hero of the hour; he had acted in the hot indignation of the moment
and was now abashed and bewildered at the sensation he was making.
He looked anxiously about for his brother and sister, and as soon
as he caught sight of them, was about to make his escape when the
purser seized him by the collar and bade him remain.
“You are a nice one, to be attacking your betters, who have never
given you any provocation,” he said in German, which Truls,
fortunately, did not understand. “I am going to take you to the
captain, and he will have you punished for assault.”
He made a motion to drag the struggling boy away, but the crowd
closed about him on all sides, and pressed in upon him with angry
shouts and gestures. The third officer, who had so far taken no
part in the proceedings, now stepped up to the purser and begged
him to release the boy.
“Of course,” he said, “you are in the right; but if I were you, I
would waive my right this time. It’s hardly worth while making a
row about so small a matter; and it is always bad policy to go to
the captain with squabbles and grievances, especially when they
might so easily have been avoided. I assure you, you will only
injure yourself by doing it.”
They talked for a minute together, while the ever-increasing throng
surged hither and thither about them. Whether purposely or not,
the irate purser, in the zeal of his argument, released his hold
on Truls’ collar, and the liberated boy dodged away, as quickly as
possible, and was soon lost in the crowd. The Savoyard and his bear
had long before seized the opportunity to withdraw from the public
gaze.
III.
The life on shipboard did not agree with Fiddle-John. Like a
spoiled child, he was restless and unhappy when he was unnoticed.
All day long he sat on the top of a coil of rope in the forecastle
of the ship and sang. The forecastle was often deserted, and there
were probably not many among the emigrants who would have been
capable of judging whether his voice was in any way extraordinary.
And yet, one there was who found an untold amount of comfort in
listening to that clear, sweet tenor of Fiddle-John’s, and that
one was the Savoyard boy. It had been his constant effort, since
his encounter with the purser, to make himself as inconspicuous as
possible, and it would have gratified him much if he had possessed
some means of making the bear invisible. As the forecastle was the
least visited portion of the ship, he had chosen to hide himself
there behind the anchor-cable.
He trembled whenever anyone approached, and threw the end of the
tarpaulin which covered the deck-freight over his friend, the
bear. The only people whose company did not incommode him were
Fiddle-John and his children, for whom he testified his devotion by
smiles and gestures and all sorts of endearing Italian diminutives,
which, on account of his caressing tones, even a dumb brute could
not have failed to appreciate. After a long and exciting pantomime,
Truls ascertained that his name was Annibale Petrucchio and that
his bear gloried in the name of Garibaldi.
Both boys felt that they had made great progress in each other’s
friendship when these facts had been established, and another hour
of dumb show, intersprinkled with exclamations, resulted in a still
more astonishing revelation, which was that Annibale and his friend
slept every night on deck, because they feared to arouse once
more the purser’s displeasure by invading the steerage. Sometimes
Annibale curled himself up with Garibaldi within the coil of the
anchor-cable--he jumped up, dragging the bear after him, to show
the attitude in which they slept--but when it rained, or when the
sea was high enough to sprinkle the deck, they both crept under
the deck-freight tarpaulin, where they had made themselves a
little house between two trunks which they had pushed apart. The
only trouble was that the April nights were very cold--Annibale
shivered all over to show how cold he was--and anchor-cables and
deck-freight were not particularly soft to sleep upon.
As Alf and Truls became duly impressed with the unpleasantness of
the Savoyard’s situation, they took counsel in order to ascertain
how they might relieve his distress. But all the plans that were
suggested were found to be risky, and night came before they
arrived at a decision. The weather had been raw and blustery all
the afternoon, and the officer on the bridge had been looking
every minute uneasily at the falling barometer. After sunset the
gale increased in violence and the ship pitched and rolled in the
heavy sea. In the steerage there was a terrible commotion; women
prayed and screamed and moaned, children of all ages joined in the
chorus, the lamps swung forward and backward in their brass frames,
and bottles, glasses, and loose crockery made a terrible racket,
sliding to starboard and back again to port with every motion
of the ship. The wind howled in the rigging, and every now and
then a big wave swept across the deck and poured out through the
scupper-holes.
