Atlantis | Page 2

be sure, they have failed me miserably. But that, of course,
you cannot help, and, curiously enough, now that all's lost, the thing
that most bothers me is the horrid thought that I cannot repay you.
My father, you know, is principal of a public school and actually
managed to save some money. But he has five children beside myself,
all of whom are unprovided for. He looked upon me as his capital
which would bring more than the usual rate of interest. Being a
practical man, he now realises he has lost both principal and interest.
In brief, he is afraid of responsibilities which unfortunately I cannot
shoulder in the better world to come--faugh, faugh, faugh!--I spit three
times. What shall I do? Would you be able to forego the payment of my
debt?
Several times, old boy, I have been two thirds of the way over already,
and I have left for you some notes on the states I have passed through,
which may not be lacking in scientific interest. Should it be possible for
me, after the great moment, to make myself noticeable from the
Beyond, you will hear from me again.
Where are you? Good-bye. In the vivid, flashing orgies of my nocturnal

dreams, you are always tossing in a ship on the high seas. Do you
intend to go on an ocean trip?
It is January. Isn't there a certain advantage in not needing to dread
April weather any longer? I shake hands with you, Frederick von
Kammacher.
Yours, George Rasmussen.
* * * * *
Frederick, of course, had immediately sent a telegram from Paris,
which relieved the son, dying a heroic death, from solicitude for his
hale father.
Though Frederick von Kammacher had profound troubles of his own to
occupy his mind, his thoughts kept recurring to the letter in his pocket
and his dying friend. To an imaginative person of thirty, his life of the
past few years is in an eminent degree present to his mind. There had
been a tragic turn in Frederick's own life, and now tragedy had also
entered his friend's life, a tragedy far more awful.
The two young men had been separated for a number of years. They
had met again and passed a number of happy weeks together, enriched
by a liberal exchange of ideas. Those weeks were the beginning of
similar epochs in the career of each. It was at little winter festivities in
Frederick von Kammacher's comfortable home that the cigarettes of
Simon Arzt of Port Said, which Rasmussen had brought from the place
of their manufacture, had played their rôle.
Now, in the reading-room of Hofmann's Hotel, near the harbour, he
wrote him a letter.
* * * * *
Dear old George,
My fingers are clammy. I am constantly dipping a broken pen in

mouldy ink; but if I don't write to you now, you won't get any news of
me for three weeks. This evening I board the Roland of the North
German Steamship Company.
There seems to be something in your dreams. Nobody could have told
you of my trip. Two hours before I started, I myself knew nothing of it.
Day after to-morrow it will be a year since you came to us direct from
Bremen, after your second journey, with a trunk full of stories,
photographs, and the cigarettes of Simon Arzt. I had scarcely set foot in
England when twenty paces from the landing-place, I beheld our
beloved brand in a shop window. Of course, I bought some, by
wholesale, in fact, and am smoking one while writing, for the sake of
auld lang syne. Unfortunately, this horrible reading-room in which I am
writing doesn't get any the warmer, no matter how many cigarettes I
light.
You were with us two weeks when fate came and knocked at the door.
We both rushed to the door and caught a cold, it seems. As for me, I
have sold my house, given up my practice, and put my three children in
a boarding school. And as for my wife, you know what has befallen
her.
The devil! Sometimes it makes one creepy to think of the past. To both
of us it seemed a splendid thing for you to take over our sick
colleague's practice. I can see you dashing about to visit your patients
in his sleigh and fur coat. And when he died, I had not the slightest
objection to your settling down as a country physician in the immediate
vicinity, although we had always poked a lot of fun at a country
physician's starvation practice.
Now things have turned out very differently.
Do you remember with what an endless number of monotonous jokes
the goldfinches that fairly overran the Heuscheuer Mountains used to
furnish us? When