13.—During the night was roused by the noise of the anchor being let go. On leaving my cabin was astounded, for I stepped into brilliant sun shine, in whose beams the waters danced, while, like a panorama, a lovely landscape was unrolled on either side. No longer a weary waste of water, with an unchanging horizon, met my view, but a noble river, rolling between picturesque banks. The north was rugged, with lofty hills, wooded to the summit; the south was an undulating slope, along whose lower edge ran a line of small white-washed houses, so near each other as to form a street. The fields were flushed with green and some of the tree-tops thickened with bud and bursting leaf. Evidently the occupants of each house had a farm, which ran like a riband from the river to nigh the head of the slope, which was crowned with woods. At regular intervals in the line of houses there is a church—plain stone edifices with high pitched roofs, which, with steeples, are tinned, giving them a foreign look. We were waiting for the tide to turn, the breeze being insufficient to enable the ship to beat against the current. On the other side of the river were four large ships, at anchor like ourselves. As the morning wore on a boat was seen to leave the shore and row towards us. The gunwale of our ship was crowded with passengers watching her approach. On coming near us, the two men in the boat did not seem to fancy our looks, for they did not throw their line to us. They had evidently come to sell us the provisions they had aboard. “Lay to, what are you afeared of,” shouted the boatswain. One of the men shook his blue cowled head. “Parley vous Français?” he cried “What does he say?” the boatswain asked me “I think he wants to know if you speak French.” “Blast his himpudence; what does he think my mother was? I wants none sich lingo,” retorted the salt. Scared by the row of white faces the men had plainly decided to forego the profits of trade from fear of infection. One had seized his oar to bring the boat’s head to shore when, recalling all the French words I had ever heard, I shouted “Lait,” and held out a pail with one hand and sixpence with the other. They swung round, and one of the men caught my pail, filled it and handed it back. Pointing to some loaves he gave me one for a sixpence, and several other passengers bought the rest of them. This done, the boat left. With that milk Aileen hopes to save the lives of the few infants left. The bread was welcome, though it was heavy and had a peculiar sourish taste. When the tide began to make, the order to weigh the anchor was given. The ships to the north of us were doing the same, and the sailors’ songs came over the water with beautiful cadence, blending with the chorus of our own crew, which began with “haul in the bowline, the black ship’s arolling,” and ended declaring that “Katie is my darling.” With a large spread of canvas we moved slowly up the mighty river for the wind was light. In spite of our dismal surroundings, this was a day of quiet delight to Aileen and myself. The extraordinary width of the river, said to be over ten miles, its waters, pure and of deep blue color, clasping at intervals a picturesque island, the boldness of the wooded hills on the north shore and the brightness and softness of the cultivated landscape on the south, were a constant feast for eyes wearied of the sea. The depth and tender blue of the sky, so much more transparent than in the dear old land, particularly impressed Aileen. As we made our way up the glorious river, the shores trended nearer, the hills on the north grew loftier and the southern bank less steep. The sun had set in a glory of gold and crimson beyond the hills when the order was given to let go the anchor, the tide no longer serving us. Quarter a mile ahead of us a large ship did the same. The evening being calm Aileen got a wrap and we sat watching the darkening waters and the shores that loomed momentarily more faint, until the lights from the house windows alone marked where they were. “What is that?” she suddenly exclaimed, and I saw a shapeless heap move past our ship on the outgoing tide. Presently there was another and another. Craning my head over the bulwark I watched. Another came, it caught in our cable, and before the swish of the current washed it clear, I caught a glimpse of a white face. I understood it all. The ship ahead of us had emigrants and they were throwing overboard their dead. Without telling Aileen, I grasped her arm, and drew her to our cabin.
