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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gideon's Band, by George W. Cable
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Gideon's Band
+       A Tale of the Mississippi
+
+Author: George W. Cable
+
+Illustrator: F. C. Yohn
+
+Release Date: September 22, 2006 [EBook #19348]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIDEON'S BAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rudy Ketterer, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         GIDEON'S BAND
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                   BOOKS BY GEORGE W. CABLE
+
+              Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+
+          #Gideon's Band.# Illustrated. 12mo       _net_ $1.35
+
+          #Posson Jone' and Pere Raphael.#
+             Illustrated. 12mo                     _net_ $1.35
+
+          #Kincaid's Battery.# Illustrated.
+             12mo                                  _net_ $1.35
+
+          #Bylow Hill.# Illustrated. 12mo          _net_ $1.25
+
+          #The Cavalier.# Illustrated              _net_ $1.35
+
+          #John March, Southerner.# 12mo           _net_ $1.35
+
+          #Bonaventure.# 12mo                      _net_ $1.35
+
+          #Dr. Sevier.# 12mo                       _net_ $1.35
+
+          #The Grandissimes.# 12mo                 _net_ $1.35
+            The Same. Illustrated. Crown
+            8vo                                    _net_ $2.50
+
+          #Old Creole Days.# 12mo                  _net_ $1.35
+            The Same. Illustrated. Crown
+            8vo                                    _net_ $2.50
+
+          #Strange True Stories of Louisiana.#
+            Illustrated. 12mo                      _net_ $1.35
+
+          #Strong Hearts.# 12mo                    _net_ $1.25
+
+          #The Creoles of Louisiana.# Illustrated.
+            Square 12mo                            _net_ $2.50
+
+          #The Silent South.# 12mo                 _net_ $1.00
+
+          #The Negro Question.# 12mo               _net_ $ .75
+
+          #Madame Delphine.#                       _net_ $ .75
+
+          #The Cable Story Book.# [_Scribner
+            Series of School Reading._] Illustrated.
+            12mo                                   _net_ $ .50
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Ramsey                                     [_Page 80_]]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             GIDEON'S BAND
+
+                       A TALE OF THE MISSISSIPPI
+
+                                  BY
+
+                            GEORGE W. CABLE
+
+                            ILLUSTRATED BY
+
+                              F. C. YOHN
+
+                               NEW YORK
+                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+                                 1914
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          Copyright, 1914, by
+                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+                       Published September, 1914
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                TO EVA
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER                                    PAGE
+
+       I. The Steamboat Levee                 1
+
+      II. "The Votaress"                      5
+
+     III. Certain Passengers                  9
+
+      IV. The First Two Miles                13
+
+       V. Ramsey Hayle                       17
+
+      VI. Hayles's Twins                     25
+
+     VII. Supper                             31
+
+    VIII. Questions                          37
+
+      IX. Sitting Silent                     43
+
+       X. Peril                              50
+
+      XI. First Night-Watch                  57
+
+     XII. Hugh and the Twins                 68
+
+    XIII. The Superabounding Ramsey          75
+
+     XIV. The Committee of Seven             83
+
+      XV. Morning Watch                      90
+
+     XVI. Phyllis                            95
+
+    XVII. "It's a-Happmin' Yit--to We All"  106
+
+   XVIII. Ramsey Wins a Point or Two        113
+
+     XIX. This Way to Womanhood             122
+
+      XX. Ladies' Table                     131
+
+     XXI. Ramsey and the Bishop             138
+
+    XXII. Basile and What He Saw            147
+
+   XXIII. A State of Affairs                152
+
+    XXIV. A Senator Enlightened             158
+
+     XXV. "Please Assemble"                 164
+
+    XXVI. Alarm and Distress                173
+
+   XXVII. Pilots' Eyes                      180
+
+  XXVIII. Words and the "Westwood"          186
+
+    XXIX. Studying the River--Together      195
+
+     XXX. Phyllis Again                     203
+
+    XXXI. The Burning Boat                  211
+
+   XXXII. A Prophet in the Wilderness       222
+
+  XXXIII. Twins and Texas Tender            229
+
+   XXXIV. The Peacemakers                   234
+
+    XXXV. Unsettled Weather                 246
+
+   XXXVI. Captain's Room                    252
+
+  XXXVII. Basile Uses a Cane                260
+
+ XXXVIII. The Cane Again                    272
+
+   XXXIX. Fortitude                         280
+
+      XL.  Ramsey at the Footlights         289
+
+     XLI. Quits                             299
+
+    XLII. Against Kin                       306
+
+   XLIII. Which from Which                  313
+
+    XLIV. Forbearance                       319
+
+     XLV. Applause                          327
+
+    XLVI. After the Play                    331
+
+   XLVII. Insomnia                          337
+
+  XLVIII. "California"                      347
+
+    XLIX. Kangaroo Point                    354
+
+       L. "Delta Will Do"                   365
+
+      LI. Loving-Kindness                   374
+
+     LII. Love Runs Rough but Runs on       383
+
+    LIII. Trading for Phyllis               393
+
+     LIV. "Can't!"                          404
+
+      LV. Love Makes a Cut-Off              412
+
+     LVI. Eight Years After                 425
+
+    LVII. Farewell, "Votaress"              436
+
+   LVIII. 'Lindy Lowe                       443
+
+     LIX. "Conclusively"                    446
+
+      LX. Once More Hugh Sings              460
+
+     LXI. Wanted, Hayle's Twins             469
+
+    LXII. Euthanasia                        478
+
+   LXIII. The Captain's Chair               493
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+_Ramsey_                                                _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                             FACING
+                                                               PAGE
+
+_"Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this
+boat now is right where you are standing--Phyllis"_            258
+
+_"My heavenly Father wouldn't 'a' had to call me in
+out of the storm"_                                             334
+
+_"For I believe that we belong to each other from the
+centre of our souls, by a fitness plain even to the
+eyes of your brothers"_                                        420
+
+
+
+GIDEON'S BAND
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE STEAMBOAT LEVEE
+
+
+Saturday, April, 1852. There was a fervor in the sky as of an August
+noon, although the clocks of the city would presently strike five.
+
+Dazzling white clouds, about to show the earliest flush of the sun's
+decline, beamed down upon a turbid river harbor, where the water was
+deep so close inshore that the port's unbroken mile of steamboat wharf
+nowhere stretched out into the boiling flood. Instead it merely lined
+the shore, the steamers packing in bow on with their noses to it, their
+sterns out in the stream, their fenders chafing each other's lower
+guards.
+
+New Orleans was very proud of this scene. Very prompt were her citizens,
+such as had travelled, to remind you that in many seaports vast
+warehouses and roofed docks of enormous cost thronged out so greedily to
+meet incoming craft that the one boat which you might be seeking you
+would find quite hidden among walls and roofs, and of all the rest of
+the harbor's general fleet you could see little or nothing. Not so on
+this great sun-swept, wind-swept, rain-swept, unswept steamboat levee.
+You might come up out of any street along that mile-wide front, and if
+there were a hundred river steamers in port a hundred you would behold
+with one sweep of the eye. Overhead was only the blue dome, in full view
+almost from rim to rim; and all about, amid a din of shouting,
+whip-cracking, scolding, and laughing, and a multitudinous flutter of
+many-colored foot-square flags, each marking its special lot of goods,
+were swarms of men--white, yellow, and black--trucking, tumbling,
+rolling, hand-barrowing, and "toting" on heads and shoulders a countless
+worth of freight in bags, barrels, casks, bales, boxes, and baskets.
+Hundreds of mules and drays came and went with this same wealth, and out
+beyond all, between wharf and open river, profiled on the eastern sky,
+letting themselves be unloaded and reloaded, stood the compacted,
+motionless, elephantine phalanx of the boats.
+
+The flood beneath them was up to the wharf's flooring, yet their low,
+light-draught hulls, with the freight decks that covered them doubled in
+carrying room by their widely overhanging freight guards, were hid by
+the wilderness of goods on shore. Hid also were their furnaces, boilers,
+and engines on the same deck, sharing it with the cargo. But all their
+gay upper works, so toplofty and frail, showed a gleaming white front to
+the western sun. You marked each one's jack-staff, that rose mast high
+from the unseen prow, and behind it the boiler deck, high over the
+boilers. Over the boiler deck was the hurricane roof, above that the
+officers' rooms, called the "texas." Above the texas was the
+pilot-house, and on either side, well forward of the pilot-house and
+towering abreast of each other and above all else--higher than the two
+soaring derrick posts at the two forward corners of the passenger and
+hurricane decks, higher even than the jack-staff's peak--stood the two
+great black chimneys.
+
+And what a populace teemed round and through all! Here was the Creole,
+there the New Englander. Here were men of oddest sorts from the
+Missouri, Ohio, and nearer and farther rivers. Here were the Irishman,
+the German, the Congo, Cuban, Choctaw, Texan, Sicilian; the Louisiana
+sugar-planter, the Mississippi cotton-planter, goat-bearded raftsmen
+from the swamps of Arkansas, flatboatmen from the mountains of Tennessee
+and Kentucky; the horse trader, the slave-driver, the filibuster, the
+Indian fighter, the circus rider, the circuit-rider, and men bound for
+the goldfields of California.
+
+More than half the boats, this April afternoon, flew from the jack-staff
+of each, to signify that it was her day to leave, a streaming burgee
+bearing her name. A big-lettered strip of canvas drawn along the front
+guards of her hurricane-deck told for what port she was "up," and the
+growing smoke that swelled from her chimneys showed that five was her
+time to back out.
+
+In the midst of the scene, opposite the head of Canal Street--the
+streets that run to the New Orleans levee run up-hill and get there head
+first--lay a boat which specially belongs to this narrative. A pictorial
+poster, down in every cafe and hotel rotunda of the town, called her
+"large, new, and elegant," and such she was in fair comparison with all
+the craft on all the sixteen thousand navigable miles of the vast river
+and its tributaries. Her goal was Louisville, more than thirteen hundred
+miles away. Her steam was up, a velvet-black pitch-pine smoke billowed
+from her chimneys, and her red-and-white burgee, gleaming upon it, named
+her the _Votaress_.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE "VOTARESS"
+
+
+Her first up-river trip! The crowd waiting on the wharf's apron to see
+her go was larger and included better types of the people than usual,
+for the _Votaress_ was the latest of the Courteney fleet, hence a rival
+of the Hayle boats, the most interesting fact that could be stated of
+anything afloat on Western waters.
+
+So young was she, this _Votaress_, so bridally fresh from her Indiana
+and Kentucky shipyards, that the big new bell in the mid-front of her
+hurricane roof shone in the low sunlight like a wedding jewel. Its
+parting strokes had sounded once but would sound twice again before she
+could cast off. Both pilots were in the lofty pilot-house, down from the
+breast-board of which a light line ran forward to the bell's tongue, but
+neither pilot touched the line or the helm. For the captain's use
+another cord from the bell hung over the hurricane deck's front and down
+to the boiler deck rail, but neither up there on the boiler deck nor
+anywhere near the bell on the roof above it was any captain to be seen.