Alf and Truls, who had been lying awake for hours listening to the
hollow boom of the waves and the shrieking of the wind, conversed
in a whisper about the poor Savoyard, who had to be on deck in
that terrible weather, and they finally summoned courage to creep
toward the ladder and slowly to mount it, tightly clutching each
other’s hands. It was a risky undertaking, and their hearts stuck
in their throats as they clung to the door-knob, hesitating whether
they should open the door. Without knowing, however, they must
have given the knob a twist; for suddenly the door swung open with
a tremendous bang, and Truls was flung across the deck against
the bulwarks with such force that for an instant he scarcely knew
whether he had lighted on his head or his feet.
He picked himself up, however, without any serious damage, and as
there was a momentary lull in the storm, he half rolled, half crept
up toward the prow, where a couple of lanterns were swinging in the
fore-royal stays. Nevertheless it was so dark that he could not
discern an object ahead of him, and only groped his way along the
bulwarks, until he stumbled upon a demoralized mass of rope which
he knew to be the anchor-cable.
“Annibale!” he shouted at the top of his voice, “are you here?”
But before he had time to receive a reply the ship plunged into a
monstrous wave, which rose in a storm of spray and drenched the
whole forecastle up to the mainmast. Truls, in his effort to keep
his footing, tumbled forward and grabbed hold of something wet and
hairy, which slid along with him for a couple of yards, and then
was hauled back by some unseen force. The boy crawled along in the
same direction and shouted once more, “Annibale! where are you?”
And a voice close to his ear answered:
“_Ah, Monsieur Truls, Garibaldi et moi, nous sommes à demi
morts._”[11]
“Now, don’t jabber at me, Annibale,” Truls observed, making his
voice heard above the wind; “but if you will come along with me,
Alf and I will give you half of our berth; and Garibaldi can sleep
at our feet.”
Whether Annibale understood the words or not, he could not fail to
comprehend the friendly gestures which accompanied them. He eagerly
seized Truls’ hand and they plunged bravely forward, but slipped on
the wet deck, and the bear and the boys slid with great speed in
the direction of the descent to the steerage. They were drenched to
the skin and considerably bruised when, after several unsuccessful
efforts, they seized the door-knob. Alf, as it turned out,
feeling too ill to keep watch, had already preceded them to bed.
Garibaldi, who seemed keenly conscious of his disgrace since the
day he molested the purser, slunk along as meekly as possible, and
only now and then shook his wet skin and coughed in a dispirited
fashion. He was not as grateful, moreover, as might have been
expected, when he was assigned his place on the straw at the foot
of the berth, but gradually pushed himself upward until his nose
nearly touched that of his master; whereupon he curled himself up
comfortably and went to sleep. It was a very pretty sight to see
the blond Norse boys and the swarthy Savoyard peacefully reposing
on the same pillow, with the shaggy head of the bear between them,
and the Savoyard half unconsciously clutching his pet in his
embrace.
Toward morning the storm began to abate, and the dim light peeped
in through the port-holes. The steerage was comparatively quiet.
Fiddle-John arose and went on deck; a strange oppression had come
over him. The dim, gray light, the all-enveloping dampness, and the
incessant throbbing and clanking of the machinery wrought upon his
sensitive soul, until he seemed in danger of going mad. The world
seemed so vast and so empty! The waves heaved and wrestled in their
gray monotony, until it made him dizzy to look at them. Merely to
rid himself of this terrible oppression, Fiddle-John lifted up
his voice and sang wildly against the wind; his beautiful tenor
seemed to cut through the fog like a bright sword and to flash
and ring under the sky. His soul expanded with his voice; the sun
broke forth from the clouds, and he felt once more free and happy.
He scarcely knew how long he sang; but when by chance he turned
about, he saw to his surprise that a crowd of well-dressed cabin
passengers had gathered about him. His three children stood holding
one another’s hands, looking in astonishment at the fine ladies
shivering in fur-trimmed cloaks, and wondered why their father was
attracting so much attention.
