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forgot my umbrella down below and ran off to get it; I didn’t want to drag my trunk with me. Then on top of that I got lost.”—“You’re all alone? Without anyone to look after you?”—“Yes, all alone.”—“Maybe I should join up with this man,” the thought came into Karl’s head, “where am I likely to find a better friend?”—“And now you’ve lost your trunk as well. Not to mention the umbrella.” And the man sat down on the chair as if Karl’s situation had at last acquired some interest for him. “But I don’t think my trunk is lost yet.”—“You can think whatever you like,” said the man, vigorously scratching his dark, short, thick hair. “But morals change every time you come to a new port. Maybe in Hamburg your friend Butterbaum might have looked after your trunk; here it’s almost a sure thing that they’ve both disappeared.”—“Then I have to go up and see about it right away,” said Karl, looking around for the way out. “You just stay where you are,” said the man, shoving him quite roughly with one hand against his chest, so that he fell back on the bunk again. “Why should I?” asked Karl in exasperation. “Because there’s no point in it,”said the man, “I’m leaving very soon myself, and we can go together. Either your trunk has been stolen and there’s nothing you can do about it, or else the man has left it standing where it was, and then we’ll find it all the more easily when the ship is empty. And the same with your umbrella.”—“Do you know your way around the ship?” asked Karl suspiciously, and it seemed to him that the idea, otherwise plausible, that his things would be easier to find when the ship was unloaded must have a catch to it somewhere. “Well, I’m the ship’s stoker,” said the man. “You’re the stoker!” cried Karl overjoyed, as if this revelation surpassed all his expectations, and he rose up on his elbow to look at the man more closely. “Just outside the cabin I shared with the Slovak there was a little window through which we could see into the engine-room.”—“Yes, that’s where I worked,” said the stoker. “I’ve always been so interested in machinery,” said Karl, following his own train of thought, “and I would have become an engineer in time, that’s certain, if I hadn’t had to go to America.”—“Well, why did you have to go?”—“Oh, that!” said Karl, dismissing the whole story with a wave of the hand. He looked with a smile at the stoker, as if begging his indulgence even for what he was not ready to admit. “There was some reason for it, I’m sure,” said the stoker, and it was hard to tell whether in saying that he wanted to encourage or discourage Karl to tell him about it. “I could become a stoker now too,” said Karl, “it doesn’t matter to my father and mother what happens to me now.”—“My job’s going to be free,” said the stoker, and, as if to emphasize the point, he stuck both hands into his trouser pockets and flung his legs in their wrinkled, leathery, iron-gray trousers on the bunk to stretch them. Karl had to move closer to the wall. “Are you leaving the ship?”—“Yes, we’re packing up today.”—“But why? Don’t you like it?”—“Oh, that’s just the way things are; it doesn’t always depend on whether a man likes it or not. But you’re quite right, I don’t like it. Idon’t suppose you’re thinking seriously of being a stoker, are you, because that’s just the time you can most easily turn into one. I strongly advise you against it. If you wanted to study engineering in Europe, why don’t you study it here? The American universities are really a lot better than the European ones.”—“That’s possible,” said Karl, “but I have hardly any money to study on. I once read about someone who worked all day in a shop and studied at night until he got his doctorate, and became a mayor, too, I think, but that calls for a lot of