or captain of a vessel who would take them to America, and a
certain Grandsteiner accepted the task. For a time he quartered them in
Amsterdam, but by and by, with hearts revived, they began to go again on
shipboard. This time there were three ships in place of the one; or two
ships, and one of those old Dutch, flattish-bottomed, round-sided,
two-masted crafts they called galiots. The number of ships was
trebled--that was well; but the number of souls was doubled, and eighteen
hundred wanderers from home were stowed in the three vessels.

III.

FAMINE AT SEA.

These changes made new farewells and separations. Common aims, losses, and
sufferings had knit together in friendship many who had never seen each
other until they met on the deck of the big Russian ship, and now not a
few of these must part.

The first vessel to sail was one of the two ships, the _Johanna Maria_.
Her decks were black with people: there were over six hundred of them.
Among the number, waving farewell to the Kropps, the Koelhoffers, the
Schultzheimers, to Frank Schuber and to the Muellers, stood the Thomases,
Madame Fleikener, as we have to call her, and one whom we have not yet
named, the jungfrau Hemin, of Wuertemberg, just turning nineteen, of whom
the little Salome and her mother had made a new, fast friend on the old
Russian ship.

A week later the _Captain Grone_--that is, the galiot--hoisted the Dutch
flag as the _Johanna Maria_ had done, and started after her with other
hundreds on her own deck, I know not how many, but making eleven hundred
in the two, and including, for one, young Wagner. Then after two weeks
more the remaining ship, the _Johanna_, followed, with Grandsteiner as
supercargo, and seven hundred emigrants. Here were the Muellers and most of
their relatives and fellow-villagers. Frank Schuber was among them, and
was chosen steward for the whole shipful.

At last they were all off. But instead of a summer's they were now to
encounter a winter's sea, and to meet it weakened and wasted by sickness
and destitution. The first company had been out but a week when, on New
Year's night, a furious storm burst upon the crowded ship. With hatches
battened down over their heads they heard and felt the great buffetings of
the tempest, and by and by one great crash above all other noises as the
mainmast went by the board. The ship survived; but when the storm was over
and the people swarmed up once more into the pure ocean atm