The short, stout man, to whom the electrical engineer was chiefly directing his discourse, was conducting himself peculiarly. At short intervals he would look out anxiously into the uproar, turning his small, watchful eyes searchingly up to the tops of the masts, which never ceased to describe great arcs in the air (starboard to port, port to starboard!), and out into the monotonous rolling of the waves, swelling into ever higher and larger masses. His face was full of concern. Frederick was on the point of inwardly ridiculing the pitiful landlubber's cowardice, when he heard him say that scarcely three weeks before he had brought his schooner safely to New York from a three years' trip around the world, and intended to start out from New York on the same trip to last the same length of time. The little gentleman was the experienced captain of a sailing vessel. In the course of his fifty years, he had spent more than thirty on all the waters of the globe. XXII Frederick reflected upon the timid skipper, whose characteristics seemed to harmonise so poorly with the demands, active and passive, of his rigorous calling. He wondered what it is that permanently holds a man like that to his marriage ties and all the duties of his life. Then he arose to wander about the _Roland_ vaguely. The enforced idleness of a sea trip, especially in bad weather, induces passengers, when they have made the complete round of the vessel, to begin over again and go through the same circle. Thus, Frederick, after descending the companionway, ascending it, and descending again, found himself on the leather-seated bench in the smoking-room avoided by most of the smokers, in which the armless man had taken his meal the day before. Hans Fuellenberg entered, asked whether he was not permitted to smoke a cigarette in the room, and began to grumble about the weather. "Who knows how this thing is going to end?" he complained dismally. "Perhaps, instead of reaching New York, we'll have to be towed into port somewhere in Newfoundland." Frederick was indifferent to the prospect. He noticed that young Fuellenberg cared for nothing except to produce an impression; and young Fuellenberg noticed that Frederick von Kammacher was not susceptible to the impression he tried to produce. He cast about for another theme of conversation. "Do you know there are two priests on board? You should have been at Cuxhaven when they got on. The sailors were beside themselves. I hunted up the fellows, the sailors I mean, in the forecastle. How they did curse! It was fearful. The stoker told all the men of the engine-room. They said you could not get genuine seamen to think any differently--with priests on board something is bound to go wrong." "How is your lady?" asked Frederick.