something wrong with a fellow who will make a row at a funeral, and
after all, of a poor workingman like himself.  But you'd think he'd
want to pay a little respect to the dead, wouldn't you?

"Always the same," groaned Hansen, seizing the top of his hair with
both hands for a moment, "respect for the dead, never for the living."
"Let's go up and have a drink," suggested Freytag as a way out.

Hansen dropped his hands and shook his head.  "I don't want a drink,"
he said, as self-centered and frank as a five-year-old.  Freytag heaved
a deep breath as he stepped outside, and shook his shoulders as if the
Old Man of the Sea were clinging to them.

Mrs.  Treadwell, her narrow hand on the rail, descending the stairs
towards the dining salon, observed critically her reflection in the
broad looking glass on the landing.  Her gilded sandals exposed her
toes with bright red varnished nails.  Quite a good figure, she decided
again, if a little on the flat side, and not such a bad head.  She
wished there were not those lines from nose to mouth, deeper on the
right side, or that small shadow of a fold under the chin.  With those
away she would have nothing to worry about for a long time; but they
were 'here, and to stay and to grow deeper, and to be joined by other
shadows and folds and lines marking every step of the long solitary
journey towards old age.  Forty-six is the second awkward age.  Which
would turn out worse, to be fourteen, not child, not woman; or as she
was now, not young, not old?  What is expected of me now, I wonder, she
asked herself as she had done at fourteen, almost in the same
bewilderment.  I still dance as well as I did, still ride, still swim,
still like doing most of the young things I did like-still, still-what
a terrible word.  She had dressed herself carefully for a possible

evening of a kind of enjoyment; she longed to be merry and
lighthearted indeed, but how could she be since there was no one to
lighthearted with?  A pink-faced young officer or two would spin her
around sedately a few times at arm's length, but she loved dancing' so
much a dull partner was sometimes better than none.  I wish one of
those good-looking gigolos would ask me to dance, but of course none of
them will, the little pests.  They'll go on dancing and quarreling and
making love to their sluttish girls--they're young, at least, and
that's what's wanted.  With a thin line forming between her eyebrows, a
new one she had first noticed a few days before, she paused before the
looking glass on the landing and examined her face sharply under the
harsh light.  It was true, she was old, she had not been young for
years and she had not known it, nor feared it, nor even thought of it;
now seeing herself clearly and without mercy, the way others must see
her, it was bitterly obvious and impossible to believe.  Her age seemed
something temporary, outside of herself, a garment she could put off at
will, a mask painted on her face that she could by some simple magic
wash away at any moment in her bath.  Oh dear God, I'll be paying
gigolos to sit with me in night clubs if I don't take care.  Soon there
won't be anybody left of my charming friends to send me flowers and
dance with me and take me to the theater.  I'll be sitting by myself at
corner tables or on terraces and a creature with waved hair and a
border-line eye will come smirking up: "Dear Madame, will you be
pleased to dance?"  and I- no, I'll never, never never!  I'm going to
grow old gracefully as they used to warn me I must--in those days when
I knew I was going to be young forever- with a fine false front of
dignity.  Nobody is going to suspect that I am that unfortunate girl
who couldn't grow up, that under my sober old-lady skin I am hiding
carefully my sixteen-year-old heart.  That's going to be my own dreary
business.  The first thing I must do in Paris is to get everything new
and more suitable to my years.  Her thin light pleated gown, rose red,
with a wide gilded leather belt, falling smoothly from her bare
shoulders over her sharp little pointed breasts neatly sustained by a
harness of lace- all very pretty, but none of it matched her face, she
noticed for the first time.  Should I wear more black, I wonder?  And
if I painted my toenails green, would anybody really care?

Such a profound melancholy fell upon her spirits at this point, she had
half a mind to turn back and change to an ordinary gown.  David Scott,
who had been following her, overtook her and stopped to speak,

and to gaze at her with that pleased, approving glint which she knew
well in the eye of a man and never tired of seeing.  "you are looking
wonderful," he said, in exactly the right tone; and this was so
extraordinary, coming from him, Mrs.  Treadwell took his arm and smiled
at him with great confidence and charm.  "You are simply a dear to say
so," she told him and they walked on together.  She noticed that his
black knitted tie was a little crooked, his linen suit slightly
rumpled, but no matter.  She rested her fingertips on his forearm and
kept step with him, reassured and consoled by his attractive
unequivocal male presence,

"I thought, though," said David, "we had all agreed to ignore this
party.

"Well, it is a party, after all," said Mrs.  Treadwell, "no matter how
it happened.  I mean to dance a little, I should like to drink
champagne, and I shan't mind in the least pretending that I feel a
little better than I do- at least, now.  Something even halfway
pleasant, or just funny', you know?  absurd--may happen.  Think of
those slum my dancers giving a party for anybody!  Suppose they did
steal the prizes and pick pockets besides?  I didn't give them a penny,
and neither did you.  Why should we miss the show, if there is going to
be one?"

"Oh, they'll get away with it," said David.  "-They always do."

"I get so tired of moral bookkeeping," said Mrs.  Treadwell, gently.
"Who are They?  Why does it concern me what They do?"

David, chilled to the marrow at this hateful indifference, tightened
his arm and drew it to his side impulsively.  She lifted her fingers
from his sleeve at once and dropped her hand to her side, and said,
"For me They are just Others who bore me, or behave stupidly to me
--anything of that kind.  These Spaniards--what do i care what they
did, or what they may do?  They dance well, they are good-looking in
their savage unkempt style, let them be amusing at least!  What else
are they good for?  But even they make it sound dull with their horrid
little unkind notices about people...."

"It's a form of blackmail," said David, "and it nearly always works."
He glanced at Mrs.  Treadwell, whose attention had wandered.  They were
coming into the crowd entering the dining room, and she nodded lightly
in several directions--to Freytag, who nodded back without smiling; to
the young Cuban pair with their two children; to the bride and groom,
who did smile; to the purser, who beamed at her with his broadest
smirk; to anybody and everybody, David noticed,

without appearing really to see anyone.  She behaved in fact like
Jenny, except that Jenny was looking for something, a response of some
kind, almost any kind at all, always either a little too hard or too
soft, with no standards that he could understand or believe in.  An
intense resentment against Jenny rose in him when he saw her at work
trying to undermine him, to break down by any means his whole life of
resistance to life itself- to whatever environment or human society he
found himself in.  He preferred Mrs.  Treadwell's unpretentious rather
graceful lack of moral sense to Jenny's restless seeking outlaw nature
trying so hard to attach itself at any or at all points to the human
beings nearest her: no matter who.  It was just that he could not
endure promiscuity.  He almost forgot the woman beside him in the
familiar hatred of Jenny which moved all through him in his blood; then
he saw her standing near the wall below, waiting for him, looking
upward, very beautiful in one of her plain white frocks that looked
well at any time of day.  She had the severity and simplicity of a
small marble figure, smooth and harmonious from head to foot, no rouge
or powder visible, no varnished nails, fresh and sweet as a field of
roses: she was smiling at him, and he smiled back, with such a deep
intake of breath that Mrs.  Treadwell, glancing down, nodded to Jenny,
then turned back to David.  The whiteness and tightness of his face and
the blaze of his eyes astonished her.  "There she is," he said, and
with the barest bob of his head to Mrs.  Treadwell, he left her and
leaped down the stairs while even then Jenny was coming towards him.

Herr Rieber had not for a moment given up his notion that he was still
going to find ways and means to seduce Lizzi successfully and
thoroughly.  "Sometime, someday, somewhere, somehow," he sang to
himself silently the refrain of his favorite popular song; but no, it
must be done on the boat, tonight or never.  Once he set foot in
Bremerhaven there would not be a moment to spare; he was in fact to be
met at the pier by several of his employees.  He would be able to do no
more than bid Lizzi the most amiable of farewells--amiable but formal,
of course, and fl nal--as he put her on the motor coach for Bremen.
Since that unfortunate evening of the dog, Bebe, and all the confusion
that followed, he had been able only once to entice Lizzi to the boat
deck again; and that time she had been all modesty and reserve,
refusing to allow him even to touch her in any way that mattered, until
at last he had thought of a new strategy--that of humility and
childish

gentleness.  He laid his head in her lap and called her his little
lamb, She stroked his brow a few times, as if she were thinking of
something else.  As indeed she was.  She was wondering why, in all this
whirligig, Herr Rieber had never once mentioned marriage.  Not that she
wished to marry him- far from it.  For a permanent settlement, and she
had resolved that her next settlement should be permanent, wedlock
locked and double-locked, secured with the iron bolts of premarital
financial contracts, she looked, materially speaking, considerably
higher than Herr Rieber.  Still, it would never do to let any man run
away with a situation, whatever it was; it must be clearly understood
always-and not just by implications, hints, threats, glances, by mute
understandings, but plainly in so many words- that she was a woman of
the marriageable kind, and any amorous frolics with her were only
preliminary to a possible march to the altar.  Every other man she had
known unfailingly pronounced the magic word "marriage" before ever he
got into bed with her, no matter what came of it in fact.  This one had
not, and until he did, well!  so far and no further.

Herr Rieber had not mentioned marriage to her, much as he might have
liked, for the simplest reason in the world- he had a wife from whom he
was legally separated, who refused to divorce him, was blameless
herself in any lawful sense so that he could not divorce her.  He was
supporting her and three children, a family of four who detested him
and whom he detested, who would hang on him leeching his blood for
life.  Oh what had he done to merit such a fate?  Yet there it was, and
Lizzi must never learn of his embarrassing predicament; it would be an
intolerable affront to his pride.  Besides, he was certain she would
never understand, and why should she?  Ah, the fine tall creature who
moved like a good racing mare, oh, for a nice soft bed in a quiet hotel
in Bremen even for a night and a day before he must go on.  No such
hope.  It must be here and now, during the party those impudent
guttersnipe Spaniards were so unaccountably giving "in honor of our
Captain" -honor, indeed!.  He went on a tour of the boat deck, selected
a likely spot, indulged again in his day dream that after plenty of
champagne and tender words, after long waltzing to soft music on deck,
she would be melted and oozing like hot cheese on toast.  He would then
persuade her to take a walk in the beautiful soft night--the nights
were growing a little cooler and windier--and the deed could be done in
a twinkling, while everybody else was dancing on the lower deck or

drinking in the bar.  Such was his eagerness by now he even feared an
unmanly incontinence at the great moment, but even the thought was too
great a shame to face.  In his imagination it all was as easy and
uninterrupted and blissful as the happy ending in a child's story.

He had scrubbed and polished himself until he appeared to be lacquered,
and with his playful mood at top peak he was wearing a white baby bib,
and a frilled baby cap sitting on his bald head with strings tied under
the chin.  Leaving a solid wake of Maria Farina cologne, straight as a
homing pigeon he bored his way through the crowd of confused dinner
guests looking for places to sit, for the seating arrangements had all
been changed about, with the usual place cards but no one knew where to
look for his own.  Stewards hovered being helpful and people followed
them about blindly.

The one thing certain, common knowledge to all, was that the Spanish
company were to be seated at the Captain's table, and none of his
original guests went near it.  Herr Rieber lowered his head and charged
through a group and took Lizzi by the elbow, who screamed with delight
at his baby cap.  She was wearing a long green lace gown and a small
green ribbon eye-mask, and wanted to know at the top of her voice
however he had managed to recognize her!  Herr Rieber pushed her firmly
towards a table for two under a porthole.  "We'll sit here, no matter
what!"  he cried recklessly and burst into song in a high tenor:
Sometime, someday... I"

"Somewhere, somehow!"  Lizzi joined in, off key two tones above him.
They bent towards each other until their noses almost touched and sang
the whole chorus into each other's mouth.  "Bring champagne instantly,"
he commanded the nearest steward, drawing out a chair for Lizzi
himself.  "At your service, mein Herr," said the steward, who did not
belong at that table.  He disappeared at once and did not return.

"Champagne, champagne!"  shouted Herr Rieber into the air.

want champagne!"

"Sometime, someday," sang Lizzi, and they were both overcome with
enjoyment of her wit.  They noticed that the Baumgartners, she in
Bavarian peasant costume, he with his chalked clown face with false
nose and movable whiskers, were observing them with particularly
unfestive, censorious faces, their mouths prim and down at the corners,
eyes glancing sidelong.  The Cuban medical students came leaFing in a
line singing "La Cucaracha," all wearing mate lots and caps with red
pompoms.  They rushed upon their own table as if taking it

by storm, and were prepared to defend it from a siege.  The bride and
groom, dressed simply as usual, went quietly to their own table,
removed the cards and placed them on the table next to them, and sat
smiling gently at each other.  They opened the small packets beside
their plates, unfolded the gilded paper hats and the noise-making
devices and laid them aside.  A bottle of wine was set before them, and
they touched glasses before they drank.

A large square hand with fingers the same thickness from one end to the
other, a rude-looking thumb attached to a palm powerfully secured to a
muscular wrist covered with a thatch of hair that gleamed red under the
table light, reached over Herr Rieber's shoulder and plucked the place
card from its metal holder.

Herr Rieber's skin crawled coldly and colder still when a familiar
voice brayed reverberating, outlandish, altogether repulsive German: "I
am sorry to trouble you, but this is my table," and coming around where
he could face Herr Rieber, Arne Hansen brandished the card under his
nose.  Back of him stood Herr Glocken, wearing a single large colored
quill pen in his hair; his pink necktie flourished the words Girls,
follow reef painted on it.  Hansen picked up the second card from
before Lizzi's plate and brandished that.  "Can you not read?"  he
asked.  "This says Herr Hansen and this Herr Glocken.  So, I do not
understand why..."

Lizzi reached out and struck him lightly on the forearm.  "Oh, but dear
Herr Hansen, do try to understand-"

"Please," said Herr Rieber, pulling himself together, the top of his
head bedewed with large clear drops that shortly began to join and run,
"please, Fraulein, this is for me to settle..."

"There is nothing to settle," bawled Hansen in his unmodulated voice
heavy as a club, "nothing but that you find your own table and leave me
mine!"

"Herr Hansen," said Herr Rieber, swallowing violently and shooting his
chin out of his collar, the baby cap bobbing, "I cannot overlook your
rudeness to a lady.  Please meet me on the main deck."

"Why should I meet you anywhere?"  bellowed Hansen, staring down at him
overpoweringly.  "I ask you for my table, you make trouble about that?"
and he gave Lizzi a look of contempt that scalded her.  She rose with
her knees shaking and implored Herr Rieber, "Let us go, let us go," and
walked away so swiftly he had to run to overtake her.  "Find us our
table," he shouted to the nearest steward, almost as ferociously

as Herr Hansen.  The steward said instantly, "Come with me, mein Herr,
--never was there such confusion in this salon."  But he seemed to
recognize Herr Rieber, found their table quickly, pulled out Lizzi's
chair, and said briskly, "Jawohl!"  to Herr Rieber's demand:
"Champagne, at once!"  "He insulted me," said Lizzi in a small whimper,
and lifting her mask she dabbed at a tear.  Herr Rieber had never seen
her in such a mood.  He was delighted in spite of its cause.

"Don't think of it again, he shall pay for it," he declared stoutly,
mopping the top of his head and running his handkerchief inside his
collar.  "Let us not have our evening spoiled by such a lout!"

"He is always claiming your chair--remember that first day?  I knew
then he was a low person.  He is a Bolshevik I think, from his
talk..."

"Ha!"  said Herr Rieber.  "I threw him out that time!  This is his
revenge."  The thought restored his good humor.  "Now I shall make him
sorry for this!"

What will you do?"  asked Lizzi in delight.

I'll think of something," he answered her, beaming with confidence.

They watched furtively under their eyebrows halfway across the room
while Hansen put on the red cocked hat at his plate, glanced around him
sourly, and took it off.  That hunchback Glocken was grinning like a
gargoyle.  He would have been glad of a fight, no doubt--he would be in
no danger!  "Will you look at that nasty dwarf," she said, as the
champagne was being poured.  "Why are such horrors allowed to live?"

"That is a great question," said Herr Rieber, beaming at her and
mounting one of his favorite subjects.  "As publisher my aim is to
direct the minds of my readers to the vital problems of our society.  I
have lately got a doctor to begin a series of articles, very learned,
very scientific, advocating the extermination of all the unfit, at
birth or as soon as they prove themselves unfit in any way. Painlessly,
of course, we really wish to be merciful to them as well as to everyone
else.  Not only defective or useless infants, but old as well- all
persons over sixty, or sixty-five, perhaps, or let us say, whenever
they lose their usefulness; in bad health, exhausted, a drain upon the
energies of the gifted, the young and strong of our nation- why should
we handicap them with such burdens?  The doctor is preparing to present
this thesis,

with the strongest arguments, examples and proofs drawn from me dica
research and practice and sociological statistics.  Jews too, of course
and then all persons of illegitimate mixtures of race, white with
colore, of any kind- Chinese, Negroes... all such.  And for any white
man convicted of serious crime- well, as for him," he twinkled at her
mischievously "if we do not put him to death, at least the state shall
make certain he does not bring any more of his kind into the world!"

"Wonderful," sang Lizzi in rapture, "then we would not have the dwarf
around, nor that dreadful little man in the wheel chair either nor
those Spaniards!"

"And a good many more besides!  To our new world---" said Her Rieber,
lifting his glass to hers, his spirits rushing back so merrily in his
vision of the glorious future he almost forgot that no amount of
extermination of the kind of people he didn't like could possibly
include the one he liked least- Arne Hansen, who was himself one of the
strong, the healthy, the useful, the powerful, the man who knew how to
defend himself, who would always, ever and anywhere, find the chair
marked with his name and take it, or take it anyhow, as he had done
with Herr Rieber's plainly marked deck chair.  That hairy paw, fit to
grapple a lion, that jaw with the big square teeth -Herr Rieber
shuddered abruptly.  Such thoughts could ruin every thing--let it all
go until tomorrow.  He gulped his champagne as if it were the first
swig from a stein of beer.  Lizzi tossed hers down too, and he poured
again at once, and ordered another bottle.  The great evening was begun
at last, and where might it not end?  Herr Rieber was certain that he
knew.

The purser, dodging and striking at the colored balloons floating in
his path as if they were perhaps horseflies, halted at Mrs. Treadwell's
table with a bottle in one hand and two champagne glasses in the other.
"We Germans, gniiclige Frau," he began, weightily, "are not allowed
any longer since that war to use the word champagne to describe our
German bubbling wine- not that we wish to do so.  But I shall be happy
if you will permit me to offer you a glass of our noble Schaumagein.  I
myself after many years' comparison am not able to distinguish between
this and the very finest Mot Chandon or Veuve Cliequot."

"Naturally not," said Mrs.  Treadwell, consolingly.  "Do sit down, I'll
be delighted.  Have a chair brought, please."  The purser stood,
holding his bottle uncertainly, a faint mistrust of her cordiality
blowing like a

small cold draft through his congenitally clouded mind.  He set it on
the table though, and motioned to a steward to bring the chair.

Jenny and David sat at their own table watching the joyless, agitated
scene, noting certain absences--Dr.  Schumann, Wilhelm Freytag.  Jenny
had seen Freytag in the bar a few minutes earlier, where dinner was
being served him at a small table.  He stood up, bowed and called out
to her, "May I have the first dance this evening?"  "Yes," she called
out without pausing, smiling back at him.  She felt for the first time
that the evening might not be a total loss.  Pleasantly excited, she
reached up and struck lightly at a balloon floating over her head.

'here," she said, "David darling, that is my contribution to this wild,
wild evening."  For when she saw David's face as he came down so
swiftly to join her, with Mrs.  Treadwell lingering so as not to come
near them, she knew he was in love with her again, or trusted his
feelings for her, or perhaps even believed for a moment in her love for
him--no matter what, the blessed reconcilement was occurring again; and
she felt such a warm surge of delight in him she had by internal
violence to restrain herself from ruining everything by saying
something hopeless and unanswerable, such as--"Oh, David darling, why
can't we... why don't we, or why do we, or what shall we do or say or
where shall we go, and why, why, when we have this, must we make each
other so unhappy?"  She kept silence and smiled at him, her eyes
glimmering.  David reached over and touched her hand.  "Jenny angel,
you're looking lovely, you really are," he said seriously as if he did
not expect her to believe it.  But she did, she believed it with all
her heart, and saw him transfigured as he always was in these
mysterious visitations of love between them- reason less causeless,
having its own times and seasons, vanishing at a breath and yet always
bringing with it the illusion that it would last forever.... "You're
looking wonderful too," she said.

Herr Lowenthal, alone at his table, his absurd paper bonnet askew above
his censorious face, chose for his festive dinner schmalz herring in
sour cream, buttered beets, boiled potatoes, and Mnchener beer.  The
rather careless movements of the steward's hands caused him to glance
up.  He caught the brief shadow of a look he knew too well, a
secretive, repelled, contemptuous amusement, ridiculing not only Herr
Lowenthal personally, his whole race and religion, but his wretched

dinner as well, symbol of his condition in life, his place as pariah
in a swinish Gentile society: this dinner he had been forced to select
carefully, even though it was not clean but only permissible, from a
garbage heap of roast pork, pork chops, ham, sausages, pig's knuckles,
lobsters, crabs, oysters, clams, eels--God knows what filth--until even
nearly starved as he was, his stomach turned at the mere sight of the
words on the card.

As the steward, a mild-looking young fellow, whose dislike of Jews was
so ingrained, so much a habit of his second nature he was quite
unconscious that it showed in his face, was about to pour the beer,
Herr Lowenthal almost shouted, "Stop!  That is not what I ordered ...
take back that bottle and bring me a stein of draft Minchener!"

The young man said, "I am sorry, mein Herr, but we have no ckaft beer
left, and no dark beer at all.  Only light beer, in hordes."

'when in such a case, you tell me before, and I do the ordering," said
Herr Lowenthal, furiously.  "Do you pay for this beer, or do I Who
drinks it, you?  What kind of place is this that you can change the
order without telling the customer?  Do you want I should report you to
the head steward?"

The steward appeared unmoved at this threat.  "As you please, mein
Herr," he said in a respectful tone, and Lowenthal saw the shadow of
that look again, undisguised this time- the upper lip curled ever so
slightly, the naturally insolent blue eyes wandering for a second.