“Charming!” “Wonderful!” “Magnificent!” exclaimed the fine people,
when Fiddle-John had stopped singing; and a portly American
gentleman, with gray side-whiskers, who seemed more enthusiastic
than the rest, gave him a slap on his shoulder, and said that if
he himself were ten years younger, he would undertake to make a
fortune out of Fiddle-John, which, of course, was a very generous
offer on his part. Jens Skoug, the emigration agent, translated
the remark; and as the American seemed to have more to say to
Fiddle-John, offered his services as interpreter.
“What is your trade?” asked the gentleman.
“I sing and play,” said Fiddle-John.
“But I mean, how do you make your living?” repeated his questioner.
“By singing and playing,” said Fiddle-John.
“You won’t make much of a living by that in America; people won’t
understand you, unless you sing in English,” remarked the American.
It had actually never before occurred to Fiddle-John that his songs
would be unintelligible in America. He had supposed that music
appealed equally to all nations and needed no interpreter. The
remark of his new friend, therefore, was a positive shock to him,
and it took him fully a minute to recover from its effect.
“I will sing to the President of America,” he said, in an injured
tone. “Jens Skoug, there, says that the President will make me a
great man when he hears my voice.”
It did not suit Skoug’s convenience to translate this remark
correctly; and he observed instead, with a confidential air, that
Fiddle-John was a harmless monomaniac who had got it into his
head that he wanted to sing to the President. The American was
evidently amused at this, and said, with a laugh, that he feared
the President was not so great an authority in music as in affairs
of state.
Fiddle-John was extremely puzzled and a little distressed at the
jocose manner of the American gentleman; it could scarcely be
possible that he was making fun of him. But American ways were
probably different from Norwegian ways, and he would therefore not
be hasty in taking offence.
“I know a great many songs,” he said, with a determination to
appear amiable; “and what is more, I can make songs about anything
you choose.”
“Aha, you are a sort of poet--an _improvisatore_, as the Italians
say. Now I begin to understand. Perhaps you can make a song about
me,” suggested the American.
“Indeed I can!” cried the Norseman.
“Well, let us have it!” urged the other.
Fiddle-John never needed much urging to sing. He straightened
himself up, flung back his head and was about to begin, when his
son Truls, whose ears had been burning uncomfortably during the
whole interview, seized his father’s hand and entreated him not to
sing.
“Don’t sing to that man, father,” he said. “He is making sport of
you. Please don’t! Both Alf and I are distressed to think that the
gentleman should dare to speak to you as he does. He thinks----”
“Get out of the way, sonny! No one is talking to you,” interrupted
Jens Skoug, pushing Truls rudely aside; but the boy, fired with
sudden wrath, wheeled quickly around.
“It is you who have brought all this misery upon us,” he cried,
excitedly. “I know you mean to desert us as soon as we get to New
York, and I only wish I were big enough to give you the thrashing
you deserve, now, on the spot.”
“Why, little chickens can crow like big roosters!” Jens Skoug
exclaimed; “but if you don’t keep a civil tongue in your head,” he
added, with a menacing scowl, “I will make you dance a jig to a
very lively tune--the hazel tune; perhaps you may have heard of it.”
This was more than Truls could stand; and with clinched fists,
a flushed face, and eyes blazing with anger, he rushed at the
exasperating emigration agent. But the American, who thought that
the fun had now gone far enough, seized the angry boy by the collar
and restrained him. “Hold on, my little fellow!” he said; “it is
time to stop for refreshments. You are a lively little customer for
your years. I don’t know exactly what you are mad about, but I can
assure you it isn’t worth fighting for. Now, simmer a little, and
then cool down.”
During this scene, Fiddle-John had been standing irresolutely
shifting his weight from one foot to the other and gazing with a
bewildered air at Jens and Truls. He could not understand what had
happened to arouse the anger of his son, and his excited words had
scarcely furnished him with a clew to the mystery.
“Why--why--why, don’t you want me to sing, Truls?” he stammered,
helplessly. “I am sure I sing as well as anybody, and need not be
ashamed to be heard.”
“Oh, it isn’t that, father!” the son responded in a tone of
tender consideration, which appealed strongly to the American.
“You sing beautifully; but these people would not understand
you--and--and--wait till we are alone, father; I will tell you what
I mean.”
