The new death in the hold caused some changes in the accommodations for a few passengers. Fina-Kajsa, who one morning had awakened as a widow, must now move to the other side of the sailcloth hanging, among the unmarried women. Two married men, Karl Oskar and another farmer, who until now had slept with the unmarried men, were allowed to move in with their families and occupy the bunk vacated by the old peasant couple.
From the bushel of earth from Sweden three shovelfuls were taken again. And the deathbed of one became the sleeping place of another. Karl Oskar slept from now on in the bunk vacated by Måns Jakob, who himself rested on the bottom of the sea, his face washed, cleaner than he had been in many a day. And the young farmer remembered what he had heard the very first day on board the brig Charlotta: “There’s more room in the hold the farther out we get.”
XIX. AT HOME AND AWAY
— 1—
“. . To the storm he said: Be calm!
To the billow: Lay thee down!
And the billow down she lay
And the roaring storm he died away.
The sun so glorious and dear
Looks down upon the water clear.
Our sails we hoist!
Our Lord we praise,
He heard our prayers’ qualm!”
(Morning hymn sung on the brig
Charlotta
’s deck, chosen
by homeowner Danjel Andreasson from Ljuder Parish,
and sung when the great storm had abated.)
The weather improved, the air was warmer. They had clear days when the sun remained long on deck. And for several days the brig Charlotta of Karlshamn enjoyed an even stern wind which gave her good speed.
When the sea had come to rest the disquiet and upheaval in the passengers’ intestines disappeared. When the weather grew calm, calmness also entered into the people. The seasick ones improved little by little; one after another, they returned to the deck. And in the galley, which had been practically deserted during the storm, the women thronged again with their cooking utensils, and the smell of boiling peas and rancid pork again spread over the deck and was diffused by the wind over the sea.
The course of the emigrant vessel was now southwest: the Charlotta was sailing into the English Channel.
The land people somewhat wonderingly beheld this water, which was not as they had thought it would be. The English Channel — a channel to them was a broad ditch, dug in order to drain low-lying ground — bogs and swamps. They had hoped they were to sail through a narrow trough; they had harbored a wish to sail a small water, where they had solid ground near on both sides, so they would feel safer than on the open sea. And now they discovered that the English Channel was no ditch. Its water was not moss-brown, its waves came and went as they did on the sea. They discovered that this channel was also a sea.
And they soon learned that this water was an important crossroad of the sea, used by many vessels. Every day they saw other ships — they met them, they were in their company, they passed them, they were overtaken by them; they saw vessels both smaller and bigger than their own, with people from foreign lands on board, vessels flying flags in all colors.
Then one morning they discovered land on the starboard side — a glittering white shore rose before them, like a high, steep bank. It was the coast of England, said the seamen. There were knolls and cliffs of chalk, shining white in the sun. Beyond the shore — farther inland — high towers and steeples rose up; those were forts, castles, and churches. And the emigrants stood there and looked over the bank into the foreign land; they beheld England, a land they sailed by, the soil of which they were never to tread on. This was the first foreign country they had seen so close — when they passed Denmark, land had been a long way off — and the vision was strange to them. But strangest of all was this white wall, this beautiful, high-chested shore which rose up in front of them. It looked like a tremendous whitewashed fireplace, a giant stove wall which the sea’s surging waves had been unable to demolish. They thought, this must be a strong kingdom, with such fortifications.
The white wall was to be their abiding memory of England.
In the Channel the ships thickened, masts from many lands were gathered here; here was the meeting place of the seafaring pines. Here rose masts much taller and thicker than the two from Swedish ground which had been transplanted to the Charlotta; but perhaps these foreign masts came from other trees than the family of evergreens.
After one day the white cliffs of England disappeared from their view and sank slowly into the choppy sea astern. And with this the emigrants said another farewelclass="underline" this stretch of shore was the last they were to see of the Old World. Many days would pass before they saw land again. Now the big sea opened its expanse to them, now there remained only the ocean.
And when next they espied a shore, it would rise at the prow, it would be the New World.
— 2—
The emigrant ship met new storms and bad weather, but her passengers were growing accustomed to them as something inescapably belonging to their new existence.
In their early days on board they had willingly talked about Sweden, and bitter, angry words passed, for the most part, as they compared each other’s lot at home. But as the days after their departure increased, they spoke ill less often of the land they had left. They had left it, once and for all, and that seemed sufficient. Their homeland lay behind them and it was already far away — already a foreign place. And it seemed wrong to them to speak ill of someone or something that was so far away, and couldn’t hear them. Now they did not wish to revile their homeland. They had their relatives there — indeed, the whole country seemed to them a relative. They had left this relative — that was enough; they might never again see what they had left; they had closed their accounts with the kingdom that had borne them — there was no reproach.
But one day they met a ship flying a flag which they recognized: from the stern flew the flag of their homeland. The emigrants stared in amazement, and watched. The time they had been at sea could be measured in weeks only, as yet, but they had already experienced storm and suffered seasickness and endured all the inconveniences of seafarers, and it seemed to them that they had sailed for months. They felt they were immeasurably far out in the world: they had sailed over the unfathomable expanse of sea, their homes seemed to lie in a faraway land behind them. And now, suddenly, that land was close to them — they had encountered it out here on the ocean. Over there, only a few hundred yards away from them, must be people from the same sort of hamlets as their own, people who spoke the same language they did. There might even be someone on that ship whom they knew.
The eyes of the Charlotta’s passengers followed the vessel with the known flag waving to them so near. Her course was exactly opposite to their own; she sailed their own route back. Those people sailed home; their own ship sailed away.
Home—they surprised themselves by still thinking of Sweden as their home. Yet none of them had a home left in the land that they had turned their backs on. They had all deserted their old homes — to seek new ones. And yet — Sweden was home. It was inexplicable, and they mused over it.
The brig Charlotta was loaded with seekers of new homes. Her passengers were people who had left their old homes but as yet had no new ones. The emigrants were a flock of homeless people, roaming the sea. This ship — forty paces long and eight wide — was their refuge on earth.