e perfection of spring; March is a kind of May.
And March came.

They saw other ships now every day; many of them going their way. The
sight cheered them; the passage had been lonely as well as stormy. Their
own vessels, of course,--the other two,--they had not expected to see, and
had not seen. They did not know whether they were on the sea or under it.

At length pilot-boats began to appear. One came to them and put a pilot on
board. Then the blue water turned green, and by and by yellow. A fringe of
low land was almost right ahead. Other vessels were making for the same
lighthouse towards which they were headed, and so drew constantly nearer
to one another. The emigrants line the bulwarks, watching the nearest
sails. One ship is so close that some can see the play of waters about her
bows. And now it is plain that her bulwarks, too, are lined with emigrants
who gaze across at them. She glides nearer, and just as the cry of
recognition bursts from this whole company the other one yonder suddenly
waves caps and kerchiefs and sends up a cheer. Their ship is the
_Johanna_.

Do we dare draw upon fancy? We must not. The companies did meet on the
water, near the Mississippi's mouth, though whether first inside or
outside the stream I do not certainly gather. But they met; not the two
vessels only, but the three. They were towed up the river side by side,
the _Johanna_ here, the _Captain Grone_ there, and the other ship between
them. Wagner, who had sailed on the galiot, was still alive. Many years
afterwards he testified:

"We all arrived at the Balize [the river's mouth] the same day. The ships
were so close we could speak to each other from on board our respective
ships. We inquired of one another of those who had died and of those who
still remained."

Madame Fleikener said the same:

"We hailed each other from the ships and asked who lived and who had died.
The father and mother of Madame Schuber [Kropp and his wife] told me
Daniel Mueller and family were on board."

But they had suffered loss. Of the _Johanna's_ 700 souls only 430 were
left alive. Henry Mueller's wife was dead. Daniel Mueller's wife, Dorothea,
had been sick almost from the start; she was gone, with the babe at her
bosom. Henry was left with his two boys, and Daniel with his one and his
little Dorothea and Salome. Grandsteiner, the supercargo, had lived; but
of 1800 homeless poor whom the Dutch king's gilders had paid him to bring
to America, fo