She had gone to sleep at a moment when he himself was carried away by his description of the United States — for her benefit. He was disappointed in her. But here she lay, practically in his arms; for the first time a girl’s head rested against his breast. This could happen only on the chariot of adventure — after just thirty miles on the road! How many miles were left? Many, many! This adventure would last a long time!
Little by little he too was rocked to sleep by the movement of the wagon. Jonas Petter did not have the heart to awaken him at the next gate, he opened it himself. Robert slept on, unmindful of the gates on the road to America, unable to count them any longer.
— 5—
Early the next morning the three wagons drove into Karlshamn and came to a stop near the harbor. From the steeple of the town church they were greeted by a clock striking seven, slowly and solemnly. The harbor town was just coming to life for the day. The fishermen, returned from the sea with the night’s catch, were busy mooring their boats at the pier where the town maids awaited the fresh herring with their baskets. A shop clerk with a long birch broom was sweeping the steps in front of a house with the sign Sunesons Skeppshandel. In the air was the odor of fish, tar, hemp, herring, salt, and sea.
The emigrants climbed down from their wagons, sleepy and frozen, stiff and aching in their bones after the long ride. The menfolk stepped aside and flapped their arms against their bodies to warm up. The women attended to the children who were whimpering and whining from lack of sleep. They were all rather depressed and dullish after the long night; no one felt morning-cheerful.
A sharp, cold, penetrating wind blew from over the harbor and bade the emigrants welcome to the sea.
For the first time in their lives they looked across water without seeing land on the other side.
They had reached the sea they were to cross — this sea now greeted them with its wind; it sent as its messenger this cold, severe wind as if to frighten them, to challenge them: Come out here! I’ll teach you! The men turned up their coat collars and the women pulled their woolen shawls closer around their children and themselves. What an unmerciful wind they had in the coast towns! It cut through skin and bones, it penetrated their very marrow. Never did it blow so fiendishly at home, not in fall or in spring, not in summer or in winter. Even the heavy peasant wadmal seemed to give no protection.
The people of the earth met the sea, and they hardly had time to behold it before the wind brought tears to their eyes.
The men in the fishing boats looked curiously at the group of strangers who had stopped near the harbor with their high loads and their crying children. Some men, gentry by their dress, walked by in leisurely fashion and looked at the little company in amusement: apparently honest-to-goodness gray wadmal peasants with their simple shawl-wrapped wives and their pale-faced, runny-nosed children; a couple of farmhands in new suits which were too large and puffed out in bags front and back — jacket and trousers carelessly basted together by some village tailor. And whole loads of ancient chests, flowery knapsacks, homemade baskets and boxes and bundles — they must be backwoods people going on a long journey across the sea. What kind of restless itch had got into the poor devils?
Karl Oskar had arranged passage for them all, and it seemed as if he was to be their head, also, during the whole trip. No one undertook anything of importance without first asking him.
He now went over to a herring fisher and asked about ships in the harbor. He had paid passage to America — where might their ship be anchored?
The fisherman peered at the peasant and sized up his solid new boots. Yes, an America-sailer had arrived the night before last, she was a brig, the Charlotta. She was lying at anchor in the outer harbor — perhaps it was that old hull over there.
The name was the right one. Karl Oskar looked toward the outer harbor in the direction where the fisherman had pointed.
“Is that the Charlotta? Our ship?”
All eyes were turned toward the ship indicated. They stood silent, and gazed. It was a silence of disappointment, wonder, anxiety, and bafflement. Could this really be their ship?
It was Kristina who expressed in five words what all were thinking: “Is our ship so little?”
None among them had seen a sailing ship except in pictures. They had thought of ships as being much bigger than this. And the ship that was to carry them across the enormous ocean they had pictured as much larger. In front of them was the wide expanse of the sea; and on this sea their ship seemed so minutely small. Compared with the water she was to cross she looked pitiful and puny.
“The boat is larger than you think. It just looks small at this distance,” said Robert.
He attempted to choke his own feeling of disappointment at seeing the Charlotta, and wanted to encourage the rest of his company.
He pointed. “Look at the masts! Has anyone ever seen such tall masts?”
None had seen other masts on ships to make comparison. The small ship anchored landwards from the little island, in the entrance of the harbor, had two masts stretching toward the sky and seeming higher than the tallest tree in the forest. The masts were as tall as the ship was long. Robert thought that perhaps he himself had helped fell the trees which he now saw as naked, slender stems: perhaps he had cut the firs, helped remove them from their place of immobility in the forest to the sea, replanting them, as it were — those mast-trees which for the rest of their lives were to sail the seas, were to be supported by water instead of earth.
Karl Oskar wondered when they might be allowed to go on board. The fisherman said that the Charlotta was to take on freight, and as the vessel had barely arrived in harbor nothing had been loaded yet. It might be several days before passengers could board the America-sailer.
They could not remain here in the wind with their freezing, whimpering children. They must find quarters while waiting for embarkation. The kind fisherman showed them to the Maja’s Inn, located in an alley near the harbor. It was the house behind the Hope Tavern, right there, as they could see; they were sure to get accommodations.
The emigrant wagons pushed on to the indicated place. Only Robert remained standing at the harbor.
He stood there alone and looked out across the sea.
The others called him several times, but he did not answer.
Part Two. Peasants at Sea
XIII. THE CHARLOTTA OF KARLSHAMN
The Ship
The brig Charlotta, Captain Lorentz, sailed from Karlshamn April 14, 1850, with New York as her destination. The ship’s capacity was 160 lasts, her length 124 feet, and her width 20 feet. She had a crew of fifteen: 2 mates, 1 bosun, 1 carpenter, 1 sailmaker, 1 cook, 4 able-bodied seaman, 2 ordinary seamen, and 3 deckhands. She was loaded with pig iron and sundries.
She carried 78 passengers, all emigrants to North America, making the total number of people on board 94.