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called out in passing: “Not very eager to go ashore, are you?”—“Oh, I’m quite ready,” said Karl with a laugh, and being both strong and in high spirits he heaved his trunk onto his shoulder. But as his eye followed his acquaintance, who was already moving on with the others, casually swinging a cane, he realized with dismay that he had forgotten his umbrella down below. He hastily begged his acquaintance, who did not seem particularly pleased, to do him the favor of keeping an eye on the trunk for a minute, made a quick survey of the situation to be sure he could find his way back, and hurried away. Below decks he was distressed to find that a gangway that would have made a handy shortcut had been barred for the first time in his experience, probably to facilitate the disembarkation of so many passengers, and he had to find his way painfully down an endless series of little stairways, through corridorswith countless turnings, through an empty room with a deserted writing table, until in the end, since he had taken this route no more than once or twice and always among a crowd of other people, he got completely lost. In his bewilderment, meeting no one and hearing nothing but the ceaseless shuffling of thousands of feet above him and in the distance, like faint breathing, the last throbbings of the engines, which had already been shut down, he began without any hesitation to pound on a little door before which he had chanced to stop in his wanderings.
    “It isn’t locked,” a voice shouted from inside, and Karl opened the door with genuine relief. “What are you hammering at the door for, like a madman?” asked a huge man, scarcely even glancing at Karl. Through an opening of some kind in the ceiling a feeble glimmer of daylight, all that was left after the upper decks had used most of it up, fell into the wretched cubbyhole in which a bunk, a cupboard, a chair, and the man stood packed together, as if they had been stored there. “I’ve lost my way,” said Karl. “I never noticed it during the voyage, but this is a terribly big ship.”—“Yes, you’re right there,” said the man with a certain pride, fiddling all the time with the lock of a little sea chest and pressing down its lid with both hands in the hope of hearing the bolt snap shut. “But come inside,” he went on, “what do you want to stand out there for!”—“I’m not disturbing you?” asked Karl. “Now, how could you disturb me?”—“Are you a German?” Karl asked to reassure himself further, for he had heard a great deal about the perils that threatened newcomers to America, particularly from the Irish. “That’s what I am, all right,” said the man. Karl still hesitated. Then the man suddenly seized the door handle, and, pulling the door shut with a swift movement, swept Karl into the cabin.
    “I can’t stand being stared at from the passage,” he said, beginning to fiddle with his chest again, “people keep passing and staring in, it’s more than a man can stand.”—“Butthere’s no one out there,” said Karl, who was standing squeezed uncomfortably against the end of the bunk. “Yes, not now,” said the man. “But it’s now we’re speaking about,” thought Karl, “it’s hard work talking to this man.”—“Lie down on the bunk, you’ll have more room there,” said the man. Karl scrambled in as well as he could, and laughed aloud at his first unsuccessful attempt to swing himself over. But scarcely was he in the bunk when he cried: “Oh, my God, I’ve completely forgotten about my trunk!”—“Well, where is it?”—“Up on deck. Someone I know is looking after it. What’s his name again?” And he fished a calling card from a secret pocket that his mother had made in the lining of his jacket for the voyage. “Butterbaum, Franz Butterbaum.”—“Is your trunk really all that important?”—“Of course it is.”—“Well then, why did you leave it in the hands of a stranger?”—“I