The best short stories of 1915, and the yearbook of the American short story
General
The best short stories of 1915, and the yearbook of the American short story
American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories -- 20th century -- Bibliography; Short stories -- 20th century -- Indexes; Short stories, American
They boarded the ship, and the Dream gave them a courage that
surprised them. There were others going aboard, and Ivan and Anna
felt that those others were also persons who possessed dreams. She
saw the dreams in their eyes. There were Slavs, Poles, Letts, Jews,
and Livonians, all bound for the land where dreams come true. They
were a little afraid--not two per cent of them had ever seen a ship
before--yet their dreams gave them courage.
The emigrant ship was dragged from her pier by a grunting tug and
went floundering down the Baltic Sea. Night came down, and the devils
who, according to the Esthonian fishermen, live in the bottom of the
Baltic, got their shoulders under the stern of the ship and tried to
stand her on her head. They whipped up white combers that sprang on
her flanks and tried to crush her, and the wind played a devil's lament
in her rigging. Anna lay sick in the stuffy women's quarters, and Ivan
could not get near her. But he sent her messages. He told her not to
mind the sea devils, to think of the Dream, the Great Dream that would
become real in the land to which they were bound. Ivan of the Bridge
grew to full stature on that first night out from Libau. The battered
old craft that carried him slouched before the waves that swept over
her decks, but he was not afraid. Down among the 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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