the right and left and periodically calling out in his little old voice: “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” Prokop went across to him on the warship and tried to force him to say who had sent him. “Nobody, please,” asserted the old man; “but my daughter Elizabeth is the housekeeper.” He would have talked further about his daughter Elizabeth, but Prokop stroked his white hair and told him to tell this nameless person that he was well and strong.
That day Dr. Krafft drank alone, gossiped, philosophized, and again expressed his contempt for all philosophy; action, he maintained, was everything. Prokop sat trembling on the Princess’ seat and all the time kept his eye on one star. God knows why he selected that particular one, which was a yellow one in the constellation of Orion. It was not true that he was well; he had pains in the places in which he had suffered from them in Tynice, his head was spinning and he was trembling with fever. When he wanted to say anything his tongue somehow failed him, and his teeth chattered so much that Dr. Krafft became sobered and almost uneasy. He hastily stretched Prokop out on the couch in the cubicle and covered him with all sorts of things, including the Princess’s bathing-gown. He also placed a cold compress on his forehead. Prokop asserted that he had a cold; about midnight he went off to sleep, semi-delirious and a prey to the most terrible dreams.