"Well, what are you waiting for?"  demanded Lowenthal in fresh rage.
"Pour it out, pour it out and bring me another."  He pushed his glass
towards the edge of the table.  The steward poured the beer, made a few
ritual passes above the table as if refining his services, and went
away swiftly.  Herr Lowenthal then remembered his comic hat, snatched
it off, crumpled it in his fist and kicked it under the table.  He ate
his potatoes and beets in chunks, piling herring and sour cream on
them, the food sticking in his throat so that the beer could hardly
wash it down.  He had made a tour of the ship with some other
passengers, and the sight and smells of the galley had sickened him. He
remembered it again with loathing, the dirty cave below decks where
everything was all the same as cooked in one pot; it was no good trying
to keep clean, to eat decently, the way they handled the stuff it was
dirty anyway from the start, enough to poison a man.  He could not
swallow another mouthful yet he was bitterly hungry.  When the

young steward came back with his second bottle of beer, he pushed away
his plate and said: "Take this swill away and bring me a couple of
hard-boiled eggs, and another bottle of beer."

For dramatic effect, the zarzuela company delayed their entrance until
everyone else was seated.  The Captain, who knew nothing of this
strategy, took his place at his accustomed hour.  Glancing round at the
empty chairs surrounding him, he proceeded to order his dinner without
delay.  The decorations reminded him of grave ornaments in peasant
churchyards.  The center was a large mass of red cotton roses, mixed
with shiny tinfoil foliage and lace paper flowers of an unknown
species.  A stuffed dove with a few feathers missing was perched beak
downward on a stick above the floral arrangements, carrying around its
neck a placard bearing in multicolored crayon the single word
"Homenaje."  The Captain leaned forward in idle curiosity, even
amusement at this childish display, and drew into his nostrils an
almost lethal cloud of synthetic rose scent.  Sitting back and turning
his head aside, he breathed out as long as he could, then began to
sneeze.  He sneezed three times inwardly, one forefinger pressed firmly
to his upper lip as he had been taught to do in childhood, to avoid
sneezing in church.  Silently he was convulsed with internal
explosions, feeling as if his eyeballs would fly out, or his eardrums
burst.  At last he gave up and felt for his handkerchief, sat up
stiffly, head averted from the room, and sneezed steadily in luxurious
agony a dozen times with muted sounds and streaming eyes, until the
miasma was sneezed out, and he was rewarded with a good nose-blow. This
cleared his head, but further dimmed his view of this ill-advised,
extremely dubious occasion, unlike any he had known in his whole
experience.  With his own hands, at arm's length, he shoved the
pestiferous homage dear across the table lrrom him.  The dove fell off
his perch and the Captain did not notice.  He glanced at his watch, and
it was almost a quarter of an hour past the precise moment when his
soup should have been set before him.  The Captain had not been kept
waiting, not even in his own house, since he became Captain.  He began
to brood in ruffled, glaring, swollen immobility, extremely resembling
an insulted parrot.  His dignity demanded that he begin his dinner at
once as a rebuke to their impudence, and to further ignore as far as he
was able the presence of these guttersnipes from Granada, or wherever
they came from.  He glanced about him until his eyes rested coldly on
several members of his scattered dining circle- the Huttens and Frau
Rittersdorf sat together, eating already, indifferent to the goings-on
around them.  That Rieber fellow and that Lizzi were behaving like
monkeys as usual, waving glasses at each other.  Little Frau Schmitt
was sitting with the Baumgartners--at least he had been spared their
company!  He could not say he regretted the absence of any one of them,
but he resented the reason for their absence.  It was his due right and
privilege to protect himself against the tedious society of his table,
voyage after wearisome voyage of it; he could and did retreat to the
sanctuary of the bridge, where he saw only subordinates, who would not
dream of speaking until they were spoken to; who did as they were told
instantly in silence as matter of course.  That was his true world, of
unquestioned authority, clearly defined caste and carefully graded
privilege, and it irked him grievously to be forced to concern himself
with any other.  He knew well what human trash his ship- all ships-
carried to and from all the ports of the world: gamblers, thieves,
smugglers, spies, political deportees and refugees, stowaways, drug
peddlers, all the gutter-stuff of the steerage moving like plague rats
from one country to another, swarming and ravening and undermining the
hard-won order of the cultures and civilizations of the whole world.
Even on the surface, where one might expect at least the good
appearance of things, what moral turpitude showed itself, given
opportunity.  He knew too well the respectable father of a family, or
the trusted wife and mother, traveling alone for once, taking a holiday
from decency as if they were in another country where no one could find
out their names; as if a ship were merely their floating brothel!

His stomach burning, he dabbled in his thin soup, afraid of his food
which had a way of turning and rending him.  So- these Spaniards were
no news to him even before he picked up the gossip and rumors about
them from his table guests.  It had all been abysmally beneath his
notice, they were so obviously pimps with their prostitutes disguised
as dancers in order to get proper passports, up to their shady tricks
night and day.  Anything would do, from scrounging money from
passengers to stealing right and left from shops in Santa Cruz he
understood now the meaning of that howling leaping madwoman on the pier
as the ship drew away; and the only question was, how had they managed
to blackmail so many people, how had they got themselves seated at his
table, where they had no right on earth to be, and what criminal
effrontery had given them the notion in the first

place?  And what b this was the painful question, not to be answered:
what had he been thinking of, to let such disorder thrive under his
very eyes, and to consider it of no importance, something for the women
to gossip about?

He resisted an impulse to leave the table then and there.  It would be
better to stay, to observe them further, to let their impudence run its
course, and to chastise them publicly with his contempt at the right
moment.  The one thing necessary with such people was to control them,
to keep them firmly in their place.  Once you allowed them the smallest
impertinence, they would edge in and crowd you out like that camel who
got his nose into the Arab's tent, and after that, there was only one
course to take: they must be put down with fire and sword.

The Captain was fascinated by American gangster films full of
gunfights, raids on night clubs, wild motor chases between police and
bandits with screaming sirens and spouting machine guns; abductions,
roadside murders, bullet-riddled bodies streaming blood sprawled about
the streets, with only now and then it long intervals a lone gangster
being led to the death chamber in the last scene.  He now entertained
himself with dreaming, as he sometimes did, that he was turning one of
those really elegant portable machine guns on a riotous mob somewhere,
always from a splendidly advantageous position, swiveling it in a half
circle, mowing them down in rows.  At this point there was some
confusion in his mind, though not enough to interfere with the
enjoyment of his fantasy; for though he could not imagine himself as
being on any side except that of established government, he had in fact
noticed that it was nearly always the gangsters who were shown
operating the machine guns.  There was no good reason why this should
be so, and it was a state of affairs which could only exist in a
barbarous nation like the United States.  It was true that all the
Americans were devoted to crime and criminals, to indecent dancing and
drug-taking in low Negro jazz cellars, a debased people who groveled in
vice, and left their police to depend mostly on tear gas bombs, or hand
grenades or revolvers, all more awkward and less effective than machine
guns.  Even supposing that an American policeman might possibly be an
honest man, though very unlikely, why put him at such a disadvantage?
If it had not been for the constant gangster warfare among themselves,
killing each other off in great numbers, they might easily have taken
the country over entirely, years ago!  But it was common knowledge
that American gangsters and police were in close partnership, one could
not thrive without the other.  The leaders on both sides divided the
power and the spoils, and they took in everything, from highest
government posts to labor unions to the gayest night clubs and even the
stock market, the food crops--yes, and the international shipping, God
knows!  All all was one vast gangster's paradise, where only petty
criminals and stupid policemen and decent workmen got killed or beaten
and cheated.  Besides the moving pictures which told him all this, the
newspapers every day told him the same.  In a word, the whole country
was run by mobs of gangsters, there was not a single law in the land
that they could not break as they pleased, and not a single man who
would have dared to oppose them.

The Captain, from his eminence of perfectly symmetrical morality, a man
who steered by chart and compass, secure in his rank in an ascending
order of superiors so endless the highest was unknown, invisible to
him, took deep pleasure in his apocalyptic vision of the total anarchic
uproar of the United States, a place he had never seen, for no ship of
his carried him into any port more interesting than Houston, Texas,
with its artificial canal in a meadow in a part of the country far
removed from any marks of civilization.  It was narrower and duller
than the river Weser that took him into Bremerhaven.

He reveled secretly in the notion of lawless murderous fury breaking
out again and again at any time, anywhere- in some place he could not
even fix on the map, but always among people whom it was lawful to
kill, with himself at the center, always in command and control.
Nothing worthy of his hopes of violence had ever occurred, not even in
the war, where his part had been useful, honorable, if inconspicuous,
as he was bound to admit, and altogether lacking in opportunities for
him to exercise his real talents.  This fate seemed to dog him:
competent as he was to deal with the largest disorders and
insubordination, here on his ship he dealt with silly rows, head
crackings in the steerage, a gang of petty knaves making themselves a
nuisance: beneath his notice, yet he must deal with them.

He brooded on his vanished Germany, the Germany of his childhood and
earliest youth, the only Germany whose existence he admitted in his
soul- that fatherland of order, harmony, simplicity, propriety, where
every public place was hung with signs forbidding this or that, guiding
the people so there could be no excuse for anyone making a mistake;
whoever did so disobeyed clearly with felonious intent.  This

made the administration of justice more swift and certain than in
other countries.  Set the very tiniest sign saying Verboten at the edge
of?  a grass plot, and even a three-year-old boy who could not read
should know better than to put his toe over the edge.  He had not
known, or perhaps had been guilty of inattentiveness to signs, because
in childish ignorance or carelessness, he had put his toe over the edge
of the grass plot near the little sign, and his father, who had taken
him for his morning walk in the park, had whipped him with his walking
stick until his back was welted blue all over then and there, on the
very spot, so that the lesson might sink not only into the culprit's
mind, but furnish a public demonstration of the discipline parents
should practice on their young.... The Captain shuddered, leaped out of
his revery, glanced at his watch and said to the steward, "Pour my wine
please, and bring the fish."

At that moment the Spanish company erupted into the dining room in the
full uproar of their professional native dress and arts, and bore in
procession towards the Captain to the rhythmic strains of a popular
bullfighter's entrance march, played on two guitars by Tito and Manolo
to the light flutter of castanets on the fingers of the ladies, whose
brilliantly smiling faces were masks in black, white and red.  They
wore flimsy red and white figured cotton gowns with long ruffled
trains.  High tortoise-shell combs filled out in front with cotton
roses and draped with short black lace mantillas adorned their shining
black hair.  They glittered with sequined fans, jingled with necklaces,
earrings and bracelets of colored glass and ornaments of gold-colored
metal; their skirts, shorter in front, showed their beautiful ankles
and feet in black lace stockings and red satin high-heeled slippers.

The men wore their uniforms of tight high-wasted black trousers, wide
red sashes and short black jackets, their thin black dancing pumps with
flat ribbon bows.  Ric and Rac wore their bullfighter and Carmen
costumes, a little disheveled from pulling each other back by clutching
hair or garments, each wanting to go first in the parade.

The whole company circled around the table in a bright carnival of
bowing and strumming and clacking and whirling, every face fixed in an
intent smile.  The Captain, monumentally remote, rose and returned the
greeting with deadly courtesy.  They responded as to an enthusiastic
audience.  At last the stewards pulled out the ladies' chairs,

and they settled with excited little cries, like crows to a cornfield,
Lola at the Captain's right hand, Amparo at his left; the others found
their places at the much extended board and there at last after their
long fight, they found themselves seated at the Captain's table, the
high place they were determined to be even if only once in their lives,
and not only to be there, but to prove their right to the place they
had won.  Their smiles faded, their eyes were hard, glittering,
savagely triumphant as they glanced around at the other passengers,
some of whom were still pretending to ignore them.  Let them!  Not for
a moment did they forget the point of their victory.  They had come to
do honor to the Captain, and they did him honor at length and in
profusion.  As food was set before them, grew cold and was taken away,
except for Ric and Rac, whose appetites never failed, they rose in turn
with lifted glasses and made speeches, each expressing in a slightly
different arrangement of florid phrases the burning hope that this
beautiful occasion would serve to bring those two great martyred
countries, Spain and Germany, closer to each other, that the old
splendid order might be restored--the Spanish monarchy, the German
Empire, in all their glory!  The Captain began to squirm slightly as
oratory piled upon oratory; when the political trend of their words
became clearer, he turned pale with rage.  He had never ceased to mourn
the Kaiser; he loathed with all his soul the debased
pseudo-republicanism of defeated Germany, and was shocked to discover
that this ragtag bobtailed lot were claiming as it were relationship
with him, calling themselves Royalists; they were toasting a high
glorious cause to which by the very nature of things they had no right
to adhere- they were only to live under it, as under the whip of their
master.  Royalists?  How did they dare to say the word, much less call
themselves that?  They were the beggars whose place it was to line the
streets and cheer when royalty passed, to scramble for the money thrown
at the cathedral door after royal weddings, to dance in the streets at
fairs and pass the basket afterward.

The Captain could hardly find the will to raise his glass, he felt he
would choke if a drop of wine passed his lips in such infamous company.
He suspended it a few inches above his plate with a nearly
imperceptible flourish, nodded stiffly without looking up and set it
down again.  The zarzuela company rose stormily as if in a delirium of
admiration, crying, "Long live your mother!"  at which indecent
familiarity the Captain blushed in deepest resentment.  His mother
had

been dead for more than twenty years, and he had not liked her much
when she was alive.  As his invaders closed in upon him, leaning in
until the beads of black wax on the women's eyelashes, the almost
liquid oiliness of the men's hair, the intolerable stench of their
perfumes, seemed to be rubbing off on his skin, tainting him forever,
his grudging pretense of acknowledgment vanished altogether.  His face
grew sharper and dryer, he sat back with his hands on the arms of his
chair.  His former guests began to suffer for him, and their eyes began
to meet from their scattered places in the salon, with a kind of
unanimous agreement among them, for the first time: even Lizzi and Frau
Rittersdorf shook their heads and frowned together, even the purser and
Dr.  Schumann, who had come in late, exchanged looks of disapproval.
The young Cuban married pair, who had put their children to bed after
an early supper, invited the Mexican diplomat's wife, little Seniora
Ortega, to join them at the table assigned to them, since she had been
turned away from her own, and they were all looking for respectable
company in the emergency.  They watched the performance of the dancers
around the Captain's table for a few minutes.  The young husband
remarked: "It is most inappropriate, When I bought those tickets for
their raffle, I had no notion they were planning such impudence as
this!"

"It makes one almost ashamed of being Spanish, doesn't it?"  asked
Seniora Ortega, well aware of what the Spanish of Spain, even the
lowest of them, thought about the Spanish of Mexico and Cuba...
mongrels speaking a parrot Spanish, their veins rotted with Indian and
Negro blood.  "These are lower than Indians," she said.

"Ah well," said the young man, "they are only gypsies, from Granada."
"I was told," said his wife, "that they are even worse than gypsies
they are Spaniards calling themselves gypsies."

"Yes, and behaving like it!"  said Seniora Ortega.  "But how I pity
that poor Captain, and I never expected to feel sorry for him!  I have
always found all Germans very unsympathetic.  After knowing so many
Germans in Mexico, I say often to my husband, "Oh, please be careful
and never get yourself sent to Germany!"

"My great-grandfather was a German, a businessman of Havana," said the
young Cuban wife, rather unpleasantly.  "Oh," said Seniora Ortega,
dismayed.  "I'm so sorry."  They went on with their dinner in
silence.

At the Captain's table, Lola took charge of the ceremonies by right.
She turned, her eyes blazing with fury, and brandished her wine glass
in all directions like a weapon, calling out in her deep voice:
"Silence!  I wish to propose a toast!  To the eternal friendship of our
two great nations, the Kingdom of Spain and the Empire of Germany, and
to the great leaders who are restoring order and government to these
countries in distress!  Viva!"  and "Viva!  Viva!"  shouted the others,
in chorus, drinking down their wine.  The Captain did not move, and not
a glass was lifted except their own.  Then Lola shouted again, her
voice brassy with rage: "And to all selfish, obstructive, inhuman
people who refuse to contribute their share or take part in this
occasion meant to do homage to courage, to leadership, to nobility of
mind and heart, to-in short--to you, my Captain," she said, bowing
towards the Captain with her most brilliant smile, "to all who have
tried to destroy the joy and beauty of this homage, eternal shame and
confusion and dishonor!"

All the dancers, even Ric and Rac, shouted "Viva!"  and swallowed their
wine.  The Captain, his head buzzing, not sure whether a toast or a
curse had been proposed, for or against whom, rose and flung his
napkin.  The Cuban students at once leaped up waving large goblets of
red wine, shouting cheerfully, "To eternal confusion!  To dishonor!  To
shame!  Viva las Vergiienzast.  Viva la Cucaracha!"  and they burst
noisily into their song about the unhappy cockroach and her many
privations.  All over the salon voices joined in, a large untidy
bawling at first which at once settled into a chorus, hands clapping,
feet patting: "Cucaracha, cucaracha, ya no puede caminar, Porque no tie
ne porque n o tie ne Marihuana para fumar!"  The Captain inserted his
fingers into his collar as if he were being strangled, spat out the
words "Thank you, thank you" between his teeth, and strode out of the
salon charging blindly between tables.

The dancers ignored the situation, and all else except their chosen
object; they trailed after him still crying "Viva!  Viva!"  though
quite drowned out by the rowdy singing At the head of the stairs they
looked in vain for him; he had eluded them, had taken to the bridge
like a fox to his burrow, and was not seen again for twenty-four
hours.

Jenny broke down as David knew she would, and began swaying and patting
and clapping her hands with the rest, singing at the top of her voice
about the cockroach, going straight ahead from bad to worse, for each
verse was a little more ribald than the one before, and

Jenny sang them as they came, until people at nearby tables began
staring.  She was the only woman singing.  "My God," he said at last,
in despair.  "Do you know what you are saying?"

Jenny went on beating time hand and foot.  "Of course, I do.  If you
like, I'll sing it in English.  Please, David, I can't help it.  I'm
just as much a prisoner in myself as you are in you.  I think this
whole thing is wild, and everything about it is crooked, we both know
it; but I don't understand why, if you know it is all so wrong, you
didn't do something about it--why didn't you let me speak to the
police, or tell one of the shopkeepers in time?  We saw these people
stealing right and left."

David said shortly, "It was none of our business."

"Well, then, what makes you so self-righteous about it?  Why do you sit
and sulk?"  asked Jenny, quite reckless in her impatience.

'"This is none of our business either," said David, a trap like
finality in his tone.  Jenny drank her wine and watched passengers
straggling slowly in the wake of the dancers.  "Well," she told him,
"have a merry evening.  I am going to dance with the first man that
asks me!"  And left him alone to the dessert and coffee.

The band leader had been well instructed by Tito and Lola; he was to
play alternate German and Spanish dance music until time for the
drawing of tickets for the prizes.  After that, he could play what he
chose; he was given five tickets for his obliging consent to this, and
had already set his heart on the white embroidered silk shawl for his
girl in Wieshaden.  As the zarzuela company with their followers
appeared, he struck his favorite "Tales from the Vienna Woods" with
great spirit.  At the first sound of the music, a faint spark, a
firefly gaiety, played through the crowd lighting each face with a
wavering, hopeful smile.  The Spanish company led the way, paired off
and swung into step as their feet touched the deck, stepping out
rhythmically pair by pair, matched like slender porcelain figurines
alike in their practiced grace, serpent-litheness, thin-boned, smooth
narrow heads, fine feet and hands.  They seemed to be a beautiful,
evil-tempered family of brothers and sisters, their hard eyes and
bitter mouths denying their blithe motions.  Several German pairs
followed- Frau Rittersdorf with a young officer, the Baumgartners,
sad-faced, Elsa and her father, Herr Rieber and Lizzi -they all looked
rustic and awkward and mis-matched beside the Spaniards--their bodies
all shapes and heights and widths,

their faces nondescript, their coloring lifeless; nothing but a common
heaviness proclaimed them as members of the same nation; that, and a
certain fitful, uneasy vivacity as if practicing social graces not
quite their own.  The Spaniards did not favor them with so much as a
glance, and the Germans could not take their gaze from the Spaniards.
As they watched, first to one and then another came a vague impression
that shortly settled into a disturbing certainty; the zarzuela company
was no longer dancing a pure, classical Viennese waltz, with their
birdlike lightness; they were- yes, no doubt of it- doing an imitation-
an insulting parody, of the German style of waltzing.

Mrs.  Treadwell, with her young officer, noticed this most amusing bit
of comedy, and laughed merrily together as they moved into the dance.
Jenny and Freytag saw it too, at the same moment.  Jenny said, "Oh how
cruel and funny!"  and Freytag said a trifle grimly, "It's almost too
true to be funny, I think," and swung her firmly into step.  Within a
turn or two, it became impossible for them not to see clearly that the
zarzuela company was now giving imitations of them--and it was further
impossible for any of them to deny that they were as comic as those
public figures of fun, Lizzi and Herr Rieber.  Pepe and Amparo had
become perfect impersonators of Mrs.  Treadwell's mincing, arm's length
style, her wooden young partner; Manolo and Concha did a wicked
imitation of Herr Freytag's somewhat muscular aggressiveness and
Jenny's abandoned, swooning manner, head thrown back loosely.  Pancho
and Pastora had from the first stuck firmly with their parody of Herr
Rieber and Lizzi, Pancho bouncing like a rubber ball, Pastora turning
on an axis like an animated flagpole.

"No, really," said Jenny, stopping abruptly, "that is too much.  Those
people are really insufferable... I don't want to dance any more."

"Neither do I," said Freytag.  "Let's make a tour of the ship.  Let's
see what makes it run.  I'm bored with this."

Mrs.  Treadwell danced with her officer once, declined Denny's
invitation, who thought she would do to pass the time until he could
catch Pastora, and accepted the fat purser's, who walloped with
astonishing speed three times around the narrow dance floor with his
partner streaming from his clasp like a scarf, then halted suddenly,
blowing and snorting, his face a rich red-violet, his eyes closed,
until Mrs.  Treadwell, alarmed, asked if there were anything she could
do?

"Yes," he gasped, "you may sit with me and have some more Schaum

But providentially her good-looking, gold-braided young officer
intervened, and with a deferential bow to the purser, took her away
again.  He had a smooth fair face with no expression at all, she
observed, none.  He was as sleek, neat, immaculately correct and
inhuman looking as if he were poured into a mold.  He danced with wax
like smoothness, with small even steps accommodated to hers, holding
her at an unfashionable, formal distance, as if he had been trained at
her own dancing school.  "Why, he's young enough to be my son," she
could not help thinking, "and he reminds me of my grandfather."  She
decided this was no real drawback, settled into the leisurely spin of
his style and began to enjoy the floating lightness and the pleasant
male nearness, no weight and no burden but only a presence.  She closed
her eyes a moment and danced in lulling darkness, with a diffused
tenderness for this wraith who guided her with light fingers at waist
and palm, the lover who had danced with her in her daydreams long
before she had danced with any man.  Opening her eyes, she found him
watching her face with a peculiar intentness unexpected and disturbing.
Was it her imagination, instructed in the ways of the lurking animal,
was it her own seeking eyes?  Or was it really a goa tish gleam?

