clang of iron, the place was, but some one had told him it was called
Berlin. Then they rang a bell, and another steam-machine came in, and
again he was taken on and on through a land that wearied his eyes by its
flatness without a single bit of a hill to be seen anywhere. One more
night he spent shut up in a building like a good stable with a litter
of straw on the floor, guarding his bundle amongst a lot of men, of whom
not one could understand a single word he said. In the morning they
were all led down to the stony shores of an extremely broad muddy river,
flowing not between hills but between houses that seemed immense. There
was a steam-machine that went on the water, and they all stood upon it
packed tight, only now there were with them many women and children who
made much noise. A cold rain fell, the wind blew in his face; he was
wet through, and his teeth chattered. He and the young man from the same
valley took each other by the hand.

"They thought they were being taken to America straight away, but
suddenly the steam-machine bumped against the side of a thing like a
house on the water. The walls were smooth and black, and there uprose,
growing from the roof as it were, bare trees in the shape of crosses,
extremely high. That's how it appeared to him then, for he had never
seen a ship before. This was the ship that was going to swim all the
way to America. Voices shouted, everything swayed; there was a ladder
dipping up and down. He went up on his hands and knees in mortal fear
of falling into the water below, which made a great splashing. He got
separated from his companion, and when he descended into the bottom of
that ship his heart seemed to melt suddenly within him.

"It was then also, as he told me, that he lost contact for good and all
with one of those three men who the summer before had been going about
through all the little towns in the foothills of his country. They would