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
façade, 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.