The settlers had, meanwhile, passed the long melancholy hours in very various and strange groups and positions. It must doubtless have been most difficult for the members of Hehrmann's family to bear their hardships without a complaint, without a murmur; for, accustomed from childhood to the pleasant conveniences of life, and hitherto withdrawn from the discomforts to which others had been exposed during the whole voyage, they had no idea, except from the first few nights in the steerage, of such a situation or such sufferings. Quietly and uncomplainingly the tender beings clung to the husband and the father, who folded them in his arms, and tried to protect them with his cloak from cold, and wet, and mosquitoes.
The rest of the Committee were equally ill lodged; but the men, by a sort of instinct, had cowered down in the chimney-corner, packed as close together as possible, in order to leave no more of their persons exposed to the attacks of the little blood-thirsty enemies which in myriads surrounded them than they were able to defend. The brewer, the shoemaker, the tailor, and Schmidt, as well as a troop of Oldenburghers, and several other groups, composed of Brunswickers and Alsatians, did precisely the same, so that afterwards, when the unpleasant part of the business was past and forgotten, and the settlers remembered the comic side of that night only, Becher was wont to say that the whole company was divided into so many heaps of rats.
Suddenly there was heard without, seemingly quite close to the house, a strange, wild, unearthly noise, rather a howl than a cry—and it sounded so plaintive and awful, like the cry for help of one that was perishing, and then again like the mocking laugh of a maniac, that the trembling girls pressed closer to their father, and many an otherwise brave man, surprised and startled, looked up and listened, with loud beatings of the heart, to the constantly wilder sounds.
"I say, brewer!" said the tailor, pushing him in the side, with all his strength, "what's that?"
"D——n!" swore the latter, who had just dropped off into a doze, and whom the ungentle application called back again to partial wakefulness and suffering—for the two, at present, seemed inseparable—"leave me alone; what should it be!—the watchman!—don't you hear his horn?"[12]
"A fine sort of watchman, that!" said Schmidt. "They don't want a watchman for these two houses—the people in the streets here are quiet enough o' nights, I'll be bound!"
"Don't speak so loud!" whispered the shoemaker; "yonder still sits the American, beside his dead wife. Ugh! but 'tis awful to have a corpse in the room!"
"Awful!—nonsense!" said the brewer, still half asleep—"not if she lies still!"
"You be quiet, will you!" whispered, fearfully, the tailor; "if he over there hears you, he might take it ill."
"How is he to understand German?" replied the other. "But whatever it may be, it's howling on the other side of the house now. A bear, I dare say!"