--for as her glance met his, his eye became bland, distant, even maybe
a touch bored, and he said, "Let's leave this to those ruffians.
Wouldn't you like to make a little tour of the ship?  It's a kind of
custom on gala evenings.

Mrs.  Treadwell, remembering all the voyages she had made in all sorts
of ships to how many ports, had never yet on the most gala of evenings
made a tour of any ship.  It was hard to imagine anything more boring,
perhaps; she smiled at her escort, slipped her hand into the crook of
his elbow, and set out for new, if not amusing, sights.

When the music changed to a rumba, the Cuban students moved in a body
to take the Spanish dancing girls for partners--it was a gaudy race in
which each one claimed the girl he reached first.  The two left out
turned at once to look for other possibilities; one seized Jenny as she
was leaving the dance with Freytag, and the other, smiling and humming
the tune, slipped an arm around Elsa and took her hand, and she found
herself in a daze looking into the eyes of her love, the stranger, the
beautiful merry one for her.  No, it could not be- yet he

was still smiling, frowning a little, and she felt his arm tugging at
her waist as she stood planted like a tree, unable to move a muscle.
"Oh no, come now," he said, in very civil persuasive Spanish, no argot
at all, "we are going to dance."

Elsa stood immovable.  "I can't," she whispered in a small child's
voice, frightened.  "No, no, please- I can't."

"Naturally you can," he assured her lightly, "anything with legs can
dance!"  And he performed the feat of dancing in one spot while
embracing a motionless form too weighty to push from its foundation.
"You see?"

"Oh, no," cried Elsa in despair, "I never learned how!"

He dropped his hands and stood back and she saw with terror a look of
serious distaste in his face.  "Perdoneme!"  he said and turned swiftly
away as from something extremely unpleasant, and as she stood there,
was gone, without looking back.  Oh, and he would never look back.  In
a few seconds he was dancing with Mrs.  Treadwell, who left her oR cer
for a brief turn with this diverting acreature out of a carnival, and
Elsa felt her heart break quite finally.  She wished to go at once to
bed, and cry as much as she wanted, but first she must tell her father
and mother, or they would be looking for her.  They were playing
checkers in the salon.  "No, Elsa," said her mother, "if you go to bed
so early, you will not sleep well.  Why aren't you dancing?"

"I don't feel like it, Mother," she said, so desolately both her
parents gave her looks of intimate sympathy and understanding.  "Ah
well," said her mother, so knowingly that Elsa blushed for shame, "you
are wise to be' quiet.  So just sit here and play checkers with your
father, and I will go on knitting, and we will have a nice evening
together after all this hubbub and foolishness."

Elsa, feeling her doom in her, where before she had only feared it, in
some terrible future, smiled blindly at her father, and began her
play.

Arne Hansen, sitting in a deck chair with a bottle of beer on the floor
beside him, his big shoulders hunched and his eyebrows in a tangle over
the bridge of his nose, watched Amparo dance first with Manolo and then
with one of those crazy students, and she had not given him a glance
all evening.  When the third tune struck up, a German waltz, he
lumbered over to her, standing near Manolo fanning herself.  Manolo
discreetly evanesced from the scene, and Hansen took her

firmly by the elbows, his favorite clutch when dancing.  Amparo waste
no words.  She wrenched free violently, dropped her fan, which he did
not notice.  She bent to pick it up while he was lunging towards her.
second time, ground her heel cruelly into his foot, and rising abruptly
cracked him under the jaw with the top of her head, closing his mouth
so abruptly he bit his tongue, which bled.

"Now, see what you do," he said, accusingly, getting out a large
handkerchief and collecting bright red spots on it, dabbing and
dabbing.

"Let me alone, then!"  cried Amparo in pure rage.  "This one evening I
will not lug your stinking corpse around everywhere I go.  I am
working, it is nearly time for the raffle, you go and sit over there
and drid your beer and keep out of the way."

"I bought four tickets," Hansen reminded her, feeling in his shi pocket
and bringing out his stubs.

"Yes, four, you cheap bastard," said Amparo, deliberately.  "Four!  and
she spat just past his left sleeve.

"You'll take back that word," said Hansen, with sudden dignity "You'll
be sorry you did that."  He returned to his chair and ordered two more
bottles of beer.

Her student no sooner had grasped Jenny's waist and band than he began
manipulating her, whirling her around, tossing her out to arm's length
and retrieving her on the beat, closing in and embracing he hotly,
throwing her away again carelessly, until she almost expected to be
seized by the legs and spun around head downward.  She protested out of
breath.  "I'm an infighter," she told him brightly, "I like to slug it
out toe to, toe.  All these acrobatics- what for?"

He was delighted with the compliment.  "Ah," he said unexpectedly in a
species of English, "you like?  So?"  and he began winding her out as
if she were a top.

"No," said Jenny, "no," and she broke away, laughing of course.  "Too
much!"  She waved him good-by merrily, merrily, both of them laughing,
and ran to Freytag.

He favored her with a very German, superior smile, saying: "Tell me,
you should know this, do all women prefer thugs, and maquereaux, and
guttersnipes at heart?  What is this strange feminine taste for
lowness?  La nostalgic de la boue?"

"Low?"  said Jenny, puzzled.  "Mud?  He's just a noisy middle-class
medical student, he could be a bore, but what's low about him"

"He was dancing with you without respect, as if he were making fun of
you," said Freytag, bluntly.

"He may have been," she said, simply.  "That's his affair, not mine."
"Have you no pride?"  he asked severely, for he was tired of trying to
understand this strange girl who seemed to lack everything he required
in a woman and yet disturbed him almost constantly with a sexual desire
unlike any he had known--pure lust without one trace warmth or
tenderness.  He did not even like her.

"Not much," she said.  "Are you trying to pick a quarrel with me?

Don't do it.  I have enough of that already."

Freytag, reflecting that this was indeed a bad start for an evening of
which he had some hopes, changed his tone at once.  "Don't mind me," he
said, "I am perhaps just a little jealous.  Let's dance again before-
start out ramblings, what do we care what those funny Spaniards
think?"

David finished his dessert, drank his coffee with a liqueur and a
cigarette, then wandered leisurely out to the bar, rather hoping that
Jenny might notice his entire composure.  She was not in sight, though,
so he joined William Denny in the bar, where the Baumgartners were
already installed without their child at a small table.  The Huttens
were sharing a bottle of wine at another, Bebe, apparently completely
recovered from his misadventure, lying near their feet.

David wondered now and again at the way he and Denny had set fled down
into the limited but satisfactory relationship of fellow drinkers.  He
decided that Denny could drink with anybody or alone, it made no
difference; but David, whose main trouble was that he did not really
like anybody except Jenny now and then, and Jenny less and less every
day, was at ease with Denny because, so far as David could see, Denny
did not exist at all; at least, as nothing more than a bundle of
commonplace appetites and cranky local prejudices.  He had tried him
out and there was nothing to him.  They sat and drank each in his own
silence so far removed and so unrelated to each other it had the look
of companionship.

Over their fourth whiskey, David remarked in a sluggish tone, his
tongue a little thick: "Every time I look out there, I see her going
by

with Freytag.  Now, there she goes again," he said, waving his hand
loosely, "there she goes."

Denny leaned sidewise from his stool, he bulged towards David, his face
full of conspiracy.  "I don't want to get personal," he said earnestly,
"I never mix in anybody's business, understand, but if that bitch
belonged to me, I'd break every bone in her.  Not that it's any of my
business, understand, but believe me you're getting' a raw deal."

His moony expression of solicitude touched David, who felt at once a
responsive glow of benevolent feeling not exactly for Denny but for the
words.  "Oh, that's all right," he said, "I know what you're up
against, too.  That Pastora.  We're just two shipwrecked mariners in
the same lifeboat," he said, genially.  Inside him the thin sharp wires
were twanging, snapping, letting go one at a time, he was getting
easier under the ribs, he wasn't even annoyed with himself to hear
himself talking like a fool to Denny, who talked like one all the time;
in fact, he enjoyed it.  "We all have our troubles," he told Denny,
expansively.  "You'll find a way out."

"I'm tryin' to find a way in," said Denny, lewdly.  "The way our's
easy.  I don't mind tellin' you, she got a lot more out of me than I
meant to give her, she's a slick worker; and now she's tryin' to give
me the runaround.  Well, there's goin' to be a showdown tonight, this
here very night, I'm tellin' you.  It's not goin' to be any trouble, no
trouble at all for anybody but her," he said.  "I just mean to show
her, like I told you, that's all."

David thought this over carefully.  "Well," he decided,
sympathetically, "with a woman like that, no wonder you eat yeast."

Denny was bewildered but not offended.  What's yeast got to do with
it?"  he inquired.  "Who said yeast?"  He began pushing David about
somewhat at arm's length, urgently.  David leaned back out of his
range.  "Go on," said Denny, "are you a man, or a mouse?  Go ahead. 
Now is your time.  Knock her front teeth out."

"Pastora?"  asked David.  "Why don't you?  That's your job."

"Yeah, well" said Denny, doubtfully.  "No, not exactly.  I aim to give
her a little more time to do the right thing.  I'd like her in good
condition," he said, thoughtfully.  "I wouldn't want her all bunged up
what I always say is, better the man, worse the bitch trouble.  That's
me.  But you've had that Jenny, and I'd put her out of circulation if
she belonged to me."

David focused his nearsighted eyes with some effort upon the face

sagging near him and said distinctly, because it now occurred to him
that Denny was getting extremely personal, "Well, she doesn't belong to
you," and added, with a stroke of lightning revelation, "She doesn't
belong to anybody, not even to herself."  He heard this with some
astonishment, then felt instantly he had crossed a line into a new
truth and was even then looking back calmly on old false hopes.  His
brief flash of elation sank again into gloom as the dancers passed the
barroom door again, revolving swiftly- among them, Pastora with her
student, Jenny with Freytag.  He rapped on the bar and pushed their two
glasses forward.  "The same," he said.  "Oh well, so long as they keep
passing we know where they are."

"Yeah, and what they're doin'," said Denny, leering with such abandon
his face went all out of shape.

The bride and groom, arm in arm, paused in their after-dinner stroll on
the lee side away from the dancing, stood back to allow the surly blond
boy to pass with the sick man in the wheel chair, the ghostly little
dying man drooping among his rugs and blankets, turning the leaves of a
small Bible with tremulous fingers.  As he neared them, he lifted
exalted eyes and raised a shaking hand towards them reaching to touch
the bride.  Her husband felt her tremble deeply and shrink against him.
"God bless your marriage and make it fruitful," said Herr Graf.  The
groom said, "Thank you, sir, thank you," for he was bound to pay the
respect due to age, and they remained motionless until the boy,
ignoring them with a furious face, had pushed the chair safely past
them.  The bride still trembled a little, and leaned closer to her
husband.  "Oh, it sounded like a curse," she said.  "Oh, he almost
touched

Her husband said in his new tone of husbandly fondness, indulgence,
reassurance and guidance, delicious to them both: "You know perfectly
there is no such thing as a curse.  Besides, what could harm us?  He is
only a poor dying man- after all, he wished us well.  It is a sad thing
to be old and sick..."

The bride, who was gentle-hearted, repented at once of her uncharitable
feelings, and being honest, she knew they were caused by her horror of
age and ugliness and sickness and her fear of them, and her greater
fear of death, which was the only alternative, the one possible escape
from them.  Feeling rather sensible and calm, and joyously well and
immortal, she said in a dreaming voice, "I hope we die young."  Her

husband, in the privacy of the bow, slipped his arm around her and
gave her a little shake.  "Die young?  We'll never die.  We're going to
live together until the end of the world!"  They laughed together for
happiness, without a trace of irony, and kissed hastily and guiltily,
for fear they might be seen.

Johann had been so late for dinner the salon was almost deserted, he
missed the balloons and the paper hats and all, and nobody came to sit
with him.  He was late because his uncle had chosen to have a coughing
fit that almost strangled him.  Johann had given him smelling salts to
breathe, had washed his face in cold water, and sat fanning him with a
folded paper, hoping he would die.  Instead he had come around rather
strongly, and demanded to be bathed and dressed, fresh from the skin
out, demanded that Johann sit with him and help him eat his dinner, and
insisted on being taken for an airing on deck afterwards- the old
hypocrite, pretending he wanted fresh air when what he really wanted
was to watch the dancing and hear the music and talk about how sinful
it all was.  By the time Johann finished his hurried dinner and got on
deck, Concha was already dancing.  She wiggled her fingers at him over
her partner's shoulder and gave him a look that would melt stone; but
Johann still knew that without money he would never be any nearer her
than he was then.  When she saw him again, wheeling his uncle on the
margin of the party, she was with another partner, and this time she
looked at his uncle, crossed herself, made an obscene sign against the
evil eye with her right hand, and went on.

Johann was slowly coming to a most desperate resolve--money he would
have, he would not put up another day with this selfish greedy old man
who pretended to be such a saint and was pure devil.  He would end this
slavery, he would free himself no matter how-this is the end, the end,
he said, and each time the thought repeated itself in words he got
again a shock of fright that almost stopped his heart; yet he would do
it.  He would ask his uncle once more for the money he owed him- no
more than he would have to pay a servant; if he refused, why then- then
he would search the cabin, he would find it.  He believed his uncle
kept his wallet under the mattress at the head of the bed.  He would
wait until his uncle slept, he would give him a sleeping powder, he
would find the money and take it

He turned the wheel chair abruptly into the doorway and started for the
cabin.

"Where are you going, nephew?"  asked Herr Graf, rousing with a
groan.

Where do you think?  Back to that filthy hole.  It is time for you to
sleep!"

"Turn back, Johann.  I do not want to sleep."  As the wheels bumped
roughly from step to step downward, Johann stubbornly silent, Herr Graf
added: "God is good, but He is also just.  I say again, I leave you to
Him, Johann."

"You'd better," said Johann contemptuously, "it's all you can do." 
When he shoved the wheel chair roughly through the cabin door, the
sickly shaded light burning day and night and the profuse loathsome
smells accumulated there almost broke the spirit of his resolution; he
was suffused from head to foot in a slow sweat of terror.  Not daring
to hesitate an instant, he spun the chair around and crouched as if he
would spring at Herr Graf, almost choking on his words.  "Now you will
give me some money, or I'll- where is it?  Where do you hide it, you
old miser?  I give you one more chance.  Where is the money?"

"Not so loud, Johann.  I do not want strangers to know your disgrace.

I expected this," he said calmly, through the bubbling of phlegm in his
throat.  "This is your next step towards damnation.  The money is where
it should be..."

"Give it to me!"  shouted Johann desperately.  "Give me only a
little,

but I must have it.  I will take it, I will kill you if you don't give
me the money!"  and he raised his hands together fingers curved like
talons as if they would close around his uncle's throat.

Herr Graf without moving his head fixed his gaze in Johann's eyes,

lifting both hands, palms outward.  He spoke just above a whisper with
laboring, scanty breath: "Don't do it, my Johann, my dear child.  You
will be found out.  They will put you to death.  Beyond that, Johann,
after your miserable end here, there is God's judgment."

"Damn God's judgment," said Johann raging, but retreating a step,

his fists clenching, "don't talk that rot to me any more.  Where is the
money?  Where is the money?"

"Be a thief if you must, Johann, but not a murderer.  I beg of you,

not for my sake- do you think I am afraid of death?  but for your own,
don't be either.  Don't throw your life away, my child.  Why can't you
be patient just a few days longer, when you have so many years to enjoy
after I am gone?"

Johann's fury and fright broke in him like a burst artery.  His face

crumpled, his chin shook, his eyes filled and flooded over on his
cheeks, his mouth drew together convulsively in the center and opened
at the corners, in a frenzy he shouted and sobbed until his words were
almost smothered in his throat: "I don't want to kill you, I don't want
to rob you, why do you drive me to it?  Why can't you treat me like a
human being, Uncle?  What harm did I do you?  Give me a little money,"
he wept, inconsolably, "that is all I want!  I won't kill you- I want
only to be free!"  He was sitting huddled over the edge of the divan,
mopping his face with his soiled handkerchief and blowing his nose. His
uncle watched him, shaking his head sorrowfully.

"There is no such thing as freedom, Johann," he said, with a long
broken sigh, "no such thing.  If there were, how could you hope to gain
it this way?"

"I want to buy a bottle of wine!"  cried Johann, in a passion of
renewed rebellion.  "I need some decent clothes, you keep me looking
like a beggar!  I want to dance and be young while I'm young, I have
the right to live.  Just because you are going to die- is that any
reason you should take me into the grave with you?"

Herr Graf said, "I wanted only to save your soul, Johann.  You are dear
to me."

Johann felt himself melting, giving way, losing the fight, betrayed by
this sly attack on his blind side, that side of his human feeling that
was famished for love and blinded with the anguish of being forever
outside of life, always left out of things, never being able to take
part, to give his share, to be one of his own kind: he struggled and
thrashed within himself trying to find the very words he needed to
explain to this old man, to placate him if possible, to get what was
needed from him, without hurting him, without stealing, without killing
him, damn him!  "My soul is my own," he said sulkily, almost in his
normal voice.

"No, it is not," said his uncle calmly, "and that is a stupid thing to
say.  But I cannot contest with you any longer.  I shall let you go."
He motioned towards his bunk.  "There," he said, "reach under the
mattress, back near the wall, and give me my wallet."

Johann, shocked by this sudden victory, fumbled among the blankets with
uncertain hands, ashamed and humbled and resentful.  He brought it out
and handed it to Herr Graf, who opened it at once, reached into a
certain compartment without hesitating, and without counting gave a
generous sheaf of notes to Johann, a terrible smile on his suffering
face.

"For your good, I should have done otherwise, perhaps," he said
gently, "but no gift is good unless given with a blessing," he said.
"Bless you.  Johann, you should have known I am not afraid of death.  I
do not give you this for fear that you may take my life.  I do it
because I am afraid you may otherwise become a murderer.  These are two
quite different things, Johann.  This is yours and I am no longer your
guardian.  Take it freely and go your ways, my child."

Clutching the solid roll of money he believed could buy him everything
he wanted, Johann blurted helplessly, baffled and bewildered by his
uncle's determination to keep him forever in the wrong, "Uncle, you
treat me like a servant, but you wouldn't dare cheat a servant as you
cheated me!"

"I never mistook you for a servant, Johann.  Don't attempt to justify
yourself in such a dishonest way... and now, please help me to go to
bed, for I am very tired."

Johann stuffed the money in his inside jacket pocket, and went about
his duties with a smoldering face.  "And give me a sleeping draught,
please," said Herr Graf.  Watching him drink it, Johann was moved with
pity.  He fought this new strange feeling as he undressed the little
skeleton carefully as he had been taught, without immodest exposure in
the change from dress to nightgown, lifting the arms one at a time and
laying them down gently, pulling the gown over the swollen knee joints
and lifting the limp body in his arms as if it were a child's,
straightening the limbs, and tucking in the blanket lightly.  "There
you are," he said, in a husky voice.  'fhank you, thank you always,"
said his uncle.  "Now I can rest."

Johann stood over him hesitating, then said, "Uncle, thank you.  I will
do better, I promise 4"

"No promises, please," said Herr Graf, lifting a hand and smiling his
frightful dying smile.  "Alas, my needs have not changed.  I must still
be a burden to you until the end of the voyage.  I must live, Johann,
to see Germany once more.  Be patient."

"Uncle, you will not be a burden," said Johann eagerly.  Herr Graf
looked for the first time into a candid, friendly face, strangely a (or
giving face, so transformed he could hardly recognize his hardhearted
sister's hard-hearted child.  "Good night," he said, as Johann dashed
for the door and paused to look back for an instant to say "Good night,
Uncle, and sleep well."

Herr Graf closed his eyes and let the blessed narcotic take its way

the slow blood and the pained nerves--ah, to close his eyes and
extinguish breath, to conjure a lightless world, no, a universe of
darkness, that would be pure bliss.  O, God, darken the sun and the
moon, put out Your planets as I would blow out candles.  Drop from Your
great nerveless hands darkness and silence, silence and stillness,
stillness of dust buried under dust, the darkness and silence and
stillness of the eyeless deeps of the sea.  Heal my sorrows in your
darkness, O God, I am blinded in your light.  Remember me for one
merciful moment, answer my only prayer: live and be in Your own Being
and rule in Your light for all eternity, but let me go--let me go.  Do
not deny me the gift of Your divine silence, Your eternal darkness.  O
God, let me die however Johann as he neared the end of the long dim
passageway could already hear the music, and voices, and the sound of
the sea.  He lingered a moment at the bottom of the stairs, confused
and melancholy" his nerves still raw from the punishment they had
received, deep in his mind a lingering resentment, a sense of being
wronged still, in some way that could never be made up to him.  He
resisted the softening of his heart towards his uncle, though he could
not deny it.  He argued with himself that his uncle had done for him
only what he should have done long ago, and without waiting to be
asked, much less threatened.  Johann thought almost in despair, "I'll
never get rid of this- never--"

running his hand into his jacket pocket to touch the roll of money, he
straightened his shoulders and, with an unpleasant apprehensive sinking
in the pit of his stomach, set out to look for Concha.

He had not far to look; there she was, idling with Amparo and Tito near
the piano, where a small covered basket with the raffle tickets had
been set up, and the prizes were on display- the lacy feminine
assortment of tablecloths, scarfs and fans, and the two ruffled
petticoats, of flimsy red cotton edged with coarse white lace.  His
heart gave such a jolt he stopped short for an instant, then moved to
the open deck where she might notice him.  She did not, but went on
holding one of the petticoats before her, kicking lightly under the
ruffles.  It was Tito who saw him first.  He gave Concha a discreet
sign, at which she handed the petticoat to Amparo, wiggled her fingers
at Johann, and walked to meet him, face very serious, hand lifted, her
hips swaying in that rhythm he had heard her call the Meneo.  Once when
they were walking together, she took his hand and placed it on her side
at the waist, just above the hipbone, and said: "Feel that?  Only
Spanish

women move like that.  It is called the Meneo.  Feel?  I am not a
gypsy, you know that?  I am real Spanish, and this is the sign."  He
had been set on fire by the delicate side-to-side rocking of the hips,
perfectly natural, in the bones not in the muscles, so she insisted.
"You are doing it on purpose," he accused her, but she said seriously,
"No, I was born that way.  You hear what they say, my hipbones?  They
say Meneo, Meneo, all by themselves."

