The Emigrants (36 page)

Only through the main hatch did light filter into the hold. After dark a few weak, smoking, kerosene lanterns were lit and hung along the sides of the ship.

As there was no room for Karl Oskar in the family pen, he must share a two-man bunk with his brother Robert, in the unmarried men’s compartment. Above the two brothers slept Jonas Petter, and Arvid had his bunk next, on the same side. The men here had about as much space as pieces of kindling stacked in a woodpile: there was hardly a foot’s width per person.

“They must have meant us to sleep on our sides,” said Karl Oskar. “There isn’t room for a man to sleep on his back.”

Jonas Petter held his nose: “It smells of piss!”

Robert too thought the hold smelled of night-old urine. “The air is so foul,” he said to Arvid, “let’s go above.”

The hold was dark as a cellar. He felt as if he were in a sack.

By using their elbows the two boys were able to force a way between fellow passengers and their mattresses and sacks and bundles, through the narrow passageway along the ship’s side, to where they could struggle out through the hatch. Robert looked more closely at the hatch covering, which was pierced through by a number of small holes, like a milk strainer. The only entry for fresh air was through these pitifully small openings. No wonder the atmosphere below was thick and stifling.

“Why don’t they make bigger air holes in this ship?” wondered Arvid.

On deck they breathed clear, fresh, spring-cool Baltic air. It was calm at sea, and the ship rocked with a slow roll which they hardly noticed. The water purled softly against the hull, like water from a slow-running spring.

Robert wanted to walk about and inspect this ship which was to be his home for a long time. At the embarkation yesterday there had been such hurry and disorder he had been unable to see anything of it. Their sleeping places had had to be found, chests and knapsacks, boxes and kegs, tubs and baskets carried into the hold. Wherever he had turned he had been in the way of someone. Today he was more at home.

Only he was a little afraid to get too close to the captain. In Suneson’s chandlery in Karlshamn one of the clerks had shown him the newspaper
Karlshamns Allehanda
; there was a notice about their ship under “Arrived Ship Masters.” At first he had thought it must be a misprint in the paper; it actually said “Ship Masters,” not “Ships.” It was the ship masters who arrived in harbor, not the ships themselves. Then the little man whom he saw yesterday, back aft among the crew, was more important than the whole ship. It would not do to get in his way.

The boys looked cautiously around. Arvid inspected the ropes, thick as a man’s arms, coiled here and there on deck like giant snakes. He had seen the same kind of ropes at the ship chandler’s in Karlshamn. When he had asked if these ropes were meant for huge ferocious bulls, the clerk had laughed and said they were to hold something much wilder and much more diffcult to handle than all the bulls in the world. Robert had then nudged Arvid in the side and explained that the ropes were used on ships to tie something with.

Robert had tried to learn all he could about ships and sea life, and already he was instructing his fellow traveler: Their ship was called a brig; a brig could easily be distinguished from other ships because she had a gaff sail on the aftermast.

“A gaff sail? What in the world is that?” asked Arvid.

Robert couldn’t answer this as yet; but he thought it must be a sail put up with gaff (whatever that was). The aftermast, anyway, was the one farthest back on the ship.

“Someone talked about a yard sail today,” said Arvid. “What might that be?”

This Robert thought he could answer accurately: a yard sail, no doubt, was one made right in the shipyard.

The boys looked up toward the ceiling of sails; they counted eleven of them, breeze-tightened: three on the bowsprit, four on the foremast, three on the after- or mainmast, and one small square sail on the stern. The masts were many rods high: they seemed taller than a church steeple. The mainmast was a few feet higher than the foremast—hence its name.

Robert noticed the masts were of pine; he thought again, as he had on first seeing the ship, that perhaps he had helped cut down the very trees which made them.

“Is it all one tree?” asked Arvid. “They are equally thick all the way to the top.”

Robert thought several trees had been joined to make up a mast; one pine could never be that tall.

Thus the two farmhands contemplated the riddles of sea life, staring at the mast-tops until their necks ached. Those pines from the deep forests had traveled far across the ocean. Trees which had been next neighbors to them were still rooted in the woods. They might never get out to sea. Fate dealt unequally, even among the trees of a forest.

