Missing Friends. Thorvald Peter Ludwig Weitemeyer

what are you waiting for? You said throw him in the sea; just give the word and he shall be overboard in a second." My heart beat violently. I thought murder would be committed in an instant, and not a single life either, but perhaps scores would be sacrificed. There was a dead silence. The wind whistled through the rigging, but it was the only sound heard. The doctor did not move; the captain did not move; the mate did not move; and none of the men moved. None dared to give the aggressive sign, and each seemed to feel it just as impossible to beat a retreat. It might have lasted a couple of minutes, perhaps less. It seemed an age to me. Then we all heard Thorkill's voice, he was somewhere in the rigging too, and he cried, "Countrymen—listen—to—me! hear—what—I—say! Disperse! Disperse!—quietly. Let—us—complain—when—we—come—ashore! He—will—shoot—the—first—ten—or—twelve—men—who—touch—him—and—those—who—escape—now—might—be—hung—when—we—come—ashore. Let—us—complain—when—we—come—ashore—and—we—will—get—justice." Thorkill still kept on talking, but the outburst of relief from all sides completely drowned his voice. There was an honourable way to get out of it. "We will complain when we come ashore," "Disperse," "Let it be enough," and similar expressions, were heard on all sides, and the doctor, I suppose nothing loth, had quite a pleased appearance as he stepped up on the quarter-deck again as soon as the road was clear, and disappeared out of sight simultaneously with the dispersion of the men.

      That day the doctor did not show up again, but on the next, I suppose just to show that he did not consider himself beaten, all the single men were ordered below at sundown as a punishment for insubordination, and with that the matter ended. But now the men were pressing Thorkill to write out a complaint which should embody all we had suffered, and all our supposed wrongs. Thorkill, however, would do no such thing. It was not in his line, he said. Many a talk he and I had about it, but he could not see his way. "All these poor people," said he, "are treated with contempt because they are poor, and I cannot help them for I am just as poor. We do not know to whom to complain; we cannot write English, and what we do will rebound on our own heads. Still," said he, "it—is—a—shame—that—they—should—be—allowed—to—treat—people—like—this." Then I wrote out a complaint in Danish addressed to the Danish Consul, Australia. The exact contents of it I have long since forgotten, but it was to the effect that we had been starved, ill-treated, had had no sick accommodation, insufficient bed-clothes, &c., and from that day I looked upon myself as an important personage on board ship. All the single and married men, with about a dozen exceptions, signed the statement. All the single girls wanted also to sign it, but I feared the woman in charge might confiscate the document (the matron in charge of the girls on our ship was only an ordinary emigrant selected by the doctor, and in my opinion scarcely the best that might have been selected. In English emigrant ships an educated lady is engaged as matron.) Thus I could not bring myself to go among them for the purpose of getting signatures, and so the females were not represented in the complaint. (It might, however, be interesting to English readers, as showing the standard of education on the continent of Europe, that of all the people on board only one, an elderly man, had to sign his name with a cross.)

      One day while I was getting these signatures, and the men were coming to where I held my levee as fast as they could, the doctor stormed the cabin with two constables behind him and ordered me to give up the document to him. Then the doctor and I talked, I in Danish and he in German, and we had a wordy war. I liked the doctor in my heart, because he was about as brave a man as one could wish to see, and very likely, too, some of the severe discipline on board was not altogether uncalled for; yet he was not going to have it all his own way, and to this day I maintain that whatever else might have been right or wrong, to starve as we starved was scandalous. I write about these things, and I do not know whether my readers may think them of much interest, but all these little incidents seem engraven upon my memory. On board ship there is nothing to think about or to talk about but the same old things. One is cross, perhaps, and everybody talks much about the same thing. "Where are we, I wonder?" "I wonder how many knots we are running?" "I wonder how it will go when we come to Queensland?" "I wonder if any one ever was so hungry as I?" So it goes on, day out and day in, and one has to discuss and answer these questions about five hundred times every day.

      But now we are nearing Australia, and high time I dare say the reader probably thinks it is; but if my readers are tired out, so were we. Yet there is another of the passengers I must describe, as I intend to mention him again. I will do so in a few words. He was a quiet, gentlemanly man, about thirty years old. He told me he had been a lieutenant in the Danish army, but had been dismissed for insubordination. He managed, without giving offence to anybody, to keep himself completely in the shadow in the ship, and one seemed not to know he was there. I will call him "A." A. understood and spoke English fluently, but nobody knew it. Indeed, when the complaint-fever was on, he denied all knowledge of the language. A young lady was travelling with him—that is, she went as a single girl, but they got married as soon as we came ashore. They had quite a number of things with them to set up house with, and lived for a short time very comfortably on their means; when they went away again I lost sight of them.