+
+At the front angle of the roof's larboard rail a youth, quite alone,
+leaned against one of the tall derrick posts to get its shade. He was
+too short, square, and unanimated to draw much attention, although with
+a faint unconscious frown between widely parted brows his quiet eyes
+fell intently upon every detail of the lively scene below.
+
+The whole great landing lay beneath his glance, a vivid exposition of
+the vast, half-tamed valley's bounty, spoils, and promise; of its motley
+human life, scarcely yet to be called society, so lately and rudely
+transplanted from overseas; so bareboned, so valiantly preserved, so
+young yet already so titanic; so self-reliant, opinionated, and uncouth;
+so strenuous and materialistic in mind; so inflammable in emotions; so
+grotesque in its virtues; so violent in its excesses; so complacently
+oblivious of all the higher values of wealth; so giddied with the new
+wine of liberty and crude abundance; so open of speech, of heart, of
+home, and so blithely disdainful of a hundred risks of life, health, and
+property. And all this the young observer's glance took in with maybe
+more realization of it than might be looked for in one not yet
+twenty-one. Yet his fuller attention was for matters nearer and of much
+narrower compass.
+
+He saw the last bit of small freight come aboard and the last belated
+bill-lading clerk and ejected peddler go ashore. He noted by each
+mooring-post the black longshoreman waiting to cast off a hawser. He
+remarked each newcomer who idly joined the onlooking throng. Especially
+he observed each cab or carriage that hurried up to the wharf's front.
+He studied each of the alighting occupants as they yielded their effects
+to the antic, white-jacketed mulatto cabin-boys, behind whom they
+crossed the ponderous unrailed stage and vanished on their up-stairs way
+to the boiler deck, the cabin, and their staterooms. Had his mild
+scrutinizings been a paid service, they could hardly have been more
+thorough.
+
+By and by two or three things occurred in the same moment. A number of
+boats above Canal Street and several of lesser fame below sounded their
+third bell, cast off, and backed out into the stream. The many pillars
+of smoke widened across the heavens into one unrifted cloud with the
+sunbeams illumining its earthward side. Now it overhung the busy landing
+and now, at the river's first bend, it filled the tops of the dark mass
+of spars and cordage that densely lined the long curve of the harbor's
+up-town shipping.
+
+At the same time, while the foremost boats were still in sight, the two
+pilots in the pilot-house of the lingering _Votaress_ quietly took stand
+at right and left of the wheel with their eyes on a distant vehicle, a
+private carriage. It came swiftly out of Common Street and across the
+broad shell-paved levee. As quietly as they, the youth at the derrick
+post regarded it, and presently, looking back and up, he gave them a
+slight, gratified nod. Through the lines of onlookers the carriage swept
+close up to the stage and let down two aristocratic-looking men. The
+taller was full fifty years of age, the other as much as seventy-five,
+but both were hale and commanding.
+
+As they started aboard the younger glanced up brightly to the unsmiling
+youth at the roof's rail and then threw a gesture, above and beyond him,
+to the pilot-house. One of the pilots promptly sounded the bell. Down on
+the forecastle a dozen deck-hands, ordered by a burly mate, leaped to
+the stage and began, with half as many others who ran ashore on it, to
+heave it aboard. But a sharp "avast" stopped them, and four or five
+cabin-boys gambolled out on it ashore. A smart hack came whirling up in
+its own white shell dust, and a fledgling dandy of seventeen sprang down
+from the seat of his choice by the driver before the vehicle could stop
+or the white jackets strip it of its baggage.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+CERTAIN PASSENGERS
+
+
+From his dizzy outlook the older youth dropped his calm scrutiny upon
+the inner occupants as they alighted and followed the boy on board.
+First came a red-ringleted, fifteen-year-old sister, fairly
+good-looking, almost too free of glance, and--to her high-perched
+critic--urgently eligible to longer skirts. Behind her appeared an old,
+very black nurse in very blue calico and very white turban and bosom
+kerchief; and lastly a mother--of many children, one would have
+said--still perfect in complexion, gracefully rounded, and beautiful.
+
+This was the first time he on the hurricane deck had ever seen them, but
+he knew at once who they were and looked the closer on that account. The
+self-oblivious elation with which the slim lass gave her eyes and mind
+to everything except her own footing caused him to keep his chief watch
+on her. He even beckoned a black deck hand to do the same. Wherever her
+glance went her gay interest went with it, either in a soft
+soliloquizing laugh or in some demonstration less definite though more
+radiant; some sign of delight from her lips, her eyes, her brow, her
+springing step, dancing curls, or supple arms. The youth on the roof's
+edge deepened his frown. At a point on the stage where its sheer, naked
+sides spanned the narrow chasm through which the waters swept between
+boat and wharf, her feet strayed too near one perilous edge, and just
+then her eyes went up to him. The two glances had barely met when she
+tripped and staggered. With a dozen others aboard and ashore, he gave a
+start. She sent him a look of terror, then turned from deadly pale to
+rosy red and gasped her thanks to the smiling deckhand, whose clutch had
+saved her life. The next instant she was laughing elatedly to her
+horrified nurse, and so disappeared with her kindred on the lower deck
+and front stairs.
+
+The mellow boom of the third and last parting signal diverted the
+general mind, and a glance behind him showed the youth the close and
+welcome presence of that superior-looking man in answer to whose gesture
+the pilot had tolled the earlier bell. But this person was closely
+preoccupied. Now his capable glance ran aft along every marginal line of
+the boat, now it dropped below to where the big stage lay drawn in
+athwart the forward deck from guard to guard. Now he gave short, quiet
+orders to wharf and forecastle, now a single word or two to the
+pilot-house. Far below, the engine bells jingled. The bowline was in. A
+yeast of waters ran forward from the backing wheels, the breast line
+slacked away in fierce jerks, and the _Votaress_ began to depart.
+
+Meantime there was an odd stir on shore. A cab whirled up furiously and
+two more youths, shapely, handsome, and fashionable, twins beyond cavil
+and noticeably older than their twenty years, visibly rich in fine
+qualities but as visibly reckless as to what they did with them, sprang
+out, flushed and imperious, to wave the _Votaress_. One of her guards
+was still rubbing along the steamer beside her, but before the pair
+could dash aboard this other boat and half across her deck, a gap had
+opened, impossible to leap. They halted in rage as the more compact
+youth on the moving steamer's roof, catching their attention, pointed a
+good two miles up the river front. Yet what he said they would not have
+known had not her mate repeated from the forecastle:
+
+"Post forty-six! Drive up thah! We stop thah fo' a load of emigrants!"
+
+They fled back to the cab. Aboard the receding boat the ruthless engine
+bells jingled on; the broad waterside and the city behind it seemed,
+from her decks, to draw away into the western clouds, and the yellow
+river spread wide its shores in welcome to her swinging form. Now its
+mighty current seemed to quicken and quicken as she gradually overcame
+her down-stream drift, the ship-lined shores ceased to creep
+up-stream--began to creep down--and her black crew, standing close about
+the capstan, broke majestically into song:
+
+     "Oh, rock me, Julie, rock me."
+
+From the forecastle her swivel pealed, her burgee ran down the
+jack-staff, a soft, continuous tremor set in among all her parts, her
+scape-pipes ceased their alternating roars, her engines breathed quietly
+through her vast funnels, the flood spurted at her cutwater, white
+torrents leaped and chased each other from her fluttering wheels, her
+own breeze fanned every brow, and the _Votaress_ was under way.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE FIRST TWO MILES
+
+
+The youth whom we have called short, square, and so on crossed to the
+starboard derrick post. Several passengers had come up to the roof, and
+one who, he noticed, seemed, by the many kind glances cast upon her, to
+be already winning favor, was the tallish lass with the red curls.
+
+The nurse was still at her back. She drew close up beside him and stood
+in the wind that ruffled her hat and pressed her draperies against her
+form. Her servant betrayed a faint restiveness to be so near him, but
+the girl, watching the steamer's watery path as it seemed of its own
+volition to glide under the boat's swift tread, ignored him as
+completely as if he were a part of the woodwork. The very good-looking
+man who was "taking out" the boat returned from a short tour of the deck
+and halted by the great bell over the foremost skylights; but soon he
+moved away again in mild preoccupation. The maiden's frank scrutiny
+followed him a step or two and then turned squarely to the youth. Her
+attendant stirred uncomfortably and breathed some inarticulate protest,
+but in a tone of faultless composure the girl spoke out:
+
+"Is that the captain yonder?"
+
+"No," he said, equally composed, though busy thinking that but for his
+eye she would at this moment be lying, in all these dainty draperies, as
+deep beneath the boiling flood as she now stood above it. "That's not
+the captain."
+
+"Then why is he running the boat?"
+
+"He owns her."
+
+"Oh!" The girl's soft laugh was at herself. Presently--"Where's her
+captain?"
+
+"Ashore, in the hospital."
+
+"What's he got?"
+
+"Missy!" murmured the dark woman beseechingly.
+
+But missy gave her no heed. "Got cholera?" she ventured, "the Asiatic
+cholera?"
+
+"No, a broken leg."
+
+"Oh! Is that all he's got?"
+
+"No, he has another, not broken." The speaker was so solemn that, with
+mirth in every drop of her blood, the inquirer contrived to be grave,
+herself.
+
+"How'd he get it--I mean get it broken?"
+
+"He was superintending----"
+
+"And fell? When'd he fall?"
+
+"This afternoon, about----"
+
+"Where'd it happen?"
+
+"Down on the lower deck as he----"
+
+"Which is the lower deck?"
+
+"The deck you came aboard on."
+
+"They told me that was the freight deck!"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Then, why--?" She ceased, pondered, and spoke again: "Is there any deck
+lower than the lower deck?"
+
+"None."
+
+She mused once more: "Why--that's strange."
+
+"Yes," he said, "strange, but true."
+
+"Then how could the captain fall----" Again she ceased and yet again
+pondered: "Are the boilers--on the boiler deck?"
+
+"No, the boiler deck is just over the boilers."
+
+"Then why do they--" Once more she pondered.
+
+"The boilers," said the youth, "are down on the freight deck."
+
+The questioner brightened. "Do they ever put any freight on the boiler
+deck?" she asked.
+
+Before he could say yes, and without the slightest warning, a laugh
+burst from her tightened lips. He could not have called it unmusical and
+did not resent it, although he did regard it as without the slenderest
+excuse. Her eyes and brow, still confronting his in a distress of mirth,
+confessed the whim's forlorn senselessness, while his face returned not
+the smallest sign of an emotion. As the moment lengthened, the
+transport, so far from passing, spread through all her lithe form.
+Suddenly she turned aside, drew herself up, faced him again, and began
+to inquire, "Do they ever--" but broke down once more, fell upon the old
+woman's shoulder with a silvery tinkle, shook, hung limp, threw one foot
+behind her, and tapped the deck with her toe. A married couple drifting
+by, obviously players and of the best of their sort, enjoyed the
+picture.
+
+"Why, missy!" the nurse softly pleaded, "yo' plumb disgracin' yo'seff!
+Stop! Stop!"
+
+"I can't!" whined the girl, between her paroxysms, "till he stops
+looking like _that_." But as the youth was merely looking like himself
+he saw no reason why he should stop.