He stood waiting for her to come all the way to him, still doubtful,
still shaken by his painful victory over his uncle, with something very
like terror in his blood as he realized what he had done and what he
now faced.  Their glances locked as she neared, and were fixed
unsmiling until she was under his very chin, looking up, no coquetry,
no trickiness at all in her eyes.  He even thought he saw anxiety in
them.  He was in such a rigorous tremor of excitement he hardly dared
to speak for fear his voice would betray him, but she did not hesitate.
Setting her hand over his heart she spoke at once: "Did you do as I
told you?"

He frowned and said in a bullying tone: "Did you think I would?  Do you
take me for such a fool?"

Her hand dropped away.  "Valgame Dios, so you haven't got it."  Her
despair infuriated him.

"Of course I've got it," he boasted angrily without shame, "and I
didn't even steal it, either."

Concha flung herself upon him and attempted to leap into his arms.  He
seized her by the waist and swung her above his head and set her down
again still without smiling.

"Let's dance," she whispered, nipping the lobe of his ear with her
smooth white teeth, "I don't care what you did!  And let's have some
champagne," she added, as they turned slowly together, not dancing, in
time to the music.  "Remember?  You promised."

He tightened his grip around her ribs until she could hardly breathe.
"We're going to bed," he told her, "now.  Remember?  Now, while
everybody is out here.  Where's your cabin?"  Concha said, "Don't be
such a German!"  as he marched her across the deck more like a police
officer than a lover.

"What do you expect me to be?"  he asked, but not as if his mind were
on the question.

"Well," said Concha, uneasily, 'ok."  and he could feel resistance in
her whole body through the slight yielding arm.  "Look then, if you are
going to be like this, I'll show you my cabin when you show me

your money.  How do I know you are telling me the truth?  Manolo would
kill me... how do I know?"

"You'll know," he said.  "Just wait."  Now he was sure, there was
nothing to worry about, he had the winning card in his pocket.  His
face cleared and grew amiable, he gave her a warm little squeeze that
could almost pass for tenderness.

"Well," said Concha, her doubts vanishing also, "if you fool me, I'll
kill you."  She nuzzled under his arm.

"You think so?"  said Johann, with lordly indulgence.  "Try it."  He
drew her swiftly in front of him, stopped in the dim passageway and
closed his hands lightly around her throat.  "Like this?"

Concha quivered with pleasure and smiled up at him without a shadow of
uneasiness, and said, "No, not like that.  Another way.  Better."  They
laughed in each other's faces and went on, his arm around her
shoulders.

"Here we are," she told him, opening the door and going in first to
turn on the light.  She expected an onslaught, a violent blind fumbling
brutality such as she knew too well from the inexperienced and
overwrought; or worse even, panic and impotence and the fury of
impotence or its deathly despair, which she must coddle and flatter and
persuade away without seeming to, for men in such disgrace with
themselves were likely to turn resentful, unmanageable, even dangerous,
blaming her and wanting revenge for their outraged male pride.  She was
on guard, ready for anything; but he just stood there looking at her
expectantly, all shining and golden-haired.  She had a weakness for
blond men, and this one had turned eager and warm and simple; he put
out his hand and stroked her smooth black hair and said in German,
"Beautiful, beautiful."

She laughed with relief to find that everything would be easier than
she had thought, took his hand in both of hers and said, "Come in,
don't be strange, you are with me- we are going to be gay together."
She drew his head down and kissed him, then began to loosen his tie,
saying, "And you must help me undress, too.  It is more fun to do
everything together.  Tell me darling, am I your very first girl?"  He
nodded, and blushed, then gathered himself together and said, "Why do
you say that?"  Concha sheered away from the subject.  "Do you love me,
ah, well- do you love me just a little?"

"I don't know," he said, hoarsely, wrapping himself around her so
resolutely she could hardly get his shirt off him.  He began to pull at
the

front of her dress to get at her breasts.  "Wait," she said, "are you
going to let me be very nice to you?"  and she wriggled out of her
shabby little black frock, dropped her colored silk petticoat and was
naked.  "I am a very bad girl," she said, teasing, "you'll see."  He
did not seem to hear her, and he did not need any blandishments.

Herr Rieber sent Beer once more to the band, and called for "Waltzes
from the Vienna Woods" for the fourth time.  The music, the
Scha'umwein, the starry sky, Lizzi in a tender promising mood whirling
in the waltz almost caused him to forget future pleasures in the wanton
luxury of his present delights.  His bib worked round under his ear,
his Baby cap slipped to the back of his neck, he had not a care in the
world.  His wide tireless smile showed the tip of his wet pink tongue,
when now and then he smacked his lips over the sweet morsel of his joy.
Taking a fresh grip on Lizzi's waist and hand, he pressed his hard
little stomach against her and burst wordlessly into high tenor song.
"La de dada la de dada la de da, de daa!"  sang Herr Reber, frisking
like a faun, turning lightly on his toes gazing up in ecstasy at Lizzi,
who answered at once "La de dada like Echo herself.  He felt he was a
faun, a fleet prancing faun deep in the forest glade, stamping a
pattern of cleft flowers into the leaf mold under his sharp little
polished hoofs; with the winds moaning like violins in the treetops,
the sweet voices of birds calling la de da to each other among the
branches where the harp strings were sighing, and the nymph waiting for
the young goat boy, half god, light on his hoofs and ready to leap the
likely, long legged creature in the green gown who loved a good caper!
Ah, lade dada, de da, sang the young faun at the top of his voice in a
panic rapture as he spun wildly on the very tiptoe of his sharp hoofs,
while the nymph, leaning backward from the waist, whirled so steadily
her lace skirts rose and spread out slowly upward at the back like an
opening fan.

Hansen, sunk in his chair, nursing his bottle of beer, glared at them
from under his frown clutched hard over his nose.  They had passed him
several times, and the last time they came so near Lizzi's skirt
brushed his knees, an outrage so unbearable he resolved that, if she
did it again, he would put out his foot and trip her up and send the
pair of them sprawling.  As they careered towards him again more wildly
than ever, he gathered himself and put a foot forward in readiness.
Lizzi's flying skirts brushed his face this time, he blinked and
flinched, and

Herr Rieber's boot came down grinding cruelly into his toes.  Herr
Hansen, with a subterranean rumble of groans, rose Instantly, opened
out to his full height and brought his beer bottle down forcefully on
Herr Rieber's naked defenseless skull.  Herr Rieber stopped dead in his
tracks looking immensely surprised.  The glass shattered and a long,
bright red track appeared at once on his head and began streaking and
trailing downward rapidly.

"You see?"  inquired Herr Hansen sternly as if he had proved something
beyond argument.  "You see?"

The blow knocked Herr Rieber still deeper into his fantasy.  He bleated
like a goat, "Baaah, meeeeh!"  and charged Herr Hansen, butting him
accurately in the sensitive midriff just where the ribs divide.  Herr
Hansen doubled over deeply and fought for breath.  Before he could
recover it, a matter of seconds, Herr Rieber charged again.  "Baaaah,
meeeeeh!"  he bawled and butted with all his might, leaving untidy red
smears on Herr Hansen's shirt front.

"Just stop that now," gasped Herr Hansen, his chest heaving.  He caved
in once more, and pushed Herr Rieber's face away with the flat of his
hand.  "Just you now, you stop that!"

Herr Rieber threw the hand off and drew away for a third charge.  The
trap drummer pushed his paper hat off his forehead and grappled with
Herr Rieber, who looked confused and did not resist.  The violinist
laid a gently restraining hand on Herr Hansen's arm and was shaken off
like a kitten.  When the music stopped so suddenly, the Cuban students,
dancing with the Spanish girls, crowded about to see the show, and when
they saw Herr Rieber's blood-festooned head, they shouted, "Que rive Ia
sang re  Viva la barbaridad!"  Frau Rittersdorf and the Huttens had
been sitting together not so much as spectators as living models of
decorum publicly rebuking an indecorous spectacle.  They now rose
ostentatiously though nobody noticed, and took themselves away.  Frau
Rittersdorf said, "We shall do very well if we reach port alive!"  a
conclusion so obvious the Huttens thought it not worth answering.

Lizzi stood staring, her hand over her mouth, her forehead wrung with
shock.  The violinist patted her on the cheek.  "So, so," he said
soothingly, and at this gentleness she woke to a sense of her disaster.
Little fine wrinkles leaped about in her face, she turned from him and
ran blindly, bent forward, hands up, palm outward, uttering the shrill
cries of an anguished peahen.  The violinist followed swiftly and
said,

"My dear Fraulein, let me help you if I can.  Don't try to go by
yourself."  She hunched her shoulder away from his hand, and broke into
shrill laughter and tears.  She moved past Herr Reber without a glance
at him, and he did not see her go, or remember her.  Herr Hansen walked
away alone, his arms folded tightly across his stomach.  The trap
drummer stayed firmly by Herr Reber, who was plainly dazed.  Both
Rieber and Hansen stopped abruptly, some distance apart, and leaned
over the rail.  They stood back after some moments of agitation, wiped
their faces and went on weaving with the rise and fall of the deck.

The violinist by then regretted his gallant attempts to aid a
distressed female who showed nothing but the most shameless
ingratitude, who would scream "Don't touch me!"  as if she were being
raped, every time he tried to take her arm and guide her.  Yet she was
staggering all over the passageway, from side to side, bumping into the
walls, and God knows she was the ugliest woman he had ever seen.  Yet,
slave to his decent upbringing and perhaps his natural good temper, he
persisted, keeping a brave face to the business, and did succeed at
last in landing his nuisance at the right door, where he knocked as
loudly as he dared, and waited.

Denny struggled up from his bar stool for the first time that evening,
and said, "I've got business.  I'm going to cut in on Pastora.  I see
her buzzing around with one of those Cubans.  She's going to do some
tall explainin' now- little she knows!"

David, who had been benumbed for some time without having enjoyed any
of the progressive pleasures of getting drunk, now felt detached enough
to offer good advice to Denny, who was so obviously born to do the
wrong thing no matter what he did: "You ought to have started earlier,
maybe.  You've lost control.  You won't be able to gauge distance or
pull your punches, "remember, it's dangerous to hit a woman anywhere,
even when you're sober.  They're all over soft spots, they can't take
it."

"This one will," said Denny, firmly.  He tottered, held on to the bar
with his left hand, hit himself in the stomach with his right, and gave
a loud belch.  As if this had a steadying effect, he walked a fairly
straight line towards the dancers.  David followed along, hoping to see
Denny snubbed properly.  Not at all: the Cuban student surrendered all
claim to his partner at once.  Before she could refuse and take flight,
Pastora was hedged in Denny's arms; while they wobbled about in a

series of ellipses, Pastora held him away by both his elbows, and
Denny hung on around her shoulders in gruesome silence, breathing a
miasma of mingled unclean fumes into her face.  "Let me go, you smell
like a buzzard!"  Pastora was crying out, turning away and struggling.
Altogether, a most unpromising situation, David was pleased to see.
With a cheerful heart he wished Denny a fine busy evening bringing
Pastora under, and all the bad luck in the world at it.

He had troubles of his own, and as he had begun to do lately, when the
whiskey, as he hoped, had cleared his head and taken the edge off his
anxieties, he wondered at his lack of self-respect, letting any woman,
and above all a woman like Jenny, weigh on his mind and hound his
feelings day and night and interfere with his plans and sidetrack him
into places he had never meant to be, and corner him with unfair
arguments and work on his weaknesses with her tears and her lovemaking,
upset his work and drive him to drink- simply no end to her bitchery-
what in God's name could he have been thinking of?  Here he was,
getting drunk every day simply to get away from her and the thought of
her, and what had come of it?  What had become of Jenny?  For the girl
he thought he knew had disappeared so entirely he had almost to believe
he made her up out of odds and ends of stuff from his own ragbag of
adolescent dreams and imaginings.  Of course, it was time he grew up.
There never was, there couldn't possibly be, any such living girl as he
had dreamed Jenny was.... His drunkenness almost bowled him over.  He
leaned on the rail holding his head, and though his knees shook under
him, and his gorge rose as it did too often even under less
provocation, his heart and his will hardened as if they had separate
lives of their own not subject to the caprices of alcohol.  "Darn you,
Jenny angel, I give you up.  I won't fight with you any longer.  It's
not worth it.  I can't live like this."  When he heard his own voice he
glanced about in dismay, but no one was near.  Jenny's bright voice
spoke up with its unbearable gay mockery: "... and the Emperor
Cuautomoc then spoke to him from his pit of fire and asked, "Think you
that I am on a bed of roses?"  She had already said that a long time
ago when he did not take her seriously; when he let her know she was
causing him distress and making him unhappy, she had always answered in
some oblique way that she was unhappy too, and it was his fault, and it
was her belief that if they tried hard enough, they were bound to be
blissful together.  But she never said how they were to try, nor who
should begin.

Pastora, with a face of fury, passed him in full flight, her ruffled
skirts and black lace mantilla flowing backward; with a glance over her
shoulder she dived through the nearest door.  Denny, far off his center
of gravity, approached more slowly but in earnest pursuit.  He blinked
at David and rounded on him confidentially: "She thinks she's goin' to
get away," he said easily, "but there isn't any place on this ship she
can hide.  I'll get her, don't worry."

David said, "Maybe you ought to wait now until morning, you'll be in
better shape," but Denny shook his head obstinately and said, "No,
tonight's the night."  He hobbled on with a good deal of waste motion,
but made it safely to the doorway where Pastora had disappeared, leaned
against the jamb for a few seconds, and went on.  David wandered
without plan, meeting strayed revelers whom he saw through a mist- Mrs.
Treadwell with that solemn young officer; poor Elsa being escorted
probably to bed by her parents; Dr.  Schumann, who appeared to be
walking in his sleep: they swam past him, and from the other side of
the ship floated the strains of that never-ending bore of a waltz,
"Tales from the Vienna Woods."  At last he admitted where he was going,
and who he was looking for and what he expected to find; he was beyond
feeling, his nervous system felt dead, yet he was in anguish, a
distress so deathlike it gave him a shock of fright, he really feared
for the first time in his life that he might be going to die.  There
was nothing for it, though, but to keep going, up one flight of steps
after another, to the boat deck, there to circle about warily and
stealthily until he found them there together, and they were not even
trying to hide.  With a scalding shock in his blood as if he had not
known all along they would be there, his search ended.  They were
huddled together on the deck, backs against a funnel, their knees drawn
up, heads bowed thoughtfully, turned to each other, their foreheads
touching, their bodies infolded, and fitted together smoothly.  The
twilight of the moon in a drift of cloud shone on Jenny's frost-white
face, the look of one suffering in her sleep on her closed eyes and
mouth.  Freytag was holding her firmly and easily, his arms completely
around her, her folded hands held in one of his rested on her closed
knees turned helplessly towards him.

David's hands and feet turned cold, his nose grew thin and white and
pointed downward, the nostrils working- he could feel it changing
shape, drawing in upon itself in utter repulsion.  A frightful
confusion of simple jealousy, human outrage, pure disgust, a freezing
hatred of

Jenny set up their clamor in him at once.  Yet he could not tell which
was the more loathsome to him, the scene itself and its meaning,
Jenny's face of shameless, painful rapture, or Freytag's
self-possession, his easy, familiar hold on her, his control, the kind
of professional expertness of a Born handler and trainer of women.

This was what David, then and afterwards, could not endure; very murder
rose in his soul at the sight of Freytag's amiable, composed face, with
its rather pleasantly elated look.  Obviously he was waiting for Jenny
to move into another phase of her desire, with his attentive help, and
to declare herself first, before he closed with her.  They might have
been in a tower or on an island, in their absorption with themselves.
Freytag raised his forehead from Jenny's, and spreading one hand upon
her hair, he held her head back, turned her face up to his, studied it
with quiet interest for a few seconds, then kissed her deliberately
with the utmost luxury on the mouth.  Jenny stirred and seemed to try
to bury herself in his arms.  He gathered her to him fully,
competently, without haste or excitement, and began straightening out
her legs, until he lay at full length beside her, moving his hand over
her breast.

Still watching her face, he shifted his shoulder easily and covered her
upper body with his, and there he stopped, and put his cheek to hers as
if listening to her breathing.  Then he turned away, and lay beside
her, cradling her head on his arm, and he laughed, a very odd small
laugh, under his breath, all to himself.  He shook her head a little,
kissed her, drew her up sitting, and tried to raise her to her feet.
"Shame on you, you wench!"  he said, in the utmost good temper.
"Imagine passing out at a moment like this!"  Jenny moaned, and said,
"Oh, let me alone.  Leave me here!"

'"You know I can't do that," said Freytag in a tone very like Brotherly
annoyance.  "Now stand up, Jenny, don't be tiresome."

David, standing frozen there in the shadow of the tunnel, now turned in
an utter horror of humiliation and tiptoed down the steps, his head
roaring like a seashell.

In the bar, Herr Baumgartner, his clown make-up streaked, his whiskers
on the floor under his chair, fumbled for the stem of his liqueur
glass, jostled his coffee cup and spilt coffee on his napkin.  Using
the napkin as a handkerchief, he wept in silence, wiping his mouth,
eyes and forehead distractedly.  His wife watched him with eyes like
agates, and spoke in a lowered, hardened voice: "Everybody is very

carefully not looking at you.  So after all I suppose you are not
making a show of yourself in public."

He swallowed his Benedictine, his expensive, festive after-dinner
treat, in one gulp without tasting it.  Reaching over the stack of
saucers between them, he touched the back of her hand with a
forefinger, tapping lightly.  She could see only one blurred hopeless
eye behind the napkin, and the tremulous corner of a mouth full of
unspoken reproaches.  "Mein Liebchen," he said, "have you forgotten? We
have been married ten years today."

"What is there to remember?"  she asked him un forgivingly  "What has
it been?  A hell, a little hell on earth from the beginning."

"No," he said, "not from the beginning.  That is not true

She hurried on, fiercely determined to deny everything but her
unhappiness, unable, unwilling to remember anything but disappointment.
"Don't tell me I don't know what it has been!  Oh, aren't you ashamed
of the life you have made for us?"

He covered his face again and groaned through the cloth.  "Yes, yes,

I am ashamed, I am always ashamed.  But I am dying, Gretel, you know I
am dying with these ulcers, maybe cancer, how do we know?  I am dying
and what do you care, what have you ever cared..??"

"If you stopped this swilling day and night you would be well," she
told him, leaning nearer.  "You want to be sick, you want to make me
wretched, you want to ruin all our lives- I understand you now.  You
hate me.  You do it to spite me..."

Herr Baumgartner straightened his shoulders, drooped again, swayed,

braced his fists on the table.  "Very well," he said, "that is the last
straw.  Think what you please.  I am finished, I have lived too long
already not another hour of this torment.  I am going to kill
myself."

"Of course," said his wife, freezing with anger and fright, "now begin
that again!  Well, just how and when do you propose to end your life
this time?  I should like to know your plans for once."

"I shall jump overboard in this next minute," he said, gulping his
coffee.  "That will bern" He smashed the cup down so violently it
shattered and several persons glanced about, glanced instantly away
again.  He caught every eye as it turned and gave a stagy hoot of
joyless mirth.  "That will be the safest way!"

"Yes," she said, taunting him, "you will make a big disturbance and be
rescued like Bebe --"

"Or maybe like the Basque," he reminded her.

"Bah!"  she said.  "You make me sick!"

He saw with dismay that she was simply and purely angry, that she was
taking this merely as another quarrel, but he had gone too far to draw
back; he must persist until he had driven her to believe in the
seriousness of his threat and to take action to prevent him from
carrying it out, as a wife should do.

Frau Baumgartner almost read his thoughts.  She saw him waiting for her
next move, a wicked childish calculation in his gaze, trying to measure
the limits of her resistance, to break her down into pleading until he
would at last consent, for her sake, to live.  Instead, she folded her
arms and leaned back and said wearily, "You will never do anything, so
stop talking nonsense.  I am tired of this, I am going to bed and you
may stay here as long as you please."

He leaped up blindly at that and took long strides towards the nearest
door before he looked back.  His wife had not unfolded her arms, and
she was not watching him.  When he looked back again from the deck she
had left the table and was walking in the opposite direction from him,
the gaudy streamers of her peasant's headdress fluttering.

Benumbed from the shock of this treachery, this desertion, the last
thing in the world he could have expected from her, he tottered out and
lagged along the rail, his eye roving, looking for her to appear
presently from almost any direction; she surely meant only to punish
him for a few minutes, then she would come round from somewhere to
intercept him, to prevent him, to plead with him, to bring him to
reason as she had so often tried to do.  Waiting, he stopped short,
holding his head, elbows at rest, trying to pretend that he really
meant to jump.  Gazing into the steeply rising and Falling sea,
staggered by the unruly heaving of the deck, he shuddered in horror at
his vision of himself, poised upon the rail for one split second over
the frightful depths, leaning forward with the leaning of the ship,
falling in a curve, head downward, just at the very split second Gretel
should come running with her arms stretched towards him, hands clasped,
imploring, "Oh, nonono, wait wait my love forgive- me!"

He fell back in such terror he almost lost his balance, and nearly
collided with Mrs.  Treadwell, who was walking with that boyish looking
young lieutenant Herr Baumgartner had noticed with her before.  They
were laughing merrily and zigzagging with the roll of the deck, his arm
around her.

"Pardon, pardon," he said, recovering his foothold, bowing from the

waist and attempting to click his heels.  They nodded and turned their
distant eyes upon him, waved their hands lightly and went on, utterly
indifferent to his sufferings, coldly careless that he was on the point
of ending his miserable existence- worse still, unable even to imagine
such a disaster!--with no more pity and humanity in them than his
heartless wife.  He returned to the side, took a good grip, and
contemplated the waters again, and his situation, somewhat more calmly.
So it was with him, here and now; he had come to this, and what a fool
he had been to expect better!  it was a tragic thing when a man was
abandoned in his despair by the wife he had loved and trusted and given
the best of everything, the wife he had depended upon to appreciate his
devotion, to respect the nobility of his motives, to sustain his
courage by her loyalty, to be indulgent of his weaknesses whatever they
might be, for what man was altogether free of them giving him freedom
in all things while at the same time maintaining the restraints,
appearances, and disciplines of daily life--what else was a wife for?
Yet here he stood alone in the damp windy chill of midnight at sea in
September, on the point of suicide; and she had not lifted a finger to
save him.  In fact, she had jeered at him, and mocked him onward.

