The brig Charlotta sails through the storm with Indisposition as guest and passenger, with Wretchedness in her bowels.
XVIII. A BUSHEL OF EARTH FROM SWEDEN
— 1—
Karl Oskar Nilsson was one of the passengers in the ship’s hold who could best stand the sea. He felt as well here on the ocean as he did on firm land. As yet he had not missed a single meal. The food was supplied by the ship, and he liked to get his due; many of the seasick peasants lay and fretted because they couldn’t swallow a bite, although they had paid for the fare, and no money was refunded.
During the storm most of the emigrants remained in their bunks, day and night, without consuming anything except the half gallon of water which was their portion. Of all the grownups from Ljuder Parish, only Karl Oskar and Ulrika of Västergöhl were able to be up and about. While Kristina remained in bed, the father alone looked after the children. They were well and lively and did not suffer from the sea. Karl Oskar prepared food for himself and the children up in the galley, as best he could over a fire that rocked like a cradle with the ship’s rolling and pitching. He had to stand and hold the handles of pots and pans to be on the safe side; once when he left them unguarded for a moment he had to get down on his knees and gather the food from the galley deck.
He had long ago given up trying to make Kristina eat; she had asked him not even to speak of food, as this made her still more uncomfortable. Butter and pork he was particularly forbidden to mention: one was as rancid as the other, and if she heard either referred to she was immediately seized by convulsions.
The storm was still raging on the morning of the third day, when Karl Oskar stood at Kristina’s bunk and asked the usual question.
She tried to move her head enough to meet his eyes. How did she feel?
Did he have to ask? She didn’t have enough strength to answer.
He held the tin cup to her mouth, water he had saved from his own portion. The ship’s water had become old, it was murky, as if it had been taken from some swamp or peat bog — slimy, and full of sediment. It stank, and had the taste of old laundry tubs; all edibles on board now had an old taste — of chests, cupboards, and barrels. But the water could be somewhat refreshed by a few drops of vinegar, which the emigrants were accustomed to add before they used it.
Kristina drank, and some water ran down her chin and neck. Karl Oskar dried her with his handkerchief.
“The storm will soon be over.”
But Kristina did not care about the storm — it could do what it pleased, die down or rage on. She had only one wish: to lie here, still, still.
When her indifference left her for a moment, her first concern was for her children. Harald crawled about in her bunk-pen and could not get outside its fence — she need not worry about him. But when she didn’t see Johan and Lill-Märta, she wondered where they were. Sometimes they stood at the edge of her bunk and prayed and entreated her, pulled at her arms and clothing, persistently, stubbornly: “Mother, get up! Why don’t you get up, Mother? You can’t stay in bed any longer!”
And now she asked her husband, as she had asked him twenty times a day: “Are you able to find some food for the little ones?”
“They get enough to manage.”
“I’m glad they are well — glad you are well.”
Suddenly she broke off: “Karl Oskar — the bucket!”
The water she had just drunk came up, mixed with greenish slime.
“Do you want a spoon of The Prince’s Drops?”
“No. I want nothing — nothing.”
Neither Hoffman’s nor The Prince’s nor The Four Kinds of Drops seemed to relieve her. She had tried all the kinds that were obtainable from the medicine chest. And why should she take medicines, only to be tortured in throwing them up again?
Karl Oskar bent anxiously over Kristina: her face was green-white, pale and wan in the meager daylight down here. She could keep down neither food nor water, and these vomitings night and day were weakening her. Her pregnancy added to her discomfort. He had become seriously concerned about his wife — she could not stand this for very much longer.
The voyage across the sea to North America was more unhealthy and perilous than he himself had imagined. But no one could know in advance what a crossing would be like. Of one thing he was sure, however: since people so often became sick on the sea, they were meant to live on land. Only because God had created water between the continents were they forced to go on the sea at times. It would feel good with solid ground underfoot again.
“Is there nothing you wish, Kristina?”
“Ye-es, Karl Oskar — I would like to — I wish—”
She broke off again, and was silent. He never knew what she wished him to do. The fact was, she had suddenly felt dizzy when her swing almost touched the stable roof, and she had wanted to ask Karl Oskar to help her down from the swing.
— 2—
The second mate unexpectedly came down to the family compartment in the hold. The bedridden emigrants gazed at him; some were even able to gather enough energy from this visit to emerge from their apathy and ask themselves: What errand could the mate have down here? Something must be out of order.
The mate carried a piece of canvas in his hands. What was the canvas to be used for? The emigrants wondered, yet they were fairly indifferent in their wonder. So much they understood, that something was out of order here in their quarters; but they had not the strength to guess what it might be. Something had happened, however, and they were soon to know. It could not be kept a secret.
The first death had occurred on board the ship.
A corpse was to be shrouded in the canvas. The young girl with the throat abscess had died. All the warm porridge which her parents had boiled and applied had been prepared in vain, all the salves from the medicine chest had been of no avail. The captain had been down to look at the girl’s throat, and he had said the abscess ought to be lanced. But neither he nor anyone else had dared use the knife. In the end the boil broke, and a few minutes later the girl breathed her last.
It was said that the dead girl was seventeen years old, but she was small of growth, hardly bigger than a twelve-year-old. Now it turned out that the mate had brought a piece of canvas far too large; there was enough to wrap it twice around her body before she was carried away through the main hatch.
A dead person had been lying among the living down here. But now she was gone, and everything was in order again in the hold.
That day the northwest storm spent its force and began to die down. The waves sank and the surface of the sea became smoother; toward evening the weather was almost calm. The lull that came after the great upheaval on the little brig at first seemed strange to the passengers.
Karl Oskar had not mentioned the death in the compartment to Kristina; it had passed her by unnoticed. Now he said: “You’ll soon get well when the weather is calm.”
“I wonder.”
But at the same moment she raised her head from the pillow, and her eyes opened wide. She listened. She could hear something going on on deck; the main hatch was open and she could hear singing from above. “Am I delirious, Karl Oskar, or—”
Did she dream or was she awake? Were they no longer on board the ship? Had they landed? Was she in church, or in the churchyard? People were singing! If she still was alive, she could hear them singing a hymn.
“Yes — they are singing a psalm up there.”
Kristina was listening to a funeral hymn. A funeral was taking place on the afterdeck.