‘It’s so black,’ Elize muttered.
Magdalena Radtke glanced at her, and then cast her worried gaze at my mother. ‘It looks like a coffin, Johanne.’
Mama raised her eyebrows. ‘As long as it floats.’
‘If God is not merciful to us, we shall be buried in the water.’
Eleonore Volkmann lifted a hand to her forehead and squinted against the light. ‘Look, they’re bringing more supplies out to it now. I wonder what’s in those barrels?’
Elize shrugged. ‘Pork. Flour. Water. Herrings, someone said.’
‘Herrings? I’ve never eaten a herring in my life,’ said Magdalena.
‘Ah well. We may eat stranger things yet.’ Eleonore sighed. ‘Best start with herrings.’
It seemed impossible that we might need so many hundreds of barrels, that such a great hulking ship would not sink under their weight.
‘What if we run out of things to eat before we get there?’ Rosina asked.
A familiar voice murmured into my ear, ‘We can cook the children.’
I turned and saw Hans standing next to me, brown eyes smiling.
‘Stop it, Hans,’ muttered Rosina.
‘Good,’ I whispered, turning back to the ship. ‘They can start with Hermine.’
‘I heard that,’ my mother said.
We were rowed out to the ship in handfuls, assisted onto the top deck by courteous sailors who shouldered our belongings with ease. A tall, clean-shaven man stood watching us as we boarded, hands folded behind his back.
‘That is the captain,’ whispered Matthias.
We stared at him, a little awed. This was the man who would take us over the great seas in nothing but a pile of timber. I wondered at how he knew to do such a thing. ‘He looks clever,’ I said. Matthias nodded. We bowed our heads as we passed him.
When all of us stood upon the deck, hushed and nervous at the height of the masts, the great symphony of ropes and rolled sail above us, the captain cleared his throat and opened his arms wide in greeting.
‘Welcome.’ His voice was a foghorn against the resonance of water and wood, the shouts of the sailors bringing further provisions on board. ‘I am Captain Olsen and it will be my pleasure to bring you to your new home in Adelaide.’
There was a sudden burst of clapping. The captain smiled, bowing his head. He told us a little of what we might expect from the crew, who numbered less than twenty, and then gestured to a man who stood behind him, deep-set eyes shadowed by thick eyebrows. He did not smile, but stepped forwards and looked down over us, Adam’s apple bobbing over his neckcloth.
‘This is Dr Meissner,’ the captain continued. ‘He has been appointed your medical officer and will accompany you on this voyage. As the doctor has been charged with your welfare, he will assign you into messes for meals and cleaning. Dr Meissner is also to be regarded as the authority in all things immediately relevant to your personal conduct, health and wellbeing, and will advise you on what you have been rationed, where you may sleep and all other daily administrations that will ensure an orderly and peaceable voyage. Unless anyone has any immediate concerns they wish to bring to my attention on behalf of the passengers, Dr Meissner will show you to your quarters below deck.’
At this, Christian Pasche raised his hand. ‘We thank you, Captain Olsen. This is a momentous day for us. We leave a place of oppression and tyranny for a land where we might freely worship and pay our debt of love to God by glorifying His name. Captain, would you do us the honour of leading us in the Lord’s Prayer?’
Captain Olsen bent his head and obliged. His voice was deep and pleasant, but it quickly grew faint as a brisk wind sprang up, sweeping his words from the deck and pulling them out along the river. The ropes creaked above us. I opened one eye and saw the sailors with heads bowed, lips murmuring. Ruffled skirts. Hair blown across foreheads.
The prayer blew out to the ocean ahead of us, blessing the air and waters we would travel through, light and tumbling. A bird to make sure of land.
a bolt of black cloth
Sometimes I wonder if I will hear it again, my voice as it was on that day we boarded the Kristi. Surely somewhere that prayer taken up by the wind is still blowing. Somewhere I am still praying. Maybe that is what I am listening for up here in the darkness of the bush: my own sweet voice rushing back at me, offering consolation. Conviction.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Below, in the valley, the lights are slowly pinching out. I imagine the women in the cottages laying down the clothes they are mending and finally going to bed, letting their fires go out in a way they never did back in the villages where they were born. The night is cool, but not cold. The wind is a bow scraping on the stars.
I will not sleep tonight. I was never someone who fell asleep easily, and now sleep seems gone from me in the same way as so much else. There was a time when wakefulness wound my thoughts into wire. But there is much to love about the night, if you know how to surrender to it.
It took some time for my eyes to become accustomed to the gloom once I had stepped down the hatch to the tween deck. I was bumped by Amalie Schultze coming down behind me on the stair and so groped my way forwards, a hand on Matthias’s shoulder, until my eyes adapted to the low light and I saw the place we were to eat and sleep for the long months of our journey.
It was a long, narrow confinement, the upper beams only a short distance above the tallest of the company. A wooden trestle table extended throughout, benches nailed firmly to the boards beneath it, and on either side of the table, beyond walkways, were wooden berths, one row above another, abutting both sides of the ship. Small lights glowered in heavy, black lanterns.
It was close. The air was already warm and stale with bodies and breathing.
‘Goodness,’ Amalie murmured. ‘How will we all fit?’
I heard Hermine’s familiar wail rise up to my left, where Mama stood peering into a berth, prodding the bare mattress. People kept coming down the stairs and there was soon too little space to move freely. I felt a jab in my side as Hans tried to manoeuvre three large bags through the crowd. He shot me a look of apology as Rosina shouted instructions at him from behind.
‘Silence, please!’ Dr Meissner had his arms extended above his head.
There was a scuffle as Traugott Geschke slipped and fell down the hatch, knocking a young girl to the floor. She started crying, rubbing her head where she had hit it upon the corner of a berth, and several babies started up in sympathy. My heart was racing. There were too many of us, it was too crowded, and still people continued climbing down the hatchway, stumbling over one another, over luggage. There were exclamations of indignation, of disappointment. Arguments broke out.
‘Silence!’