Now the helmsman came to bid his friends good-bye. John Conrad gave him many blessings and the children cried bitterly and embraced him.
"If he were only going with us, what fine times we should have on the sea!" said Conrad.
"He seems like our last friend," mourned Margareta. "Everything before us is strange."
"We thought George Reimer was our last friend," said John Conrad. "Perhaps we shall find other friends as good."
For four days, the Germans watched for a ship. When at last two English vessels came into the harbor and they were taken aboard, the Weisers had little food and less money. When John Conrad heard that no passage was to be charged, he breathed another sigh of relief.
"The good Queen will keep her promises," said he to his children. "The worst of our troubles are over."
But within an hour it seemed that the worst of their troubles had only begun. The channel crossing was rough. From their fellow travelers there was rising already a cry, which was to grow louder and louder as the weeks and months went by--"Would that we had suffered those miseries which we knew rather than tempt those which we did not know!"
When the ship entered the smooth waters of the Thames River, the Germans began to smile once more. About them were green fields. They saw pleasant villages and broad stretches of cultivated land and deer browsing under mighty trees.
"If we might only stay here!" they sighed.
Once more the Germans disembarked, wondering whether their stay on shore would be long enough for a closer view of the fine churches and palaces of London. Of so large a city as this even John Conrad had never dreamed.
"Shall we see the Queen?" asked Sabina in a whisper of her father.
"We might see her riding in her chariot."
Then John Conrad grew sober. As they stood crowded together upon the quay some young lads shouted at them roughly. The ears which expected only kindness were shocked.
"They say we are taking the bread from their mouths," repeated Conrad. "They call us 'rascally' Germans."
"There are rude folk everywhere," said John Conrad.
He directed the children to take their bundles and follow a man who seemed to have authority to conduct them to some place in which they were to spend the night.