Ah, it was the end.  He could not endure it.  No, and he would not
either.  What madness could have come over him that he had even for
moment dreamed of leaving his innocent, promising son, his only child
an orphan, and so gladly provided for, after all.  His insensible
mother would certainly marry again, and leave her child to the tender
mercie of a stepfather as she had left her husband to the crud sea.  In
a new wave of fright and fresh outrage, but with a new resolution too,
he began a long, dim struggle back to his cabin, with no clear plan in
mind, but a fixed idea that seemed to be rooted somewhere in his vital:
that now was the time to settle certain accounts, long overdue, with
the female viper he had warmed in his bosom all these calamitous ten
years.

Frau Baumgartner opened the door to her cabin noiselessly, ant shaded
the wall light with her palm as she turned the switch.  Hans was in
bed, as she had left him.  He opened his eyes and blinked at smiling.
She sat on the side of the bed and with a shake in her voice,

she could not control, asked him: "Were you asleep?  Dreaming?"  "A
little," he said shyly.  "I listened to the music a long time."  "Did
you say your prayers?"

"I forgot," he said anxiously, afraid of a scolding.  Instead she

smoothed his hair and kissed him.  "We'll say them later," she told
him.  "Would you like to hear a story?"

Hans sat up instantly happy and wide awake.  "Oh, you haven't told me a
story since we came on this ship."

"Poor child," said his mother, reaching for her knitting bag, and
sitting near him again.  "What do you want to hear?"

"Hansel and Gretel," he said at once.  "I'd like that."

"You're getting to be a big boy for such a childish story," she told
him, controlling her trembling fingers and getting the knitting
started.

"I like it though, still," he said a little timidly.  "Is that my
sweater you're making?"

"Yes," she said, "and I mean to finish it before we get to Bremerhaven.
I simply cannot worry any more about anything."  After a short uneasy
pause while he watched her face to find out what she meant, she smiled
at him and began: "Once upon a time there were a little brother and
sister who lived in the Black Forest.  His name was Hansel- Hans, like
you; and hers was Gretel, like me; and one day they were wandering in
the woods, picking flowers, when there came an old witch..."

Her voice steadied itself and smoothed out into the gentle drone that
lulled Hans to sleep as if it were a rocking cradle; when she came to
the part where the dear little brother and sister were stuffing the
wicked old witch into her own blazing oven, Hans's eyelids were
fluttering in vain efforts not to close, but at last he gave way and to
the howling of the doomed witch he drew a soft deep breath and turned
his head on the pillow.

Frau Baumgartner shaded the light with a small scarf, her eyes already
running with tears.  She sat down again and began to knit blindly,
counting her stitches.  If it took all night, she was going to sit
there knitting and waiting for her husband.

When he opened the door wide and swung in, he could hardly believe what
he saw there, yet it was all too clear.  He had not known what he meant
to do or say, but when she raised her stubborn face and stared at him
unrepentantly, he raised his right arm.  She dodged violently to one
side, but the tears burst again down her cheek before the flat of his
hand struck it like a wooden paddle.  It was a light spanking blow that
did her no harm, but in getting up from her chair she staggered and
fell, striking her cheekbone on the wash hand stand.  Hans woke
cowering and cringing; he covered his eyes with his crossed arms

and shrieked.  The ship was rolling so heavily Frau Baumgartner was
awkward trying to get off the floor, and her husband took her hands and
helped her.  "Knitting!"  he shouted at her as he raised her up, in a
frenzy of grief, all anger forgotten.  "Oh, how could you?  Knitting
with me about to destroy myself!  Oh God, what does a man do with such
a woman,"

"I don't care!"  she cried with terrifying obstinacy.  "I don't care!
Look at your poor child," she said, "you are frightening him to death.
What will become of him if he sees us like this?  Shame on you!"

The father turned upon his son, arms outspread to embrace him.  Hans
implored with his hands spread before him, "No please Papa don't hit
me!"  This was the cut that went to Herr Baumgartner's marrow.  He
dropped on his knees beside the bed, drew the sobbing child to his
breast murmuring tenderly, "Papa's poor little boy, poor good little
child, I wouldn't harm a hair of your head.  How could you think I
would hurt you" Hans stiffened and turned his head rigidly from the
stink of the breath blown in his nostrils, his mouth tightly closed,
feeling with horror his father's clammy warm tears joining his own on
his face.  His mother came silently, her weeping finished, a big blue
bruise already forming on her cheekbone.  She spread her arms around
her son and husband and said in a most loving voice, "Look, Karl- this
must stop.  We are wrong to torment him like this with our troubles. He
will be sick.  He will never forget.  Karl, try to forgive me.  I am
sorry."  At once he straightened and turned about, drew her towards him
almost over Hans, who leaned out as far from between them as he was
able.  "My sweet Gretel," he said, "I am sorry too.  My heart is
broken!"

"Oh no, no," she said, dismayed.  Mehed with tears and surprised by
rising sensuality, they began to fondle not each other but the child
between them; their newly roused passion for each other poured back and
forth over and through him like a wave.  Hans threw himself sidewise
trying to break out of the prison of their arms.  They then recollected
themselves, and let him go.  He hunched back in his bed against the
wall and tried not to see them.  His mother's headdress had fallen and
lay underfoot, its ribbons crumpled and streaked by their boot soles
She stopped to pick it up, his father lurched forward to hand it to
her.  They rose together, then sat down again, their arms about each
other.  "Oh, oh, oh," his mother kept whispering in a breathless voice,
hiding her face in his father's shoulder as if she wished to be
smothered.  "Oh, oh... When she raised her head, her wandering eyes
rested on her little boy, his head turned away, hands hanging.  He
looked like any other lost unhappy neglected child, a foundling in the
room not sure of his welcome.  Without moving, for her husband's face
was now buried on her shoulder, she spoke to Hans in her familiar
maternal voice: "Wash your hands and face, my son, you'll feel better-
hurry now, in warm water, not cold.  It is late for you to be awake. We
must all go to sleep now, to sleep."

Hans rose, and began to wash his face timidly, fumbling with the wet
washcloth, eyelids lowered as if he were ashamed to be seen in his
nightshirt, washing before these strangers.  In soundless wretchedness,
with a pitiable mouth, he dried his face and hands and crawled into
bed, pulling the covers up to his chin.

His mother approached him again, gently.  "Ah, never you mind, my dear
little one.  Go to sleep to sleep--everything is over, nothing bad has
happened.  Sometimes we are crossest with the ones we love best.  Say
your prayers, little love, good night."

She was smiling vaguely not exactly at him, but at something she was
thinking about.  His father came also and kissed him with a wet mouth
on his cheek.  "Good night, my little man."  They turned out the light
and began to undress rapidly.  He could tell by the sounds.

In the dark, he lay still, arms folded tightly over his chest, knees
stiff, his stomach a hard knot, hearing in the narrow bed a few feet
away his father and mother moving, turning, the sound of bedclothes
being drawn up, pushed back; the gentle rustle and hiss of their
whispered secret talk, shallow irregular breathings, and his mother's
slow measured broken sighing" Oh oh, oh..."  as if she were in pain;
and his father's breathing "Sh-sh-sh--" suddenly ended by a long low
groan.  Something horrible was happening there in the dark, something
frightful they were keeping from him--he strained his eyes staring, but
there was only a wall of pure blackness mingled with the sounds of
struggle.  It was not even sound, but a feeling of commotion as if they
might be struggling--and yet, maybe not, for his heart was beating so
hard and so loudly it deafened him for a while; when his ears cleared
again there was nothing to be heard.  Then he heard his father asking
tenderly in a slow whisper: "How do you feel?  Are you happy?"  And his
mother's drowsy murmur, "Oh yes, yes, yes- yes."

The little boy's muscles and nerves and even the ends of his fingers
and the roots of his hair let go all at once, all over, all through
him,

as if the thousand sharp cords binding and cutting him everywhere had
broken all at once.  A long yawn of delicious sleepiness flowed in him
like warm water.  He flung himself loosely on his side, nearly face
downward towards the wall; his hands and feet and the back of his neck
felt easy and soft, he fell asleep blissfully drifting from cloud to
cloud all by himself into that soft darkness without sound and without
dream.

Mrs.  Treadwell and her young officer were joined by other junior
officers who seemed to be taking them in on a drinking party, while
making a round of the ship.  She remembered afterward that she had been
rather gay all over the place- first in the bake shop helping some very
polite lads make rolls.  Her party looked in on the galley, the bar,
the officers' mess, all four decks, the engine room, and no matter
where they were, trays of drinks followed them.  She was offered, and
accepted, cognac, Chartreuse, port, Amer Picon, Rhine wine, and German
champagne.  At one point they met up with the purser, who got the
surprise of his life when Mrs.  Treadwell greeted him as a boon
companion and kissed him fondly.  He returned the compliment with a
hearty smack on her cheek, and a shrewd look into her eyes.  "So," he
said, indulgently, and trundled on, with the junior officers in his
wake.  Her partner of the evening appeared to expect her then to kiss
him; she asked him why.  He said it was not a thing one gave reasons
for.  Mrs.  Treadwell thought it much the better idea to wait until
tomorrow and see then how they both felt about it.  He could not
conceal his horror at such a point of view.  "That is simply terrible!"
he said, severely.

"I suppose so," said Mrs.  Treadwell.  "I am sorry."  The charming
young man looked very sulky, and Mrs.  Treadwell noticed for the first
time that he had a flashlight with him.  He directed the ring of light
at Mrs.  Treadwell's feet, lighting her way, and they descended the
narrow steps in silence, he holding her arm firmly.  "I do not believe
you are sober," he informed her at last, "on the bridge you offered to
steer the ship.  No harm done of course- but I think it is the first
time such a thing ever happened to the Captain."

"He must lead a very sheltered life," said Mrs.  Treadwell, "poor man."
They strolled along the main deck, passed the dancers and the music,
noticed Lizzi and Herr Rieber still waltzing, and towards the bow, that
wretched Herr Baumgartner seemed to be being sick at the rail.  He
turned a face of despair towards them, almost an appeal for

help.  They passed, the young officer now supporting Mrs.  Treadwell
with an arm around her waist.

"He seems awfully sick, somehow," said she, "perhaps dying.  He says he
is dying, of something very painful."

The young officer said flatly, "I don't believe it at all.  He just
likes to drink all the time and keep himself sick...."

Mrs.  Treadwell said quite soberly "You don't believe then that people
get sick and die some times just naturally?  Of some disease they can't
help?"

She noticed for the first time the cocky set of his white cap, farther
to one side than was usual.  He spoke up promptly in an intolerant
voice: "Of course.  But why should anyone claim special consideration
merely because he happens to be dying?  We are all sick," he said
dogmatically, and the stoic mask of self-pity covered his features for
an instant.  "We are all dying, only not at the same pace... well, is
that anything to get excited about?"

"I am not at all excited about it," said Mrs.  Treadwell, a little on
the defensive side, "but you seem to be."

"I am never excited, never," he told her, with a tremor in his voice
that could mean anger, "it is simply that I who live a life of endless
discipline have no patience with all the stupid muddle caused by such
people as he, who do not know how to live!"

"Do you know?"  asked Mrs.  Treadwell gently, stopping and raising her
face to his so that their glance met steadily.  "Tell me."  It occurred
to Mrs.  Treadwell that this was an odd conversation in the light of
what she saw at once was going to happen.  He enveloped her wholly,
waist, shoulders, arms, brought her instantly under control and kissed
her violently on her mouth, which was still open in speech.  Mrs.
Tread- well shuddered at the same unpleasant sensation of being bitten,
of the blood being drawn by suction to her mouth that had revolted her
in the past, and she drew away, turned her head outward, refused, and
defended herself by a passivity that dismayed and enraged him.

He drew his head back, lifted his elbow and swept her hair back with
his forearm, and she saw the sweat standing on his forehead.  "I have
been looking at you, thinking about you, for a long time," he said,
harshly.  "You never noticed me, no not even when we danced- why not?
Now you will not kiss me--why not?... Do you want me to beg you?  to
say I love you?  i never knew what people meant by that word."

"Don't say it, don't say it, I cannot bear the sound of it..."

His face, manner, mood, all shifted with the same violence, from erotic
impetuosity to sheer pettiness.  "When why did you come with me, why
did you encourage me to kiss you?"

Mrs.  Treadwell drew away altogether, stood back facing him.  "And now
for the first lovers' quarrel," she said outrageously and laughed with
a somewhat extreme amusement.  What a young face he had; she saw him as
if for the first time--smooth and lineless, clear features, tightly
drawn, with angry vanity in the set of the mouth, a burning uneasiness
in the eyes.

"I do not deserve for you to laugh at me," he said, with a dignity that
carried his resentment past its crisis.  He offered her his arm again
but as if he did not wish to touch her.  "Thank you for a very pleasant
evening, Madame, and I shall be happy to see you to your door."

"Oh thank you, but it isn't at all necessary.  Please don't trouble, I
can go the rest of the way by myself."

He clicked his heels, bowed sharply from the waist, made a fine swift
about face, and marched straight back towards the dancers.  Mrs.  Tread
well took time to admire him, thinking that the masculine passion for
physical discipline of all sorts had its points--he was undoubtedly as
drunk as she was, and yet, here she was, skipping and leaping down the
perilous slopes from main deck to B deck, where on the last step but
one she caught her sandal on the metal-edged tread and tore the heel
off.  It rattled down before her as she stood a moment, balancing
herself on one foot.  A young steward who was polishing shoes rose,
came forward, picked up the heel, and spoke with high good manners,
holding out his hand; "If you please, meine Dame, allow me to repair it
for you."  Mrs.  Treadwell, with a wave and a smile, bent her knee,
raised her foot and offered him the slipper, which he removed; she then
went hippety-hop down the corridor, now and then stopping to raise her
skirts and try a good high kick, straight up, toe pointed.  What an
absurd evening, and how pleasant to know it was over.  She liked the
young steward's shadowy face and tactful gestures: if everyone were
like that, how much more possible life might be.

Lizzi would be dancing and then lurking about in corners with her pet
pig, until any hour at all.  Mrs.  Treadwell leaned very close to the
looking glass and studied her features thoughtfully, and began to amuse
herself with painting a different face on her own, as she used to do
for fancy dress balls.  She drew long thin very black eyebrows

that almost met over her nose and ran back over her temples almost
into her hair.  She covered her eyelids with bluish silver paint,
weighted her lashes with beads of melted black wax, powdered her face a
thick clown white, and at last drew over her rather thin lips a large,
deep scarlet, glistening mouth, with square corners, a shape of
unsurpassed savagery and sensuality.  She brushed her black hair
sleekly from her forehead, and moved back a few steps to admire the
effect at the right distance.  Yes, it would have done very nicely- she
could have worn a mantilla and comb and gone to the party masked as one
of the zarzuela company--Amparo perhaps.  Why hadn't she thought of it?
Because it would have been dull, and the evening would have ended just
as it did, no matter what.

Mrs.  Treadwell was nearly through her third round of solitaire, cards
spread on her small game board, at the dressing table before the
looking glass, where now and again she might glance at her strange
assumed face, which no longer amused her but seemed a revelation of
something sinister in the depths of her character.  Mrs.  Treadwell
had, to begin with, hardly suspected she possessed a character in the
accepted sense of the word, and had never felt the lack of one.  It was
rather late perhaps to discover there were depths in her, where were
hidden all sorts of unpleasant traits she would detest in anyone else,
much more in herself.  She sighed and pushed the cards together without
finishing the game, and rummaged in her dressing case for her sleeping
tablets.

The door flew open and Lizzi fell in, went to her knees and up again in
a sweeping movement, her features distorted, her speech incoherent and
full of tears.  A thin, chronically worried-looking young man just
behind her let go her arm a moment too soon for fear of being dragged
with her into a ladies' cabin.  He could not conceal his astonishment
at Mrs.  Treadwell's face in its bizarre disguise; at first glance he
had mistaken her for one of those Spanish dancing women, at second he
knew better and was mystified.  He stepped back and stood in shadow
outside the door.  "Meine Dame," he began, and swiftly gave Mrs.  Tread
well a brief account of events.  Lizzi, far gone in hysteria, wrapped
her arms around her head and swayed to the rhythm of sobs and hiccups.
"I must leave her to you, pardon, Meine Dame," said the young man, "I
am in the band and must get back to my place at once."

"Thank you," said Mrs.  Treadwell with extreme sweetness, closing

the door.  Lizzi moaned luxuriously, now lying at full length on the
divan, and kept it up to intolerable lengths.  "Oh, the brute, the
savage, the beast," she repeated monotonously.  Mrs.  Treadwell
repressed her airy impulse to ask, "Which one of them?"  as she helped
Lizzi get out of her dress and into her nightgown.  She even picked up
and put away tidily those garments steaming with body heat and the
dreadful stale musky scent.  She then remembered her sleeping tablets
and swallowed two.  Lizzi's abjectly suffering face on the pillow
turned to her, the eyes like a beaten dog's, the forehead glistening
with sweat.  "Oh," said Mrs.  Treadwell, full of remorse and gentle
feelings, "you need those, too."  She brought water and the sleeping
pills, and Lizzi took them in silence.  "There," said Mrs.  Treadwell,
simply as one friendly woman to another," Fhat should settle something
for tonight, at least."

"Oh, but tomorrow!"  sighed Lizzi brokenly, calming a little.
'tomorrow?  Let it come!"  said Mrs.  Treadwell.  "At least tonight w
ill be over!"  She was quieted and easy, her lightness of heart might
almost have been happiness, only of course that would be absurd.  What
was there to be happy about?  She moved about rather unsteadily, not
noticing that she was walking with one high-heeled sandal and one bare
foot.  Lizzi, soothed and wearied, forgot her troubles long enough to
stare at Mrs.  Treadwell's face.  '"But whatever for?"  she gasped.
"Whatever- what did you do to yourself" "I was putting on a mask," Mrs.
Treadwell explained reasonably.  "A mask for the party."

"But you're late," sang Lizzi, weeping again, "the party's over!" 
"Yes, I know," said Mrs.  Treadwell, thinking that Lizzi was already
coming back in her old ghastly style, and would soon be the same bore
as ever. She felt she must be entirely drunk, for Lizzi's high voice
came to her full of echoes as if she were calling down a well: "Oh what
shall I do now?  Oh everything is so changed.  Oh, I wish never to see
him again... Oh dear, Mrs.  Treadwell, can you tell me how I could have
been so deceived?  I never loved him, I see it now!"

"How does one know these mysterious things, always so sure, first one
thing and then another?"  asked Mrs.  Treadwell, amiably detached and
smiling, dressing gown in hand.  She spoke apparently to the ceiling, f
or her eyes were raised as if she expected to see an answer written
there.  "How do you know what you feel?"

She lowered her eyes slowly without curiosity and listened a moment to
a clamor at the door, a ferocious beating and kicking, and drunken

shouting.  She moved nearer, recognized Denny's voice: "Listen,
Pastora, let me in there, you filthy little--" Mrs.  Treadwell's ears
shuddered, but she listened to Denny's thick-tongued descriptions of
the Gothic excesses he intended to commit upon Pastora's person, of
which rape would be the merest preliminary.

Lizzi sat up covering her ears and screaming, "Oh no, no, no, this is
the last straw... No, no, I do not deserve this... No, I will not have
this, no no, no..."

"Oh, please," said Mrs.  Treadwell, carefully.  "He is not talking to
you.  He is not talking to either of us.  He is talking to himself. Lie
down and be quiet."

She took her time, put a wet cloth on Lizzi's forehead, rearranged her
as if she were a jointed doll, then went to the door, walking hip pity
hop, and stood there a moment, hand on the knob.  Quite suddenly, she
snatched the door back wide.  Denny, surprised, swayed backward a step,
then surged forward and seized the front of her gown, wrung it into a
rag and said, "Come out here, you whore," almost formally as if he were
delivering a message from someone else.  "Come out here now, I'm goin'
to break every bone in you."  He gave a twist to her front, which
wrenched her breast so painfully she almost went off balance.

She seized his wrist with both hands and said earnestly, "You are
terribly mistaken.  You'd better look again!"

"Who are you?"  he asked dimly, then: "Jesus, what is this?"  leaning
over to examine her face under the paint, blowing a pestiferous breath
in her face.  "Oh, come on, come on, you can't fool me."

Mrs.  Treadwell braced herself against him and pushed him in the chest
with more force than she knew she had.  He tottered back limply, taken
off guard, staggered against the opposite wall, slid along it sideways
as he fell in a confusion of grunts, arm-waving, thumpings, scrapings
and sprawlings.  Mrs.  Treadwell watched him in motionless amazement,
unable to believe that her unpremeditated little gesture had
accomplished so much.  He lay still.  Mrs.  Treadwell knelt near him
and felt his head and neck with the tips of her fingers, not being
willing to touch him further.  There seemed to be nothing broken;
though his neck felt loose, that might be only natural.  He was
breathing loudly with his mouth open, his eyes rolled up between his
half closed lids.  His tongue moved to the edge of his lips, he seemed
to be forming a word, Mrs.  Treadwell doubled her fist and struck him

sharply, again and again, in the mouth, on the cheek, on the nose. The
blows hurt her hand and seemed to make no impression on Denny.  He
moved as if he might get up.  Feeling her sandal under her, she took it
off and held it firmly by the sole and beat him in the face and head
with the heel, breathlessly, rising on her knees and coming nearer, her
lips drawn back and her teeth set.  She beat him with such furious
pleasure a sharp pain started up in her right wrist and shot to her
shoulder and neck: The sharp metal-capped high heels at every blow
broke the skin in small half moons that slowly turned scarlet, and as
they multiplied on his forehead, cheeks, chin, lips, Mrs.  Tread well
grew cold with fright at what she was doing, yet could not for her life
stop herself.  Denny stirred and groaned bitterly, opened his eyes for
one glimpse, then amazingly opened them wide, struggled until he sat
halfway up, fell back again, crying out in his nightmare in a strangled
voice, "Pastora, Pastoral"

Mrs.  Treadwell got to her feet, feeling that not Denny, but she, had
been averted from a shocking end.  She swayed in drunkenness and
exhaustion, balancing on one foot while she put on her sandal; there
was just time for it before the steward appeared at the head of the
passageway.  She motioned to him anxiously and he hurried to her as if
she were the injured one, though he saw instantly at a distance the
crumpled form at her feet.

"Meine Dame," he inquired with real anxiety, "you are not hurt?  The
gentleman," he glanced downward, "he did not...?"

