Strange True Stories of Louisiana
Page 24
II.
SIX MONTHS AT ANCHOR.
Setting out thus by whole families and with brothers' and sisters'families on the right and on the left, we may safely say that, once thelast kisses were given to those left behind and the last look taken ofchildhood's scenes, they pressed forward brightly, filled with courage andhope. They were poor, but they were bound for a land where no soldier wasgoing to snatch the beads and cross from the neck of a little child, asone of Napoleon's had attempted to do to one of the Thomas children. Theywere on their way to golden America; through Philadelphia to the virginlands of the great West. Early in August they reached Amsterdam. Therethey paid their passage in advance, and were carried out to the Helder,where, having laid in their provisions, they embarked and were ready toset sail.
But no sail was set. Word came instead that the person who had sold theship had not been paid its price and had seized the vessel; the delays ofthe law threatened, when time was a matter of fortune or of ruin.
And soon came far worse tidings. The emigrants refused to believe them aslong as there was room for doubt. Henry and Daniel Mueller--for locksmithMueller, said Wagner twenty-seven years afterwards on the witness-stand,"was a brave man and was foremost in doing everything necessary to bedone for the passengers"--went back to Amsterdam to see if such news couldbe true, and returned only to confirm despair. The man to whom the passagemoney of the two hundred families--nine hundred souls--had been paid hadabsconded.
They could go neither forward nor back. Days, weeks, months passed, andthere still lay the great hulk teeming with its population and swingingidly at anchor; fathers gazing wistfully over the high bulwarks, mothersnursing their babes, and the children, Eva, Daniel, Henry, Andrew,Dorothea, Salome, and all the rest, by hundreds.
Salome was a pretty child, dark, as both her parents were, and lookingmuch like her mother; having especially her black hair and eyes and herchin. Playing around with her was one little cousin, a girl of her ownage,--that is, somewhere between three and five,--whose face wasstrikingly like Salome's. It was she who in later life became Madame KarlRouff, or, more familiarly, Madame Karl.
Provisions began to diminish, grew scanty, and at length were gone. Theemigrants' summer was turned into winter; it was now December. So pitifuldid their case become that it forced the attention of the DutchGovernment. Under its direction they were brought back to Amsterdam, wheremany of them, without goods, money, or even shelter, and strangers to theplace and to the language, were reduced to beg for bread.
But by and by there came a word of great relief. The Government offered areward of thirty thousand gilders--about twelve thousand dollars--to anymerchant or captain of a vessel who would take them to America, and acertain Grandsteiner accepted the task. For a time he quartered them inAmsterdam, but by and by, with hearts revived, they began to go again onshipboard. This time there were three ships in place of the one; or twoships, and one of those old Dutch, flattish-bottomed, round-sided,two-masted crafts they called galiots. The number of ships wastrebled--that was well; but the number of souls was doubled, and eighteenhundred wanderers from home were stowed in the three vessels.