14.—An eventful day, the consequences of which I fear, although, recalling every detail, I do not see how I could have acted otherwise. Anxious to see this country, so new and bright to me, I rose at daylight. The ship was under plain sail, beating against a northwest wind, and making little headway. One of our lads who had been taken to help the sailors was ordered by the mate up the foremast to put to rights some tackle that had got entangled in the last tack. The boy blundered, and the mate repeated the order with his customary oaths. Again the lad tried to do what he was bid and failed. Ordering a sailor to go up and do the work, the mate shouted to the boy to come down. He did so reluctantly, for he saw the mate had grasped a rope’s end. Cursing him for his slowness, the mate seized his feet while still in the ratlines. He fell violently on the deck, when the mate proceeded to shower blows with the heavy rope on the head and back of the boy, who cried piteously for mercy. I could not stand it; my blood was boiling. “Stop,” I shouted, “have pity on the boy; he did not mean to disobey your order. It was his sorrow for his mother who died last night that confused him.” The mate paused in his lashing of the lad and glared at me with such a malignant look as I pray the saints I may never again have cast on me. “Mind your business, damn you, or I’ll have you put in irons for mutiny,” he shouted and again laid the rope across the lad’s quivering body with fiercer strength. It was, perhaps, foolish for my own interests but I could not help it. I sprang at the mate and dealt him a blow in the face. He clutched hold of me and we grappled. He was strong, with muscles toughened by fighting sea and wind, but a Sligo boy of my inches will take odds from no man in a wrestle. We fell time and again, he beneath me, but he always managed to wriggle up again, until I got a good hold of his neck, then I bent him under me and rained blows on every part of him my right fist could reach. All that the cheating villain had done, his cruelties to my people, his brutal indifference to their sufferings, flashed across my mind, and lent vim to every blow I dealt. How the scoundrel howled for help and, finally, for mercy. Not one of the sailors interfered. They drew off to the forepeak and looked on, glad to see his punishment. The passengers who were on deck formed in a circle around us, delighted at the sight. One of them, I recall, popped up from the hatchway and held out a blackthorn to me with the explanation, “To finish him off wid, yer honor.” I needed no shillelah. The fear that I might fatally injure the bully alone caused me to pause. I gathered him up in my arms for a final effort, when a strange thing happened me. I saw in my mind’s eye, as they passed before me, the white face of one after the other of the dead I helped to drop into the sea. It was one of those freaks the imagination plays when the mind is intensely excited. This could not have taken over a moment or two, but I saw them all, plainly and distinctly. Solemnized yet strengthened by the sight, I was given a power I had not. I raised the craven, who was whining and sobbing, as high as my breast and flung him away as far as I could. Fortune favored him, he fell on a coil of rope, where he lay helpless. The steward went to him, wiped the blood from his eyes, and finally he was able to rise and, leaning on the steward’s left shoulder, shuffled to the cabin. By this time every man of my people able to leave the hold was on deck, an excited throng, eager for fighting. “If they lay a finger on yees for what ye’ve so nately done, we’ll break the heads av ivery wan o’ thim,” said a county Leitrim man to me, and I knew that was the spirit of them all. Softly opening the door of our little cabin I was thankful to find Aileen asleep. Getting a change of clothes, for those I had on were torn and bloodstained, I slipped out, had a wash in a bucket of saltwater, and then dressed myself. At breakfast I told Aileen all. She was much shocked at the danger I had run, and when satisfied I had received no greater injury than sundry black and blue bruises from kicks and blows and some handfuls of hair the coward had torn from my head, she became alarmed for the result. Assaulting an officer on shipboard I knew was a serious offence in the eyes of the law, and so did Aileen. “I don’t think,” I said to her, “you need fear their punishing me according to law, for they know if I am taken before a court, all the villainy of captain and mate towards the passengers would come out. They have broken the law in fifty ways, and know it. What I fear is the captain trying to take the law into his own hands before we reach Quebec.” We passed the day on deck as usual, appearing as unconcerned as might be. Whether the captain entertained any notion of arresting me, I cannot say, for he made no sign. The sight of a score or so of my people keeping nigh me wherever I moved, from whose coats peeped the end of what they called “a bit av a shtick,” may have had some influence in deterring him, but the real cause I opine to be what the boatswain whispered to me in the evening, that the steward had told the captain the sailors to a man would refuse to put a hand on me. They hate the mate, who, by the way, according to the cabin boy, is lying in his berth, alternately groaning with pain and swearing from rage. We made little progress today. The wind was ahead and we kept tacking every half hour or so. In beating up the river thus, a ship overhauled us. She was a Clyde trader, and being shorter she wore more quickly and being heavier laden sailed more closely to the wind, and owing to these advantages she outsailed us. As she passed us, her captain stood at the stern and dangled a rope to us, as if offering to take our ship in tow. Our captain, with an oath, rushed down the companionway to hide his mortification. In the afternoon a discovery was made that sent joy to the heart of every passenger. A boy had hauled up a pailful of water to douse his head in, after getting his hair clipped, when he got a taste of it and found it was fresh. The tide was out, and at the point we now had reached, at the slack, the water is fresh. Pailful after pailful was hauled on board, and the sick were supplied without stint, with water sweet, clear and cool. Alas, the refreshing draught came too late for seven, who died during the day. I wanted to keep the bodies on board in hopes of giving them burial, but the boatswain advised otherwise, as he said, although we were within a short distance of quarantine with the present wind we might be two or three days of making it. Ship anchored at darkening, close to shore.
