‘He’s supposed to make daily rounds, isn’t he?’ continued Thea. ‘To check on the health of all passengers? To ensure cleanliness? Well, he hardly ever comes into the bow. Ottilie has been unwell since we set out, and he only learned this yesterday. And when he came, Mutter Scheck made the mistake of complaining about the food, and he told her she was welcome to give her rations to those who desired them.’
It was true that the provisions on board were hard to become accustomed to. The largest meal of the day was dinner, held at one o’clock, and usually consisted of salt pork or beef. It was heavy food; it did not sit well with us. At night Thea and I sometimes listed the things we missed. Pears. Sweet peas prised from pods. Raw, shredded cabbage. Sour apples.
As if reading my mind, Anna Maria asked us who had been assigned cook within our mess.
‘Christiana,’ Thea and I said in unison.
‘If all the doctor is going to do is tell us to fumigate with vinegar, I’ll see if I can’t keep you well with better food,’ Anna Maria muttered. ‘At the very least I might see if I can’t entice the sick girls here to eat a little more.’
Anna Maria had a word with Mutter Scheck that evening, and the following day Christiana was excused from her duties. Our mess’s fare improved dramatically. Salt pork baked on ship’s biscuit, which soaked up the fat and grew soft and flavoursome. Dumplings cooked in broth. Rice pudding that held the possibility of a rare, submerged prune. If Mutter saw Anna Maria boiling her herbs in the time now permitted to her in the kitchen galley, she never mentioned it to us.
The days grew warmer as we travelled further south, and by the time the Kristi passed Madeira, one month after our departure from Altona, the weather was uncomfortably hot. Bible pages wrinkled under damp fingers.
The nights became so muggy it took all my energy just to breathe in and out. Thea was slick with heat next to me. Anna Maria told us that Samuel Radtke had produced some pieces of sealing wax that had melted together.
Mutter Scheck, determined to keep us all from listlessness, produced a number of needles, white thread and cotton. ‘No need to waste your time aboard this ship,’ she said. ‘Think of the life you will lead in the colony. The home you will make. Keep these hours filled now, and you will be grateful you did not succumb to idleness when we arrive.’
For all that I had detested the drudgery of domestic chores at home in Kay, it was a relief to have something to take my mind off the oppressive atmosphere below deck, off the sweat that trickled down my spine and gathered in the small of my back, the smell of bodies and the sound of arguments. The heat shortened tempers, made people less willing to apologise for the inevitable conflicts arising from living in such close quarters. Anna Maria told us that over forty people were now confined to their beds in steerage, suffering from fevers, and that families were anxious. She had taken to smoking their beds with juniper and cloves, having run out of gentian and rhubarb tincture, and that night in bed Thea whispered to me that her mother was also using her book, privately, to make paper seals that might be worn on the bodies of those who were accepting of such things. When she saw my concern, she told me what was written on such seals: ‘Spare them all, Adonay, because they are yours. Your unfathomable spirit is in everyone, you who love life.’ The words remained on my tongue long after Thea fell into sleep beside me.
Six women from the bow contributed to the number of ill on the ship. At first Mutter Scheck had thought they were taking longer than usual to recover from the woes that had plagued all of us at the beginning of our journey, but when Ottilie began contorting on her bunk, crying with pain, Mutter hastily told the rest of us to spend the remainder of the afternoon on the upper deck, on the condition that we occupied ourselves with sewing.
Thea and I emerged out of the hatchway into a hot and sullen day. The sea was still and, without any waves to clear the waste from the sides of the ship, the smell on deck was nearly as bad as below. There was no wind, the air so thick that breathing felt like an act of conscious will. Before us lay a horizon of water so large my eyes ached.
Thea and I stood to the side, out of the way of the sailors who were cleaning the deck. For some minutes we simply gazed out at the water. It was one thing to know that we were a long way from land, and yet to see only ocean ahead and behind was to understand how truly vulnerable and small we were. It made us quiet, reflective.
We have nothing but sky and each other, I thought.
Thea suddenly seized my shoulder. ‘Look,’ she said.
There was something moving just under the surface of the sea nearby. Earlier in the week we’d heard about the sighting of more dolphins, but this creature was of a size that belied imagination.
A sailor cried out and other passengers drew nearer, curious.
‘A leviathan,’ Thea said breathlessly.
Just at that moment, the whale burst through the surface of the sea, dark bulk gleaming, soaring – an impossible flight of weight. It was bigger than anything I had ever seen; my heart stuck to my chest. Thea crushed my arm. People cried out in awe, in terror, as the whale made its arc, made a fool out of the sky, then fell back into the ocean. In the enormous slap and ensuing rush of water I felt my soul briefly lift out of my body, as though, wonder-struck, it had soared into the divine. The whale was divine. Waves from its foaming disturbance reached the Kristi and rocked the ship as if it were nothing but a cork in a pond.
‘Ah, none of us will reach Australia,’ Gottfried Fr?hlich muttered. ‘We will all be put overboard.’
Thea turned and looked at me, eyes brilliant and shining. She did not say anything. Neither did I. We did not have to.
All talk that morning was of the whale. While some, like Thea and me, were awestruck and jubilant, seeing the whale’s breaching as a gift, others became Jeremiahs and wondered if the creature’s sighting was a sign of some disaster to come.
‘They’re afraid,’ Thea said, eyes following Elder Fr?hlich as he spat over the side and made his way back down the hatchway. ‘Word has spread that the doctor has asked to put into harbour.’ She gave me a heavy look.
‘How do you know?’ I asked.
‘Someone heard him and told some of the men, Papa included. Mama told me. Dr Meissner believes the ship needs to be thoroughly cleaned, that it will provide people with an opportunity to recuperate on shore. The doctor does not have a diagnosis, but Mama says that it is typhus.’
‘That is a bad one?’
She nodded. ‘But the captain said that as long as his crew remains healthy and there is no lack of food, he cannot warrant putting into harbour.’
‘Are you worried?’ I asked Thea.
‘I don’t know. I keep thinking of Ottilie.’
‘Mm. But the whale, Thea – doesn’t it fill you with hope?’
Thea smiled. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, then leaned against my shoulder and pointed to the cloth in my hands. ‘What will this be?’
‘A pillow overcover. It will say, “Schlafe wohl”. Sleep well. See? This is the beginning of the first letter. And then, under that, I’ve also put my initial.’
‘Shouldn’t it be J for Johanne?’