Atlantis | Page 6

an hour and a half is enough gradually to reduce a traveller's nerves to a state of torture. The proximity of that awful element the surface of which marks the limits of the one element in which man is capable of living, forces upon the mind thoughts of death and destruction; all the more so since the water's tricks seem so incalculable to the landman that he sees danger where there actually is none. Another thing hard for the man accustomed to unhampered movement to bear is the close confinement. All at once he loses his illusion of freedom of will. Activity, the thing that in the eyes of the European endows life with its sublimest charm, cannot in the twinkling of an eye turn into absolute passivity. Nevertheless, despite these novel, distressing experiences, despite throbbing pulses, over-stimulated senses, and nerves tautened to the snapping point, the situation is by no means lacking in fascination.
Thus, Frederick von Kammacher felt a flush of exaltation. Life was straining him to her breast more closely, wildly, passionately than she had for a long time.
"Either life has again become the one tremendous adventure, or life is nothing," a voice within him said.
Again the tender lay still. Suddenly it groaned, churned the water, sent out huge puffs of hissing steam, whistled as if in great fear, once, twice--Frederick counted seven times--and started off at its utmost speed, as if to escape Satan's clutches. And now, all at once, it turned, swept into a region of light, and faced a mighty vision.
The Roland had reached the Needles and was lying tide rode. In the protection of its vast broadside the little tender seemed to be in a brilliantly lighted harbour. The impression that the surprising presence of the ocean greyhound made upon Frederick was in a fortissimo scale. He had always belonged to that class of men--a class which is not small--whose senses are open to life's varied abundance. Only on the rarest occasions he found a thing commonplace or ordinary, and was never blasé in meeting a novelty. But, after all, there are very few persons who would be dull to the impressions of an embarkation by night, outside a harbour in the open waters.
Never before had Frederick been inspired with equal respect for the might of human ingenuity, for the genuine spirit of his times, as at the sight of that gigantic black wall rising from the black waters, that tremendous fa?ade, with its endless rows of round port-holes streaming out light upon a foaming field of waves protected from the wind. In comparison with this product, this creation, this triumph of the divine intellect in man, what were undertakings like the Tower of Babel, allowing that they were not isolated instances and had actually been completed.
Sailors were busy letting the gangway-ladder down the flank of the Roland. Frederick could see that up on deck, at the point where the ladder was being suspended, a rather numerous group of uniformed men had gathered, probably to receive the new passengers. His state of exaltation continued, even while everybody in the tender's saloon, including himself, suddenly seized with haste, grasped his or her hand luggage and stood in readiness. In the presence of that improbability, that Titan of venturesomeness, that floating fairy palace, it was impossible to cling to the conviction that modern civilisation is all prose. The most prosaic of mortals here had forced upon him a piece of foolhardy romance compared with which the dreams of the poets lose colour and turn pale.
While the tender, dancing coquettishly on the swelling foam, was warping to the gangway-ladder, high overhead, on the deck of the Roland, the band struck up a lively, resolute march in a martial yet resigned strain, such as leads soldiers to battle--to victory or to death. An orchestra like this, of wind instruments, drums and cymbals was all that lacked to set the young physician's nerves a-quiver, as in a dance of fire and flame.
The music ringing from aloft out into the night and descending to the little tender manoeuvring in the water, was designed to inspire timid souls with courage and tide them over certain horrors attendant upon the moment. Beyond lay the infinite ocean. In the situation, one could not help representing it to oneself as black, gloomy, forbidding, a fearful, demoniac power, hostile to man and the works of man.
Now, from the breast of the Roland, tore a cry rising higher and louder, upward from a deep bass, a monstrous call, a roar, a thunder, of a fearfulness and strength that congealed the blood in one's heart.
"Well, my dear friend Roland," flashed through Frederick's mind, "you're a fellow that's a match for the ocean." With that he set foot on the gangway-ladder. He completely forgot his previous identity and