Frederick beheld himself down there, too, one of those decaying phantoms, months old, wandering about in the ghastly abode of the sunken _Roland_, in that horrible Vineta, where each man passed his neighbour mutely with a frightened gesture, each seeming to carry in his breast a congealed cry of anguish, which he expressed with bowed head and outstretched arms, or head thrown back and open mouth. Or else he was hideously crawling on his hands, or wringing his hands, or folding them, or spreading out his fingers. The engineers in the boiler-room seemed still slowly, slowly to be controlling the cylinder and driving-wheel; yet differently than before, since the law of gravity seemed no longer to be in force. One of the engineers was doing his work in a peculiarly twisted way, like a man asleep caught between the rim of the wheel and the piston-rod covered with verdigris. Frederick descended on his ghastly tour down to the stokers, whom the catastrophe had surprised in the midst of their occupation. Some were still holding their shovels in their hands, though unable to lift them. They themselves were floating, while the shovels to which they clung did not stir from the bottom. All was over. They could not kindle the fire into a white glow, and so could not keep the mighty steamer in its course. In the steerage the sight was so horrible to behold, with men, women and children of all nationalities huddled and tossed in thick, dark heaps, that even a cat-shark, which had made its way through the chimney of the stoke-hole and then through the engine, did not feel sufficiently courageous or hungry to mingle in the gathering. _Noli turbare circulos meos_, these people, too, seemed to be saying. All were thinking strenuously, absorbed in the profoundest meditation--they had plenty of time for profound meditation--upon the riddle of life. In fact, they seemed to be placed there merely for the purpose of reflecting. Those men and women wringing their hands or spreading their fingers, or walking on their hands, or even standing on the tip of a single finger, while grazing the ceiling with their feet, were all thinking. Professor Toussaint alone, who came floating toward Frederick in the gangway, seemed to be acting differently. With his right hand raised, he seemed to be saying: "An artist may not rust. He must air himself. He must seek new conditions of life. If he doesn't receive the honour he should in Italy, he should simply go to France, like Leonardo da Vinci, or even emigrate to the land of liberty." "I want to live, live, nothing else," thought Frederick. "In the future, like Cato the Elder, I would rather walk a year on foot along a way that I could cover in three days on a steamer."