Yet the people in this uncanny apartment appeared to be in no wise disturbed by its vagaries, and, most amazing thing of all, when any individual crossed the room, or entered, or quitted it, he or she walked with a ridiculous disregard for either the changing angles of the room or Newton’s theory. So astonished was Karl by the spectacle that it took him a long time to realize that he was looking at the saloon drawing-room of a big Atlantic liner, which was evidently ploughing through a stiff gale. He saw the ship’s name, the _Merlin_, on a printed notice swinging on the wall, and he laughed so heartily at the antics of a fat man who essayed to carry a shawl to a lady on the opposite side of the vessel, that he regained his wits to find Hooper holding his arm and eagerly demanding: “Well, what have you seen? Why are you laughing?” Grier, not bewildered in the slightest degree by the sudden transition from the saloon of an ocean-going steamship to his chambers in an Oxford College, told his attentive friend what had transpired. Like every up-to-date American, Hooper knew most of the great liners, and kept track of their sailings. An Englishman drops a letter into the pillar-box and trusts to Heaven and the Postmaster-General that it will reach its destination, but the average New Yorker would wonder what was wrong with him if he could not follow the missive by sea and rail, with precise details of the journey from start to finish. So Hooper ejaculated: “The _Merlin_! Great Scott! She sailed from New York to-day. Was the girl on board?” “I do not know,” admitted Karl. “I did not even look for her, so greatly was I mystified by the wobbliness of everything.” “Well, I guess we’ve done enough for one _séance_,” said the other. “I’ve read and heard of some top-notch clairvoyants, but I give you best. To-morrow evening, after Hall, I shall have the tangle a bit less knotted, if pen and paper will follow its twists. You were away somewhere for nearly twenty minutes, your eyes were closed, and you reeled so that I thought you would have fallen. Guess you felt the deck heaving! But, say, old man, do you sleep well after this kind of circus?” “Sleep! I sleep like a healthy navvy!” said Karl. CHAPTER V KARL’S FIRST MEETING WITH STEINDAL Hooper turned up next evening armed with a note-book. “I did not go to bed until long after sunrise,” he said. “When I began to marshal my thoughts into some semblance of order, I was amazed to find how far back into the twilight of human origins you carried me with your cat language. Has it ever struck you how old this world is, how long men have waited before they took their first sure step towards knowledge?” “Are you speaking of the evolution of matter in general, or of mankind in particular?” asked Grier.