+
+To avoid the current the steamer suddenly began to run so close beside
+the moored ships that the continuous echo of all her sounds--the flutter
+of her great wheels, the seething of waters, the varied activities of
+her lower deck--came back and up to the three voyagers with a nearness
+and minuteness that startled the girl and drew her glance; but just as
+her dancing eyes returned reproachfully to the youth the big bell at her
+back pealed its signal for landing and she sprang almost off her feet,
+cast herself into the nurse's bosom, and laughed more inexcusably than
+ever.
+
+The woman put an arm about her shoulder and drew her a few steps back
+along the rail to where four or five others were gathered. The young man
+gave all his attention downward across the starboard bow. The engine
+bells jingled far below, the wheels stopped, the giant chimneys ceased
+their majestic breathing, and the boat came slowly abreast of a ship
+standing high out of the water.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+RAMSEY HAYLE
+
+
+The flag of Holland floated aft of a deck crowded with a sun-tanned and
+oddly clad multitude. The Dutch sailors lowered their fenders between
+the ship's side and the boat's guards, lines were made fast, a light
+stage was run down from the ship's upper deck to the boat's forecastle,
+and in single file, laden with their household goods, the silent aliens
+were hurried aboard the _Votaress_ and to their steerage quarters, out
+of sight between and behind her engines.
+
+Up on the boiler and hurricane decks her earlier passengers found,
+according to their various moods and capacities, much entertainment in
+the scene. The girl with the nurse laughed often, of course. Yet her
+laugh bore a certain note of sympathy and appreciation which harmonized
+out of it all quality that might have hurt or abashed the most diffident
+exile. Childlike as she was, it was plain she did not wholly fail to see
+into the matter's pathetic depths.
+
+The youth at the derrick post, scrutinizing each immigrant that passed
+under his eye, could hear at his back a refined voice making kind
+replies to her many questions. He knew it as belonging to the older of
+the two men for whose coming aboard the _Votaress_ had delayed her
+start. Between the girl's whimsical queries he heard him indulgently
+explain that the Dutch ensign's red, white, and blue were no theft from
+us Americans and that at various periods he had lived in four or five
+great cities under those three colors as flown and loved by four great
+nations.
+
+Amazing! She could not query fast enough. "First city?"
+
+First in London, where he had been born and reared.
+
+"And then?"
+
+Then in Amsterdam, where he had been married.
+
+"And then?"
+
+Then for ten years in Philadelphia.
+
+"And then?"
+
+Why, then, for forty years more, down to that present 1852, in New
+Orleans, while nevertheless, save for the last ten, he had sojourned
+much abroad in many ports and capitals, but mainly in Paris.
+
+The girl's note of mirth softly persisted, irrepressible but
+self-oblivious, a mere accent of her volatile emotions, most frequent
+among which was a delighted wonder in looking on the first man of
+foreign travel, first world-citizen, with whom she had ever awarely come
+face to face. So guessed the youth, well pleased.
+
+Presently, as if she too had guessed something, she asked if the boat's
+master was not this man's son.
+
+He now running it? Yes, he was.
+
+"And was he, too, born in England?--or in Holland?"
+
+"In Philadelphia, 1803."
+
+"And did he, too, marry a--Dutch--wife?"
+
+"No, a young lady of Philadelphia, in 1832; an American."
+
+"Did you ever see Andrew Jackson?"
+
+"Yes, I knew him."
+
+"Were you in the battle of New Orleans?"
+
+"Yes, I commanded a battery."
+
+"Did you know anybody else besides Jackson? Who else?"
+
+"Oh, I knew them all; Claiborne, Livingston, Duncan, Touro, Sheppard,
+Grimes, the two Lafittes, Dominique You, Coffee, Villere, Roosevelt----"
+
+"I know about Roosevelt; he brought the first steamboat down the
+Mississippi. My grandfather knew him. Did you ever have any
+grandchildren?"
+
+Yes, he had had several, but before she could inquire what had become of
+them the attention of every one was arrested by the second approach of
+the cab bearing the two hotspurs who had missed the boat at Canal
+Street. All the way up from there their labored gallop, by turns hid,
+seen, and hid again, had amused many of her passengers, and now, as the
+pair shouldered their angry way across the ship's crowded deck and down
+the steep gang-plank, a general laugh from the boat's upper rails galled
+them none the less for being congratulatory. So handsome and
+dangerous-looking that the laugh died, they halted midway of the narrow
+incline, impeding the stream of immigrants at their heels, and sent up a
+fierce stare in response to the propitiatory smiles of the boat's
+commander and the youth standing near him. Only one of the twins spoke,
+but the eyes of his brother vindictively widened till they gleamed a
+flaming concurrence in his fellow's high-keyed, oath-bound threat:
+
+"We'll get even with you for this, Captain John Courteney. We warn you
+and all your tribe."
+
+The old nurse on the roof, to whose arm her slim charge was clinging
+with both hands, moaned audibly: "Oh, Lawd, Mahs' Julian! Mahs' Lucian!"
+
+The girl laughed, laughed so merrily and convincingly--as if to laugh
+was the one reasonable thing to do--that most of the passengers did
+likewise. Even the grave youth whose back was to her inwardly granted
+that the lamentable habit could make itself useful in an awkward
+juncture. While he so thought, he observed the unruffled owner of the
+_Votaress_ motion to the chagrined young men to clear the way by coming
+aboard, and as they haughtily did so he heard the commander's father say
+to the girl still at his side:
+
+"I believe those are your brothers?"
+
+"Yes," she responded, for once without mirth, "my brothers," and the
+peace-loving but conscientious nurse added with a modest pretence of
+pure soliloquy:
+
+"One dess as hahmless as de yetheh."
+
+The bell boomed. The last transatlantic stranger shuffled aboard, wan
+and feeble. Now to one wheel, now to the other, the pilot jingled to
+back away, then to stop, then to go ahead, then to both for full speed,
+and once more the beautiful craft moved majestically up the river. Her
+course shifted from south to west, the shores for a time widened apart,
+the low-roofed city swung and sank away backward, groves of orange and
+magnolia grew plainer to the eye than suburban streets, and the course
+changed again, from west to north. Soon on the right, behind a high
+levee and backed by a sombre swamp forest, appeared the live-oaks and
+gardens of Carrollton, and presently on the left came Nine-mile Point
+and another bend of the river westward. As the boat's prow turned, the
+waters, from shore to shore, reflected the low sun so dazzlingly that
+nearly all the passengers on the roof moved aft, whence, ravished by the
+ascending odors of supper, they went below.
+
+But the handsome old man, the sedate youth, the girl, the nurse,
+remained. Captain Courteney came along the deck and crossed toward the
+four, eyed from head to foot by the girl even after he had stopped near
+her. But her gaze drew no glance from him.
+
+"Well, Hugh," he said.
+
+The youth turned with a smile that bettered every meaning in his too
+passive countenance: "Well, father?"
+
+"Oh!" breathed the startled girl. She looked eagerly into the three male
+faces, beamed round upon her dark attendant, and then looked again at
+grandfather, father, and son. "Why, of course!" she softly laughed.
+
+"John," said the older man, "this young lady is a daughter of Gideon
+Hayle."
+
+"I thought as much." The benign captain lifted his hat and accepted and
+dropped again the dainty hand proffered him with childish readiness.
+"Then you're the youngest of seven children."
+
+Her reply was a gay nod. Presently, with a merry glint between her long
+lashes, she said: "I'm Ramsey."
+
+The captain's smile grew: "That must be great fun."
+
+The girl looked from one to another, puzzled.
+
+"Why, just to be Ramsey," he explained. "Isn't it?"
+
+She gave him a wary, sidewise glance and looked out over the water. "My
+three married sisters all live near this river," she musingly said; "one
+in Louisiana, two in Mississippi." Her sidelong glance repeated itself:
+"I know who it would be fun to be--for me--or for anybody!" Her eyes
+widened as her brother's had done, though in an amiable, elated way.
+
+"Your father?" asked the captain.
+
+She all but danced: "How'd you know?"
+
+"I saw him--in your eyes," was the placid reply. "Your father and I, and
+your grandfather Hayle, and this gentleman here----"
+
+"Ya-ass, ya-ass!" drawled the nurse in worshipping reminiscence, and
+Ramsey laughed to Hugh, and all the while the captain persisted: "We've
+built and owned rival boats----"
+
+"Fawty yeah'!" murmured the nurse. "Fawty yeah'!"
+
+"Yes, yes!" chirruped the girl. "Pop-a's up the river now, building the
+_Paragon_! We're on our way to join him!"
+
+"Law', missy," gently chid the nurse, made anxious by a new approach
+which Ramsey was trying to ignore, "dese gen'lemens knows all dat."
+
+Ramsey twitched her shoulders and waist. Her lips parted for a bright
+question, but it was interrupted. The interrupters were the restless
+twins, whose tread sounded peremptory even on the painted canvas of the
+deck, and the fineness of whose presence was dimmed only by the hardy
+lawlessness which, in their own eyes, was their crowning virtue.
+
+"Ramsey," drawled one of them, who somehow seemed the more forceful of
+the two. He spoke as if amazed at his own self-restraint. She whisked
+round to him. He made his eyes heavy: "Have you had any proper
+introduction to these--gentlemen?"
+
+A white-jacket, holding a large hand-bell by its tongue, bowed low
+before the captain, received a nod, and minced away. With suspended
+breath the girl stared an instant on her brother, then on the captain,
+and then on his father; but as her eyes came round to Hugh his solemnity
+caught her unprepared, and, with every curl shaking, she broke out in a
+tinkling laugh so straight from the heart, so innocent, and so helpless
+that even the frightened old woman chuckled. Ramsey wheeled, snatched
+the nurse round, and hurried her off to a stair, hanging to her arm,
+tiptoeing, dancing, and carolling in the rhythm of the supper-bell
+below:
+
+     "Ringading tingalingaty, ringadang ding,
+      Ringading tingalingaty, ringadang ding."
+
+Red and dumb, the questioner glared after them until, near one of the
+great paddle-boxes, they vanished below. But his brother, the one who
+had the trick of widening his eyes, found words. "Captain Courteney," he
+said, "by what right does your son--or even do you, sir--take the
+liberty, on the hurricane-deck of a steamboat, to scrape acquaintance
+with an unprotec----?"
+
+The captain had turned his back. "Hugh," he affably said, "will you see
+what these young gentlemen want?" And then to the older man: "Come,
+father, let's go to supper." They went.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+HAYLE'S TWINS
+
+
+Hugh was grateful for this task in diplomacy, yet wondered what mess he
+should make of it.
+
+He was here for just such matters, let loose from tutor and books for
+the summer, to study the handling of a steamboat, one large part of
+which, of course, was handling the people aboard. Both pilots, up
+yonder, knew this was his role. Already he had tried his unskill--or let
+"Ramsey" try it--and had learned a point or two. She had shown him, at
+least twice, what value there might be in a well-timed, unmanageable
+laugh. But a well-timed, unmanageable laugh is purely a natural gift. If
+it was to come to his aid, it would have to come of itself. Lucian, the
+twin who had asked the last question, turned upon him.
