"Why, it was just dreadful!" she exclaimed. "Those officers were no better than pirates."
"Not a whit! In fact, they were pirates. But go on, my dear; let us have the rest of your story."
Mrs. Embury resumed her reading.
"'What shall we, what can we do,' asked Frau Follen of her husband. 'I fear there will be no money left for buying land when we reach America.'
"'Alas! I fear not, indeed!' he returned; 'and should anything happen to delay the vessel we may be reduced to great extremity even before reaching the shores of America. Ah, would we had been satisfied to remain in the fatherland!' he groaned in anguish of spirit.
"'Ah, father,' said Gretchen, the eldest daughter, 'let not your heart fail you yet. Help may yet come from some unexpected quarter, and if not—if we die for lack of food—we may hope to awake from the sleep of death in the better land, to suffer and die no more. Let us trust in God and not be afraid.'
"'You are right, my daughter,' he returned with emotion. 'But oh, God grant I may not be called to see my wife and children suffer and die for lack of food!'
"A young man standing near, one with whom they were slightly acquainted, here joined in the conversation.
"'It is dreadful, dreadful!' he exclaimed, but speaking in a subdued tone for fear of being overheard by their inhuman oppressors, 'the way these mercenary wretches are robbing the helpless poor whom they have entrapped into their net. Every fellow of them deserves the headsman's axe, and I hope will reach it at last. Think of the exorbitant sums they are asking for the barest necessaries of life! Nor do I believe they will ever carry us to our destination, lest complaint be made of them and they be brought to condign punishment by the authorities of the land.'