But now that land was in sight, the Lyon was not able to get into the harbor. Already as the passengers watched the shore a storm was rising. It was not so severe as those which had gone before nor so long continued, but it was far more alarming since the ship was now in danger of being cast upon the reefs. It seemed for many days that the passengers had endured all for naught. It was like being sent back into mid-ocean to suffer once more all the fearful trials through which they had lived. Again the captain grew wan and hollow-eyed, again the travelers lived for days in the hold of the ship, again there was sickness and death. Some of those who had seen the promised land saw it no more, nor any earthly land. There was no concealing the fact that those who were ill had ship fever, which was almost certain, in the conditions in which the patients had to live, to be fatal. Little John Frederick, the youngest of the Weisers, about whose health they had long felt anxiety, grew worse, so that his brothers and sisters could not look at him without tears. Still the pilgrims were patient and kind, still they tried not to murmur at this new dispensation of Providence.
"Courage!" said John Conrad a dozen times a day, to himself, as well as to his companions. "Many a good enterprise has failed because those who undertook it could not endure quite to the end."
The pilgrims were to have, alas, need for all the courage and patience which they could summon. When a long swell succeeded the fierce beating of the waves and the skies cleared, they sought the deck once more, and hurried to the prow. There they stared at one another in amazement and terror. The promised land at which they had looked with such longing eyes had vanished.
"What has become of it?" asked a bewildered company.
"It is still exactly where it was," answered the captain. "It is we who have changed our place."
"When shall we see it again?"
The captain reassured them with a cheerfulness which he did not feel. The ship had been driven far out of its course; it would take many days to win again a view of the low-lying shores.
It was now June. Unless conditions in the new world were very different from those in the old, the season for planting was almost passed: and John Conrad's eagerness to be settled grew to anxiety. Whatever young Conrad's book might say about the strength of the sun in America, it was certain that the pilgrims must have a house and some stores of food and fuel with which to meet the winter. Again they gazed toward the west until, between the blinding glare of the sun on the smooth sea and their own tears, they could see no more.
But like all evils in the world the long journey came to an end. The travelers had given up rising before dawn to watch the first beams of the sun strike on the western shores, when one bright morning a shout awoke them.
"Land! Land! Land!" Though it needed but one call to rouse the sleepers, the sailor called a dozen times, as though the joyful news could not be too often proclaimed.