A servant-girl led two children by. Frederick drew a breath of relief, for she diverted Stoss from his unsavoury theme.
"Well, Rosa," he called, "how is Mrs. Liebling?" It was his habit to obtrude himself upon everybody. From the gossip of Bulke, his valet, he had learned of Rosa and her cross. The difficult lady she served was the excitable person of whom the barber had told Frederick and with whom he was acquainted from certain impressions of his hearing. Rosa, who was carrying Ella Liebling, a girl of five years, on her crimson arm, looked pleased and laughed.
"She is not coming on deck. She's taken up with fortune-telling and table-turning."
Bulke, in whose eyes Rosa seemed to have found unqualified favour, took Siegfried Liebling, a boy of seven, from her hand and helped her place both children safely in steamer chairs.
"There is nothing to beat a crazy woman," Stoss declared. "That Mrs. Liebling actually called in Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward, to help her with Rosa"—the very Rosa, who unwearyingly and self-sacrificingly worked for her day and night, in good weather and bad. The worst to be said against her was that at utmost she was a little too ready with her tongue.
XXVII
The music was still playing, the sun was still shining from a slightly clouded sky. On the dry deck the travelling city, in the gayest, most superficial mood, was still dancing in the face of the infiniteness of heaven and sea. A steward came up to Frederick and presented the second engineer, who brought a message from Doctor Wilhelm asking Frederick to come to him immediately. The engineer led Frederick to the engine-room and down a perpendicular iron ladder. The warm, heavy smell of oil almost robbed Frederick of his breath. The downward climb seemed endless.
On all sides the engines were working. Frederick glanced at the gigantic cylinders, in which the compressed steam was moving pistons up and down like pump handles. The pistons communicated their motion to the big shaft running aft along the keel to the stern, and the revolutions of the shaft in turn produced the revolutions of the screw propelling the vessel across the Atlantic.
Oilers holding oil cans and waste clambered in and out of the rotating masses of iron with astounding sureness and boldness. To graze one of the fly-wheels, or to step one inch within the unguarded circle of their revolution, was to receive a deadly blow. Here was the heart and soul of the vessel, the real modern miracle of strength, the like of which no age in the past has been able to produce. An iron soul, a steely heart. It was as if one were descending below earth into the glowing workshop of Vulcan of old, the lame god, who did not demonstrate the full skill of his divinity until our times.