"Oh, no," she said vaguely, "nothing of that sort."  The boy knelt
beside Denny, who had relapsed into stupor.  Mrs.  Treadwell recognized
the boy to whom she had given her other sandal.  "I was in my cabin,"
she said, with blameless candor.  "I heard cries, I heard someone
fall... he seemed to be calling for someone, I couldn't hear... I came
to see if I could help..."  Her voice faded into a bewildered child's,
her mouth trembled.  "I was frightened," she added, clearly, with
perfect truth.

"Don't trouble yourself, racine Dame," said the boy.  "I will look
after this.  It is not serious," he said, scrutinizing the bleeding
little half-circle wounds all over Denny's features.  "It is just that
the gentleman is a little- perhaps... not quite..."

"I'm sure of it," said Mrs.  Treadwell, with a deprecating smile,
taking her hand from her forehead in a small, round defensive motion.
"I'm very grateful to you, and sorry for your trouble.  Good night."

Lizzi had pulled the sheet over her head, and peered out at Mrs.
Treadwell like a timid furry beast from its nest.  Mrs.  Treadwell's
smile still lingered on her lips if not in her eyes.  She was very
reassuring.  "He is gone.  It was nothing, just a mistake.  He knocked
at the wrong door, that was all.  He knows it now."

"I wish I were dead, just the same," whimpered Lizzi.  "Life is
unbearable, don't you find?"

Mrs.  Treadwell laughed outright.  "Nonsense," she said, handing Lizzi
a glass of water and a third sleeping pill.  "I think it is wonderful."
She swallowed another herself, and smiled delightedly at her hideous
wicked face in the looking glass.  In her joy and excitement, she
snatched off her bloodstained sandal and kissed it.  Leaning over Lizzi
on the divan, who asked dreamily, "What are you doing now?"  she tossed
it through the porthole.  "Bon voyage, my friend," she said, and to
Lizzi peremptorily, "Go to sleep at once, or I'll give you a whole
handful of sleeping pills!"  She stood over her threateningly.  Lizzi
in her daze was flattered by all this attention, mistook it for an
unsuspected softhearted ness in this difficult stranger, dropped away
into a light snore.

Mrs.  Treadwell washed her disfigured face lavishly, slapping on warm
water, anointing, patting, restoring herself to a semblance she
recognized.  Blissfully she sang a tuneless song under her breath as
she tied her Alice in Wonderland hair ribbon and slipped into her white
satin gown with the bishop sleeves.  She was just folding herself into
bed like a good little girl who has finished her prayers when a
discreet knocking at the door brought her out again.  The young steward
stood there at attention, bowing.  He handed her the sandal with the
heel nicely replaced.  "With your permission," with deep respect and an
expression that was too near a knowing smile to match his words, "meine
Dame, your sandal."

She took it by the sole firmly as if it too were a weapon.  She thanked
him gently, modestly, standing there before him quite unconcerned in
her nightgown.  His eyes flickered over her once, up, down, sideways,
and he resented what he saw.  To her he was just a servant, a nothing,
something that came when it was called and did whatever she demanded.
He leaped away down the passage wishing there were some way to get even
with her--to make trouble for her, standing there smirking like a cat
as if he didn't know how that stupid Herr Denny had got those heel
marks in his face.  Served him right!

He made the gesture of spitting, but he did not spit- he would have
had to clean it up.

Mrs.  Treadwell went again to the porthole over the spraddled form of
Lizzi, and cast the second gilded sandal after its mate into the sea.
She leaned forward a moment to breathe blissfully the damp fresh wind,
to hear again the surge of the waves rolling up in great round hills,
under the black-blue sky scattered with immense stars.  She remembered
how once she had sat for her portrait to a young painter in a tall old
house near the Avenue Montaigne, and as the evening came on, he went
down all those flights of stairs and brought up bread and cheese and
cold beef and a bottle of wine for their supper.  Afterwards, he held
the creaky ladder for her while she climbed and put her head through a
tiny open skylight in the roof; and she saw the glimmering lights of
Paris coming on slowly, and above, the clear darkening blue sky with
the stars coming out, one by one.  It was the middle of May.

As the evening wore on, Dr.  Schumann emerged for a walk and a look
around him, but wearied soon of the disturbances and disorders taking
form and breaking like waves, the monotonous barbarous beat of the
music, and the inevitable results of an evening of gaiety on shipboard.
The Spanish dancers, he noted, remained sternly sober, and kept their
minds on business.  They still had some business to transact, though
the possible audience appeared to be thinning out in all directions.
One or two of the young officers were still dancing occasionally with
the Spanish girls, and the students were indefatigably athletic as
usual, performing a comic version of a Basque male square dance; but
several of the other men were miserably drunk--such as Herr Denny,
having a violent argument with the zarzuela dancer called Pastora.  Dr.
Schumann considered seriously what means might be used to control such
people, or at least, their language and behavior in public; that fellow
should not be allowed to use such language on deck even to such a woman
as she; but it was not his affair, thank God.  Nearly every woman still
visible showed signs of having been recently in tears, or a temper, or
both, and some of them were none too sober, either.  He retired to his
quarters, where he might be found if needed, and almost at once a cabin
boy came with a message that he was wanted in Herr Rieber's cabin.  He
went at once, oppressed with weariness, and found Herr Lowenthal,
drowsy, indignant, reeking of beer,

wringing out towels in cold water and laying them on top of Herr
Rieber's head.

"Bottle fighting," he said, "like in the lowest places.  Come in,
Doctor.  And now tell me, Doctor, can anybody show me a place on this
ship where I can go to get rid of this fellow, who makes nothing but
trouble for me every day?  What did I do I deserve to get stuck with
him when I'm nearly asleep after a hard day?"

He dipped another towel in the wash hand stand, wrung it out and
slapped it down on Herr Rieber's head.  "Is there any way I can lose
him?"

Dr.  Schumann said, "Wait, I'll look at him.  It's a pity, I'm afraid
there's no place to put him.  I'll get the steward to nurse him."

"Nurse?"  groaned Herr Lowenthal.  "Is it that bad?"

Dr.  Schumann took a brief look at the wound under his flashlight,
mopped the skull with alcohol, gave Herr Reber a piqu re at the top of
his forehead, and took seven neat stitches in a row on his scalp.  H e
tied a line of small black silk stitches, snipping them off so that
Herr Rieber appeared to be growing an extra row of eyelashes on his
head.  Herr Rieber squeezed his eyelids together during this operation
but was otherwise motionless.  Dr.  Schumann then gave him a piqre, and
sent for the steward to undress him and put him to bed.  Herr Lowenthal
was very near complete demoralization.  "My God, my God," he kept
muttering to himself under his breath, until Dr.  Schumann said, "He'll
sleep a long time.  I think you don't have to worry about him any more.
But if you need me, call me."  He heard the croak of exhaustion in his
voice as he pronounced the ritual words.

He was no sooner in bed and settling into sleep than he was called
again by the cabin boy.  This time it was Herr Denny, the young Texan;
he had got into an encounter with mysterious forces which left his face
from forehead to chin a lumpy, discolored mass of ugly- looking little
cuts and bruises, full of dried blood and already swelling.

Herr Glocken was shaking and fluttering in helpless fright.  "I sent
for you, Doctor, what could have happened to him?  Two stewards brought
him, and said they found him so, and one of them said he knew what had
happened, he had seen it before, these were heel marks from a woman's
slipper!"  He fluttered and nattered at Dr.  Schumann's elbow, who was
giving his patient an anti tetanus piqre as a beginning.  He washed the
battered face carefully with alcohol and said, "Yes, or it could have
been a tack hammer.  There must have

been metal caps on them."  Dr.  Schumann had seen such wounds before,
too, and of course, he decided at once, the sharp talons on that
Spanish dancer's slippers would exactly fit any and all of these
wounds.

"What could have happened, Doctor?"  gibbered Herr Glocken, and his
self-pitying face added plainly, "Why must such things always happen to
me?  What am I to do now, with no one to help me?"  And he implored,
"Doctor, you know I am not well.  Don't leave me here alone with him!
Confidentially, dear Doctor, he is a species of monster, certainly not
quite human, I have seen and heard him.  What can I do?"

Dr.  Schumann smiled at him very frankly and said, "You are one of the
few sober passengers I have seen this evening.  Why not go looking for
Herr David Scott and bring him back to help you?  But I think you will
not need it.  Herr Denny will sleep, never fear.  Good night."

Herr Glocken followed him out, but took his forlorn way up deck alone,
and Dr.  Schumann went at once, fearing he might collapse before he
could reach the porthole in his cabin for a breath of air while he took
his crystal drops.  In that moment, when he truly expected death, he
looked upon all these intruders as his enemies.  Without exception, he
rejected them all, every one of them, all human kinship with them, all
professional duty except the barest tokens.  He did not in the least
care what became of any one of them.  Let them live their dirty lives
and die their dirty deaths in their own way and their own time, so much
carrion to fill graves.  He crossed himself and folded his arms and lay
still breathing carefully, turning his head slowly from side to side,
denying his own bitter thoughts even as they rose and flowed again
painfully all through him as though his blood were full of briers.

The blessed medicine worked its spell again.  In his waking sleep La
Condesa's face floated bodiless above him, now very near, peering into
his eyes; then retreating and staring and coming again in ghostly
silence.  The head rushed away into the distance, shrunken to the size
of an apple, then bounded back, swollen and white like a toy balloon
tossed upward by a hand, a deathlike head dancing in air, smiling.  Dr.
Schumann in his sleep rose and reached up and out before him and
captured the dancing head, still smiling but shedding tears.  "Oh, what
have you done?"  the head asked him.  "Oh, why, why?"  not in
complaint, only in wonder.  He held the head tenderly between his
spread palms and kissed its lips and silenced it; and went back to
bed

with it, where it lay lightly on his breast without smiles or tears,
in silence, and he slept on so deeply he did not know it was a dream.

At eleven o'clock, the band played "Auf Wieelersehen" and disappeared,
all except the pianist, who held a ticket for the raffle.  The Spanish
company started their show, with the gramophone going at top voice.
They first did a bolero, with Ric and Rac taking part; when in the
dance they came face to face, they searched each other's eyes fiercely
threatening murder.  The medical students sat in a shallow ring near
them, clapping their hands and shouting "Old" at the right moments. The
expected audience however had all but dispersed; those who stayed or
wandered by and wandered back were not ticket holders.  Arne Hansen,
after disposing of Herr Rieber and disappearing to change his bloodied
shirt, was back in his chair with a bottle of beer beside him.  He
seemed calm enough, his eyes were closed, and one might have thought he
was asleep, except that at intervals he would reach for his beer and
take a good swig.  Now and again he sat up, motioned to a deck steward,
and uttered one word: "Another."  Amparo decided prematurely that she
need not expect any more trouble with him for the evening.

Frau Schmitt, clutching her ticket, sat timidly on the edge of a deck
chair near the band.  Frau Rittersdorf, passing, said, "Good night.  I
wish you luck!"  If she had stuck needles in her Frau Schmitt could not
have been more injured.  Herr Lowenthal, who had spent the earlier part
of the evening in the writing room smoking, drinking beer and
addressing postcards to family, friends and business associates to go
by airmail from Southampton, avoiding his cabin for sheer detestation
of Herr Rieber's presence, had given up and gone down to his quarters
just in time to receive Herr Rieber's battered person.  He was now back
on deck and meant to stay there until the last light was out.  He had
even a notion to stow himself away on the leather couch in the writing
room.  His stomach was turned for good, he would not pollute his
nostrils with the breath from that pig.  Nobody could force him: he
would sleep on deck first.  He would go down to the steerage- there was
plenty of room there now, on deck anyway.  He stood at the rail, arms
folded, brooding, his cigar shooting sparks into the wind, and stared
with pure un appreciation at Amparo's expert performance of a dance she
announced as a Cachucha, a dance he had never seen, would not care if
he never saw again, and he wondered what any man in

his right mind could see in a woman like that no matter what she was
doing.  He had heard plenty of times that shicksas were good stuff if
you took them in the right way, that is, you didn't have to think of
them as people, the same as Jewish, only just live meat, but he never
had been able to buy that argument.... He presently went in the bar,
asked for a stein of beer and a piece of cheese, returned to the
writing room and enjoyed his snack.  He turned off the light and
stretched out on the leather sofa.  Oi, oi oi; this was peace and
quiet, the first he'd had on the voyage.

A steward pulled naggingly at his sleeve.  It was daylight and the
steward remarked, "You must have gone to sleep, sir," with the chilly
resignation of a man who cannot afford to despair of clearing up one
more little area of disorder in self-perpetuating chaos.  Herr
Lowenthal, instantly wide awake, sat up, scrubbed his face swiftly with
the palm of his hand, planted his feet on the floor and asked with
sarcasm, "What do you think?"  The steward spun away with an angry jerk
of his shoulders, at which Herr Lowenthal, who delighted in forcing
unwilling service from any kind of subordinate, bawled, "Hey, boy!"
meaning to order a pot of coffee.  He noted with satisfaction the
purely automatic pause in the steward's stride, but the man in the
servant conquered, and the man fairly burst from the room as if devils
were after him.

Herr Lowenthal, feeling sodden and lumpy, went back to his cabin to
wash and change before breakfast.  He supposed he would have to go on
doing that, but never again would he sleep in the place-nothing could
force him.  He found another steward and Dr.  Schumann already there,
fussing over Herr Rieber, who was installed in the lower berth without
so much as an if-you-please to Herr Lowenthal, the lawful occupant, who
took in the state of affairs with instant rage which he betrayed only
by the slight shake in his voice.  "He is welcome to my bunk, Doctor,
so long as he has got it already.  I wouldn't want it, I got no further
use for it."

That pig Rieber kept his eyes shut but his lids were working,
pretending he was asleep, or sick or couldn't hear, it didn't matter
which, he was pretending and it was enough to drive an honest man
crazy.  As if a little crack with a bottle could hurt a skull like
that.  Dr.  Schumann nodded and spoke absently as he changed the
dressing, spreading a nasty smell of iodoform around.  "Well, no, I
suppose you haven't," he said.  "There is always the divan, anyway."

A deep slow swelling soundless howl rose and echoed and died away in
Herr Lowenthal's soul.  It was a howl and a song with words.  "Take my
table, take my bed, take my blood, grind my bones, God curse Them what
do They want more?"  In his fury he shouted so loudly close to Dr.
Schumann's ear, the Doctor jumped and almost dropped the gauze he was
winding around Herr Rieber's brow.  "Careful, will you?"  he snapped,
but Herr Lowenthal's voice drowned the words.  "Maybe I want my bed for
myself, Doctor?  Maybe for once I should like to come back somewhere
and not find somebody pushing me out?  Is there a law saying I
shouldn't have what I paid for?  How is it you can come in here as if
he owned the place and take my bed just because he is drunk and I am
not? Doctor," he said, his speech trailing off in a tone of pathos, one
righteous man appealing to the sense of pity and justice in another,
"Doctor, I want to know these things."  you tell me!"

Dr.  Schumann, deeply repelled by this show of selfishness and bad
temper, as if his disgusting patient were not trial enough, asked
coldly: "Is it such a martyrdom as all that to give up your bed to
someone who needs it, especially since you have another as good?  I
shall have him put on the divan if you wish, but the ship is beginning
to roll heavily and there is less danger of his falling out here."

So I can fall out until all the Jews go back to Jerusalem, what of it?
It is only my head is cracked, who cares?  Aloud he said in a luxury of
contempt: "Let him have the whole stinking place, I got no use for
it!"

Dr.  Schumann said with weary scorn: "Thank you," at which Herr
Lowenthal gave a loud spluttering puff of air from his pouched lips,
and got out into the passageway before he really said what he thought
about that kind of thanks.

The Captain invited Dr.  Schumann for mid-morning coffee on the bridge,
and opened the conversation at once.  "I have had the reports of
various officers in line of duty," he said, stretching his wattles and
tucking them in his collar again, "and beyond the sheer impudence of
the thing, beyond their total ignorance of any forms of social decency,
those disorderly dancers seem to be quite a common sort of petty
criminal, too, of the pilfering and pickpocket order.  This has been an
unusually eventful voyage-"

"It is a disaster," said Dr.  Schumann, making no attempt to conceal
his weariness or his indifference to the whole sordid affair.  "That is
not a word we use at sea for anything less than the loss of

a ship," said the Captain, tempering his austerity with a thin smile.
"An old sea-dog," he said, leaving Dr.  Schumann to infer which sea dog
he meant, "knows what danger and disaster really are, and could never
mistake the misdemeanors of a load of passengers for anything serious
They do not know how to behave on a ship-"

"Nor on land, either, some of them.  But there are still some very
decent persons on board."

The Captain almost smirked at this opportunity handed to him as if on a
tray.  "I shall be more than pleased if you will show me one," he said,
with unctuous enjoyment.  Dr.  Schumann decided to appear somewhat
amused.  "It is difficult," he agreed, "on short acquaintance and in a
trying, unfamiliar situation.  We few persons show up at their best."

This required no answer.  The Captain went on: "I am told La Condesa's
pearls were stolen--unhappy lady!  I began to think at that her mind
was not exactly--" He touched his forehead lightly with an index
finger.

"It is possible," said Dr.  Schumann, to end that topic.  "We do not
know whether the pearls were stolen or not.  La Condesa said the
children snatched them from her.  Her nurse the stewardess said La
Condesa was not wearing her pearls that day.  The children threw some
object overboard.  There were two witnesses, Herr and Frau Lutz, but
unfortunately they do not support each other's testimony.  Nothing is
proved."

"The trouble with this sort of thing," said the Captain, raising a hand
and keeping silence while the young steward standing out of earshot
came forward and poured more coffee, "the trouble is, when a man, any
sort of man," he added generously, "not just a naval officer, finds
himself embroiled in a low kind of women's gossip, it is an affront to
his self-respect to have to deal with these things on their natural
debased level.  I was told the Spanish company robbed many shops in
Santa Cruz, and that many of those you call decent persons among the
passengers witnessed this.  No one interfered or took steps to prevent
this on the scene?"

"Several passengers, not women," said Dr.  Schumann, "have agreed among
themselves this morning that what they saw looked very dubious indeed,
they had well-founded suspicions, but after all, no proof.  At no time
did anyone feel it was his business to interfere or even to take
particular notice."

"That was very prudent," said the Captain, dryly.  "Tell me, how are

your casualties getting on?  The young fellow whose name I do not
remember, who seems to have been attacked by someone wielding an
unorthodox weapon, perhaps a tack hammer or a woman's shoe heel?"  Dr.
Schumann saw the glint of gallantry in the Captain's pale eyes.  "I
should imagine there are the usual number of shipboard romances with
their inevitable disappointments and dramatic scenes," he said, with
relish.  "Is the young man recovering?"

"He'll live," said Dr.  Schumann, "and so will all the others.  There
is again the question of who committed this thoroughly mischievous act.
The young man himself insists it was a girl called Pastora, one of the
Spanish company.  But a steward has defended this girl, says she is
innocent- a strange word to use about any of that troupe- and that he
is certain it was done by a woman wearing a mask, so that he did not
recognize her.  That was all he knew."

"As for the incident on deck when Herr Rieber got his scalp
scratched?"

"What is the only perfectly clear incident we have.  Herr Hansen has,
throughout the voyage, showed himself consistently as a man of unstable
temper and eccentric views, and for his own reasons he broke his beer
bottle over Herr Rieber's head when Herr Rieber was dancing harmlessly
with a lady--"

"Lady--" echoed the Captain thoughtfully.  The word hung between them
like a drift of vapor.  Dr.  Schumann proceeded without a pause:
"Everybody knows this and it seems to be the one thing everybody does
know.  All the rest is a very sordid little sort of tempest in a
teapot... a trivial mystery."

"La Condesa was the mysterious one," said the Captain.  "That beautiful
lady should never have been left on that barbarous island alone.  No
matter what she did.  No lady could do enough harm politically to
deserve such a sentence.  By the way, you were her physician and in her
confidence, what did she do?"

"I don't know," said Dr.  Schumann, rather bluntly.

The Captain's chin retreated, his neck stiffened, his face turned
slowly a dark red.  "I have thought as much from the beginning," he
said with rancor.  "It is a pity she did not respond better to your
treatment.  Indeed, I gather that her condition worsened very much in
your hands..  well, Dr.  Schumann, flesh is grass, no?  A doctor cannot
afford to let his failures weigh upon his mind!"

Dr.  Schumann stood up suddenly in the middle of this speech, and

at the end, took his leave with a stiff bow, noting the signs of the
Captain's wrath and chagrin, but with such a stinging anger in himself
it crossed his mind only a good while later that the Captain's blood
pressure was apparently rather high.

Denny's loud groans and threats of revenge on Pastora had been quieted
by Dr.  Schumann's needle, but his swollen lips and end of his nose
just visible in a swathe of bandages big as a large pumpkin emitted
burbles and rattles and snorts for the rest of the night.  David stood
swaying, legs wide, feet rocking, trying to keep his balance and to
take in the meaning of the squalid disorder in the cabin.  Herr Glocken
was almost entirely terrorized, and tearfully begged David not to go to
sleep, and not to let him, Herr Glocken, go to sleep either.  Life was
too dangerous on board this ship, nobody was safe, the innocent and the
guilty were threatened alike, and the innocent first' Not always," said
David, with a flapping gesture full of drunken portentous ness towards
Denny.

"Always," said Herr Glocken, obstinately.

"Have it your way," said David, struggling to the bunk by the wall,
falling into his pillow face downward and letting his drunkenness take
charge of him.  He sank through qualmy waves into bottomless deeps of
drowning and yet could not drown.  Nightmare closed around in whirling
flame and orange flashes of dreadful shapeless visions with crazed eyes
and stretched silently screaming mouths.  He roiled face up and opened
his eyes on the low comedy of his surroundings and heard himself say
loudly, "I'm ready for the nut-hatcht"

"What?  What is that?"  Instantly Herr Glocken responded.  "Don't turn
out your light.  Don't go to sleep!"

"All right," said David, "i won't.  But you go to sleep.  It's all over
anyhow.  Nothing more can happen."

"Oh, how do we know?"  moaned Herr Glocken, but in a few minutes David
saw that he was asleep.  He slept also at last, for an hour, and woke
in the horrors of headache fit to crack his skull, a leaping gorge,
blazing thirst, and a stomach so estranged it refused to harbor its
only friends, aspirin and cold water.

