Lill-Märta had caught a cold in the windy harbor town, and was now in bed with a fever, perspiring, an alarming flush in her cheeks. Kristina wished she could obtain a mug of hot milk for her. But there was no milk on the ship. She must now mix honey in water and warm it for the child. And what was she to do with Johan? He was well enough, but he wet his bed nearly every night; that dripper ought to have had his own mattress. And the amount of clothing which the children already had dirtied — how was she ever to wash and dry it here on the ship?
She was now enclosed in a small pen, among all these strangers, with three children, one of them sick — never in her life had she felt so lost and helpless.
The children had no place down here to play and entertain themselves, and they hung on their mother. Johan kept pulling at her skirts.
“I want to go out, Mother!”
“We cannot go out here, little one.”
“But I want to go out and go home.”
“We are on the sea now.”
“I don’t want to be on the sea. I’ll go home. I want milk and cookies.”
“But we cannot get off. I’ve told you.”
“Mother — I don’t like it here!”
“Keep quiet now! Be a good boy!”
Thank God, she had some sugar. She opened the knapsack at the foot of the bunk, found her bag of sugar, and gave the boy a lump. He kept quiet awhile — this was her only way to silence him. Lill-Märta ought to have had a piece, too, but she slept in her fever. Kristina felt the child’s forehead tenderly; she was still burning hot.
Karl Oskar came down from deck with a jar of water in his hand. Now they had obtained their weekly rations, but had not received potatoes; he missed potatoes, he was used to potatoes every day. Instead he had been given sour cabbage — but this he liked. Kristina thought that perhaps potatoes wouldn’t keep on the ship, they would sprout and spoil, though she was not sure if this was the reason for their absence. Karl Oskar said they would eat just so many more when they planted their own in the rich soil of North America.
Soon it was their turn to use the ship’s galley. But Karl Oskar said there was little room up there — it was as crowded in the galley as it was in church pews on a Christmas morning; the women stood and sat on top of each other. This did not cheer Kristina: was she now to elbow her way among strange women while she prepared their food, also?
Each time Karl Oskar came down from the fresh sea air on deck he would grin and sniff the air in the hold. “One needs a nose clip down here! The air stinks!”
Kristina had almost collapsed the first time she came into the hold. All evil smells that used to make her sick streamed toward her: rancid pork, old herring brine, dirty socks, sweaty feet, dried vomiting. In one corner she had espied some wooden buckets, and she could guess their use. She had felt as if she had been pushed into the bottom of a smelly old herring barrel. She had felt nausea, had wanted to turn and run up on deck — had wanted to get off the ship at once.
Little by little she was accustoming herself to the evil odors. But she still went about taking short breaths, trying not to inhale the bad air.
Karl Oskar explained that the bad air was caused by poor ventilation. The people took the air from each other’s mouths down here. But as long as calm weather lasted they might go on deck and breathe fresh air during the daytime.
He was dissatisfied with their ship; he felt he had been cheated in his contract for the passage. And yesterday — when he had been denied sleeping place with his wife, and been put with unmarried men — he had spoken plainly to the mate: he did not ask to sleep like a king on silken sheets under eiderdown in a gold-plated chamber; but neither had he imagined they were to live crowded and jammed together like wretched sheep in a pen. At least twenty people too many had been packed in down here. The shipowner had only been interested in getting their money. Each grown person paid one hundred and fifty riksdaler for his passage — forty-three and a half dollars, he was told it was, in currency of the new country they were bound for. Yet they had to lie here and suffer in a dark unhealthy hole so the owner might grow fat on their money. That was what Karl Oskar had said to the mate, and the most outspoken among the emigrants had agreed with him. The mate had threatened to call the captain, Kristina had become frightened and prayed him to keep quiet — but Karl Oskar was like that; he could not keep his mouth shut when he felt an injustice.
Moreover, they had had to lie and wait in Karlshamn a whole week, and their quarters in the harbor town had cost many daler which he had had to pay unnecessarily; they should have been notified in advance about the exact date of the ship’s sailing.
One of the seamen, who looked decent and wasn’t quite so haughty, had admitted that the ship was overloaded with people. But he had added that it usually thinned out in the hold as they got out to sea.
If that hint was meant as a comfort, then it was indeed a cruel comfort; as a joke, Karl Oskar liked it even less.
This much he knew by now: that their life on board ship would be neither comfortable nor healthy.
There were already sick fellow passengers. In one family compartment, on the other side, lay a young girl who had been ailing when she embarked. She had fallen ill with a throat abscess while they were staying in Karlshamn. Her parents boiled porridge in the galley and tied this as a warm compress around her infected throat. But it had been of no help as yet. The girl lay there breathing heavily, with an unpleasant rattle. Karl Oskar had suggested to the father that the abscess in the throat be opened. He himself had once in his youth had such trouble in his throat, and porridge compresses had been useless — only the knife had helped.
The enclosure next to Kristina was occupied by an old peasant couple from Öland. The husband’s name was Måns Jakob, and the wife was called Fina-Kajsa. They had told Karl Oskar that they were emigrating to their son, who had been living in North America for many years. Karl Oskar had noticed the old Öland peasant when they embarked: he had brought a huge grindstone with him, and the mate had objected, wondering if it were necessary to drag that thing with him. Couldn’t they just as well heave it overboard? He would no doubt get along without the grindstone in America. But Måns Jakob thought a great deal of his stone: he would take it with him on the ship, or demand the return of his money. He was so insistent that the mate finally gave in; and the grindstone was now in the hold. Måns Jakob had heard from his son that good grindstones were expensive in America. They were cheap on Öland, and he wished to bring this one as a present to his boy.
Karl Oskar recalled that he had practically given away a new, even grindstone at his auction, because he had considered it too cumbersome for the voyage. Perhaps it would be difficult to find an equally good stone — he would surely need one to sharpen the scythes that were to cut the fat, rich, tall grasses in America; a sharp scythe did half the haymaker’s work.
There were also other implements they should have taken along.
“Did you see, there are those who drag along spinning and spooling wheels and such?”
“Yes,” admitted Kristina. “I regret leaving my spinning wheel.”
Seeing what others had taken with them, she regretted having left behind so many necessary household articles.
But they must reconcile themselves to the thought of what they should have taken and what they would miss in America. Kristina was much more upset by the fact that they must travel in the company of one person who ought not to have been taken along.
She pointed to the canvas bulkhead at the foot of her bunk: in there slept one who ought not to have been in their company on this voyage.