"They come out from the shore like wolves," answered the sailor. "But with these cross dogs we can scare them off."
But whether there were pirates or not, whether there were storms to meet, or whether they were to sail in a continued calm, the Germans must now get aboard. On Christmas morning the first four hundred embarked upon the ship Lyon for another stage of the long journey.
[V]
ACROSS THE SEA
So welcome had been the sight of the ship, so blessed the prospect of being able to set out once more, that the Weisers and their friends had no fault to find with the meager provision which had been made for them. They trooped joyfully aboard, disposing themselves and their goods as well as they could. It was true that what seemed to be a large space shrank amazingly as the passengers found places for the bundles and boxes which remained in their possession in spite of all their misfortunes, but of lack of space they made light. Thus crowded together they would not suffer so dreadfully from the cold as they had in the open tents of Blackheath. Besides, the journey would soon be over. Those who had misgivings as the shores of England dropped out of sight, smiled to see Conrad and Peter gazing longingly from the boat's prow toward the west.
In comparison with the journey down the Rhine the journey across the Atlantic is dull to most travelers. There are no interesting waitings at landings, there are no towering castles, there are no flowery meadows. But to the children on the ship Lyon there was no moment without its entertainment. There was, to begin with, the never-ending motion of the sea; there was, for the first few days, the almost hourly sight of a distant sail. Presently they began to watch for the spouting of whales and for the dipping and soaring of creatures which were half bird, half fish.
The voyage began in a long and unusual calm, so that the older folk could sit comfortably on the deck in the sunshine and the children could scamper about at their games. The captain and the crew were kind and patient, as they needed to be to answer the numberless questions about the ship and her rudder and her white sails and the wide sea upon which she traveled. The mate had crossed the Atlantic Ocean four times and had been many times to Marseilles: to the shivering girls and the delighted boys he told a hundred tales of storms, of waves covering the ship, of rigging locked in ice, of flights from pirates and of battles with the French.
"Shall we meet storms like that?" they asked, terrified, yet eager.