But now this humiliating time was over again. Captain Lorentz had lain eight days in Karlshamn, and it had been a week of annoying tasks, trying the patience of the Charlotta’s master. More cargo had had to be taken on, provisions stored, new crew members signed on. But the biggest nuisance were these damned peasants. In her old age the Charlotta had been turned into an emigrant ship instead of a merchantman, and her most important cargoes nowadays were these people emigrating to North America: peasants — peasants from Blekinge, Småland and Öland. Each time he had shipped such passengers across the ocean they had filled and overrun Captain Lorentz’s ship. This time they had even chased the rats from their holes before they all found room. This time they had come dragging still larger chests, still heavier boxes, still bulkier sacks, more baskets, bags, and belongings. Not even God the Almighty knew what junk they contained. This voyage they also had brought along more women and children than ever before. Never were so many brats aboard the Charlotta before — whole families, from old white-bearded grandfathers to suckling cradle-infants; cradles, yes, the number that were dragged on board this time! Devil take the captain if his ship wasn’t a nursery this trip!
And all these people his old ship must transport to the other side of the globe. The Charlotta was getting somewhat squeaky and ancient and sour in her hull, but was still seaworthy. Captain Lorentz loved watching her ride the sea, taking rough weather, curtsying to the waves like a court lady to a queen. She had only one fault, the old ship: she sweated. Perhaps she hadn’t been quite dry when launched — and such ships remained moist in their hulls as long as they lasted; only usually they didn’t last long.
Skipper Lorentz thought back in regret to the years when the Charlotta had been a simon-pure merchantman. The captain on an emigrant ship had many heavy new duties, and much greater responsibility. Nor did Lorentz like the idea of taking so many people out of the country. With each voyage he asked himself: Why did these peasants with their wives and children cross the sea? What did they expect to find in North America? In the captain’s mind all countries were equally good or bad. Dry land was dry land the whole world over, in North America as in Sweden. The sea was the part of the globe where sane people lived. He could never understand these peasants who undertook a long and costly voyage to the other side of the earth just in order to find another patch of soil to till! They might as well keep turning their patches in Sweden as in America; to poke and dig in the earth was the same degrading prison-chore everywhere. These peasants traveled from one field to another, from one dunghill to another — for what?
A seaman ought to spend his time at sea, a farmer on the farm. But strangely enough, it was actually the farmers, the homestead people in Sweden, who crossed the seas to change their country. Why? They were of course crowded in their bunk-beds over the fireplaces. There were too many around the potato pot. But it was their own fault: they begot too many children. If these peasants had been as busy in their fields as in their beds they would never need to emigrate. Apparently they used their wives every night of the year — except Christmas night; that night they abstained for fear of getting thistles and weeds in their fields next summer, for these peasants were as superstitious as they had been a thousand years ago.
Oh, well, some of them came from good stock in Sweden, and they might find a better lot in North America, where they would at least have elbowroom. He himself had never been farther inland than the harbor town of New York. And no decent soul could enjoy that dirty hole. When for the first time, some ten years ago, he had touched at that port, he had seen pigs poking in the stinking filth of the town streets. Some quarters were veritable pigpens. Cholera raged then, with hundreds dying daily, and most of the inhabitants had moved inland to uncontaminated regions. The town of New York had looked dead, stinking of corpses. Now it was lively again, and noisy, and beautiful women in white silk dresses drove in stately carriages through the streets. But it wasn’t a town where a seaman felt at home, not even for a few days. On Broadway there were some taverns, but none could offer a traveler the comforts he was accustomed to in the harbor towns of Europe. New York, after all, was a town for peasants.
The brig Charlotta had at last cleared the harbor and was in the open sea. The captain sniffed the wind — it seemed even calmer than before; all sails were set but hung limp and dead; they were depressed and wrinkled, waiting for the wind.
The second mate, a Finn, approached the captain. He was responsible for the passengers in the hold, and in his Finnish-accented Swedish he reported that they all had found their allotted bunks and turned in; all was well. There had of course been the usual complaints that it was too crowded and too uncomfortable down below. It was always so at first. They kept on jostling each other in the hold, until they realized that they couldn’t make the ship roomier or gain more space by pushing with their hands and elbows. As soon as they understood this they tired of their noise and settled down. And it looked as if they had fairly decent folk on this voyage; only one of the peasants appeared refractory, a man with the biggest nose he had ever seen. He and one other married man had been unable to find sleeping room within the partition set aside for families. Perhaps new bunks could be built for them near the family bunks, but for the time being they had been put up with the unmarried men, and this made the big-nosed man furious and hard to handle; he insisted on staying with his wife and children. He — the mate — had told him to pull in his big nose if he wished to remain on board with his huge elephant feet. My God, the boots these peasants wore! That man had such big underpinnings he no doubt could sail dry-shod across the Atlantic in his boots.
Captain Lorentz chewed his pipe while he listened to his mate. The peasants crawled over his ship this time like grasshoppers in the fields of North America. Hell and damnation! Perhaps he had allowed too many of them aboard. He hoped they would be manageable, as his mate predicted. The first few days of the voyage, while they were still on inland seas and had calm waters, the emigrants usually kept quiet enough and busied themselves in their curious way inspecting the ship. But when they reached open waters and began to feel the sea, even the most tractable of men sometimes went berserk. A peasant who on land was the most docile of creatures could, in a storm at sea, become the most ferocious beast, impossible to handle.
The Charlotta’s captain felt sorry for the pathetic earth rats who had been lured from their safe holes to spend weeks at sea. Perhaps these poor devils had never been in even a flat-bottomed skiff, or seen a larger body of water than a wash pan; and now suddenly they were off on an ocean voyage. The poor creatures could never take to the sea, and were as much afraid for their lives as old maids. But after all, what business of his was that? It was not his fault. He hadn’t advised these farmers to leave their peaceful cottages in their home parishes, he hadn’t persuaded them to exchange the sturdy fold-bed of the farm for the rolling bunk of a ship under sail. They could blame only themselves.
The drizzling rain thickened, the southeast wind died down. This time of year the winds shifted suddenly in the Baltic Sea, and even an old skipper would not predict the weather; but it seemed at the moment that the night would be calm. Captain Lorentz might as well turn in and rest for the remainder of the evening watch.
On the way to his cabin the captain almost fell over one of the passengers, who was down on his knees near the rail. Lorentz grabbed the man by the shoulder and raised him up. He was a rather short peasant, his face covered by a bushy, brown beard; his long, round-cut hair fell on his jacket collar.