IX
"You here, Doctor von Kammacher? I can scarcely trust my eyes." At the bottom of the companionway Frederick felt Hahlström tackle him, just as he was about to mount to deck.
"Why, Mr. Hahlström, what a peculiar coincidence! It's as if the whole of Berlin had agreed to emigrate to America!" Frederick exclaimed, simulating surprise with somewhat forced liveliness.
"May I present Mr. Achleitner? Mr. Achleitner is an architect from Vienna."
The man with the piercing eyes smiled with an air of interest, holding fast to the brass balustrade to keep from being hurled against the wall.
The door of a rather gloomy saloon opened on the first landing. It bore the misleading sign "smoking-room," misleading because the smokers never used it, far preferring the cosey little saloon on deck. A brown upholstered bench ran around the brown, wainscoted walls. Kneeling on the bench one could look out through three or four port-holes upon the seething and boiling of the waves. The entire floor space between the benches was taken up by a table finished in a dark stain.
"This room is a horrid hole," said Hahlström. "It positively makes me creepy."
A loud, trumpet-like, laughing voice called out from inside the room:
"I say, Hahlström, if this sort of weather holds out, neither your daughter nor I will keep the first day of our engagement with Webster and Forster. We're not even making eight knots. Perhaps I'll be able to manage. A big dose of salt water doesn't hurt me. To-day is the twenty-fifth. If we reach Hoboken at eight o'clock the evening of the first of February, I can appear for my act in perfect serenity at nine o'clock; but that frail blossom of yours can't. She will certainly need a few days to recover from the hardships of this trip."