+
+Hugh smilingly lifted a pacifying hand. "You're entirely mistaken," he
+said. "Nobody's tried to scrape acquaintance." In the midst of the last
+two words, sure enough, there broke from him a laugh which to him seemed
+so honest, friendly, well justified, and unmanageable that he stood
+astounded when his accuser blazed with wrath.
+
+"You lie, damn you!" was the answering cry. "And then you laugh in my
+face! We saw you--all three of you--just now!" The note was so high that
+one of the pilots began to loiter down from the pilot-house.
+
+Hugh crimsoned. "I see," he said, advancing step by step as the frenzied
+boy drew back. "You really don't want a peaceable explanation, at all,
+do you?"
+
+The other twin, Julian, arrested his brother's back step by a touch and
+spoke for him: "No, sir, we don't. You can't 'peaceably explain' foul
+treatment, you damned fool, and that's all we Hayles have had of you
+Courteneys this day. We want satisfaction! We don't ask it, we'll take
+it! And we'll get it"--here a ripping oath--"if we have to wait for it
+ten years!"
+
+This time Hugh paled. "It needn't take ten minutes," he said. "Come down
+to the freight deck, into the engine room, and I'll give both of you so
+much of it that you won't know yourselves apart."
+
+"One more insult!" cried Lucian, the boy who so often widened his eyes,
+while Julian, narrowing his lids, said in a tone suddenly icy:
+
+"That classes you, sir, on the freight deck."
+
+"We don't fight deck hands," said Lucian.
+
+"Nor emigrants!" sneered his brother. "And when we fight gentlemen we
+fight with weapons, sir, as gentlemen should."
+
+Hugh's awkward laugh came again, and the pilot who had come down from
+beside his fellow at the wheel inquired:
+
+"What's the fraction here?"
+
+"Oh, nothing," said Hugh.
+
+"Everything!" cried Julian. "And you'll find it so the first time we get
+a fair chance at you--any of you!"
+
+The pilot was amiable. "Hold on," he suggested. "See here, my young
+friend, what do you reckon your father'd do to this young man"--touching
+Hugh--"if he should rip around on a Hayle boat as you're doing here?"
+
+"That's a totally different matter, sir!"
+
+The pilot smiled. "Don't you know Gideon Hayle would put him ashore at
+the first wood-yard?"
+
+"He'd be wrong if he didn't," gravely said Hugh.
+
+"Do you mean that for a threat?--either of you?" snapped Lucian.
+
+"No," said the pilot, "I was merely trying to reason with you. Come,
+now, go down to supper. It's a roaring good one: crawfish gumbo, riz
+biscuits, fresh butter, fried oysters, and coffee to make your hair
+curl. Go on, both of you. You've had--naturally enough--last day in the
+city--a few juleps too many, but that's all right. A square meal, a
+night's rest, and you'll wake up in the morning with Baton Rouge and all
+the sugar lands astern, the big cotton plantations on both sides of us,
+you feeling at home with everybody, everybody at home with you."
+
+"Many thanks," sneered Julian. "We'll go to our meals self-invited. Good
+evening."
+
+Hugh granted the pair a slight nod. As they went, Lucian, looking back
+over Julian's shoulder with eyes bigger than ever, said: "We'll wake up
+in the morning without the least change of feeling for this boat's
+owners, their relatives, or their hirelings."
+
+The relative and the hireling glanced sharply at each other. But then
+Hugh said quietly: "A man can't quarrel with boys, Mr. Watson."
+
+"No," mused the pilot aloud as he watched the pair go below, "but he can
+wait. They'll soon be men."
+
+"And this be all forgotten," said Hugh.
+
+"Not by them!" rejoined Mr. Watson. "They'll remember it ef they have to
+tattoo it--on their stomachs."
+
+"I should have managed them better," said Hugh.
+
+"Lord, boy, nobody's ever managed _them_ sence they was born." The
+speaker sauntered back toward the pilot-house, coining rhetoric in his
+mind to relieve his rage. "It's only the long-looked-for come at last,"
+he thought, "and come _toe_ last." As he resumed the bench behind his
+partner his wrath at length burst out:
+
+"Well, of all the hell-fry I ever come across----!"
+
+"And they 'llow to keep things fryin'," said his mate.
+
+Which made Watson even more rhetorical. "Yes, it's their only salvation
+from their rotten insignificance." He meditated. "And yet--hnn!" He was
+about to say something much kindlier when suddenly he laughed down from
+a side window upon the twins returned. "Well, I'll swear!"
+
+"We heard, sir," said Julian with a lordly bow.
+
+"And you," chimed Lucian, "shall hear later." Rather aimlessly they
+turned and again disappeared, and after a moment or two the man at the
+wheel asked, with playful softness, with his eyes on the roof below:
+
+"D'you reckon yon other two will ever manage to offset the tricks o'
+Hayle's twins?"
+
+His partner rose and looked down. The old nurse and the third Hayle
+brother stood side by side watching the beautiful low-lying plantations
+unbrokenly swing by behind the embankments of the eastern shore. The
+level fields of young sugar-cane reposed in a twilight haze, while the
+rows of whitewashed slave cabins, the tall red chimneys of the great
+sugar-houses, and the white-pillared verandas of the masters' dwellings
+embowered in their evergreen gardens, still showed clear in the last
+lights of day. But the query was not as to the nurse and the boy. Near
+them stood Ramsey, with arms akimbo, once more conversing with Hugh.
+
+"Oh!" said the glowing Watson. "If that's to be the game, Ned, I'm in
+it, sir! I'm in it!"
+
+"Just's well, Watsy. You're in the twins' game anyhow."
+
+Meantime Ramsey's talk flowed on like brook water, Hugh's meeting it
+like the brook's bowlders:
+
+"Guess who's at the head of the table!"
+
+"Who? my grandfather?"
+
+"No, he's 'way down at the men's end."
+
+"Well, then, father?"
+
+"Yes! And who's sitting next him--on his right?"
+
+"Your mother?"
+
+"Yes! And guess who's going to sit at the head of the children's table.
+You!"
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+The reply was chanted: "I asked the steward to put you there." She
+laughed and glanced furtively at her unheeding brother. Then her eyes
+came back: "And I'm to be the first on your right!" She spread her arms
+like wings.
+
+"Why, Miss Ramsey!" protested the nurse.
+
+Hugh blushed into his limp, turn-down collar. "I don't believe you'd
+better," he said.
+
+"I will!" said Ramsey, lifting her chin.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SUPPER
+
+
+Deep in love with the river life was Ramsey.
+
+She had tried it now, thoroughly, for an hour, and was sure! The
+twenty-four hours' trip down from her plantation home, on the first boat
+that happened along, a rather poor thing, had been her first experience
+and a keen pleasure; but this, on the _Votaress_, was rapture.
+
+One effect was that her mind teemed with family history. Her grizzly,
+giant father, whom she so rarely saw, so vehemently worshipped, son of a
+wild but masterful Kentucky mountaineer who had spent his life floating
+"broadhorns" and barges down the Ohio and Mississippi, counted it one of
+the drawbacks of his career that so few of his kindred cared for the
+river. One of his brothers was an obscure pilot somewhere on the
+Cumberland or Tennessee. Another, once a pilot, then a planter, and
+again a pilot, had been lost on a burning boat, she knew not how nor
+when. The third was a planter in the Red River lowlands. Her three
+sisters, as we have heard her tell, were planters' wives, and the
+father's home, when ashore, was on a plantation of his Creole wife's
+inheritance, four or five miles in behind the old river town of Natchez.
+
+There Ramsey had been born and had grown up, knowing the great
+Mississippi only as a remote realm of poetry and adventure out of which
+at intervals her mighty father came to clasp to his broad breast her
+sweet, glad mother, tarry a few days or hours, and be gone again. She,
+herself, had seldom seen it even from the Natchez bluffs, yet she could
+name all its chief boats apart, not by sight but by the long, soft
+bellow of their steam-whistles, wafted inland. But now, at last, she was
+a passenger on its waters. As Hugh, so well grown up as to breadth and
+gravity, took his seat at the head of the dazzling board that filled the
+whole middle third of the cabin, and as she sat down next him with all
+the other adolescents and juveniles in places of inferior dignity, the
+affair seemed the most significant as well as most brilliant in which
+she had ever taken part.
+
+Most significant, because to love the river for itself would be to find
+herself easily and lastingly first in her father's love and favor--her
+only wish in this world. And most brilliant: without an angle or
+partition the cabin extended between the two parallel lines of
+staterooms running aft through the boat's entire length from boiler deck
+to stern guards. Its richly carpeted floor gently dipped amidships and
+as gently rose again to the far end, where you might see the sofas and
+piano of that undivided part sanctified to the ladies. Its whole course
+was dazzlingly lighted with chandeliers of gold bronze and crystal that
+forever quivered, glittered, and tinkled to the tremor of the boat's
+swift advance. It was multitudinously pilastered, gleamingly
+white-painted and shellacked, profusely gilded and pictorially panelled,
+and it bewilderingly reflected itself and Ramsey from mirrors wide or
+narrow wherever mirrors wide or narrow could be set in.
+
+A new decorum came into her bearing. She ceased to ask questions. She
+waited for them to be put to her--from the head of the table--and smiled
+where an hour earlier she would have laughed. Above all, she felt in her
+spirit the same dreamy strangeness she had so lately felt in her bodily
+frame when the boat first began to move: a feeling as if the young
+company about her were but stayers behind on a shore from which she was
+beginning to be inexorably borne away. The wide river of a world's life,
+to which the rillet of her own small existence had been carelessly
+winding, was all at once clearly in sight. She could almost have written
+verse! She yearned to tell her whole history, but not one personal
+question could she lure from Hugh. Silently she recalled the story of
+her Creole grandmother, married at fifteen--her own present age. That
+young lady had met her future husband just this way on Roosevelt's
+famous _New Orleans_, earliest steamboat on the Mississippi. But there
+sat Hugh, as square, as solid, and as incurious as an upended bale of
+cotton. And still she kept her manners.
+
+It was but the custom of the time and region that the most honored guest
+of the _Votaress_, wife of her owner's most formidable competitor, with
+her family, not only should enjoy her journey wholly without cost, but
+that she should receive every attention courtesy could offer. The heat
+of the contest counted for nothing. And so, while Ramsey ate and talked
+with Hugh, his grandfather, near by in the ladies' cabin, at her left
+and at Hugh's back, conversed with her mother on a sofa. It was a
+heavenly hour. The resplendent boat kept her speed with no inward sign
+of her ceaseless ongoing except the tremor of her perfect frame, the
+flutter of her hundred-footed tread, and the tinkle and prismatic
+twinkle of her pendent glass, all responsively alternating with the deep
+breathings of her stacks, and with no sign of her frequent turnings but
+the softly audible creepings of her steering-gear.
+
+While never failing duly to receive and return Hugh's rather stiff
+attentions, and while doing superb justice to the repast, Ramsey, with
+side glances from her large, unconscious eyes emotionally enriched by
+long auburn lashes, easily and with great zest contemplated her mother's
+charming complexion, so lily-white and shell pink for a Creole matron,
+as well as the lovely confidingness of her manner, so childlike yet so
+wise. It was not for her to know that her mother, while hanging on every
+word of the courtly old man, was closely observing both her and Hugh.
