All the same, nothing definite emerged from the stoker’s outpourings, and although the Captain still listened thoughtfully, his eyes expressing his resolve to hear the stoker out this one time to the very end, the other gentlemen were growing impatient and soon the stoker’s voice no longer dominated the room, a bad sign. The gentleman in civilian clothes was the first to show his impatience by toying with his bamboo cane and tapping it, though only softly, on the floor. The others still looked up now and then; but the two harbor officials, who were clearly pressed for time, snatched up their papers again and began, though somewhat distractedly, to glance over them; the ship’s officer turned back to his desk, and the Head Purser, who now thought he had won the day, heaved a loud ironic sigh. The only one who seemed to be exempt from the general dispersion of interest was the attendant, who sympathized to some extent with this poor fellow confronting these great men, and gravely nodded to Karl as though trying to explain something.

Meanwhile outside the windows the life of the harbor went on; a flat barge laden with a mountain of barrels, which must have been wonderfully well secured to keep them from rolling around, went past, almost completely obscuring the daylight in the room; little motor-boats, which Karl would have liked to examine closely if he had had time, shot straight past in obedience to the slightest touch of the man standing erect at the wheel. Here and there curious objects bobbed independently out of the restless water, were immediately submerged again and sank before his astonished eyes; boats belonging to the ocean liners were rowed past by sweating sailors; they were filled with passengers sitting silent and expectant as if they had been stowed there like freight, except that some of them could not refrain from turning their heads to gaze at the changing scene. Activity without end, restlessness transmitted from the restless element to helpless human beings and their works!

But everything demanded haste, clarity, precision; and what was the stoker doing? He was talking himself into a sweat; his hands were trembling so much that he could no longer hold the papers he had laid on the window-ledge; from all points of the compass complaints about Schubal streamed into his head, any one of which, it seemed to him, should have been sufficient to dispose of Schubal for good; but all he could produce for the Captain was a pathetic hodgepodge in which everything was jumbled together. For a long time the man with the bamboo cane had been staring at the ceiling and whistling to himself; the harbor officials now detained the ship’s officer at their table and showed no sign of ever letting him go again; the Head Purser was clearly restrained from letting fly only by the Captain’s composure; the attendant stood at attention, waiting every moment for the Captain to give an order concerning the stoker.

Karl could no longer remain inactive. So he advanced slowly toward the group, running over in his mind the more rapidly all the ways in which he could most adroitly handle the situation. It was certainly high time; just a little longer, and both of them might well be kicked out of the office. The Captain might indeed be a good man and might also, or so it seemed to Karl, have some particular reason at the moment to show that he was a just master; but he was not, after all, a mere instrument to be recklessly played on, and that was exactly how the stoker was treating him in the boundless indignation of his heart.

So Karl said to the stoker: “You must put things more simply, more clearly; the Captain can’t do justice to what you are trying to tell him. How can he know all the mechanics and errand-boys by name, let alone by their first names, so when you mention so-and-so, how can he understand who you’re talking about? Take your grievances in order, tell the most important ones first and the lesser ones afterward; maybe it won’t even be necessary to mention most of them. You always explained them clearly enough to me!” If trunks can be stolen in America, one can surely tell a lie now and then as well, he thought in self-justification.

But was his advice of any use? Might it not already be too late? To be sure, the stoker stopped speaking at once when he heard the familiar voice, but his eyes were so blinded with tears of wounded dignity, of dreadful recollections, of extreme grief, that he could hardly even recognize Karl. How could he at this point—Karl silently realized this, facing the now silent stoker—how could he at this point suddenly change his style of argument, when it seemed plain to him that he had already said all there was to say without evoking the slightest sympathy, and at the same time that he had said nothing at all, and could hardly expect these gentlemen to listen to the whole rigmarole all over again? And at such a moment Karl, his sole supporter, has to break in with so-called good advice which merely makes it clear that everything is lost, everything.

“If only I had spoken sooner, instead of looking out of the window,” Karl told himself, dropping his eyes before the stoker and letting his hands fall to his sides as a sign that all hope was gone.

