They were fever-struck and famine-wasted. But February was near its end,
and they were in the Gulf of Mexico. At that time of year its storms have
lulled and its airs are the perfection of spring; March is a kind of May.
And March came.
They saw other ships now every day; many of them going their way. The
sight cheered them; the passage had been lonely as well as stormy. Their
own vessels, of course,--the other two,--they had not expected to see, and
had not seen. They did not know whether they were on the sea or under it.
At length pilot-boats began to appear. One came to them and put a pilot on
board. Then the blue water turned green, and by and by yellow. A fringe of
low land was almost right ahead. Other vessels were making for the same
lighthouse towards which they were headed, and so drew constantly nearer
to one another. The emigrants line the bulwarks, watching the nearest
sails. One ship is so close that some can see the play of waters about her
bows. And now it is plain that her bulwarks, too, are lined with emigrants
who gaze across at them. She glides nearer, and just as the cry of
recognition bursts from this whole company the other one yonder suddenly
waves caps and kerchiefs and sends up a cheer. Their ship is the
_Johanna_.
Do we dare draw upon fancy? We must not. The companies did meet on the
water, near the Mississippi's mouth, though whether first inside or
outside the stream I do not certainly gather. But they met; not the two
vessels only, but the three. They were towed up the river side by side,
the _Johanna_ here, the _Captain Grone_ there, and the other ship between
them. Wagner, who had sailed on the galiot, was still alive. Many years
afterwards he testified:
"We all arrived at the Balize [the river's mouth] the same day. The ships
were so close we could speak to each other from on board our respective
ships. We inquired of one another of those who had died and of those who
still remained."
Madame Fleikener said the same:
"We hailed each other from the ships and asked who lived and who had died.
The father and mother of Madame Schuber [Kropp and his wife] told me
Daniel Müller and family were on board."
But they had suffered loss. Of the _Johanna's_ 700 souls only 430 were
left alive. Henry Müller's wife was dead. Daniel Müller's wife, Dorothea,
had been sick almost from the start; she was gone, with the babe at her
bosom. Henry was left with his two boys, and Daniel with his one and his
little Dorothea and Salome. Grandsteiner, the supercargo, had lived; but
of 1800 homeless poor whom the Dutch king's gilders had paid him to bring
to America, foul ships and lack of food and water had buried 1200 in the
sea.
The vessels reached port and the passengers prepared to step ashore, when
to their amazement and dismay Grandsteiner laid the hand of the law upon
them and told them they were "redemptioners." A redemptioner was an
emigrant whose services for a certain period were liable to be sold to the
highest bidder for the payment of his passage to America. It seems that in
fact a large number of those on board the _Johanna_ had in some way really
become so liable; but it is equally certain that of others, the Kropps,
the Schultzheimers, the Koelhoffers, the Müllers, and so on, the
transportation had been paid for in advance, once by themselves and again
by the Government of Holland. Yet Daniel Müller and his children were
among those held for their passage money.
Some influential German residents heard of these troubles and came to the
rescue. Suits were brought against Grandsteiner, the emigrants remaining
meanwhile on the ships. Mr. Grymes was secured as counsel in their cause;
but on some account not now remembered by survivors scarce a week had
passed before they were being sold as redemptioners. At least many were,
including Daniel Müller and his children.
Then the dispersion began. The people were bound out before notaries and
justices of the peace, singly and in groups, some to one, some to two
years' service, according to age. "They were scattered,"--so testified
Frank Schuber twenty-five years afterwards,--"scattered about like young
birds leaving a nest, without knowing anything of each other." They were
"taken from the ships," says, the jungfrau Hemin, "and went here and
there so that one scarcely knew where the other went."
Many went no farther than New Orleans or its suburbs, but settled, some in
and about the old rue Chartres--the Thomas family, for example; others in
the then new faubourg Marigny, where Eva Kropp's daughter, Salome's young
cousin Eva, for one, seems to have gone into domestic service. Others,
again, were taken out to plantations near the city; Madame Fleikener to
the well-known estate of Maunsell White, Madame Schultzheimer to the
locally famous Hopkins plantation, and so on.
But others were carried far away; some, it is said, even to Alabama.
Madame Hemin was taken a hundred miles up the river, to Baton Rouge, and
Henry Müller and his two little boys went on to Bayou Sara, and so up
beyond the State's border and a short way into Mississippi.
When all his relatives were gone Daniel Müller was still in the ship with
his little son and daughters. Certainly he was not a very salable
redemptioner with his three little motherless children about his knees.
But at length, some fifteen days after the arrival of the ships, Frank
Schuber met him on the old customhouse wharf with his little ones and was
told by him that he, Müller, was going to Attakapas. About the same time,
or a little later, Müller came to the house where young Eva Kropp,
afterwards Schuber's wife, dwelt, to tell her good-bye. She begged to be
allowed to keep Salome. During the sickness of the little one's mother
and after the mother's death she had taken constant maternal care of the
pretty, black-eyed, olive-skinned godchild. But Müller would not leave her
behind.