15.—Remained at anchor all day. Cold with strong wind from north-west. At intervals there were squalls, accompanied by driving showers of rain and hail. Three hours’ fair wind would see us at quarantine, yet here we are unable to advance a yard on our way. Five deaths today. I resolved the bodies be kept for burial. Boatswain told me mate is worse today, being feverish. The pilot bled him and the captain gave him a blue pill. Not being needed to work the ship, all hands were engaged in putting the vessel into her best trim, scraping, scrubbing, and painting. Outwardly the ship is neat and clean, a sight to delight a sailor’s eye, and to look at her from the deck it is hard to conceive of the putrid state of her hold. The steward bribed several of the passengers with whisky to clean the steps and alley-ways of the steerage. A steamer painted white and with a house the length of her deck, passed us, going east.
16.—The sound of the anchor being weighed awoke me and I heard it with joy. I dressed and gave the sailors a hand. The wind had veered into the east, and it looked as if rain was coming. The fore mainsail having been set, the ship swept on, keeping the channel as easily as if propelled by steam. When Aileen came out, the church bells were ringing for early mass, and we could make out the people driving along the roads to attend. Reports from the steerage are gloomy. There have been three deaths during the night. It seems as if a number of the sick had reached that point that their dropping off is inevitable. The river was dotted with ships following us, and the sight of so many large vessels moving majestically in a column in our rear fascinated me. By and by the rain came on, when Aileen left to pack our trunks, for we are fully persuaded the wind will hold and that we will land in Quebec before dark, bidding farewell to this ship of misery. When quarantine was sighted, I dropped in to see how she was getting on, and finding my help not needed, wrote this, in all probability, the last entry I will make on board.
Grosse Isle, May 31.—Fourteen days since I penned a line in this sorrowful record. I wish I had not lived to pen another. God’s will be done, but, oh, it is hard to say it. Yet I ask myself, what right have I to repine? Grievous as has been my loss, what is it compared with that of many of those around me, whose quiet submission rebukes my selfish sorrow. Enough of this, let me resume my record. When the ship came abreast of the quarantine buildings, all fresh from a new coat of whitewash, the anchor was dropped. It was nearly an hour before the quarantine officer came on board, and I heard him on stepping from his boat apologize to our captain for the delay, owing to his waiting for breakfast. The captain took him down to the cabin and it was a long while before he re-appeared, when he stepped down to the main deck, where all the passengers, able to be out of bed, were waiting him. He walked round us, asked a few to hold out their tongues, and then went down into the hold, where he stayed only a minute or so. Passing a few words with the captain, he re-entered his boat and was rowed back to the island. No sooner had he left, than the boatswain got orders to have all boats made ready to take the sick ashore. First the dead were brought up. The sailors shrank back, there was a muttered consultation, and the boatswain, taking me aside, told me they would not touch them or even row a boat that held them, and I had better drop them overboard. “Never,” I cried, “shall it be said that the bodies of the faithful did not receive Christian burial when it was possible to give it.” Calling out from among my people four men whom I knew were fishermen, I asked them if they would row the dead ashore, and on saying they would, the boatswain let me have a boat. Decently the bodies were passed over and we made our way to the landing. We had trouble in getting them out of the boat, for the steps of the quay were out of repair, but we managed it and carried them to what, from the cross on it, we saw was a church. The priest came out, and I told him our purpose. Leaving the dead in the church, we went back to the ship for the others. By this time the sick were being landed, and roughly handled they were. As it would be awhile before the graves would be ready, I lent a hand—the most miserable, heartrending work I had ever engaged in. With indecent haste they were hurried from the ship deck into the boats, and