Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1966, Page 73

WESTWARD JOURNEY
55
cries most bitterly. Perhaps he was
the father of the deceased who, I
think, was a young man. The body
Was then taken and gently lowered
°ver the gunwale. Down it sank
slowly into the dark deep bosom of
the sea. A wave closed over the
corpse and the wind smoothed it
over so that no markings of its
resting place were visible. “Rán”,
the mighty goddess of the sea took
!t into her bosom to keep forever
ln the innermost hiding place of her
heart. The ship with its flag at half
^oast rushed on towards the mighty
Western World.
At last we sighted America ap-
Pearing as a blue rim on the western
horizon. My grandfather gazed for a
^°ng time at this blue rim and again
and again repeated “Vineland the
Good”, “Leif the Lucky”. A few
crew members who were standing
near by began to laugh and tried,
ut in a distorted fashion, to repeat
the words after him.
Finally we landed at a dock in
New York. We were at once trans-
ported to an inn managed by a
Paunch-bellied Dane. With his help
my grandfather located the Danish
c°nsul who resided in the city. This
5°usul procured tickets for us to
Halifax. This used up the rest of our
^aoney. The last five dollars went to
Pay for food for the rest of our
journey but it did not nearly suf-
ice. We stopped only overnight in
ew York and nothing unusual
appened to us except that one of
e guests who sat with us at the
supper table that evening pushed me
r°m the table because I had taken
®ugar from the sugar bowl on the
m with a spoon that was in my
cup and had consequently wet the
sugar in the bowl. No one except
he seemed to notice this. To be sure,
if I had broken the rules of table
etiquette he broke them, no less, by
pulling my chair from the table, or
such was my opinion of the incident.
We again boarded ship in New
York, but disembarked after a
twenty four hour journey. Where we
landed I do not know. I only re-
member that we were rudely awak-
ened from a sound sleep in the
middle of the night and led some
distance in the darkness. We then
walked up two or three steps into
a long narrow hall, along the entire
length of which there were two
rows of benches. We seated our-
selves and awaited further develop-
ments. All of a sudden we heard a
steamship-like whistle and at the
same instant we felt that the hall
in which we were seated was in
motion. At first it moved slowly and
then faster and faster until it seemed
to rush forward at a tremendous
rate. Sometimes it seemed to me that
it rushed backward and again at
intervals it seemed to be swept down
steep slopes. The chandeliers that
hung in the ceiling were in constant
motion and everything that was in
there shook and quivered but in a
different manner from what we had
become accustomed to on shipboard.
“This is a locomotive,” said my
grandfather after a short while, “as
I live and breathe we are on a
train.”
My grandmother expressed the
same opinion.
I remember that I enjoyed this
journey very much, but gave some
serious thought to what the creature