It was the manner, rather than the words, of the boy which gave the
stranger an insight into the relations which existed between him
and his father; and what he saw, and still more what he inferred,
interested him greatly. There was a diffidence in Truls’ tone, and
at the same time an air of protectorship, which, in one of his
years, was quite touching. The American could not help admiring
his spirited behavior, and he only wished he could have told him
how far he was from wishing to humiliate either him or his father.
But he had lost confidence in Mr. Skoug as an interpreter, and he
saw no one else who, for the moment, could take that gentleman’s
place. He therefore put his hand caressingly on the boy’s head and,
trusting to his intuition rather than his knowledge of English,
said:
“If you should ever happen to need a friend in the United States,
you must remember to come to me. My name is Alexander Tenney, and I
live in New York. Here is my card, with my address upon it.”
He gave Fiddle-John and his son each a friendly nod and
sauntered away toward a group of ladies who were seated in their
steamer-chairs, conversing with the captain about the state of the
weather.
IV.
It was a beautiful sunny morning in May that the steamer cast
anchor in the bay of New York. Fiddle-John and his children and
a thousand other poorly clad people from all parts of the world
were carried by little steam-tugs to a large building by the
water, where there was a babel of noise and confusion. Everybody
was shouting at the top of his voice; children were crying, women
hunting for their husbands, husbands hunting for their baggage;
policemen were pushing back the crowd of screaming hotel-runners
who were besieging the doors, and an official, standing on the top
of a barrel, was yelling instructions to the emigrants in half a
dozen different languages.
Fiddle-John, to whom this spectacle was positively terrifying,
could do nothing but stare about him in a hopeless and dazed
manner, while he pressed his violin-case tightly in his arms and
allowed himself to be pushed hither and thither by the surging
motion of the crowd. He was finally pushed up to a gate, where an
official sat writing at a desk.
“How old are you?” asked the official, or, rather, the interpreter,
who was standing at his elbow.
“Thirty-five years,” said Fiddle-John; but a vague alarm took
possession of him at the question, and his heart began to beat
uneasily.
“What is your occupation?”
“Occupation? Well, I sing. I am a singer.”
“A singing-teacher? Is that what you are?”
“No, I don’t teach.”
“What do you do, then, for a living? Perhaps you are a sort of
theatrical chap--a play-actor?”
Fiddle-John looked greatly mystified; he had never heard of such a
thing as a theatre in all his life, and the word “actor” was not
found in his vocabulary. Nevertheless, he thought it best to keep
on good terms with the great official, and he therefore made one
more effort to explain the nature of his occupation.
“If you will pardon my boldness,” he began, with a quaking voice,
“I may say that I am a kind of poet--a minstrel----”
“Aha, that’s what you are!” roared the official, with a laugh, as
if he had at last found the solution of the problem; “you are a
negro-minstrel, an end-man, clog-dancer, and lively kind of a chap
generally.”
Fiddle-John stood aghast; he was not a combative character, but the
recent scene with the American gentleman on shipboard had aroused
his suspicion, and the conclusion now suddenly flashed upon him
that the official was making fun of him. The blood mounted to his
head and his whole frame trembled.
“How dare you mock me?” he cried, passionately; “how dare you call
me a negro? Don’t you see with your own eyes that I am as white as
you are?”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head, now, or I’ll have you arrested
on the spot,” the other replied, coolly. “I can’t afford to waste
my time on you. So far as I can learn, you are a beggar who walks
about in the street, singing. Now, that kind of thing won’t go
down over here; and you had better not try it. How much money have
you?”
“I haven’t any money.”
“And what is your destination? Where do you intend to go?”
“I am going to see the American President, and sing to him.”
“Sing to the President! Well, I expected as much. Why, my good
friend, it seems you are a lunatic as well as a beggar. I shall
send you to the Island, and you will be returned by the next
steamer to Norway. It is only able-bodied, self-supporting
emigrants we receive here, not street-singers and crazy people!”
