THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
and the first actual observation showed that our calculations had not been so very wrong and that three or four days would bring us to the English coast. So we headed for the port of Newcastle. Kinkel had in the meantime recovered all his bright humor, and would not permit me to remind him of his outbreaks of seasick despair. We were of good cheer, but rejoiced with our whole hearts when we saw the first strip of land rising above the horizon. Then the wind turned toward the south and the captain declared that we would have to cruise a considerable time against it in order to reach the port of Newcastle. The navigation council therefore met once more and resolved to steer in a northerly direction toward Leith, the harbor of Edinburgh. This was done, and the next evening we saw the mighty rocks that guard the entrance of that port. Then the wind suddenly died away and our sails flapped. Kinkel and I quoted for our consolation various verses from Homer: how the angry gods prevented the glorious sufferer Odysseus, by the most malicious tricks, from reaching his beloved home, Ithaca, but how at last, while he was asleep, he was wafted by gentle breezes to the hospitable shores of his island. And so it happened to us. After we had gone to bed in a somewhat surly state of mind, a light wind arose that carried us with the most gentle movement toward the long-wished-for port, and when we awoke next morning the “Little Anna” lay at anchor.
Now the good captain, Niemann, learned for the first time what kind of passengers he had carried across the North Sea under the names of Kaiser and Hensel. He confessed to us that the matter had appeared to him from the beginning quite suspicious, but he expressed in the heartiest manner his joy that, even ignorantly, he had contributed his part to Kinkel's liberation. Kinkel and I were impatient to get to land. Fortunately Mr. Brockelmann had not only given us letters
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