Denny was awake again, too, this time merely groaning at intervals,
begging for water, but unable to lift or turn his head to drink it.
David said, "Just keep still for God's sake and open your mouth as much
as you can, and I'll pour a little and you swallow!"  This was done
with

much commotion and spilt water and sounds of choking from Denny, with
Herr Glocken pleading, "Bitte, bitte, bitte, my medicine, Herr Scott,
please my medicine, I am late with it, bitte--"

David gave him his medicine, swallowed more aspirin, and while he
washed lightly at the stand and changed his clothes, he asked Denny
whatever had happened to him.  Denny's beaten mouth moved and he told
the story of his afflictions, or rather his version of them, slowly in
a vocabulary that astonished even David, who thought he knew all the
words and most of their meanings.  He almost lost track of the events
in his fascinated attention to the language, but the name Pastora did
emerge from the depths of boiling pitch.

"Are you sure?"  asked David.  "Last time I saw her she was running
from you like a rabbit, way ahead, too--"

"I finally got to her cabin," said Denny in a low hoarse voice, "and
she came right out and lit into me with an ice pick.  I bet her pimp
put her up to it.  i bet he was right there back of her--" His mouth
pouted and twitched at the corners.  "She already had my money," he
whispered, "all the hell she was going to get.  I guess they figured it
all velvet and no wear and tear-"

David left the cabin without waiting for more, pretending that he
didn't hear Herr Glocken pleading earnestly that Herr Scott should not
leave him alone.  "Let him get out on deck by himself," David decided,
"I'm through."  Hunched and sick, he found his table.  For once he was
not hungry but drank coffee, hoping for Jenny and fearing she would not
come, glancing around in spite of himself every time someone entered,
hating the very thought of seeing her and hardly able to endure his
waiting for her.  At last he felt he had something to say to her that
she would not be able to answer.  Would she dare to say to him again,
"it wasn't love, David--" Well, this time he didn't care what it was.
It was the end for him and he was going to walk off the ship at Vigo.

When he glanced about again, Jenny was there, coming towards him.  He
was so blinded with excitement he could not see, until she was quite
near, that she was pale, exhausted, her eyes swollen; but she was
freshly washed and smelled of roses, her smile was quite frank and
friendly if a little shamefaced.  She seated herself, shook out her
napkin and said, "Lord!  that was heavy going last night, wasn't it?
I've never been so absolutely blot to in my life.  What happened to the
raffle, I wonder?  Finally?  Or to anything else?  David darling, you
look downright done in.  What became of you?"

She had not looked straight in his eyes, in spite of her smile; she
now asked the steward for orange juice and coffee and toast and jelly
and milk, then said, "Heavens, it's just force of habit.  I can't eat
anythin Is coffee all you're having, too?"

David said in a crackling voice, "Look here, Jenny, what are you up to?
What are you trying on this time?  Pretend you don't remember?  Well,
you never believed me when I told you that, and now I don't believe
you."

"That's fair enough," said jenny, "but now I do believe you, because I
don't remember one single thing after a lot of dancing and scurrying
around the ship with Freytag and drinking a lot, and then I woke up
this morning with a crashing head in my own chaste narrow bunk with
Elsa lying there staring at me across the cabin, and the minute I
opened my eyes she asked, "How do you feel now?"  I was delighted to
tell her I felt simply immeasurably awful and it seemed to cheer her
up."

David saw that she was really uneasy and kept a cold steady eye upon
her as she rambled along, but interrupted to ask: "You don't
remember?"

Jenny said, "I am trying my best to tell you that for the first time in
my abandoned career, I don't remember a thing after a certain point. 
We joined up for a while with Mrs.  Treadwell and her little powder
puff of an officer, and we were all over the ship and we seemed to
drink everything in sight, but I can't remember how I got back to my
cabin. Oh," she said painfully, drooping her face into her hands.

"Are you sure you went to your cabin at all?"  asked David with a
scorching smile.

"I woke up there, if that's any proof," said Jenny, feeling a chill in
her spine, for David was about to tell her something she did not want
to hear, and her blood knew what it was.  "Why?"

"Why, nothing," said David.  "This alcoholic blank is convenient, isn't
it?"

"Why, no," said Jenny, drearily, "not if you've been trailing me around
again and peeping.  What was it?  What did I do?"

He turned his head away and his profile was one tight small secretive
smile.  "Ask Freytag," he said, watching acutely her pallor taking on
faint greenish shadows.

Jenny knew that expression in his face too well, and resented it again.
"I'll do that, later," she said.  "There's no hurry."  The anger in her
voice didn't match the tears slowly filling her eyelids.  More tears,
yes, she

could draw them at will- this time they wouldn't work.  "Don't cry,
Jenny, or not before people.  They'll think I've been beating you--" he
said.  "You do cry so nicely, but it's a little late for that now.
We've crossed a line, it's all over, why can't we say so and let go?"

"Haven't we been doing that, letting go little by little, all along?"
asked Jenny, her tears drying at once and her face beginning to glow
pinkly with anger.  "Does it have to be a wrench?  Do we have to break
bones?  I wish we could let it come of itself when we are really ready
for it- when it won't hurt so much!  We'll get used to it gradually-"

David flared up in turn.  "What exactly am I supposed to get used to,
Seeing you sprawled flat on your back in a fairly public place, the
boat deck?  And the only reason you stayed nearly faithful to me is
that you were too drunk to be interesting to your seducer, after all."
He poured another cup of coffee and said, "Let's drop this subject. I'm
sick of it already."

Jenny took a good swig of too hot coffee, gasped a little and said,
"You are a monster, did you know that, you monster?"

"Are you still drunk?"  asked David in something like triumph.
"Sometimes when I thought I was sobered up and could face the mean
trivialities of real life again, one cup of hot coffee would slam me
back into the ditch, I'd have to crawl out once more through the slime
and weeds---"

"You're pleased with yourself, aren't you?"  asked Jenny accusingly.
"You're glad this happened, aren't you?  You were really hoping all
along for something like it, weren't you?  I'd give a good deal to know
what you really have had in mind all this time--not that it concerns
me."

"It did concern you," said David in a new tone, as if he were talking
pleasantly with a stranger, "but you are right.  It doesn't now."

Jenny stood up calmly, her face quietly intent, but David saw her hands
shaking.  "I'm sorry," she said, "but I must run away now.  I've got a
question to ask somebody."

"I've told you already."  David raised his voice a little, but did not
glance at her again as she went.  He poured more coffee, and said to
the waiter, I'll have scrambled eggs and ham now, thank you."

Mrs.  Treadwell and Herr Freytag greeted each other pleasantly on a
morning stroll around the deck and agreed that breakfast together in
the open air would be a very nice way to dispel the lingering miasma of
last night's uproar.  They were both clear-eyed, in amiable mood and

inclined to smile at each other when some specially used-up-looking
reveler strayed by their chairs.  They exchanged one or two universal
if minor truths- pleasure was so often more exhausting than the hardest
work; they had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave
to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of
asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.  "Both equally
disfiguring," said Freytag.  "The real sin against life is to abuse and
destroy beauty, even one's own- even more, one's own, for that has been
put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being--"

Mrs.  Treadwell turned her dark blue eyes on him in faint surprise.  "I
never thought of that," she said.  "I just thought beauty was a phase
of living and would pass with everything else in time----"

"Maybe," said Freytag, but that is not the same as hurrying to kill it,
do you think?"

"Maybe not," said Mrs.  Treadwell, watching Jenny Brown coming towards
them slowly, head towards the sea, hands crossed and folded at the
wrists.  She passed without seeing them, all pallor and melancholy.
"That poor girl," said Mrs.  Treadwell, rather idly, turning to
Freytag.  He started so sharply the things on his tray rattled, he
gazed after the retreating Jenny, and his dilated pupils turned his
gray eyes to black fire.  Mrs.  Treadwell Instantly was warm with
embarrassment, as if Freytag had spoken some dire impropriety: he
simply had no reserve, no dignity.  It did not matter what kind of
thing existed between him and that girl, it was so weak of him to let
every feeling he had show in that way.  She carefully avoided facing
him.  It was like that other morning when the talk about his wife came
up; like the time he had picked the quarrel with her in the writing
room.  Mrs.  Treadwell set her tray carefully on the deck between their
chairs, alighted feet together, and rose as if she were getting out of
a motor car.

"Why are you going?"  asked Freytag simply as a small boy.

'my cabin mate is not well, I promised to help her."

"isn't that the screeching hag who made all the trouble?"  asked
Freytag with a writhing mouth.  Mrs.  Treadwell walked away.  Freytag
got up and went in the opposite direction, looking for Jenny.  He did
not find her after a half hour's search.

As Mrs.  Treadwell neared her own door, the door of the cabin next hers
was opened, and the Baumgartner family emerged, the little boy in front
with his timid hangdog air.  Herr Baumgartner held the door

for his wife and stepped aside for her with an almost theatrical show
of deference on his weak-mouthed, self-pitying face, with its beaten
look of guilt.  His wife passed him like a stranger, yet her
perpetually grieved air was now touched with shame, the silence among
the three was like some burdensome secret they were carrying together.
Mrs.  Treadwell opened her door and, halfway in, said hastily, "Griiss
Gott " over her shoulder, then closed the door, and Lizzi, pushing the
ice cap off her brow, said plaintively, "Please, what is it now?"

"Nothing," said Mrs.  Treadwell.  "Is there anything I can do for
you?"

"I would like another sleeping pill," said Lizzi, drearily.  "Tell me,
did you hear anything new upstairs?  What happened to the party?"

Mrs.  Treadwell handed her the pill and a glass of water.  "There are
rumors," she said, "not very interesting.  There was almost nobody at
the raffle, and one of those twins drew the tickets out of an open
basket, and the Spanish company won all the prizes except a little
white shawl for the pianist and a pair of castanets for one of those
Cuban students.... I only overheard this- some of the Germans talking,
those Huttens and others.  Nobody told me anything directly.  Now
then," she ended amiably, "will you go to sleep again?"

"I think so," said Lizzi, almost entirely chastened.  "You did not hear
any word of Herr Rieber"

"He is resting," said Mrs.  Treadwell, "and I hope you will too."  Out
she went near desperation, but managed to make her way to the small
writing room, where almost no one went these days, without a glance or
greeting for anyone.  She sat there alone reading stale magazines until
the luncheon bugle sounded.  The exact vision of the Baumgartners'
faces would not leave her.  It was plain they too had suffered some
sort of shabby little incident during the night.  Mrs.  Treadwell did
not even wish to guess what it might have been.  That sad dull display
of high manners after they had behaved no doubt disgracefully to each
other and their child was intended no doubt to prove that they were not
so base as they had caused each other to seem.  That dreadful little
door-holding bowing scene had meant to say, You can see, can't you,
that in another time or place, or another society, I might have been
very different, much better than you have ever seen me?  Mrs. Treadwell
leaned back and closed her eyes.  What they were saying to each other
was only, Love me, love me in spite of all!  Whether or not I love you,
whether I am fit o love, whether you are able to love, even if there is
no such thing as love, love me!

A small deep wandering sensation of disgust, self-distaste came with
these straying thoughts.  She remembered as in a dream again her
despairs, her long weeping, her incurable grief over the failure of
love or what she had been told was love, and the ruin of her hopes-
what hopes?  She could not remember--and what had it been but the
childish refusal to admit and accept on some term or other the
difference between what one hoped was true and what one discovers to be
the mere laws of the human condition?  She had been hurt, she had
recovered, and what had it all been but a foolish piece of romantic
carelessness?  She stood up to take a deep breath and walk around the
stuffy room.  All morning long she had been trying in the back of her
mind to piece together exactly what had happened last night to her, and
what she had done.  The scene with that young officer was clear enough.
She remembered Herr Baumgartner hanging over the rail looking sick.
Lizzi was delivered to her hands later, when she had been amusing
herself painting her face; and then

No good putting it off any longer.  She could not find her gilded
sandals when she was putting her things in order.  There were small
random blood spots on the lower front of her nightgown.  And as she
walked, she remembered, and stopped, clutching a chair back feeling
faint.  Walked again, then left the room and set out to look for Jenny
Brown.  She should know everything about it, being the "girl" of the
rather self-absorbed young man, Denny's cabin mate.... Mrs.  Treadwell
remembered very well what had happened, what she had done, she wanted a
few particulars of the damage she had caused, and about all to learn
whether her enemy had recognized her.

Jenny Brown was reading the bulletin board.  A ragged-edged imitation
of an ancient proclamation announced: The victims of last nigh violence
and bloodshed are resting quietly.  The suspected criminal under
surveillance, not yet apprehended, but an early disclosure some
interesting identities is expected.  Signed: Les Camelots de
C.caracha.

For the rest, news from the faraway world mentioned the shipp strike,
the number of ports tied up, the number of men involved, amount of
wages lost, the many millions of money lost to the ship business, and
no end in sight; the situation in Cuba was not improved all attempts at
a settlement between factions had failed; unemployment was world-wide
and growing worse, a real threat everywhere; ye.  day's ship's pool, so
much, had been won by Herr Lowenthal; the

races would begin at two o'clock, and whoever had lost a gold-banded
fountain pen with the initial R engraved on it, please call at the
purser's office.

Mrs.  Treadwell said to Jenny: "But no bulletins about the casualties
in last evening's engagement.  I wonder how they are doing."

Jenny said: "It seems to have all been very gay.  That dancer called
Pastora is said to have attacked that William Denny with an ice pick.
And that long-legged Swede hit that Herr Rieber over the head with a
beer bottle.  These are notes I have just picked up in my travels
around deck."

Mrs.  Treadwell suddenly and surprisingly laughed out- not a loud laugh
or an empty one- a small rich trill of merriment, pure pleasure; Jenny
was so taken with the sound she laughed too, in a small shaken voice;
she had not expected to feel like laughing about anything, and now she
laughed without knowing why.

"So it was that little dancer, after all?"

"That's what he says, and I'd think he should know," said Jenny, and
they went on with light laughter in their voice, quite blithe and
ruthless, perfectly frank in their delight that the insufferable fellow
had got his comeuppance.

"It nearly restores my faith in life," said Jenny.  Her face then
changed, instantly, became pale and anxious once more.  Mrs.  Treadwell
saw Freytag coming towards them, and without any sign of uneasiness,
she drifted away in her strange motionless walk as if she did not use
the ordinary human muscles.  Jenny stood until Freytag came straight
towards her and waited until he spoke.  He leaned very close and said
gently: "I've been worried about you."

Jenny said, "Don't, please."

He said, "I've been looking for you all over.  Where were you?"  Jenny
said soberly, "Oh, here and there.  No one can get really misplaced for
long on this ship.... Oh, I can't bear it much longer.  Oh, I want to
leave at Vigo, but I haven't got a visa for Spain."

"Stop saying "Oh," said Freytag, soothingly.  "Things aren't so bad as
all that.  You haven't got anything to be sorry for."

"Oh, what do you know about it?  Tell me, tell me, what happened?"

"If you could see your face!"  he told her.  "Jenny, you're such a
strange sort of girl.  You'd think you'd just been sentenced to death.
Listen to me," he said, familiarly as a brother.  With something of a

brother's impersonal touch he took her elbow lightly and steered her
out to deck center and strolled along with her.  "You'll not believe
this maybe, but nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing happened, we were
both too drunk, I'm very sorry to say; I was good for nothing and you
were- well, not there at all, on the moon, I should say; and Jenny, it
was perhaps a little dull and certainly absurd and nothing for either
of us to think about again.  Do you hear me?"  he said, leaning forward
and peering into her face.  She stopped short, and to his astonishment,
laughed with convincing merriment.  "How idiotic!"  she said. "Nothing,
after all.  For all the trouble you've made me, I should have had
something out of it!  Something more than just trouble.  You needn't
think of it again, but David will for the rest of his life.  He saw us
last night- saw something that about finished him, I think..."

"So long as he goes prowling and spying on you," said Freytag, boldly,
"anything he sees will be too good for him."

After a long pause, Jenny took a few slow steps ahead of him.  "I
deserve that," she said flatly.  "Good-by."  Her face was anything but
repentant-looking and the manner of her leave taking was, to say the
least, he observed wryly, not humble.  He did not cast off at once the
tingle of annoyance and curiously wounded feelings her sudden snub left
in him.  Even after he reminded himself again that she was not really
attractive, a little nobody not worth a man's attention, just a moody,
shallow neurotic American girl pretending to herself she was an artist
to give herself false importance- the whole series of belittling tags
seemed inadequate to his sense of injury, his desire for revenge of
some kind on her.  His grudge against Mrs.  Treadwell for her
inconsequent gossip with Lizzi had quite vanished- indeed.  He had a
slight new grievance against Mrs.  Treadwell because she had not once
made the smallest gesture towards advancing their dubious entente, thus
denying him the satisfaction of putting her off in the little ways he
knew, just enough to whet her appetite for conquest but not enough to
discourage her.  He had been rather pleased at her readiness to have
breakfast with him again as if their first had made a light bond
between them; and she had ended by walking away rudely, as rudely as
Jenny, after all, though she did seem to be of a somewhat better class;
well, maybe American women are all of them rude.  He shook his head as
if that might scatter his uncomfortable thoughts, and tried to think of
Mary, but the nearer he came to her bodily, the more dimly her image
flickered in his mind.  What was there to think of?  She was Mary,
she

was there, waiting, they would take up their life together just where
they had set it down- no, they had never set it down anywhere, this
separation was nothing, a mere interruption of habit, of custom, of the
good warm dailiness of marriage, as if marriage could be in any way
changed or affected by absences from each other.  He drew a deep breath
and sighed loudly.

In the bar Herr Hansen was bowed over a stein of beer like a man
looking into an open grave.  The Spanish company sat around a table
with coffee cups before them, Ric and Rac clawing into the sugar bowl;
they were all silent and sulky-looking and concerned only with
themselves.  Their affairs with this ship and its passengers were
ended, they were finished with all on board, they had no need to
express their hatred and contempt any more.  They looked a little dull
and melancholy in their sullenness, as if their victory had cost more
than it was worth, and had exhausted them.  Freytag passed on through
the bar without stopping when he saw who was already there: no beer
could do him any good in such company.

Jenny returned to her cabin, and there was Elsa on the divan, hands
flattening a book on her knees.  "What's that you're reading?"  asked
Jenny, washing her hands for lack of something to do.  "The Bible,"
said Elsa, distantly, without raising her eyes.

"Have you had breakfast?"

"Yes," said Elsa, "and those Spaniards were already there, and when we
passed them my mother said, loud enough for them to hear, "Look out for
your wallets!"  but they pretended not to hear.  My poor father, I felt
sorry for him, he said in a low voice making a joke, I think, that my
mother would get him stabbed in the back if she said such things to
that kind of foreigners, and my mother just said loudly in Spanish that
thief was too good a word for them after all the names they called
other people.  I thought I would just die," she added suddenly. Without
warning she closed the Bible and fell sidewise on the divan and
stretched out, crying deeply with tears rolling into her hair.

"It's no use," she babbled, "nothing helps, i can't find anything in it
that tells me how to live when I am so ugly and stupid and nobody wants
to come near me, nobody can dance with me!  Once my mother made me try
to play the piano.  I took lessons years and years, but anybody could
play better than me, nobody wanted to hear me--"

Jenny offered her a clean handkerchief and said helplessly, "Elsa,

Elsa, it's not so bad as all that!  Here, take this.  Let's wash our
faces and go up on deck.  We're coming into Vigo soon, and we'll all go
ashore and those wretched dancers will stay there, and everything will
be better then."

"No, no," said Elsa, "I am not going.  You go."

Johann woke from his short heavy sleep warm and eased all over; he
stretched and yawned and rolled like a cat, making luxurious noises in
his throat.  He had come in just before daylight decently quiet but not
guiltily, not cautiously; his uncle was awake, and did not question
him, but asked only for a glass of water.  Now he was sleeping well,
comfortably composed, with a peaceful reconciled face, his eyelids
tightly folded, his wax-yellow skin smoothed out and cold-looking.  In
panic Johann laid his palm near the mouth and nostrils to feel if there
was still breath; then to the heart, his hand shaking.  "Uncle!"  he
called loudly.  "Wake up!"  His uncle opened his eyes, gave a little
melancholy sound of protest, and said, "No, why must you wake me?  I
did not sleep until very late."

Johann snatched back his hand and stammered a confused apology.  His
uncle did not reply, but closed his eyes again.  Johann waited
uncertainly for some sign of life, trying to remember his promises,
fighting down resentment and impatience mixed with fear of that deathly
presence- why could he not draw his last breath and make an end of this
dirty job?  "Uncle."  He spoke more sharply than he intended.  "Would
you like a wash and some breakfast now?  Tell me!"

His uncle opened his eyes and said, "Yes, Johann, your task is what it
was yesterday.  Do the necessary things, as before.  But first, kneel
down here beside me, and let us say a prayer together."  Johann knelt
and bowed his head in a rebellious silence, and did not join in when
his uncle began, "Our Father..."  Concha would be waiting for him, she
had promised to spend the afternoon alone with him.  His clasped hands
doubled into fists over his mouth, he was almost blind with the deathly
rapture of lust that struck him like a blow from an unknown source,
with a violence not of pleasure but like a mortal sickness or other
disaster he had not dreamed of, and no one had warned him.  "And
deliver us from evil--" said his uncle.  "Amen."  Johann blundered to
his feet and began getting the morning sponge bath ready, silent, back
turned to the cabin, hot with defensive outrage that his own
uncontrollable body had so nearly put him to shame before that pious
old

hypocrite who would pretend to be shocked and would give no matter
what to have just a flash of such feelings again.  As he went on with
the work he calmed down quite well, even felt a little remorse for
thinking rude things of his poor wretched burden, and at last, when the
steward brought the breakfast tray, he made a very creditable show of
disappearing reluctantly.  Once outside the door he went leaping like a
stag, whistling "Das gibt's nut einmal, das kommt Night wieder "

Lizzi finally got up and ventured on deck.  She lay in her chair, shaw
led and muffled like an invalid, drinking hot broth.  She was quite
silent, and for the rest of the voyage sat or walked alone, had food
brought to her cabin, her face melancholy and confused as if she could
not see well, or had just received painful news.  Mrs.  Treadwell
observed silence with her, and they lapsed rather comfortably into
their natural relation of strangers, as separate as silkworms in their
cocoons.  Yet moved by some impulse, perhaps of vague mischief, Mrs.
Tread well brought Lizzi an orange from the breakfast table, and
remarked: "Herr Rieber was up and about this morning.  He seems to be
doing very nicely."

Lizzi inserted a thumbnail in the orange peel and pulled off a section
as if she were flaying something that could suffer.  "Let him," she
remarked, sinking her teeth into the fruit.

