Low German and Danish, and seen them let down not merely bales and boxes, but also a polar bear and a royal tiger in heavily barred cages, doubtless coming from Hamburg and destined for some Danish menagerie; and this had diverted him. Then while the boat was gliding along the river between flat banks he had completely forgotten officer Peterson's interrogatory; and all that had gone before, his sweet, sad, and regretful dreams during the night, the walk he had taken, the sight of the walnut-tree,—these had again become powerful in his soul. And now that the sea opened out he saw from afar the shore on which as a boy he had been privileged to listen to the summer dreams of the sea; saw the gleam of the light-house and the lights of the seashore hotel where he had stayed with his parents … The Baltic! He leaned his head against the strong salt breeze that came to him free and unchecked, enveloped his ears, and produced in him a gentle vertigo, a slight stupefaction, in which the recollection of all evil, of torment and erring ways, of great plans and arduous labors, became lazily and blissfully submerged. And in the roaring, splashing, foaming, and groaning round about him he fancied he heard the rustling and creaking of the old walnut-tree, and the screeching of a garden gate … It grew darker and darker.
"De stars, my gracious, just look at de stars," suddenly remarked in a ponderous sing-song a voice that seemed to come from inside a barrel. He knew the voice. It belonged to a reddish-blond, simply dressed man with reddened eyelids and a clammy look, as if he had just taken a bath. At supper in the cabin he had been Tonio Kroger's neighbor and with hesitant and modest motions he had taken unto himself astonishing quantities of lobster-omelette. Now he was leaning against the rail beside his new acquaintance and looking up at the sky, holding his chin with thumb and forefinger. Without doubt he was in one of those extraordinary and solemnly contemplative moods in which the barriers between men fall away, in which the
