A maid in the kitchen told me she saw him on his way here. Captain, and all you other gentlemen, I am prepared to show you papers to disprove any such accusation, and, if you like, to call on the evidence of unprejudiced and uncorrupted witnesses, who are waiting outside the door now.” Thus spoke Schubal. It was, to be sure, a clear and manly statement, and from the altered expression of the listeners one might have thought they were hearing a human voice for the first time after a long interval. They certainly did not notice the holes that could be picked even in that fine speech. Why, for instance, had the first relevant word to occur to him been “dishonesty”? Should he in fact have been accused of that, instead of nationalistic prejudice? A maid in the kitchen had seen the stoker on his way to the office, and Schubal had immediately divined what that meant? Wasn’t it his own guilty conscience that had sharpened his apprehension? And he had immediately collected witnesses, had he, and then called them unprejudiced and uncorrupted to boot? A fraud, nothing but a fraud! And these gentlemen were not only taken in by it, but regarded it with approval? Why had he allowed so much time to elapse between the kitchen-maid’s report and his arrival here? Simply in order to let the stoker weary the gentlemen, until they began to lose their powers of clear judgment, which Schubal feared most of all. Standing for a long time behind the door, as he must have done, had he deliberately refrained from knocking until he heard the casual question of the gentleman with the bamboo cane, which gave him grounds to hope that the stoker was finally finished and done for?

The whole thing was obvious and Schubal’s very behavior involuntarily corroborated it, but it would have to be proved to these gentlemen by other and still more palpable means. They must be shaken up. Now then, Karl, quick, make the best of every minute you have before the witnesses pour in and confuse everything!

At that very moment, however, the Captain waved Schubal away, and at once—seeing that his case seemed to be temporarily postponed—he stepped aside and was joined by the attendant, with whom he began a whispered conversation involving many side-glances at the stoker and Karl, as well as all sorts of vigorous gestures. It was as if Schubal were rehearsing his next fine speech.

“Didn’t you want to ask this youngster something, Mr. Jacob?” the Captain said in the general silence to the gentleman with the bamboo cane.

“Indeed I did,” replied the other, with a slight bow in acknowledgment of the Captain’s courtesy. And he asked Karl again, “What is your name?”

Karl, who thought that his main business would be best served by satisfying his stubborn questioner as quickly as possible, replied briefly, without introducing himself by means of his passport, which he would have had to tug out of his pocket: “Karl Rossmann.”

“Well!” said the gentleman who had been addressed as Jacob, taking a step backward, with an almost incredulous smile on his face. Likewise, the Captain, the Head Purser, the ship’s officer, even the attendant, all displayed an excessive astonishment on hearing Karl’s name. Only the harbor officials and Schubal remained indifferent.

“Well!” repeated Mr. Jacob, walking a little stiffly up to Karl, “then I’m your Uncle Jacob and you’re my own dear nephew. I suspected it all the time!” he said to the Captain before embracing and kissing Karl, who silently submitted to everything.

“And what may your name be?” asked Karl when he felt himself released again, very courteously, but quite coolly, trying hard to estimate the consequences which this new development might have for the stoker. At the moment, there was nothing to indicate that Schubal could extract any advantage from it.

“Try to understand your good fortune, young man!” said the Captain, who thought that Mr. Jacob was wounded in his dignity by Karl’s question, for he had retired to the window, obviously to conceal from the others the agitation on his face, which he also kept dabbing with a handkerchief. “It is Senator Edward Jacob who has just revealed himself to be your uncle. You now have a brilliant career before you, against all your previous expectations, I dare say. Try to realize this, as far as you can in the first shock of the moment, and pull yourself together!”

“I certainly have an Uncle Jacob in America,” said Karl, turning to the Captain, “but if I understood correctly, Jacob is the family name of this gentleman.”

“That is so,” said the Captain, expectantly.

“Well, my Uncle Jacob, my mother’s brother, had Jacob for a Christian name, but his family name must of course be the same as my mother’s, and her maiden name was Bendelmayer.”

“Gentlemen!” cried the Senator, coming forward in response to Karl’s explanation, quite cheerful now after his recuperative retreat to the window. Everyone except the harbor officials burst into laughter, some as if really touched, others for no visible reason.

“But what I said wasn’t so ridiculous as all that,” thought Karl.

“Gentlemen,” repeated the Senator, “against my will and against yours you are involved in a little family scene, and so I can’t avoid giving you an explanation, because as far as I know no one but the Captain here”—this reference was followed by a reciprocal bow—“is fully informed of the circumstances.”

“I really have to pay attention to every word now,” Karl told himself, and glancing over his shoulder he was happy to see that life had begun to return to the figure of the stoker.

“During the many years of my sojourn in America—though sojourn is hardly the right word to use for an American citizen, and I am an American citizen with all my heart—for all these many years, then, I have lived completely cut off from my relatives in Europe, for reasons which in the first place do not concern us here, and in the second, would really cause me too much pain to relate. I actually dread the moment when I may be forced to explain them to my dear nephew, for some frank criticism of his parents and their circle will be unavoidable, I’m afraid.”

“It’s my uncle, no doubt about it,” Karl told himself, listening eagerly, “he must have changed his name.”

“Now, my dear nephew was simply thrown out—we may as well call a spade a spade—was simply thrown out by his parents, just as you throw a cat out of the house when it annoys you. I have no intention of glossing over what my nephew did to merit that punishment, yet his transgression was of a kind that merely needs to be mentioned to find indulgence.”

“That’s not too bad,” thought Karl, “but I hope he won’t tell the whole story. Anyhow, he can’t know much about it. Who would tell him?”

“For he was,” Uncle Jacob went on, bracing himself with the bamboo cane and making little bouncing motions that helped to make the situation a good deal less solemn than it would otherwise have been, “for he was seduced by a servant, Johanna Brummer, a person of about thirty-five. It is far from my wish to offend my nephew by using the word ‘seduced,’ but it is difficult to find another equally suitable word.”

Karl, who had moved quite close to his uncle, turned around to read in the gentlemen’s faces the impression the story had made. None of them laughed, all were listening patiently and seriously. After all, one doesn’t laugh at the nephew of a Senator at the first opportunity. It was rather the stoker who now smiled at Karl, though very faintly, but that was, in the first place, a pleasure to see, as a sign of his reviving spirits, and excusable in the second place, since in the stoker’s bunk Karl had tried to make an impenetrable mystery of the very story that was now being made so public.

“Now this Brummer woman,” Uncle Jacob went on, “had a child by my nephew, a healthy boy who was baptized Jacob, evidently in honor of my unworthy self, since my nephew’s doubtless quite casual references to me must nevertheless have made a deep impression on the woman. Fortunately, let me add.