+
+The grandfather, too, her blue-and-auburn glances took in sidewise, as
+their closer scrutiny had earlier done pointblank on the hurricane-deck.
+He was small, unmuscular, clean-shaven, erect, placid. She noted again
+his snowy, waving hair, thin only on his pink crown. It shone like silk.
+He still kept a soft flush of unimpaired health and an air of inner
+cleanness equal to that which showed outwardly from gaitered shoes to
+the bell-crowned beaver in his hand. She observed the wide cambric
+ruffle that ran down his much-displayed, much-pleated shirt-front. His
+stiff, high stock was tied with a limp white bow-knot. His standing
+collar covered half of either cheek. He wore a jewelled breastpin and a
+heavy gold fob-chain and seal. In his too delicate hand, along with the
+beaver and his gloves, was a stout, gold-headed cane, and from his coat
+skirt his handkerchief painstakingly peeped out behind. All of which
+seemed quite natural on him and well related to the highly attractive
+attire of the lady beside him.
+
+Yet suddenly Ramsey had a painful misgiving. Hugh was remarking upon
+some matter on the other side of the world, when she asked him as
+abruptly as a boat might strike a snag: "Is your grandfather a Whig?"
+
+"He is," said Hugh. They laid up their napkins.
+
+"Oh!" sighed Ramsey, but then laughed. "Is your father a Whig, too?"
+
+"Yes, my father, too."
+
+"Not a Henry Clay Whig?" she hopefully prompted.
+
+"Yes, a Henry Clay Whig yet."
+
+Self-consciously she dropped her head over the back of her chair to be
+rid of her curls. "My father," she musingly observed, "is a Democrat."
+
+"Yet we can be friends," said Hugh, "can't we?" wondering, when he had
+asked, why they need be.
+
+Ramsey did not say. With her chin in her collar she looked herself over
+carefully while she brokenly remarked, "All our men folks--four
+men--three boys--are--red-hot Democrats."
+
+But on the last word she checked and hearkened, and they smiled together
+at the far-away whistle of another steamer, deep-toned, mellowed by
+distance, and long sustained.
+
+"That's a Courteney boat," quietly began Hugh, but Ramsey was up and
+off.
+
+"_The Empress!_" she called to her mother as she flew.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+QUESTIONS
+
+
+Out forward of the texas and close beside the great bell, Ramsey halted,
+alone in the boundless starlight and rippling breeze on the cabin roof.
+The stately _Votaress_, with her towering funnels lost in the upper
+night, was running well inshore under a point, wrapped in a world-wide
+silence broken only by the placid outgo of her own vast breath, the soft
+rush of her torrential footsteps far below, and the answering rustle of
+the nearer shore. Even on that side the dark land confessed no outline
+save the low tree tops of two or three plantation-house groves, from
+each of which shone a lighted window or two, tinier and lonelier than a
+glowworm.
+
+Across the point, between its groves, the flood revealed itself at
+intervals in pale shimmerings, and just beyond one of these gleams, in
+mid-river, shone the nearing boat, her countless lights merged into a
+single sheen brokenly repeated in the water beneath her. Hugh came to
+the girl's side at a moment when a wood on the point's extreme end
+concealed the steamer's approach; but in the next the fleet comer swept
+out of hiding, an empress in truth to Ramsey, jewelled, from furnace
+doors to texas roof, with many-colored lights as if in coronation robes.
+
+"That is how we look to her," said Hugh.
+
+But his words were lost. With a startled laugh the girl shrank low over
+the bell, clutching it as if a whirlwind had struck them, while its
+single, majestic peal thundering, "I pass to starboard, hail! farewell!"
+drowned speech and mind in its stupendous roar. Mirth, too, was drowned
+in awe. And now the vast din ceased, and now the _Empress_, every moment
+more resplendent, responded, first with her bell, then with the long,
+solemn halloo of her whistle, and presently with huzzas from all her
+glittering decks as she passed within a cable's length.
+
+Ramsey gazed entranced. Not until the fading vision had dwindled down
+and around the great bend did her tread realize again the quivering
+deck, or her sight reawaken to the wonder of the ever coming, parting,
+passing flood, its prostrate, phantom shores, and the starry hosts and
+illimitable deeps of the sky. Even then she was but half-way back to
+earth, unconscious that she had stepped down forward to the captain's
+chair and into a group including Hugh and his grandfather, her mother
+and youngest brother.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, turning, "it's as if--" and found herself face to face
+not with Hugh but his father.
+
+"As if--what?" smilingly asked the boat's master.
+
+"As if," she said more softly, "we'd left one world and were hunting
+another."
+
+His smile grew. Her own resented it. "I know what you're thinking," she
+said, and glanced away. Her curls twitched, her chin tilted, and she
+sent down from it one of those visible waves that ended at her feet, as
+if they were the cracker of the whip. When he spoke, her eyes came back
+at him sidelong.
+
+"I was thinking only," he rejoined, "that at your age it's always as if
+we'd just left one world and were seeking another."
+
+Her eyes--and lashes--were sceptical. "Weren't you going to say it would
+seem more so if we should blow up?"
+
+"No," he laughed, "nothing like it."
+
+She began absently to scrutinize his entire dress. It was like the old
+man's though without the jewelry and ruffles. "Were you ever in an
+explosion?" she asked. The words came of themselves. She was backsliding
+from her table decorum.
+
+"No," he replied, "I was never in an explosion."
+
+"Ah, my child!" broke in the mother, "questions again? And even to
+Captain Courteney?"
+
+Ramsey laughed, gave the deck a wilful scuff, and demanded of the
+captain: "Were you ever on a burning boat?"
+
+Madame Hayle flinched, gasped, and drew her from him as he replied:
+"Yes--once--I was."
+
+The mother started again. "There!" she cried; "so! you 'ave it! Now,
+go"--she laughingly pushed the querist--"go, talk with Hugh--allong with
+yo' brotheh."
+
+The girl, as she backed away, turned to the grandfather: "Was Hugh on
+the boat--when it burned?"
+
+Her mother smiled with new pain, but while the captain bowed himself
+away the old man replied: "Come, Miss Ramsey, sit down with me and I'll
+tell you the story--if we may, madam?--Hugh--some chairs, will you?"
+
+Ramsey sprang to Hugh's aid, but her brother had a mind for mutiny. "You
+told me," he accused his mother, "that I could go watch them play
+cards!"
+
+"Yes?" she asked in a pretty irony; "well, then, of co'se, sisteh or no
+sisteh, you muz' instan'ly go!" The steady tinkle of the sister's
+laughter as she passed with a chair provoked her own: "Yes, go! Me, I'll
+rimmain with her till Joy"--the nurse--"ritturn from suppeh."
+
+The boy went, flinging back for a last word: "You want to hear the story
+as bad as Ramsey does!"
+
+"'Tis true!" she brightly said to the old gentleman. "Since all those
+nine year', me, I've want' to hear the Courteney side of that!"--little
+supposing that this was what neither she nor Ramsey would then or ever
+quite lay hold upon.
+
+"No," laughed the irrelevant girl to the old man, "you sit here." She
+faced him up-stream, her mother on his "stabboard," as she said, herself
+on his "labboard," and Hugh on her left, "labboardest of all." But--to
+Hugh--"now, wait--wait! If I'm on your stabboard--how can you be--on my
+lab'--? Oh, yes, I see!" She dropped into her chair and, to Hugh's great
+weariness, laughed till her curls fell on her cheeks, larboard and
+starboard by turns.
+
+Yet she ceased sooner than any one had hoped and the four sat silent
+while several ladies sauntered past on the arms of escorts, all highly
+entertained to see such cordiality between any Hayles and the
+Courteneys. One trio that paused near by to catch some Hayle or
+Courteney utterance praised aloud the enchantment of the night and of
+the boat's speed, and as they strolled on again, having caught nothing,
+Ramsey breathed softly to the old man:
+
+"They can't describe it! Nobody can! I've tried!"
+
+Through four or five breathings of the giant chimneys she waited for the
+story she was not to hear, and at length herself broke silence. "I
+think," she said, "this boat is the most wonderful thing in the world."
+
+No one rejoined that it was or was not. "Don't you?" she airily
+challenged the "labboardest of all," defensively letting herself realize
+how nearly a woman she was, how merely a boy was he.
+
+"It's very wonderful," replied Hugh indulgently, as one so nearly a man
+should to one so merely a child. "I've never seen anything in this world
+that wasn't."
+
+"Neither have I!" cried the girl and clapped her hands.
+
+In that moment, for the first time, each thought how admirable the
+other, as yet so absurd, was--some day--probably--going--to be, and
+right there arose between them a fellowship more potent than either
+would recognize for a length of hours or days which is here best left
+unstated. Their two seniors saw; saw, but kept still--_mais pourquoi
+non?_--and why not?--while the great steamer breathed on, quivered on,
+breathed and quivered, on and on.
+
+Ramsey transiently forgot them. "Do you, too," she asked her
+"labboardest," "feel yourself widen out of yourself and down and round
+into all this wonderful boat till you are it and it's all--you?"
+
+"Yes," Hugh confessed, and they in turn were still, even though the
+seniors resumed converse, one mildly telling which sugar estates along
+the shore had been whose and the other recounting how their heirs had
+intermarried.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+SITTING SILENT
+
+
+Thus they sat, Hugh and Ramsey, not recognizing that sitting silent is a
+symptom.
+
+They sat and together felt their consciousness, his and hers, wing and
+wing, widen beyond their own frames to a mightier embodiment in this
+great cloud-white structure breasting the air that cooled their brows
+and cleaving unseen the flood so far beneath them. Together in this
+greater self they felt the headway of the long, low hull, the prodigious
+heart glow of the hungry fires, the cyclopean push of steam in eight
+vast boilers, the pulsing click and travail of the engines--whisper of
+valve and cylinder, noiseless in-plunge and out-glide of shining
+rods--the ten-foot stroke of either shaft and equal sweep of crank, the
+nimble beat of paddle-wheels and tumble of their cataracts, the tranquil
+creep of tiller-ropes, and the compelling swing and sage guidance of the
+helm.
+
+In this vaster consciousness, by a partnership which had to be tacit or
+instantly perish, they easily lifted and carried the abounding freight,
+of every form and substance, destined for the feeding, apparelling, or
+equipment of thousands awaiting it in homes and families whose strivings
+and fortunes helped to make that universal wonder of things which kept
+Hugh grave and Ramsey laughing. Especially the teeming human life of the
+great craft did these two jointly draw into this magnified self. They
+drew on deck-hands, mates, watchmen, firemen, engineers, and strikers,
+each with some aspiration and some appetite. They drew in stewards,
+cooks, chambermaids, and cabin-boys, every one with yearnings and
+sacrifices; pilots, clerks, and mud clerks, full of histories and
+dreams. Down in dim spaces behind the engines and between the two wheels
+they drew in the immigrant deck passengers, so mutely sad for the
+distant homes behind them, so mutely hopeful and fearful for the distant
+homes before. And on the deck above these exiles they took in the cabin
+passengers--ladies who told their lives over their knitting or
+embroidery in floods of lamplight and the cushioned ease of feminine
+seclusion; children here and there battling against sleep or yielding to
+it in stateroom berths; the ruder sex at card-tables in the forward
+cabin--from which, oddly, the twins were refraining; three or four
+tipplers at the fragrant bar, and one or two readers under the
+chandeliers. Outside, scores of non-readers sat in tilted chairs, their
+heels breast-high on the guard-rails and their minds tobacco-lulled to a
+silent content with the breezy lanternlight of the boiler deck, the
+occasional passing of a downward-bound flatboat or steamer, the gradual
+overhauling of some craft that had backed out earlier at New Orleans,
+and the wide, slow oscillations of the unbounded starlight overhanging
+land and flood.
