million and one smells of the steerage he
induced a thin-faced Livonian to play upon a mouth organ, and Big Ivan
sang Paleer's "Song of Freedom" in a voice that drowned the creaking of
the old vessel's timbers, and made the seasick ones forget their
sickness. They sat up in their berths and joined in the chorus, their
eyes shining brightly in the half gloom:
"Freedom for serf and for slave,
Freedom for all men who crave
Their right to be free
And who hate to bend knee
But to Him who this right to them gave."
It was well that these emigrants had dreams. They wanted them. The sea
devils chased the lumbering steamer. They hung to her bows and pulled
her for'ard deck under emerald-green rollers. They clung to her stern
and hoisted her nose till Big Ivan thought that he could touch the door
of heaven by standing on her blunt snout. Miserable, cold, ill, and
sleepless, the emigrants crouched in their quarters, and to them Ivan
and the thin-faced Livonian sang the "Song of Freedom."
The emigrant ship pounded through the Cattegat, swung southward through
the Skagerrack and the bleak North Sea. But the storm pursued her. The
big waves snarled and bit at her, and the captain and the chief officer
consulted with each other. They decided to run into the Thames, and the
harried steamer nosed her way in and anchored off Gravesend.
An examination was made, and the agents decided to transship the
emigrants. They were taken to London and thence by train to Liverpool,
and Ivan and Anna sat again side by side, holding hands and smiling at
each other as the third-class emigrant train from Euston raced down
through the green Midland counties to grimy Liverpool.
"You are not afraid?" Ivan would say to her each time she looked at him.
"It is a long way, but the Dream has given me much courage," she said.
"To-day I spoke to a Lett whose brother works in New York City," said
the giant. "Do you know how much money he earns each day?"
"How much?" she questioned.
"Three rubles, and he calls the policemen by their first names."
"You will earn five rubles, my Ivan," she murmured. "There is no one as
strong as you."
Once again they were herded into the bowels of a big ship that steamed
away through the fog banks of the Mersey out into the Irish Sea. There
were more dreamers now, nine hundred of them, and Anna and Ivan were
more comfortable. And these new emigrants, English, Irish, Scotch,
French,
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