tossed on to the steps of the quay, careless of what injury they might receive. Most were unable to help themselves in the least, a few were delirious. Men, women, and children were all treated the same, as so much rubbish to be got rid of as quickly as possible. It was no better on land. The quarantine had only two men to spare to help the few relatives who came ashore to carry them from the wharf to the buildings, and many lay an hour in a cold pelting rain. It signified little as to their getting wet, for they were all doused by the waves in landing them on the quay. Small wonder two died on the quay, and were borne to the chapel to add to the number awaiting burial there. The priest was very considerate, and, although I did not ask it, said mass, which I knew would be a great consolation to the relatives. Leaving the cemetery with the priest, I thanked him from my heart, and ran to the quay. My heart was in my mouth when I saw on it Aileen, standing beside our boxes, and the ship, having tripped her anchor, bearing up the river. “What makes you look so at me, Gerald? I have come as you asked.”
“I never sent for you.”
“The steward told me you had sent word by the sailors for me to come ashore, that you were going to stay here. They carried the luggage into a boat and I followed.”
I groaned in spirit. I saw it all. By a villainous trick, the captain had got rid of me. Instead of being in Quebec that day, here I was left at the quarantine-station. “My poor Aileen, I know not what to do; my trouble is for you.” I went to see the head of the establishment, Dr Douglas. He proved to be a fussy gentleman, worried over a number of details. Professing to be ready to oblige, he said there was no help for me until the steamer came. “When will that be?” Next Saturday. A week on an island full of people sick with fever! Aileen, brave heart, made the best of it. She was soaking wet, yet the only shelter, apart from the fever sheds, which were not to be thought of, was an outhouse with a leaky roof, with no possibility of a fire or change of clothing. How I cursed myself for my rashness in making captain and mate my enemies, for the penalty had fallen not on me, but on my Aileen. There was not an armful of straw to be had; not even boards to lie on. I went to the cooking booth, and found a Frenchman in charge. Bribing him with a shilling he gave me a loaf and a tin of hot tea. Aileen could not eat a bite, though she tried to do so to please me, but drank the tea. The rain continued and the east wind penetrated between the boards of the wretched sheiling. What a night it was! I put my coat over Aileen, I pressed her to my bosom to impart some heat to her chilled frame, I endeavored to cheer her with prospects of the morrow. Alas, when morning came she was unable to move, and fever and chill alternated. I sought the doctor, he was not to be had. Other emigrant ships had arrived, and he was visiting them. Beyond giving her water to assuage her thirst when in the fever it was not in my power to do anything. It was evening when the doctor, yielding to my importunities, came to see her. He did not stay a minute and writing a few lines told me to go to the hospital steward, who would give me some medicine. Why recall the dreadful nights and days that followed? What profit to tell of the pain in the breast, the raging fever, the delirium, the agonizing gasping for breath—the end? The fourth day, with bursting heart and throbbing head, I knelt by the corpse of my Aileen. There was not a soul to help; everybody was too full of their own troubles to be able to heed me. The island was now filled with sick emigrants, and death was on every side. I dug her grave, the priest came, I laid her there, I filled it in, I staggered to the shed that had sheltered us, I fell from sheer exhaustion, and remember no more. When I woke, I heard the patter of rain, and felt so inexpressibly weary I could think of nothing, much less make any exertion. My eye fell on Aileen’s shawl, and the past rushed on me. Oh, the agony of that hour; my remorse, my sorrow, my beseechings of the Unseen. Such a paroxysm could not last long, and when exhausted nature compelled me to lie down, I turned my face to the wall with the earnest prayer I might never awaken on this earth. How long I slept I know not. Some motion of one leaning over me brought back consciousness.
“Pax tecum,” said a voice I seemed to recall. “Et cum spiritu tuo,” I mechanically responded.