+
+These too the young pair included. All these were parts of their blended
+consciousness as the alert Ramsey noticed that the grandfather's talk
+had turned upon Hugh and boats.
+
+"He and the _Quakeress_ were the same age," he was remarking, when
+Ramsey's laugh jingled.
+
+"Both," she broke in, "built the same year!" Her curls switched backward
+at the old man. She faced Hugh. "Where were you born?"
+
+But he only signed for her not to interrupt. In the dim light she made a
+wry face at him and jingled again while her mother said: "On the
+_Quakerezz_!--end of trial trip!--whiles landing at New Orleans! Me, I
+was there, ad the landingg! Yes! on the boat of my 'usband, the
+_Conqueror_--also trial trip--arrive' since only one hour biffo'!"
+
+Ramsey, with her eyes roaming over Hugh, faintly kept up her laugh, yet
+parallel with it her mother managed to continue: "Yes, that was in
+eighteen-thirty-three, Janawary. Because that was the winter when
+Jackson he conquer' Clay in the election and conquer' Calhoun in the
+nullification, and tha'z the cause why my 'usband he name' his boat the
+_Conqueror_. Ah, veree well I rimember that; how the _Quakerezz_ she
+came cre-eepingg in, out of that fog, an' like the fog so still an'
+white, cloze aggains' the _Conqueror_. And the firz' news they pazz----"
+
+The old nurse reappeared, laid thin shawls on the mother and daughter,
+and sat down on the deck close below Ramsey.
+
+"Firz' news they pazz," resumed the speaker, "'tis that Captain
+Courteney he's got with him his wife, from Philadelphia, and----"
+
+Ramsey broke in merrily: "Was _she_ the Quakeress? Was the _Quakeress_
+named for her?"
+
+"Yes, and she's juz' have, they say, a li'l' son! An' my 'usband he
+di'n' like that! Because----"
+
+"But you had three little girls!" said Ramsey.
+
+"Girl', they di'n' count! Because those girl', you know, they can' never
+run those steam_boat_'."
+
+"I don't see why," said Ramsey. Hugh might sit silent if he chose; her
+silent sitting was over.
+
+"They di'n' count," repeated the lady. "And so my 'usband he di'n' want
+those Courteney' to be ahead of those Hayle' in having boys!"
+
+"He little knew what was coming," said Ramsey, and wondered why the
+remark was ignored, especially when----
+
+"Me," said the pretty matron, "I was nearly ready to 'ave those twin',
+but Gideon Hayle he di'n' know they was goin' be twin', an' he di'n'
+know those twin' goin' be boys!" She gently laughed. The daughter stared
+as if in no light--or shade--could those twins be a laughing matter, but
+the mother spoke on gayly: "Never I 'ear my 'usband swear so hard--an'
+so manny way'--like that day--at everything--everybody. Not because that
+li'l babee--if that be all; but because he see that _boat_, that she's
+the mo' fine boat, that _Quakerezz_, an' when they ripport her run from
+Loui'ville, he's already affraid--to hisseff--that she's goin' to be the
+mo' fas'."
+
+"And was she?" asked the girl.
+
+"Barely," said the grandfather. "It took years to prove it and by that
+time your father had built another boat."
+
+"The _Chevalier_!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, which beat the _Quakeress_ once or twice nearly every season until
+the _Quakeress_ burned."
+
+"Burned!" cried Ramsey, while Hugh, stirred to rise, yet remained. "Was
+it the _Quakeress_ that--?" But the old man was telling earlier history
+and she sank repiningly in her seat. "You're going backward," she softly
+whined.
+
+"In 'sixteen," he said, "I built the _Huntress_, and----"
+
+"We already know about that," sighed Ramsey, bracing her feet in old
+Joy's hands. "I know it from old nursie."
+
+"Ramsey!" murmured her mother.
+
+"In 'seventeen," said the chronicler, "Miss Ramsey's grandfather built
+the _Hunter_. In 'twenty he built the _Charioteer_----"
+
+"Ain't we ever going to hear about the burning?" laughingly whimpered
+the girl, but the narrator kept on:
+
+"In 'twenty-one I built the _Shepherdess_----"
+
+Ramsey all at once revived. "And did the _Shepherdess_ outrun the
+_Charioteer_?"
+
+"A trifle, yes."
+
+"Humph!" she said to herself, and twice again, on a higher key and with
+a grimace at Hugh, "humph!"
+
+"But in 'twenty-five the _Charioteer_ was run into and sunk, and the
+Hayle boat that came next," continued the historian, "was the best ever
+seen till then on these waters, of the hundred and sixty-five steamers
+launched."
+
+"Yes," said Madame Hayle, "and the firz' boat what my 'usband was
+captain."
+
+Ramsey started wildly. "The _Admiral_!" she cried at Hugh. She whisked
+round on his grandfather. "And then--to beat the _Admiral_--you
+built----?"
+
+"My son built--the _Abbess_."
+
+"And did the _Abbess_ beat the _Admiral_?"
+
+"Not for a long time. But in 'thirty-three the _Conqueror's_ very first
+run broke the _Abbess's_ record."
+
+But madame was not to be outdone in generosity. "Ah, yes," she cried,
+"but that same day the _Quakerezz_ she beat the _Conqueror_!" At which
+the teased Ramsey, suddenly seeing that all this was but a roundabout
+peacemaking where she could discern no strife, laughed herself so limp
+that she all but tumbled into old Joy's lap.
+
+"That's where we began!" she commented.
+
+"True," said the old man to her mother, "but in 'thirty-eight came your
+husband's _Chevalier_----"
+
+"Came--yes! only to get beat racing yo'"--the name eluded her----
+
+"_Ambassadress_," prompted Ramsey. "Everybody knows about that--'way
+back in the country--even the dates. The _Ambassadress_ beat the
+_Chevalier_, the Autocrat beat the _Ambassadress_, the _Empress_ beat
+the _Autocrat_, the _Regent_ beat the _Empress_, te tum, te tum, te tum!
+Didn't the _Quakeress_ ever burn up, after all?"
+
+"Ramsey----"
+
+"Oh, well! this forever sitting silent! I----!"
+
+"Ramsey!----"
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+PERIL
+
+
+Ramsey clutched the old man's arm, pressed curls and brow against it,
+and laughed in a rillet of pure silver.
+
+Hugh bore it, sitting silent, while the great boat, so humanly alive and
+aglow in every part, ceaselessly breathed above and quivered below, and
+the ruffling breeze as ceaselessly confirmed her unflagging speed. The
+mere "catalogue of the ships" had lighted in him a secret glow that
+persisted. In his roused imagination the long pageant of the rival
+steamers still moved on through the rudely thronging, ever-multiplying
+fleet of the boundless valley's yearly swelling commerce, ocean-distant
+from all disparaging contrasts of riper empires; moved, yeasting,
+ruffling, through forty years of a civilization's genesis, each new
+boat, Hayle or Courteney, more beautifully capable than her newest
+senior, and each, in her time and degree, as cloud-white by day, as
+luminous by night, and as rife with human purpose and human hazards as
+this incomparable _Votaress_.
+
+The girl's mirth faded. From behind the four a quiet tread drew near.
+From another quarter came two other steps, lighter yet more assertive.
+The one was John Courteney's; the two, that halted farther away, meant
+again the twins.
+
+"Well, captain?" mildly said the grandfather.
+
+"Well, commodore?" said the captain, declining his son's chair.
+
+"Oh, good!" cried Ramsey, and rose with her nurse. "I didn't know
+anybody but my father was called commodore!"
+
+"Yes," replied the captain, "my father too."
+
+"Where've you been?" asked the fearless girl.
+
+His answer was mainly to her mother: "I've been making myself acquainted
+in the ladies' cabin. This is no Hudson River boat, you know--whole trip
+in a day's jaunt."
+
+"Ah, 'tis a voyage!" said madame.
+
+"So it's well to know one's people," added he. He looked up into the
+night. "What a sky! Miss Ramsey, did you ever see, through a glass, the
+Golden Locks of Berenice?"
+
+"The gold--" she began eagerly--"no-o! What are the golden--?" But there
+she checked, fell upon old Joy, and laughed whimperingly, "That's a dig
+at my red hair!"
+
+One of the twins gravely accosted his mother, but she and the captain
+were laughing at Ramsey while the grandfather said: "My dear child, your
+hair is beautiful."
+
+With face still hid on Joy's bosom, the girl shuffled her feet, then
+turned upon the old man and playfully intoned:
+
+"I'm not a child!"
+
+"Ramsey!" said the mother, and "Missie!" said the nurse.
+
+"Hugh," said the captain, "suppose you take Miss Ramsey up to the
+pilot-house and show her the----"
+
+The girl laid a hand on his arm. "Do you want to tell mom-a something
+you don't want me to hear?"
+
+"Why--" began the captain, and laughed. "On second thought, no. I want
+to tell your mother and the commodore something before any one else can,
+and before I tell any one else; but you may hear it if----"
+
+"If I won't get frightened. Has anything happened to the boat?"
+
+"Ramsey!" "Missie!" lamented matron and servant again.
+
+"Mother," with much dignity pleaded the twins.
+
+"Oh, no," said the captain, "not to the boat."
+
+"I want to stay and hear it," whined Ramsey, jerking up and down. "I
+won't get scared."
+
+"'T'u'd be de fust time sence she wuz bawn ef she did," audibly mused
+the nurse, and Hugh said: "I believe that."
+
+The girl stared round at him and then back at his father, her eyes wide
+with merriment. "No Ramsey to the pilot-house with him if he can help
+it!" she managed to say, and fell over her mother and nurse, down into
+her chair and across its arm, her laughter jingling like a basket of
+glass rolling down-stairs. Suddenly she hearkened. The captain was
+speaking to her mother:
+
+"Must you reach Loui'ville as quickly as you can?"
+
+"Ah!--well? yes? we muz' do our possible. My 'usband he--Ramsey!"
+
+The girl had turned face down in a play of collapse. "Nobody," she
+piped, "finishes what he starts to tell!"
+
+"Ho!" playfully retorted the mother, "an' you muz' go?--cannot wait?
+Well, good night." But no one went.
+
+Her mother turned again to the captain. "There is something veree
+bad--on the boat?" Ramsey sat up alert.
