Frederick attempted in vain to battle against a still-life picture, which the _Roland_, valiantly struggling onward, with its siren almost stifled in the storm, showed him at the bottom of the sea. He saw the majestic vessel in a coffin of glass. Across its decks swarms of fish swam hither and thither. Its cabins were all filled with water. The large dining-room, with its panels of walnut, its tables, and leather-upholstered revolving chairs, was filled with water. A big polyp, jelly-fish, and red, mushroom-like sea-anemones had penetrated into the very gangways along which the passengers were now walking. And to Frederick's horror, the liveried corpses of Pfundner, the head-steward, and his assistant stewards were slowly floating about in a circle. The picture would have been almost ridiculous, had it not been so gruesome and had it not so certainly lain in the realm of the possible. Think of all the things divers report! All the things they have seen in the cabins and gangways of submerged steamers; inextricably knotted masses of human beings, passengers or sailors coming toward them with outstretched arms, upright, as if alive and as if awaiting them. A closer examination of the clothes of those guardians and administrators of a lost estate at the bottom of the sea, those strange ship-owners, business men, captains, pursers, those fortune-seekers, money-seekers, embezzlers, adventurers, or whatever they might be, showed that they were filled with polyps, crustaceans, and all sorts of ocean worms, enjoying their stay there as long as something remained beneath their shredded garments except gnawed-off bones.