To avoid the hideous companionship of the blue, swollen thinkers, he left the gloomy, funereal smoking-room, and, with aching head and leaden limbs, dragged himself on deck, where the wild scurrying of the storm and the chaos of snow, rain and salty clouds of foam tore the weight away from his soul. XXXVIII In the space at the head of the companionway Frederick came upon the same company as the day before, sitting close together in steamer chairs--Toussaint, the timid skipper of the sailing vessel, the woman artist, the woman physician, the tall electrical engineer, and a man who had not been there the day before, an American colonel. He was a handsome specimen of the highest type of his widely spread species. He was engaged in a conversation on the number of miles covered by all the railroads in the United States, and his statements concerning their extent set fire to the European chauvinism of the electrical engineer. They forgot the weather in their debate. Each party to the dispute named an incredible number of miles and vaunted the advantages of the railroads in his native country. "We are running at only half speed," said Toussaint to Frederick. "Isn't it strange how suddenly the weather changed?" "Very," answered Frederick. "Of course," Toussaint continued with a pale grimace intended for a smile, "I don't understand anything about cyclones, but the seamen say this storm is cyclonic." "It may be called a cyclone," said the timid little skipper of the sailing vessel. "If it were striking us astern instead of ahead, it would not be so bad. As it is, the _Roland_ at the utmost cannot make more than three miles an hour. Were I on my schooner and had the same storm blown up so suddenly, we should not have had time to furl a sail. We should have been lost. Thank the Lord, it is better on modern steamers. Nevertheless, I feel more comfortable on my four-master, and the devil knows, I'd like to be on it now." Frederick could not help laughing. "As for the _Roland_," he said, "I would rather be, let us say, in the Hofbraeuhaus in Munich. Your four-master has no greater charms for me than a cabin on the _Roland_." Hans Fuellenberg came lounging in and told them a wave had swept away one of the life-boats on the after quarter. At the very same instant an arched mass of water came flying slantwise over the port bow. "Oh!" everybody cried. "Magnificent, beautiful," said Frederick. "That's cyclonic," the woman artist repeated. "Believe me," they heard the colonel say again, "the stretch from New York to Chicago alone"-- "That was a Niagara Falls," said Toussaint.