+
+The captain's reply was heard by none but her mother and the
+grandfather, but evidently the twins knew whatever there was to tell.
+"It was no time to take deck passengers at all!" said one of them to the
+other, in full voice, while the grandfather was asserting:
+
+"We are as wholly at your command, madam, as if this were Gideon Hayle's
+boat. Our one thought is your safety."
+
+"And comfort of mind," added the captain, about to go.
+
+Ramsey guessed the trouble. "We are veree oblige'," said her mother;
+"we'll continue on the _Votarezz_."
+
+"Goody!" murmured the daughter to old Joy, to Hugh, and to the captain
+as he left the group. "Goody!"
+
+"Mother!" protested the twins, "you must not!"
+
+"Oh-h! you?" she radiantly inquired, "you rather go ashore, you, eh?
+Veree well. Doubdlezz the captain be please' to put you." Her smile grew
+stately as Ramsey laughed. She turned to the grandfather. "Never in my
+life I di'n' ran away from sicknezz. I billieve anybody can't die till
+his time come'. When his time come' he'll die. My 'usband he billieve
+that, too."
+
+"Don't the Germans come from Germany?" asked Ramsey, but no one seemed
+able to tell her.
+
+"And also," pursued the lady, "I billieve tha'z a cowardly--to run away
+from those sick." She looked around for the twins but they were
+conferring aside. "And also I billieve, me--like they say--to get
+scare'--tha'z the _sure_ way to catch that kind of sicknezz. 'Tis by
+that it pazz into the syztem! My 'usband he tell me that. He's veree
+acquaint' with medicine, my 'usband, yes! And----"
+
+"Is Germany in Asia?" Ramsey drawled, but nobody seemed to know
+anything.
+
+"And I billieve," persisted madame, "to continue on the boat, tha'z also
+the mo' safe. Because if we leave the boat, where we'll find one doctor
+for _that_ maladee-e? An' if we _find_ one doctor, who's goin' nurse us
+in that maladee?"
+
+"Is Asia--?" tried Ramsey again, but hushed with a strange thrill as her
+ear caught, remotely beneath her, a faint sawing and hammering.
+
+"Mo' better, I billieve," continued her mother, "we continue on the boat
+and ourselve' nurse those sick. When the Mother of God see' that she'll
+maybe privent from coming our time to die."
+
+"If Germany--" whined Ramsey, but huddled down in her seat as the sawing
+and hammering came again----
+
+"What, my chile?"
+
+Light at last! She instantly sat up: "Why do they call it the Asiatic
+cholera if--?" She stopped short. From the open deck far below rose an
+angry cry:
+
+"Stop that fool! Stop her!"
+
+Ramsey darted so recklessly to the low front guard that Hugh darted also
+and held her arm as she bent over, while close upon the cry came a
+woman's long, unmistakable wail for her dead. Twice it filled the air,
+then melted out over the gliding waters and into the night, above the
+regardless undertones of the boat's majestic progress. Grandfather,
+nurse, mother, brothers pressed after the girl and Hugh. Clutched by the
+nurse, released by him, she still looked wildly down, seeing little yet
+much. At their back the great bell boomed. The boat's stem began to turn
+to the forested shore. A glare of torches at the lower guards crimsoned
+the flood under the bows. She flashed round accusingly upon Hugh:
+
+"What are we landing in the woods for?"
+
+He met her gaze and it fell. Her mother tried to draw her away but she
+dropped to her knees at the rail and bent her eyes upon a dark group
+compacting below. Hugh muttered to his grandfather:
+
+"She'd better leave the boat. She'd rather."
+
+Catching the words, she leaped and stood, her head thrown high. "I
+wouldn't! I won't!"
+
+She glared on him through brimming tears, but something about him,
+repeated and exaggerated in the twins as she whipped round to them,
+reversed her mood. She smote her brow into her mother's bosom and, under
+the stress of a silvery laugh that would not be stifled, hung to the
+maternal neck and rocked from side to side.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+FIRST NIGHT-WATCH
+
+
+Often through the first half of that night, while many other matters
+pressed on them, the minds of the three Courteneys turned to one theme.
+Ramsey's inquiries had called it up and the presence and plight of the
+immigrants, down below, kept it before them: the story of Hugh's
+grandmother, born and bred in Holland.
+
+With Hugh standing by, the girl had drawn its recital from his
+grandfather; as whose bride that grandmother had been an immigrant, like
+these, though hardly in their forlorn way and with Philadelphia, not New
+Orleans, for a first goal. Thence, years later, with husband and child,
+she had reached and traversed this wild river, when it was so much
+wilder, and had dwelt in New Orleans throughout her son's, John
+Courteney's, boyhood. Thence again, in his twenty-first year, she had
+recrossed the water to inherit an estate and for seven years had lived
+in great ports and capitals of Europe, often at her husband's side, yet
+often, too, far from him, as he--leaving his steamboats to good captains
+and the mother to her son--came and went on commercial adventures
+ocean-wide. It was these first seven years of John Courteney's manhood,
+spent in transatlantic study, society, public affairs, and a father's
+partnership, that had made him--what Ramsey saw.
+
+The tale was fondly told and had made Hugh feel very homespun compared
+with such progenitors. But Ramsey had looked him up and down as if he
+must have all his forebears' beautiful values deep hid somewhere in his
+inside pockets, and had wondered, as she tossed away to the pilot-house,
+if he was destined ever to show the father's special gift of winning and
+holding the strongest and best men's allegiance. A very mature thought
+for her, but she sometimes had such, and had once heard her father
+frankly confess that therein lay the Courteneys' largest advantage over
+him, he being signally able to rule the rudest men by a more formidable
+rudeness, but not to command the devotion of men superior to that sort
+of rule.
+
+At length the stars of midnight hung overhead. The amber haze of Queen
+Berenice's hair glimmered to westward. Where the river had so writhed
+round on itself as to be sweeping northeastward, the _Votaress_, midway
+of a short "crossing" from left shore to right, was pointing southwest.
+An old moon, fairly up, was on the larboard quarter, and in the nearest
+bend down-stream the faint lights of a boat recently outstripped were
+just being quenched by the low black willows of an island. In the bend
+above shone the dim but brightening stern lights of the foremost and
+speediest of the five-o'clock fleet. A lonely wooded point beneath the
+brown sand of whose crumbling water's edge the poor German home-seeker
+had found the home he least sought lay miles behind; miles by the long
+bends of the river, miles even straight overland, and lost in the night
+among the famed sugar estates that occupied in unbroken succession
+College Point and Grandview Reach, Willow Bend, Bell's Point, and Bonnet
+Carre. Past was Donaldsonville, at the mouth of Bayou Lafourche, and
+yonder ahead, that boat just entering Bayagoula Bend, and which the
+_Votaress_ was so prettily overhauling, was the _Antelope_.
+
+"Fast time," ventured the watchman to the first mate.
+
+"Yes, fast enough for a start."
+
+No word from either as to any trouble aboard.
+
+A cub pilot risked a remark to his chief: "'--Chase the antelope over
+the plain,' says the song, but I reckon we won't quite do that, sir."
+
+No, they wouldn't quite do that. Not a breath as to any unfortunate
+conditions anywhere. But on every deck, wherever equals met, the fearful
+plight of the queer folk down nearest the water was softly debated.
+Distressing to feminine sympathy was the necessity of instant burials,
+first revealed up-stairs by that woman's cry of agony down on the lower
+gangway. But masculine nerve explained that such promptness would save
+lives and might confine the disease to the lower deck. Was no physician
+on the boat? No, one would be taken aboard in the morning. Of course you
+could ask to be set ashore, but, all things considered, to stay seemed
+wiser. Where was Madame Hayle? Few passengers knew, none of the boat's
+"family" chose to tell, and at bedtime the majority "retired." So much
+for the surface of things.
+
+But beneath the surface--"Good God, sir! if any one is to go ashore, why
+shouldn't it be _they_--the foreigners?"
+
+For the full bearing of this speech let us recount certain doings in
+this first half of the night. The Hayle twins, coming aboard at "Post
+Forty-Six," had begun, by the time the boat backed away, to offer
+exchanges of courtesy with such men on the boiler deck as seemed best
+worth while, and this they kept up with an address which, despite their
+obvious juleps, unfailingly won them attention. Even a Methodist bishop,
+who "knew their father and had known his father, both stanch
+Methodists," was unstintedly cordial. No less so was a senator.
+
+"Know Gideon Hayle?" He had "known him before they had! Hoped to know
+him yet when his sons should be commodores." Was on the _Chevalier_ when
+the _Chevalier_ outran the _Quakeress_. One twin heard the tale while
+the other brought the bishop.
+
+"Senator, you already know Bishop So-and-So?"
+
+"Senator, we'd like you to know Judge So-and-So, sir."
+
+Judge, senator, and bishop were pleased. The senator reminded the judge
+that they had met years before for a touch-and-go moment as one was
+leaving and the other boarding the _Autocrat_--or was it the
+_Admiral_--a Hayle boat at any rate--how time does fly! The brothers
+took but a light part in the chat and were much too wise to betray any
+degree of social zeal. Each new introduction was as casual as the one
+before it. Sometimes they were themselves introduced but only those here
+named stayed in the set. Chairs were found for four, and Julian,
+stepping aside for a fifth chair, came upon another worthy, as well
+juleped as himself and carrying his deck load quite as evenly.
+
+"Bishop So-and-So, this is our father's boyhood friend, General
+So-and-So. Judge So-and-So--Senator So-and-So--you both know the
+general?" The general accepted Lucian's chair, and presently Lucian,
+with two more chairs, brought one more personage, tall and solemn.
+
+"Senator, have you never met Squire So-and-So?"
+
+The senator had long wished to do so, the judge was well acquainted, the
+general shook hands grandly, and the bishop blithely said the squire had
+the largest plantation on the Yazoo River. The squire was too thirsty to
+smile but said he hoped the bishop would not feel above joining the
+others as his guest at the bar. The bishop declined, but kept the seats
+of all till their return. They came back talking politics, having found
+themselves of one democratic mind, southwestern variety, and able to
+discuss with quiet dignity their minor differences of view on a number
+of then burning questions now long burned out with the men who kindled
+them: Webster, Fillmore, Scott, Seward, Clay, Cass, Douglas, Garrison,
+Davis, and others.
+
+By and by, without a break in the discussion, the seven walked back into
+the cabin and stood where, on the first tap of the supper bell, each
+could snatch a seat near the upper end of the table and so collectively
+assume among the hundreds on the boat that separate and superior station
+to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitled them. The squire
+had his motherless children aboard but could leave them to a sister and
+brother-in-law. Which reminded the twins to look after their sister, on
+the roof, as hereinbefore set forth. But both the bishop and the senator
+were thoughtful for them and when they came tardily to the board they
+found the group close about the old commodore, their own places saved
+and the judge and the general sustaining the squire's rather peppery
+assertion to the courteous but vilely inconvincible commodore, that
+certain new laws of Congress must be upheld with all the national power,
+Yankee mobs be squarely shot into and their leaders hanged, or the
+Federal Union would not long be worth a rap.