At Vigo the harbor was filled with anchored, idle ships standing bows
pointed outward.  The steerage passengers again crowded upon the main
deck and were herded down the gangplank first.  The bride and groom,
her hand on his arm, went ashore for good and disappeared without a
single word of farewell to anyone.  The Cuban family with the small
girl and boy nodded and bowed to several of the officers as they went.
David and Jenny set out together as they had finally agreed, to get
visas for France.  They went down just behind the Spanish company, who
without a glance, not even a frown, towards their recent accomplices,
the medical students, streamed off, loaded again with their parcels now
containing their loot from Tenerife, chattering like blue jays, looking
and behaving quite as they had when they boarded ship at Veracruz.  The
weather was wonderfully warm and tender, and they went at once to a
small shaded pak nearby, where they occupied a half dozen benches and
seemed for the first time at ease with themselves.

Jenny and David, in a pleasant moment of truce, went to the French

consul, an earnest bearded young fellow of the utmost gravity of
manner, and were told with gestures of regret that he had not the
faculty to grant visas to persons in transit.  He went to the door with
them, still expressing sympathy in a stern uncompromising voice.  Jenny
held her head while David took her elbow and led her down the steps.
"Let's go to Spain?"  she said, woefully.  "No," said David.  "Do you
know where we are going first?"  They passed the little park again, and
the zarzuela company were still sitting, very quietly for them, as if
they were waiting for something to happen.  Jenny and David sat on a
bench some distance from them, and for no reason, David took his wallet
out and looked at his passport and ticket.  "To Bremerhaven, that's
where," he told her, at the same moment that he discovered that his
ticket read "Southampton."

"Good God," he said simply.  "Let's go."  They hurried back and ran to
the purser, who already had prepared to put David aboard the British
tender at Southampton, a notion that filled David with acute horror.
The purser made a few small grumbles in his mustaches about people who
were always changing their minds in mid-ocean, refusing utterly to
grant that the mistake was not the passenger's.  Jenny wanted to argue
the question, but David marched her out firmly, though he could not
prevent her thanking him much too warmly as they went.  "It's the
Captain who needs to make up his mind," said Jenny, and they exchanged
the familiar bits of rumor drifting from ear to ear; someone had heard
the Captain swear repeatedly that once that cursed steerage was emptied
at Vigo, the next harbor would be Bremerhaven.  He would not stop at
Gijon, nor at Boulogne, and if he pleased, not at Southampton.  His
contention, so the gossip ran, was that his was a German ship sailing
through enemy waters, and his duty was to get her into home port safely
without international incident.  Wilhelm Freytag had been looking
forward to seeing the last of those Cuban medical students at Boulogne,
to say nothing of Mrs.  Treadwell.  Yet even as it was, the ship seemed
nearly deserted.  No one except David Scott and Jenny had gone
ashore--the passengers had been warned to stay on board unless they had
urgent business ashore, for it was necessary for the Vera to get out of
the harbor before nightfall, whether because of port regulations, or
the weather, or the shipping strike, the announcer did not say.  David
learned from the purser that the fare was the same for all ports from
Vigo, and that from there the Captain could put them off where he
liked, or take the whole lot to Bremer

haven and, said the purser kindly, "Our good Captain is not in the
mood to have his orders questioned by anyone.  However, in any case, I
am sure we will not stop at Southampton."  "Well, I'll be going on to
Bremerhaven, anyway," said David, and Jenny said instantly, "Yes, and
then we can get our visas for Spain!"

David said nothing.  They went on deck together, in the oddly changed
mood of tenderness they were arriving at as if they were two strangers
discovering something lovable in faces they were seeing for the first
time.  David's fury had melted at white heat all his habitual views and
impressions and feelings about Jenny, and these began to flow and
mingle and form again into quite different shapes, so new, so
unexpected, David seemed a stranger even to himself; and whatever Jenny
he thought he had once known, she had vanished.  Silently he watched
her turn into someone else, someone he did not know, maybe would never
know, yet this new creature before him was certainly one he had created
for himself, as he had created the other, out of stray stuffs of his
own desire.  They leaned together and their hands slid along the rail
and took gentle hold.  Jenny said, "What are we doing, venturing out
into this livid world without our keepers?  "I don't know who to curse
this time, that little worm of an agent in Mexico who told me I could
get a French visa in any port, or the purser, who assured us in
Veracruz, while it still wasn't too late, that the ship would not stop
at Boulogne, but never mind, just go to the French consul at Vigo, the
old liar said-"

"I don't mind at all," said David, "I don't care where we land, just so
we do land, sometime or other, in the same place.  That's the way I
really feel, Jenny angel, and I wish you'd stop fretting."

"Or maybe I should just curse myself," said Jenny, in mock resignation,
snuggling her face for a moment blissfully on his sleeve.  "David,
darling, when you're like this, I could creep back inside and be your
rib again!"

"I like you better the way you are," said David.  And his mind added,
Even if I can't keep you from creeping off into corners with other
men... one day this won't matter either, it will help finish things
off.  He changed the subject.

"We are certainly not loitering in port," he said, "and the pilot is
going with us all the way to Gijon."

Jenny said, "I wonder if the pilot at Tenerife got back all right?"
David said, "Pilots always do."

Between Vigo and Gijon the famous weather began to whip up.  The
waters rolled and whirled upon themselves and piled up in spiteful
green mountains opening suddenly to another abyss.  The Vera almost
lost her head at the mere approach to the Bay of Biscay.  Jenny could
not sleep, but sat at her porthole until nearly morning, watching the
great faros along the coast flaring and turning and flaring.  Spain was
the most beautiful coast she could even imagine: after the solid
promontory of rock, a great table rising out of the sea, further along
the hills were like low mounds of greenest moss, then again the rocks
thrust up like furious fists, but softly colored as agate and jade and
coral, with the great ill-humored clouds lou ring above them.  "What
was wrong with me?"  she wondered.  "It should have been Spain all
along. We'll go straight to Spain," she assured herself firmly,
watching the turning lights flashing across the tumbling waters, hoping
she would never forget them.  Now and then the Vera would rear like a
giant shied horse, give a loud frozen roar with all her machinery and
plunge head-on once more.

At Gijon, coming into harbor, hearing yelps outside, Freytag put his
head through the porthole to take a glimpse of the new scene.  The Vera
was turning very slowly.  Half a dozen launches were circling round
filled with yelling enthusiasts, all waving colored scarfs, nearly all
standing up at their own peril in their bounding little shells.  Again
there was a long row of Spanish ships backed neatly into docks like
parked motor cars.  Here, he noted later on the bulletin board, a
strike of longshoremen had been added to the general strike, so no
cargoes would be unloaded here on this account.  The air was gray and
heavy, and Freytag observed that the effect of the shouting welcoming
people swaying in their little boats, getting in the way, only added
confusion, not gaiety.  The ship began her wild plunging again almost
before she was out of the harbor, and Dr.  Schumann remarked to Herr
Professor Hutten that it looked like a good classical kind of crossing,
he expected to give out a good many sedatives, and it was a relief to
have all those steerage people safe on land.  Herr Professor Hutten
improved the moment and asked for a few cachets of something to help
his wife sleep.

Then, after all, the ship did stand out from Boulogne, at midnight,
foghorn bellowing, the half-empty ship lighted with sailors bustling
and scurrying.  Jenny leaped into a long coat over her gown and
slipped

into shoes without stockings and hurried to the side.  A small shadowy
French pilot boat eased up to the gangplank on the lower deck, its
small bell going twing-twingtwing, and leaning out Jenny saw the six
Cuban students, silent for once, leap to the narrow deck.  Mrs.
Treadwell followed, holding out her hand towards one of the officers
for help; she seated herself with her back to the ship she was leaving.
The Mexican diplomat's wife went next, with the Indian nurse carrying
the baby.  The officer took the child from her arms, and Jenny saw her
narrow naked feet as she stepped into the wet slippery little boat.
Jenny listened with pleasure to the sharp quick nasal speech in French
voices, and she watched with something near an anguish of longing to be
there, as the little bell went twing-taling and the pilot boat moved
slowly out of the circle of ship's light, and moved, glimmering faintly
in its own thrifty light, towards the blessed shores of France, towards
the beloved City of Light- when would she come there?  Jenny put her
head down on the rail and broke into tears, then ran wildly down to her
cabin.  Elsa was at the porthole, but drew her head in and asked at
once in concern' Why what has happened?"

Jenny hung up her coat and took a handkerchief out of the pocket.  "Oh
nothing!  Don't trouble... it's just my turn now.!"

At Southampton, no tender came out to meet them, just a cutter carrying
the revenue and other necessary officers.  No passenger came on or left
there.  Jenny could laugh then at her heart-jolting vision of David,
keeping a stiff upper lip and a thoroughly dissenting eye, being borne
away to the shores of England, a place where neither of them had ever
dreamed of going.  A scruffy neglected-looking little boy carrying an
armload of newspapers came on deck, but when David and Jenny tried to
buy one from him, they could not understand one word he said, and the
little boy knew no word of their language.  They had only German money,
and when David placed a half dozen marks in his hand, he regarded them
with gloom and distrust, though he did not give them back, nor would he
give them a newspaper, either.

"What language does this boy speak?"  David asked a young officer
passing by.

"English," said the officer, curtly without pausing.  "Nonsense!"  said
Jenny, to the back of his head.  The British officers, at the Captain's
invitation, seated themselves

around a table on the sunny side of the bar, temporarily closed. 
Jenny wandered in and sat within hearing distance quite purposely,
though David refused to stop with her.  But the officers were
disappointingly silent for some time, unfolding and looking at their
various documents, passing them around, signing something.  One of the
British officers asked the Captain kindly to explain a puzzling entry
on a certain page, and his forefinger jabbed the place rather abruptly.
Then glancing around and seeing Jenny, he dropped his voice, the half
dozen heads leaned towards each other, and there followed to Jenny's
chagrin a pantomime of bad temper and disagreement.  The Captain's face
was scarlet, he was awkward, baffled, fuming, even his warded jaw
puffed up over his collar, his eyes turned bloodshot.  The young
Britishers were quite self-possessed, they sat back with their chins up
and their hands properly disposed and stared down their noses at the
German making a holy show of himself, managing to put him in the wrong
by their very postures of righteous ease.  Jenny was pleased to observe
that the British really behaved the way they were said to, in
newspapers and novels.  They were behaving as if they thought this was
a social occasion and some low uninvited person had managed to get in
and commit a nuisance.

The Captain raised his voice.  "Of course, the French, the Americans,
the British, they have everything, they can do as they like, it is only
the Germans who need not expect any justice, or rather, even decency at
this point."

"I did not make this ruling," said one of them, in a chilling voice, "I
am only here to see it carried out."  He frowned severely, and Jenny
noticed that the more severely he frowned, the more helplessly he
blushed with some deep inexpressible embarrassment.

"Of course," said the Captain huffily, "we are all martyrs to our duty,
who does not know that?  But is it a state of affairs that we may not
even complain of?"

There followed a stiff silence.  One of the British officers reached
out and touched the papers.  "We may as well get on with this," he said
to the others, and after that they spoke only to each other and not
once to the Captain.

"I'd give anything just to know what they were arguing about," Jenny
said to David later.

"Something dull, no doubt," said David.

"I wish I knew what that little boy was trying to tell us," said
Jenny.  "He was trying to sell us a newspaper," said David.

"Oh, all right," said Jenny.  "All right, all right."

The last part of the voyage was quiet and pleasant enough, the few
survivors agreed among themselves: even Herr Lowenthal, noting all the
vacant chairs in the dining room, suggested to his steward that perhaps
Herr Freytag could have a whole table to himself, now.  The steward was
happy to inform Herr Lowenthal that Herr Freytag had thought of that
for himself and the change had been made.  William Denny got up and
took the bandages off his head without telling Dr.  Schumann, who
promptly put them back on again, but allowed him to go down for his
meals.  His one slowly burning resentment was that Pastora had, after
all, got clean away, had nearly got clean away with murder.  "These
little head wounds are very chancy," said Dr.  Schumann.  "Why do you
suppose I gave you a tetanus shot?  Do please let me handle this."

"That Pastora ought to be sent to the clink for life," said Denny, "and
given the hell of a beating before she got there."

Dr.  Schumann, deeply offended by the generally coarse low nature of
his patient, said very coldly: "It was not Pastora.  It was Mrs.  Tread
well, that modest and gentle lady whom you somehow succeeded in
exasperating beyond bounds."

Denny was so shocked he could only give a long low whistle that ended
"Jeeeeeesus!  For a fact?  How did you know?"

"A young steward told me."

"Which one?"  insisted Denny, sitting up suddenly.

"That I cannot tell you," said Dr.  Schumann.  "This episode is now in
the category of things past, and you will do much better to chalk it up
to Experience.  Good morning.  I will see you tomorrow."  He closed his
black satchel and left, feeling a real glow of some kind of malicious
satisfaction mixed with moral unction: for once justice was being done
in the most roundabout and no doubt reprehensible way, but it did Dr.
Schumann's heart good to see it at work.

When the ship passed the Isle of Wight, Jenny was enchanted with the
fairy-looking castle standing in a greensward the color of an emerald,
surrounded by small tender woods, and the grass shaven neatly to the
very edge of the sea.  As they passed so near to the shore, she
believed

she was deceived again in her sense of smell, which often brought her
strange improbable whiffs of cross currents of air.  Now she smelled
herbs and freshly cut grass and grazing cows.

"Yes, yes," said Elsa, almost happily, "it is true.  I have passed here
this is the fourth time and there is always that lovely smell.  When I
was little I thought maybe heaven would be like that."

The passengers began to be restless and inert at once; the daily games
ceased, some of the moving pictures were being shown for the second
time, they lolled on deck or in their cabins, and began packing and
repacking their luggage and worrying about their belongings in the
hold.  By the time the Vera went through the lock and emerged into the
narrow River Weser, Lizzi was still refusing to return to the Captain's
table when she learned that Herr Rieber was back in his accustomed
chair.  She brooded on the way Mrs.  Treadwell had simply picked
herself up and left the cabin as if she were going to take a turn on
deck, and had said no farewell.  not even a little simple "Griss Gott,"
which costs nothing, When she was in her deck chair which she had
caused to be moved far away from Herr Rieber's, she closed her eyes a
nd pretended to be asleep when she saw him trotting by--what a little
pig, after all, with that big piece of tape and lint on his bald
head... what a disgusting life it was!

The Captain, Herr Rieber, Frau Rittersdorf, and the Huttens, with Frau
Schmitt and Dr.  Schumann, sat at their table nearly in silence, for
they all felt that any topic they had in common would lead to awkward
or trivial gossip.  And they were no longer interested in anything the
others had to say--their minds were closing in and folding up once more
around their own concerns, their only common hope being to leave that
ship and end that voyage and to take up their real and separate lives
once more.  Yet at the very last dinner together, they drank each
others' healths and gave each other friendly looks, and Herr Professor
Hutten said warmly, "At last we are nearing home, and we are, after
all, all good Germans together.  Let us thank God for his blessings."

There at last they faced another port town, with its cluttered docks
and warehouses crowding down to the water, full of floating harbor
filth around the familiar line of idle empty ships waiting like others
in

harbors all over the world for the strike to be settled.  Again small
craft full of people waving scarfs and shouting welcomes circled about
playfully and got in the way.

Bremerhaven!  And the old Vera safe in harbor, among a fleet of others
like her, battered rusty tired veterans coming in from all the seas,
always the long way round, carrying the scars of their hard voyages
with their untidy cargoes and middling people in the anxious middling
way of life, who were not traveling for pleasure.  Yet from every ship
the flags were flying and dipping in courtesy to the harbor and all in
it, the little bands on every deck were playing their hoppety tunes,
the crews and the officers were at their stations, all paint-fresh, fit
and ready, in good discipline.  On the Vera the passengers lined up as
near to the gangplank as they could without disorder or crowding.  They
were indeed all Germans and together, except for the three Americans,
who stood together somewhat back and apart.  Eyes met eyes again
vaguely, almost without recognition and no further speech.  They were
becoming strangers again, though not suspicious and hostile as at
first.  It was a pleasant indifference to everything but the blessed
moment of escape to life once more.  For a moment all the faces were
raised, eyes searching out the roofs of the town, filled and softened
with generous feelings--their hearts beat freely and their stomachs
trembled with the illusion of joy; all mysteriously entranced as if
they approached a lighted altar, they prepared to set their feet once
more upon the holy earth of their Fatherland.

The day was dark and cold, with lightly floating snow.  The family
groups drew together, the tall golden-haired Johann with his dying
uncle in the wheel chair, who opened his eyes now and again and looked
about him; the Baumgartner child in the orange buckskin leather charro
dress shivered in it instead of sweating.  Elsa, wearing a wooly white
coat, her white beret covering her hair, clutched her small traveling
bag to her, and repeated patiently, "Yes, Mama," or "No, Mama," to
every question her mother asked her, sometimes twice over.  "Elsa, did
you pick up all your hairpins and safety pins, did you leave any
handkerchiefs, have you got all your stockings together?  Did you leave
your nail file and scissors?  In underwear you started out with six of
everything, I hope we reach home with that number... besides
sweaters-"

Herr Lutz said jocosely, "You have not said exactly how many hairpins,
Elsa.  Twenty-seven, maybe?"

"Oh, Papa," she said gratefully, "I'm sure I brought everything."

"Of course you have, my dear little girl.  Now we are going home and
you should be happy."

"Yes and thank God," said Frau Lutz, glad to shift the ground of
argument, since she plainly was losing.  "And the rest will be on land,
in our own compartment, on a European train, like a real family once
more and none of this promiscuous mingling with low types we cannot
avoid.  Ha!"  she said in gloomy triumph, "This will be my last voyage.
There is no sea where we are going to live, Elsa."

"No, Elsa," said her father, "and no ships.  And no iodine or salt: You
buy salt with iodine in it from the pharmacist.  Otherwise you'll have
goiter."

"Oh for shame!"  cried Frau Lutz.  "How can you say such things?  Elsa,
your father is making one of his jokes-"

"How many of your relatives in St.  Gallen have goiterS" asked Herr
Lutz, reasonably.  "I'here was Aunt Fike, and Aunt Wilhelmina, and
Uncle Wolfgang and Cousin August, and your own sister Lotte, and your
grandfather on your mother's side "

"Stop!"  cried Frau Lutz, nearly beside herself.  "Slander your own
family, not mine!"

"It is no slander," said Herr Lutz.  "Elsa, what are you looking For
Who do you see?"  For he noticed that while they were talking her eyes
roamed slowly, steadily, furtively under her half-closed lids, her head
turned ever so slightly, and he had never seen an expression like that
on her face.  As a father, he did not approve and he was disturbed.
Elsa flushed darkly and put her hand over her mouth.  "Nothing, no
one," she said in such confusion he said nothing more.  At that moment
Herr Hansen lunged by, his face in knots, and he threw Elsa a glance as
he went, the glance of a wandering eye that is seeking nothing, and yet
for Elsa the blow was as cruel as if he had intended it.  He had always
looked at her as if she were thin air or a blank wall.  She flinched,
and her father said, "That was never the man for you, my dear."  Her
mother was shocked into agreement.  "The idea," she said in derision.
"Whoever thought so, for a minute?"

Hateful as Herr Hansen was to her, yet he had been crazed about that
terrible Amparo, and he had smashed that horrid Herr Rieber for some
good reason, she was sure, so he was a man of strong feelings, only he
had never treated her as if she were human; what did she care?  Yet she
did care.  She did not really want anything from him, no not

even a look.  It was her student she would remember all her life,
standing there on deck with the music playing and his arms around her,
with his smiling questioning face and his coaxing voice--and still she
could not dance.  She drew such a deep breath she felt she must explain
it.  "I am only tired," she told them.  "I am not sick, Mama."

Freytag moved away from the German group and approached Jenny and
David, who stood hand in hand near Denny, who was picking silently at
bits of tape and cotton covering the heel cuts all over his face.
Freytag stopped before them and held out his hand to Jenny, who took
her hand out of David's and gave it to him with a gentle pressure.  She
smiled, but he saw her eyes grow very dark and excited.  "Good by,"
said Freytag, his own gray eyes clear and pleasant.  "I hope you will
like it here."

David offered his hand and Freytag gave it a good manly shake.  Their
eyes met, and though their faces were entirely impassive Jenny saw a
curious expression pass between them- the merest flicker of a glance
like light on water, but it chilled her blood.  It was the wordless
affirmation of pure male complicity, complete understanding from far
depths of instinctive being, safe from all surface movements and
perplexities of events, sympathy and a secret alliance, from which she
was excluded by natural law, in their unalienable estate of manhood.
Jenny trembled so violently that David said, "Are you cold, Jenny
angel?  Let me help you."  He took her coat off her arm and held it for
her to put on.  While he did this, he nodded to Freytag, who was going
towards the gangplank.

"Good luck," be said, and Freytag answered with a wave of his hand.

"Just to think, it's all over," said Jenny.  "Soon it will be only a
dream.  Why did I come here?"

"Because you wanted to go to France and I wanted to go to Spain, wasn't
that it?"

"I am a sleepwalker," said Jenny, "and this is a dream."

"Dreams are real too," said David, "nightmares, everything."

"David, we aren't going to spend our lives together, why are we going
on with this."?"

"Don't you remember?  We aren't ready yet."  He stood beside her and
took her hand again, quite composed and certain of his own mood.  He
watched her eyes beginning to glisten, and he became very touched and
gentle with her as he did sometimes when she wept on his account.

The sight of her weakness and defeat gave him pleasure like no
other.

"Do you know," he said, falsely, "maybe we shall never leave each
other.  Where could we go?"

"We'll think of somewhere," she said, "let's wait."

"Here we go talking again," said David.  "Let's think of something
pleasant."

"You think of something, David darling," said Jenny, "something
wonderful."

David leaned with great discretion and a very straight face and
whispered, "Tonight in Bremen we'll sleep in the same bed for a
change."  Jenny made a slight purring sound at him, and he watched her
face grow radiant.

The band played "Tannenbaum" at last, and kept it up until the
gangplank was down, and the passengers began to descend rapidly and
silently.  As the musicians were wiping the mouthpieces of their
instruments, wrapping up their drums and putting away their fiddles,
their mouths were wide with smiles, their heads towards the dock,
towards the exact narrow spot where the Vera had warped in and cast her
anchor.  Among them, a gangling young boy, who looked as if he had
never had enough to eat in his life, nor a kind word from anybody, and
did not know what he was going to do next, stared with blinded eyes,
his mouth quivering while he shook the spit out of his trumpet,
repeating to himself just above a whisper, "Griss Gott, Griiss Gott,"
as if the town were a human being, a good and dear trusted friend who
had come a long way to welcome him.

Yaddo, Agust, 1941

Pigeon Cove, August, 1961