Atlantis | Page 5

began
to churn the water slowly, as if merely to test itself.
At the last moment three telegrams were handed to Frederick, one from
his old parents and his brother, who wished him a happy voyage, one
from his banker, and one from his attorney.
Though Frederick had left neither friend nor relative nor even an
acquaintance on the quay, yet, the instant he perceived the tender in
motion, a storm assailed him, whether a storm of woe, misery, despair,
or a storm of hope in endless happiness, he could not tell. All he felt
was that something burst convulsively from his breast and throat, and
seethed up, boiling hot, into his eyes.
The lives of unusual men from decade to decade, it seems, enter
dangerous crises, in which one of two things takes place; either the
morbid matter that has been accumulating is thrown off, or the
organism succumbs to it in actual material death, or in spiritual death.
One of the most important and, to the observer, most remarkable of
these crises occurs in the early thirties or forties, rarely before thirty; in
fact, more frequently not until thirty-five and later. It is the great trial

balance of life, which one would rather defer as long as is expedient
than make prematurely.
It was in such a crisis that Goethe went on his Italian journey, that
Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg,
that Ignatius Loyola hung his weapons in front of an image of the
Virgin, never to take them down again, and that Jesus was nailed to the
cross. As for the young physician, Frederick von Kammacher, he was
neither a Goethe nor a Luther nor a Loyola; but he was akin to them not
only in culture, but also in many a trait of genius.
It is impossible to express in words the extent in which his whole
previous existence passed in review before Frederick's mental vision as
the little tender sped beyond the harbour lights of Southampton,
carrying him away from Europe and his home. He seemed to be parting
with a whole continent in his soul, upon which he would never set foot
again. It was a farewell forever. No wonder if in that moment his whole
being was shaken and could not regain its balance.
Loyola had not been a good soldier. Else, how could he have discarded
his arms? Luther had not been a good Dominican. Else, how could he
have discarded his monk's robes? Goethe had not been a good barrister
or bureaucrat. A mighty, irresistible wave had swept over those three
men and also, for all the disparity between them, over Frederick von
Kammacher, washing the uniform away from their souls.
Frederick was not one of those who enter this crisis unconsciously. He
had been feeling its approach for years, and it was characteristic of him
that he reflected upon its nature. Sometimes he was of the opinion that
it marked the termination of youth and the beginning, therefore, of real
maturity. It seemed to him as if hitherto he had worked with other
people's hands, according to other people's will, guided rather than
guiding. His thinking appeared to him to have been no thinking, but an
operating with transmitted ideas. He put it to himself that he had been
standing in a hothouse, and his head, like the top of a young tree
reaching upward to the light, had broken through the glass roof and
made its way into the open.

"Now I will walk with my own feet, look with my own eyes, think my
own thoughts, and act from the plenary power of my own will."
In his valise, Frederick carried Stirner's "The Individual and his Own."
Man living in society is never wholly independent. There is no intellect
that does not look about for other intellects, if for no other object than
to seek confirmation, that is, reinforcement or guidance, at all events,
companionship. That Frederick von Kammacher's new intellectual
companion was Max Stirner, was the result of a profound
disillusionment. He had been disillusioned in his deep-seated altruism,
which until now had completely dominated him.

III
Dense darkness closed in around the tender. The lights of the harbour
disappeared completely, and the little cockle-shell with the glass
pavilion began to roll considerably. The wind whistled and howled.
Sometimes it blew so hard that it seemed to be bringing the tender to a
standstill. The screw actually did rise out of the water. Suddenly the
whistle screeched several times, and again the steamer made its way
through the darkness.
The rattling of the windows, the quivering of the ship's body, the
gurgling whirr-whirr of the propeller, the whistling, squalling and
howling of the wind, which laid the vessel on her side, all