"In the pit of my stomach I have the feeling I used to get as a child when I swung too high."
"Kammacher, we're in the devil's cauldron. There'll be things doing compared with which the things we've gone through aren't a circumstance," said Wilhelm.
From somewhere came the word, "Cyclone," a dreadful word, though it seemed to make no impression upon the steamer Roland, a model of determination, steadfastly cleaving the waves and tearing breaches in the mountains of water. New York was its goal, and it was hastening onward.
Frederick wanted to go on deck, but it looked bad there, and he remained on the upper step under the protection of the companionway penthouse. The level of the sea seemed to have risen, so that the warrior Roland appeared to be making his obstinate way through a deep defile. One could not help succumbing to the impression that each instant the defile would close overhead and settle the faithful vessel's fate forever. Sailors in oilskins were climbing about to make fast every loose thing. Great waves had already swept overboard. The salt water was trickling and flowing over the deck. As if that were not enough, the heavens were driving down rain and snow. The rigging was howling, groaning, booming, and whistling in every pitch and key. That severity, that awfulness of the elements, that eternal rushing and roaring and seething of great masses of water, through which the steamer was staggering forward as if in mad, blind intoxication, that mournful, raging tumult kept up hour after hour. By noon it had even grown worse.
Very few responded to the trumpet-call for luncheon. There were about ten men beside the woman physician and the woman painter. Hahlström seated himself at Frederick's and Wilhelm's empty table. The ladies' places were not far away.
"No wonder," said Frederick, "that sailors are superstitious. The way this awful weather dropped out of a clear sky is enough to make a man believe in magic."
"It may even grow worse," Wilhelm observed.
The women heard his remark, looked up, and made horrified eyes.
"Do you think there is danger?" one of them asked.
"Danger is always imminent in life," he replied, and added with a smile: "It is merely a question of not being frightened."