Can you understand that? I can’t.”—“You shouldn’t put up with it!” said Karl excitedly. He had almost lost the feeling that he was on the uncertain boards of a ship, beside the coast of an unknown continent, so much at home did he feel here in the stoker’s bunk. “Have you seen the Captain about it? Have you asked him to give you your rights?”—“Oh, go on, get out of here, I don’t want you here. You don’t listen to what I say, and then you give me advice. How am I supposed to get to see the Captain?” Wearily the stoker sat down again and hid his face in his hands.

“I can’t give him any better advice,” Karl told himself. And he realized that it would have been better all along for him to go and get his trunk instead of handing out advice that was only regarded as stupid. When his father had given him the trunk for good he had said in jest: “How long will you hang on to it?” and now that faithful trunk had perhaps really been lost after all. His only consolation was that his father could hardly learn of his present situation, even if he were to make inquiries. All that the shipping company could tell him was that he had safely reached New York. But Karl felt sorry to think that he had hardly begun to use the things in the trunk, although, to take just one example, he should long since have changed his shirt. So his economies had started at the wrong point, it seemed; now, at the very beginning of his career, when it would be essential to present himself in clean clothes, he would have to appear in a dirty shirt. Otherwise the loss of the trunk would not have been so serious, for the suit he was now wearing was actually better than the one still packed away, which was in fact merely an emergency suit that his mother had hastily mended just before he left. Then he remembered that in the trunk there was a piece of Verona salami that his mother had packed as an extra tid-bit, only he had not been able to eat more than a bite of it, for during the voyage he had been quite without any appetite, and the soup that was dished out in steerage had been more than sufficient for him. But now he would have liked to have the salami on hand, so he could present it to the stoker. For such people were easily won over by the gift of some trifle or other; Karl had learned that from his father, who slipped cigars into the pockets of the subordinate functionaries with whom he did business, and so won them over. Yet all that Karl now had in the way of possible gifts was his money, and he did not want to touch that for the time being, in the event that he really had lost his trunk. Again his thoughts turned back to the trunk, and he simply could not understand why he should have watched it so vigilantly during the voyage that he had practically lost sleep over it, only to let that same trunk be filched from him so easily now. He remembered the five nights during which he had kept a suspicious eye on a little Slovak, whose bunk was two places away from him on the left, and who had designs, he was sure, on the trunk. This Slovak was merely waiting for Karl to be overcome by sleep and doze off for a minute, so that he could maneuver the box away with a long, pointed stick which he was always playing or practicing with during the day. By day the Slovak looked innocent enough, but hardly did night come on than he kept rising up from his bunk to cast melancholy glances at Karl’s trunk. Karl had seen this quite clearly, for every now and then someone would light a little candle, though it was forbidden by the ship’s regulations, and with the anxiety of the emigrant would strain to decipher the incomprehensible prospectus of some emigration agency or other. If one of these candles was burning near him, Karl could doze off for a little, but if it was farther away or if the place was quite dark, he had to keep his eyes open. The strain of this task had quite exhausted him, and now perhaps it had all been in vain. Oh, that Butterbaum, if ever he met him again!

At that moment the unbroken silence was disturbed by a series of small, short taps in the distance, like the tapping of children’s feet; they came nearer, growing louder, until they sounded like the tread of quietly marching men. They were evidently proceeding in single file, as was natural in the narrow passage; and a clatter, as of weapons, could be heard. Karl, who had been on the point of relaxing into a sleep free of all worries about trunks and Slovaks, started up and nudged the stoker to draw his attention, for the head of the procession seemed just to have reached the door. “That’s the ship’s band,” said the stoker, “they’ve been playing up above and have come back to pack up. All’s clear now, and we can go. Come on!” He took Karl by the hand, at the last moment snatched a framed picture of the Madonna from the wall above his bed, stuck it into his breast pocket, grabbed his sea chest, and hastily left the cabin with Karl.

“I’m going up to the office now to give them a piece of my mind. All the passengers are gone; I don’t have to worry about what I do.” The stoker kept repeating this theme with variations, and as he walked he kicked out sideways at a rat that crossed his path, but only succeeded in driving it more quickly into its hole, which it reached just in time.