Up in the masts hung strange nets of heavy rope; they must be intended for huge fishes, such large meshes they had. A few of the sea folk were climbing up there, shouting to each other. The farm boys went dizzy watching them suspended above. The seamen had nothing to hold on to, as far as the boys could see, and they feared that any moment the men would lose their foothold so Robert and Arvid would have to witness the bodies of these daredevils fallen to the deck, crushed into bloody pulp.

The boys continued their inspection of the brig
Charlotta,
and were astonished at the small space the passengers had in which to move about. They paced off the length of the ship and her width, and even though they shortened their steps somewhat, they found her length to be no more than forty paces, and her width eight. The floor in some farmhouses was as large as this deck. Their ship was small—not only at a distance. Forty paces long and eight wide—for almost a hundred people, for them to live, to sleep and eat and perform all the necessary functions of life. If everyone came on deck at once it would be so crowded they would almost push each other overboard. Overboard—and suppose something should happen to their small ship, out on the great ocean: what would they do? There were a few rowboat-like rafts, here on deck, but by no means enough for the passengers. Well, perhaps such gear was not considered a necessity by sailors.

As far as immediate necessities were concerned, Robert had asked a seaman today where the outhouse was located. He was told it was the roundhouse forward, just aft of the port bow. Robert didn’t know where the port bow was, but he had found the house anyway—though it wasn’t round, but square. He didn’t understand why it was called the roundhouse. It was true, the hole one used was round, of course, but so were all such holes. Who could solve the riddles of the sea?

The America-bound boys looked at the anchor winch and felt the heavy chain. What gear! But naturally heavy chains were required to tether a ship to the bottom of the sea.

“Look at the man in the fore end!” said Arvid, and pointed to the bow. The “man” was a wooden figurehead. They went closer and saw it represented the head and neck of a huge bird: an eagle stretching out over the ship’s bow. The long beak of the bird was open, and pointed over the water like a spearhead, as though he would guide the helmsman across the seas with his beak. The eagle looked ravenous and ferocious, his black, immobile wooden eyes scanning the waters of the Baltic Sea.

A bent old man with a long beard sat leaning against the foremast, busy with pieces of rope and such. He grinned in a friendly way at Robert, who asked him what he was doing.

“Can’t you see, boy? I’m splicing.”

Robert had picked up a new word—“splicing.” The bearded old man was the ship’s sailmaker. In his younger days he had been a bosun. Robert asked him about the
Charlotta
’s figurehead, and the old man explained it served no purpose except decoration.

At the railing the boys looked down into the water rolling softly a few feet below them. Robert thought it might be a couple of miles to the bottom. Arvid shuddered—he had thought it would be a hundred rods at most.

The sea lay perilously near, and he was seized with terror. “If the sea should rise only half a yard, it would drown us!”

The possibility loomed before Robert for a fleeting moment, then he said there would be no danger: should the sea rise, it would only lift the ship higher. Arvid shook his head, unable to follow this.

A fellow passenger came up to the boys. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, a light brown, loud-checked coat, and trousers that fitted his legs as tightly as skin. From his hip pocket dangled a white handkerchief, swishing his thighs like a horse’s tail; his shoes were of the finest patent leather. Robert had noticed this man earlier, on account of his colorful clothing. He seemed a gentleman among all these farmers.

The stranger looked down the side of the
Charlotta
’s worn hull and waterlogged planking, which had begun to soften and splinter. He grinned contemptuously and spat on the old hulk.

“God-damn her! Damn this sour old washtub!”

He spat a second time for emphasis.

“This is a rotten, stinking ship! Do you understand, peasants?”

In some resentment, Robert answered that he had felt the same when he boarded the ship. She was damp and unhealthy.

“Her bilge water stinks like the devil,” said the man in the checked jacket. “I’ve sailed on many ships, and I must say this old hulk is unwholesome.”

“Are you a seaman, sir?” asked Robert with new respect.

“I should say so! Was for ten years.”

