The boy was a good boy, a fine boy—it was a pity the boy was dead: if one had had to die, it should have been the mother. His shoulder hurt, worse than it had yesterday. He was hungry—he’d been on deck and missed breakfast. Why had that fool U-boat commander chosen the Vulcania? That was the sort of thing which gave these damned English propagandists their chance. He was thirsty, but not for water: he wanted alcohol; alcohol which was raw and burning and hurt his throat and stomach and opened flowers of flame in his head. That woman outside the terraced restaurant in Stockholm! The Fuehrer’s quick, nervous hand-grip! The sea had been cold; colder than he had believed anything could be cold! And that hair had hurt his neck. Maybe the strain on his neck had started the pain in his shoulder. Those fat, bursting sausages that Axel’s wife would cook every morning. The quiet, murmuring voice of the priest with the pencil, and Gertrud’s breasts, taut and trembling under her cotton frock, and the white bone showing through the red-edged gashes in the boy’s hand, and the cold hate in the eyes of the French girl before she had spat into his face, and the booming voice of the Artillery man, Hegger, and the prison-camp in England, and the two men in the wood, and the strange feel of the Spitfire’s stick, and the two Hurricanes wig-wagging up to him over the Channel. . . . And then the coldness of the sea again, and the pain in his shoulder. He wondered how the mother was—still prostrated, probably, or those newspapermen would not have been kept from her. He supposed he’d have to see her again, before they took her on shore—or perhaps he could write her a little letter; then he wouldn’t have to see her. . . .
He sat upright suddenly. The thought of writing had brought back the memory that he had lost his pencil with the wooden top, and thought of the pencil brought him sharply to consideration of his predicament. The sinking of the Vulcania, which could not possibly have been foreseen, must have disrupted the plans of the Machine for him: what would happen now? What steps, if any, should he take himself? How long must he remain purely Nils Jorgensen, a shipless, homeless and selfless Swedish sailor? What . . .
There came a sharp little rapping at the door of the cabin, and he started.
“Who is there?” he said. He stood up and went to the door and opened it.
A man stepped past him into the cabin; a lanky, stoop-shouldered person who wore, incongruously with the sunshine above, a worn and grease-stained raincoat. On his head, with its brim pulled down upon the bridge of a long and bulbous nose, was a maculate felt hat of more age than worth. From the thin-lipped mouth beneath it came a deep, grating voice.
“Nils Jorgensen!” it said, more as statement than question. “I’m Karl Etter.”
Otto studied the man without speaking: he felt a sudden and comforting certainty that Mr. Etter was more than he seemed to this American world.
“Sit down!” Etter took him by the arm and pushed him back upon the bunk and sat beside him.