But the stoker mistook the gesture, sensing, no doubt, that Karl was nursing some secret grudge against him, and with the good intention of talking him out of it, crowned all his other offenses by starting to wrangle at this moment with Karl. At this very moment, when the men at the round table were completely exasperated by the senseless babble that disturbed their important labors, when the Head Purser was gradually beginning to find the Captain’s patience incomprehensible and was just on the point of exploding, when the attendant, once more entirely within his masters’ sphere, was measuring the stoker with savage eyes, and when, finally, the gentleman with the bamboo cane, whom even the Captain eyed now and then in a friendly manner, already quite bored by the stoker, indeed disgusted by him, had pulled out a little notebook and was obviously preoccupied with quite different thoughts, glancing first at the notebook and then at Karl.

“Yes, I know,” said Karl, who had difficulty turning aside the torrent which the stoker now directed at him, yet was still able to summon up a friendly smile for him in spite of all dissension, “you’re right, you’re right, I never doubted it for a minute.” In his fear of being struck by the stoker’s gesticulating hands he would have liked to catch hold of them, and still better to force the man into a corner so as to whisper a few soothing, reassuring words to him which no one else could hear. But the stoker was quite out of control. Karl now actually began to take a sort of comfort in the thought that if things got serious the stoker could overwhelm the seven men in the room with the very strength of his desperation. But on the desk, as he could see at a glance, there was a signal-board with far too many buttons; the mere pressure of one hand on them would raise the whole ship and call up all the hostile men that filled its passageways.

But at this point, in spite of his air of bored detachment, the gentleman with the bamboo cane came over to Karl and asked, not very loudly yet clearly enough to be heard above the stoker’s ravings: “Tell me, what is your name?” At that moment, as if someone behind the door had been waiting to hear this remark, there was a knock. The attendant looked over at the Captain; the Captain nodded. Thereupon the attendant went to the door and opened it. Outside stood a middle-sized man in an old military coat, not looking at all like the kind of person who might work with machinery—and yet he was Schubal. If Karl had not guessed this from the expression of satisfaction that lit up all eyes, even the Captain’s, he must have recognized it with horror from the demeanor of the stoker, who clenched his fists at the ends of his out-stretched arms with a vehemence that made the very clenching of them seem the most important thing about him, to which he was prepared to sacrifice everything else in life. All his strength was concentrated in his fists, including the very strength that held him upright.

And so here was the enemy, fresh and carefree in his shore-leave outfit, a ledger under his arm probably containing a record of the stoker’s wages and his working papers, and he was openly scanning the faces of everyone present, a frank admission that his first concern was to discover on which side they stood. All seven of them were already his friends, for even though the Captain had raised certain objections to him earlier, or had at least pretended to do so because he felt sorry for the stoker, it was now apparent that he had not the slightest fault to find with Schubal. A man like the stoker could not be too severely reprimanded, and if Schubal were to be reproached for anything, it was for not having subdued the stoker’s recalcitrance sufficiently, since the fellow had the gall to confront the Captain this very day.

Yet it might still be assumed that the confrontation of Schubal and the stoker would achieve, even before a human tribunal, the result that would have been awarded by divine justice, since Schubal, even if he were good at making a show of virtue, might easily give himself away in the long run. A brief flare-up of his evil nature would suffice to reveal it to these gentlemen, and Karl would see to that. He already had a pretty good knowledge of the shrewdness, the weaknesses, the moods of the various individuals in the room, and in this respect the time he had spent there had not been wasted. It was a pity that the stoker had not been more competent; he seemed completely incapable of doing battle. If one were to hand Schubal over to him, he would probably split the man’s detested skull with his fists; but it was beyond his power to take the couple of steps needed to bring Schubal within reach. Why had Karl not foreseen what so easily could have been foreseen: that Schubal would inevitably put in an appearance, if not of his own accord, then by order of the Captain? Why had he not outlined a precise battle plan with the stoker when they were on their way here, instead of simply walking in, hopelessly unprepared, as soon as they found a door, which was what they had done? Was the stoker even capable of uttering a word by this time, of answering yes and no, as he must do if he were to be cross-examined, although, to be sure, a cross-examination was almost too much to hope for now? There he stood, his legs asprawl, weak in the knees, his head slightly raised, and the air flowing in and out of his open mouth as if the man had no lungs to control its motion.

But Karl himself felt stronger and more clear-headed than he had perhaps ever been at home. If only his parents could see him now, fighting for justice in a strange land before men of authority, and, though not yet triumphant, dauntlessly resolved to win the final victory! Would they revise their opinion of him? Set him between them and praise him? Look into his eyes at last, at last, these eyes so filled with devotion to them? Ambiguous questions, and this the most unsuitable moment to ask them!

“I have come here because I believe this stoker is accusing me of some sort of dishonesty.