The poor Norseman stood as if riveted to the spot. A sudden
faintness came over him, and he felt as if he were going to sink
into the ground. He made desperate attempts to speak, but his words
stuck in his throat and he could not utter a sound. A policeman
was summoned and he was unceremoniously hustled through the crowd
and forced to board a small steam-tug, where, with three other
forlorn and miserable-looking individuals, he was locked up in a
dirty and ill-smelling cabin. All this had been done so quickly
that he scarcely had time to realize what was happening to him. But
now the thought of his three children came over him with terrible
force, and a sickening sense of his helplessness took possession
of him. In one moment the blood throbbed in his face and temples,
and he burned with heat and indignation; in the next, the thought
of what was to become of his dear ones, alone and friendless as
they were, in a foreign land, suddenly drove the blood away from
his cheeks and he shivered with dread. He was in the midst of these
tormenting fancies, when the tug gave a couple of shrill whistles
and steamed through the harbor toward an island covered with gray,
dismal-looking stone buildings, the very sight of which filled
Fiddle-John’s breast with fear.
The children, in the meanwhile, had an experience hardly less
discouraging. They had seen their father led away by a policeman,
and had shouted to him with all their might; but their voices had
been drowned in the general confusion, and in spite of all their
efforts they had not been able to make their way to him through the
dense throng. They searched for hours, but could find no trace of
him. Being afraid of the man at the desk, who had been so severe
with their father, they hit upon the plan of slipping through the
gate in the train of a German family which had so many children
that it seemed hopeless to count them. This scheme succeeded
admirably, and toward evening they found themselves in a broad
square planted with trees and budding shrubs. They still had some
hope of finding their father, thinking that perhaps his detention
would merely be temporary; and they sat upon the benches or roamed
along the Battery esplanade with a miserable feeling of loneliness
gnawing at their hearts. They were hungry, but they did not know
where to turn to obtain bread. The world seemed so vast and strange
and bewildering that it gave one a headache only to look at it.
To ears accustomed only to the murmur of the pines in the summer
night and the song of birds and the river’s monotonous roar, the
huge city, with its varied noises and its incessant, deafening
rattle of wheels over stone pavements, seemed overwhelming and
terrible.
Only Truls, who had a spirit less sensitive and less easily daunted
than his brother and sister, could summon courage to think--to
devise a way, if possible, out of their perplexities. He carefully
investigated first his own pockets, then his brother’s, in the
hope of finding something that might be exchangeable for a loaf
of bread. But he could find nothing except a couple of buttons,
some curious snail-shells, and a folding knife, the blades of
which had been sharpened until there was scarcely anything left of
them. After a few minutes’ meditation, he resolved, although with
an aching heart, to part with his valuable treasures; and he took
Karen by one hand and Alf by the other, and led the way through
the Battery Park toward Greenwich Street, where he hoped to find a
baker’s shop.
They had advanced but a short distance, however, when they caught
sight of their friend Annibale, who was sitting on a bench,
swinging his legs with an air of deep dejection. His eyes lighted
up a little when he recognized Truls; he jumped up and, pointing to
something resembling a large muff under the bench, exclaimed, in a
tearful voice:
“Garibaldi is very sick. Garibaldi will die. He has been ill a long
time; he will not stand up any more. He hangs his head like this.”
Annibale here demonstrated, with pathetic absurdity, the pitiful
manner in which the little bear hung his head. There could be no
doubt; it was a serious case. Truls was especially conscious of
this, after having stooped down and noted Garibaldi’s symptoms. His
eyes were much inflamed, his nose was hot, and he frothed slightly
at the corners of his mouth. Yes, it was plain that Garibaldi was
going to die.
Alf and Truls nearly forgot their hunger and their distress at
the thought of this great calamity. By signs and gestures, they
persuaded Annibale to seek lodgings where his pet might receive
proper care and perhaps stand some chance of recovering. This
seemed sound advice, and Annibale was not slow in following it,
when once he understood it. But it was a very sad march; for
Garibaldi refused to move, and the three boys had to carry him as
best they could.
A lodging-house was finally found where supper and bed could be
procured for twenty cents; and though neither was particularly
inviting, the boys were too hungry and tired to be fastidious. The
Savoyard fortunately had a little money, which he was very willing
to share with his Norse friends, as soon as he had gained an
inkling of the day’s adventures. Moreover, he had relatives in the
city, and knew the addresses of many Italian friends. He therefore
had no fear of suffering want, and, as he asserted in his own
jargon, could well afford to be generous.