September, 1752–November, 1752
Elisabeth pulls the quilt over her ears and holds her head in her hands, partly to stifle the moans and cries from the other people on the beach, partly to quell the nausea threatening to engulf her. The hard stones hurt her legs, yet she cannot move. She is finally off the pitiless ship, but the rocky beach mimics the heave and roll of the waves and, even with her eyes closed, the horizon tilts with sickening rhythm.
The screech of the gulls and the endless slap of the waves mingle with the shouts of men and soldiers, soldiers who wave rifles and sticks at her and shout at her in English, a language she does not understand. For two weeks she has stared at this shore with desire and longing, willing anything to be off the stinking ship. Now she feels they have merely left one hell for another.
Nova Scotia. Destination of hope and promise. Where is the English welcome? Had they not come at their request? Where is the fertile farmland? The fields and pastures? The City of Halifax is part frontier town, part military camp. The town is a chaotic maze of buildings and streets; the waterfront is a muddle of docks and warehouses which sprawl at the foot of a forested hillside crowned with a brick and stone fort. A palisade of rounded timber marches across the headland. All else is dark forest and rocky shore shrouded in roiling fog. She fears these rocks and trees and the ceaseless ocean will dog her steps until the end of her days.
“Mama, I feel sick,” whimpers her youngest daughter.
“Shhh, Evie. Close your eyes, it will stop soon.”
Elisabeth lays her daughter’s head on her lap and strokes her hair.
“It will stop soon,” she repeats.
She feels her younger children cluster closely around her; Eva is five, Gertrud is nine, and Peter, older, but also nine. Her oldest daughter, Maria, 13, and her older son, Christof, 15, sit beside their father. They had been aboard their ship, the Sally, for nearly 17 weeks, 119 days of incessant rocking in stifling darkness permeated with the smell of urine, feces, vomit and unwashed bodies. Forty of the 258 settlers would remain forever in the ocean behind them, tossed overboard when their souls fled their bodies.
“What have we done? Give me strength, O Lord,” she prays weakly.
In a few minutes, or an hour, she hears a voice shouting nearby. It grows more peremptory. As she lifts her head and gingerly opens her eyes, she sees a man pushing at her husband’s shoulder and gesturing at the woods behind them.
“Leave him. He is tired. Was sagen Sie?” she calls out. “What are you saying?”
Stoffel had made the whole voyage without falling ill, but three days ago, within a hundred yards of the shore, he developed a flux and refused to eat or drink any of the remaining foul water from the ship’s barrels. When the soldiers had brought some fresh water aboard he accepted a cup, but still could not eat bread.
The man looks blankly at her, not understanding her German words. He points at the water and then at the woods, gesturing vigourously for them to move. Elisabeth looks and finally understands. The water is coming closer on its daily cycle of rise and fall.
“Ja, ja,” she answers. “Wir stehen auf, we’re getting up.”
“Christof,” she calls to her son, “help your father into the woods. Peter,” she turns to her younger son, “sit on the trunks while Maria and I find a place for us to shelter. Christof will come back and help you carry them.”
The two trunks they had been allowed to bring aboard ship contain everything they own. How many times had she packed and repacked them? Ten? Twenty? Her Stoffel had wanted to bring his butcher tools, certain he would be able to set up shop again and build a business as he had at home. And his father’s woodsman’s axe and smoothing adze. She had wanted her pots and skillets, her platters and her jars of herbs, her loom.
“No need,” the recruiter’s agent had assured them. “Everything you need will be provided when you arrive. Tools, seeds, lumber. See, here in the handbill, ‘will provide all the necessities for the husbandman…’.”
The German translation was awkward but that was what it said. Elisabeth had read and reread it many times. Stoffel believed that the agent spoke truly and so must she. In the end, they had brought only a cleaver, a few of his best knives, the finest axe, one cooking kettle and an open iron skillet, a pewter platter, tin plates for the voyage and a few linen bags of flax and buckwheat seed.
Aboard ship they had longed to get away from each other for a time, tempers had grown short and they became sick of the smell of each other. Now they are afraid to be separated. She looks back at Peter. He is sitting on his father’s trunk with his feet on hers; he never takes his eyes off her. She feels anxious; he looks so small and forlorn amid the scattered groups of immigrants. She gives him an encouraging smile.
As soon as they reach the edge of the trees, she stops and sends Christof back.
“We will rest for a minute, go and fetch Peter.”
She sits so that Stoffel can lean against her.
“Stoffel,” she says in encouragement, “we are here. Soon we will begin our new life. We are all here while so many did not make it. Tonight we will thank God.”
That night, Elisabeth forgets to pray.