Arvid was bending over the rail, and now he made a discovery. He pointed and said: “Look! There’s a hole! Our ship is leaking!”

He pointed to a hole at the water’s edge through which a stream ran in and out continuously. The man in the checked coat laughed.

“That’s the scupper hole, my boy! But the ship
is
leaky, anyway.”

Robert caught the word “scupper.” Of course, it was the hole through which the passengers scupped, or vomited; Arvid ought to have known this. He noticed now the hole was lined with iron, no doubt to prevent waste from clinging to the wood and smelling. The presence of the iron convinced him that the hole had been made with a purpose, was not caused by rot.

“Yes,” resumed the stranger, “now I sail to the North American Republic again, if this old tub keeps afloat that far.”

“Have you visited America before?” asked Robert.

“Many times, my friend, many times. I have lived in America for years.”

Robert viewed his fellow passenger with new interest. For the first time in his life he was face to face with a person who had been to the New World. What he beheld was a red, flushed face, swollen as if the owner had the mumps; a flat nose; and bloodshot, thick-lidded eyes. It was difficult to discover any redeeming features in this countenance, but the owner had been to America, and spoke of this without bragging, as if he merely mentioned that he’d been to the outhouse.

“What did you do in America, sir?”

“Various things.”

The stranger’s eyes scanned the water as if his memories of America were floating on the wave crests.

“This last year I helped a Mormon priest with odd jobs.”

The man in the loud coat and the snakeskin-tight pants spat again, this time straight out to sea. Robert need not urge him further, he continued now of his own volition.

The Mormons were the Latter-Day Saints in the United States, and he had been allowed to assist one of their greatest and most saintly prophets—or so he had thought when he accepted the job. Later, he might as well admit it now, it turned out that the priest was no Mormon at all! Things were not always what they seemed. But he would tell the story as it happened to him.

The Mormon priest (it was easier to refer to him so) had journeyed on the railroad from town to town, and he had gone with him to help with various things. It had not been a heavy or arduous task. When the supposed priest held a meeting in a town, then he, the assistant, had mixed in the crowd as one of the listeners. When the priest’s sermon was over, then it was his duty to step forward and ask leave to say a few words: that this evening, in this room, the spirit of revelation had filled him. It had been granted him to see with his own eyes the returned Lord’s prophet. And deep in his heart suddenly he had realized that he himself belonged to the lost tribe of Israel. His memory of long-gone-by times had returned to him so that it spanned even the days of Father Abraham. He wanted now to be a member of the Holy Sons of Zion.

He would be received immediately, the bogus priest would open his arms to him, hold him to his heart, and in the presence of the whole congregation call him his long-lost brother. And then many of those sitting in the audience, till now somewhat doubting and undecided, would come up to the priest and testify to the same thing: they too belonged to the lost tribes of Israel, and they too had this evening seen the prophet. All would be received into the church, and a collection would be taken up.

Evening after evening this was his sole occupation; he acted again and again the son of Zion, a brother of the Lord’s prophet, and for his services he received a dollar a day in cash, two free meals, free journeys on the railroad, and beautiful clothes lent him by his boss.

Almost every evening some woman in the audience would remember that she had been a daughter of Zion. The priest would take the most tender care of the prodigal sister, and marry her immediately, as, he said, the Lord commanded him to do. This was the one and only salvation of a woman’s soul: she must be taken to wife. There was no other road along which a woman might reach the glories of heaven. She must be sealed by a man who fulfilled his duties as bridegroom.

Sometimes it happened that more than one of Zion’s lost daughters were granted their memory, and returned to the church. Then the boss was not able to marry all of them. Neither his time nor strength was sufficient for such a task; moreover, he was a little ailing at times—especially on Saturday evenings—and then he wished to have a little time off. On those days he seldom married more than once or twice. Sometimes he actually needed a little peace, particularly as his health was not rugged. Then he would order the speaker, his paid assistant, to help: he too, at the priest’s order, would marry one or two of the lost daughters of Israel. He was not one to bar the road to heavenly glory for good sisters in Zion. Furthermore, he had been engaged to help in all matters.