+
+The senator had almost thought of something tactful to say and the
+bishop had just the right word on the end of his tongue, when Julian,
+with very good manners in a very bad manner, asked leave to speak, and
+the squire, ignoring the commodore, said: "Certainly, Mr. Hayle, sir,
+do!"
+
+"One thing to be stopped at all cost," said Mr. Hayle, "is this deluge
+of immigration. Every alien who comes to New Orleans, and especially
+every alien who passes on up this river into the West, strengthens the
+North and weakens the South commercially, industrially, and politically,
+and corrupts the national type, the national speech----"
+
+"The national religion,"----prompted the bishop.
+
+"The national love of law and order,"----said the judge.
+
+"And of justice and liberty,"----put in the general.
+
+"And the national health," said the youth. "New Orleans should refuse
+every immigrant entrance to the country, and every steamboat on the
+Mississippi ought to decline to carry him to his destination!"
+
+The commodore smiled to reply, but the senator broke in with an
+anecdote, long but good, of a newly landed German. The judge followed
+close with the story of a very green Irishman; and the general, with
+mellow inconsequence, brought in a tale to the credit of the departed
+Jackson and debit of the still surviving Clay. A new sultriness
+prevailed. The judge's palliative word, that many a story hard on Clay
+was older than Clay himself, relieved the tension scarcely more than did
+Lucian's inquiry whether it was not, at any rate, true beyond cavil that
+Clay had treated Jackson perfidiously in that old matter----
+
+That old matter's extreme deadness reminded the group that the repast
+was over and Whiggism amply squelched. Besides themselves only the
+ladies'-cabin people and the captain, away aft, lingered. The long,
+intervening double line of mere feeders was gone and the cabin-boys were
+setting the second table. The commodore rose and the seven drifted out
+again, with their seven toothpicks, to the boiler deck. There men who
+had passed the salt to each other at table were giving each other
+cigars, some standing in knots, others taking chairs about the guards.
+Almost every one had related himself to some other one or more as
+somehow his or their guest and host combined, and had taken his turn or
+was watching his chance to recognize the captain as social and civil
+autocrat and guardian angel over all. The conspicuousness of the twins
+led to stories, in undertone, of the long Hayle-Courteney rivalry.
+
+"Remarkable, how it's run on and on without their ever locking horns,
+eh?"
+
+"Mighty nigh did it when the _Quakeress_ burned."
+
+"Oh! do you really think so?"
+
+"I know it, sir!" He who knew spat over the rail, and the one who had
+dared to doubt moved on. Between stories there were debates on the
+comparative merits of the two types of hull favored respectively by the
+rival builders: the slim Hayle model and the not so slim of the
+Courteneys.
+
+"After all, sir," asserted a man of eagle eye, "a duck flies faster than
+a crane."
+
+"I doubt that, sir," said one with the eye of a stallion. "Not that I
+question your word, but----"
+
+Their friends had to separate them.
+
+At that point along came the _Empress_, as we know, a sight only less
+inspiring on this deck than to Ramsey on the roof; shining, saluting,
+huzzaing, then fading round the bend. When the card-tables were set out
+our group of seven fell into three parts. The squire and the general sat
+down to a game with a Vicksburg merchant and a Milliken's Bend planter,
+who "couldn't play late," their wives being on the boat. The twins,
+ceasing to tell the senator and the bishop what damnable things _some_
+boats were known to have done for the sake of speed, went down-stairs to
+take a glance at the safety-valve, following a few steps behind the
+captain. For him they had just seen, as he came down from the roof to
+their deck and met an unexpected messenger from the engine-room,
+promptly turn with him and go below. But their needless glance at the
+safety-valve they never took. They saw only two or three poor women
+sobbing like babes, the dead body of a young man being prepared for
+burial, and the carpenter finishing his coffin. When the captain, as
+will be remembered, went back to the hurricane-deck to tell their
+mother, they went too.
+
+The boat's torches enabled all on the various decks to view the burial.
+It ended the game of cards. During the swift ceremony and long after it
+the twins consulted the squire, the general, the Vicksburger, the
+senator, the bishop, the judge, and the planter from Milliken's Bend as
+to what ought to be done. They took care to advance their questions and
+suggestions singly and according to the nature of each hearer's
+inflammability, and as each one kindled they brought him close to
+another, Julian always supplying the hardihood, Lucian the guile. Here
+were men, they said, and soon had others saying--the squire to the
+merchant, the general to the Milliken's Bend planter--here were men,
+gentlemen, scores on scores, not to say hundreds, who at all times and
+everywhere could take the chances of life like men, like gentlemen,
+native American gentlemen. But here also were women and children, the
+families of many of these gentlemen. Such risks were not for such women
+and children. Was no step to be generally agreed upon? Was it to be
+supinely assumed that the owners of the _Votaress_, now mainly
+preoccupied in overhauling the _Antelope_, knew all that was best to do
+and would punctually do it all?
+
+The twins did not originate half the inquiries or replies, they merely
+started the ferment and kept it working. "You saw at table, did you not,
+the positive contempt the commodore--who is a foreigner himself--showed
+for the direst needs of our country?" To be sure that had little to do
+with the management of the boat, but it made it easier to think that the
+Courteneys, the captain himself being half Dutch in his origin, might
+incline to do more for those people down-stairs than was just to those
+above them--every way above them. The general called it a criminal error
+to plant the victims of a deadly contagion along a great national
+highway, like fertile seed in a fertile furrow. The bishop counted it no
+mercy to the aliens themselves to keep them aboard when they could be
+set ashore in a rough sort of roofless quarantine on some such isolated
+spot as Prophet's Island, which should be reached by sunrise, was
+heavily wooded, and lay but six miles below the small town of Port
+Hudson.
+
+Nor could he call it a mercy to consult the immigrants' wishes. How
+could they be expected to view the matter unselfishly?
+
+A deputation of seven elected itself to wait on the captain. The
+masterful twins, finding themselves not of its number, sought him in
+advance, alone. But their interview was brief. We pass it. The first
+_watch_ turned in. The men who had served through the first two hours'
+run came again on duty as "middle watch," and in their care, after their
+four hours' rest, the shining _Votaress_, teeming with slumberers,
+breasted the strenuous flood as regally as ever.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+HUGH AND THE TWINS
+
+
+In the captain's chair, between the derricks and the bell, far above and
+behind which the chimneys' vast double plume of smoke and sparks trailed
+down the steamer's wake, sat Hugh Courteney, quite uncompanioned.
+
+So his father had just left him, leaving with him the thought, though
+without hint of it in word or tone, that some night, on some boat as
+deeply freighted with cares as this one, he must sit thus, her master.
+The wonder of it, with the wonder of the boat herself and all she
+carried, sounded a continuous stern alarum through his spirit like a
+long roll sounding through a camp: "Be a man! Make haste! See even those
+Hayle twins, with all their faults, and up! Make haste! Rise up and be a
+man!" Had the wonder-loving Ramsey been there she must have laughed
+again; looking into his round, heavy visage was so much like looking
+into the back of a watch--one saw such ceaseless movement of mind yet
+learned so little from it. Amid his wonderings he wondered of her; not
+only where at that moment she might be, but what a child she still was,
+and yet in how few years--as few as two or three--she would be a woman,
+might be a bride.
+
+But soon a bride or never, the boat was full of matters only less
+remarkable and he gently let the girl out of his thought by looking
+behind him. The windows of the captain's room--between the
+chimneys--front room of the texas--gave shining evidence that somewhere
+the captain was yet astir. From the rayless pilot-house above it faint
+notes of speech showed that some one was up there with the pilot, but at
+the same time a near-by tread drew Hugh to his feet with quick pleasure
+and again his father stood before him, looking at the lights of the
+_Antelope_, a few hundred yards ahead.
+
+"She'll soon be astern," said Hugh.
+
+"We can't keep her so," replied the captain, accepting his chair. "We
+must land too often. Where's your crony?"
+
+"The commodore? He's turned in." After a pause--"Father, you've shipped
+a lot of trouble."
+
+"Yes," was the light response, "counting Hayle's twins."
+
+"I wish you'd give me full charge of them."
+
+"Do you?" laughed the father. "Take it. You hear them, don't you?"
+
+They were easy to hear, down on the forward freight deck, dancing round
+a bottle of liquor, and----
+
+"Singing 'Gideon's Band,'" said Hugh listening.
+
+"Yes," said the amused captain, "after pledging me on their honor to go
+straight to bed." Hugh started away so abruptly that his father asked:
+"Where are you bound?"
+
+"I'm going to send them to bed."
+
+"Both of them?" smilingly asked the captain.
+
+"Yes, both."
+
+"Not both at once?"
+
+"Yes, both at once. Do you know where their sister is?"
+
+"Why, abed and asleep long ago, is she not?"
+
+"I don't know," said Hugh, going; "I doubt it."
+
+On his way he glanced about for her. Taking charge of the twins seemed
+logically to involve a care of her. Where the mother was he knew. Down
+in the after parts of the lower deck, between the ceaseless torrents of
+the wheels, most of the people from overseas had spread their beds
+wherever they might, while in one small place apart some five or six lay
+smitten with the deadly contagion, two or three in agony, one or two in
+painless collapse, under the unskilled, heartbroken care of a few
+terrified kindred. There, by stealth at first and by the captain's
+helpless leave when he found her there, attended by a colored man and
+maid from the cabin service, was Madame Hayle, ministering, now with
+medicine, now with the crucifix, amid the hammer's unflagging din. To
+this Hugh was reconciled; but it would never, never do, he felt, to let
+the daughter share such an experience. Better to find her, even at that
+hour, on the boiler deck.
+
+But on the boiler deck he found only its wide semicircle of chairs quite
+empty and no one moving among the high piles of trunks and light freight
+under the hanging bunches of pineapples and bananas. He looked into the
+saloon. It was bright though with half its lamps cold, but the barber's
+shop and the clerk's office were shut, and double curtains of silk and
+wool cloistered off the ladies' cabin. The fragrant bar stood open, and
+at two or three card-tables sat heavy-betting, hard-chewing quartets,
+but no one else was to be seen; even the third Hayle brother had gone to
+bed. Halfway down the double front stairs to the lower deck, on a
+landing where the two flights merged into one, Hugh paused. All about
+beneath him forward of the wheels, clear out to the capstan and
+jack-staff, slept the deckhands, except a few on watch, a few more who
+with eager crouchings, snapping fingers, and soft cries gambled at dice
+in the red glare of the furnaces, and one who had become an amused
+onlooker of the Hayle twins--the negro who, six hours before, by merely
+putting out a hand had saved their sister's life.
+
+And there, close before Hugh, at the stairs' foot, under the open sky,
+were the twins. In their hunger for notice, their equal disdain of the
+captain and the deputation of seven, and their belief that the gayest
+defiance of the plague was its best preventive, they had set their
+bottle on the deck and in opposite directions were daintily pacing round
+it in a long ellipse and chanting to a camp-meeting tune their song of
+Gideon:
+
+     "O, Noah, he did build de ahk,
+      O, Noah, he did build de ahk,
+      O, Noah, he did build de ahk,
+      An' shingle it wid cinnamon bahk.
+       Do you belong to Gideon's band?
+
+      Here's my heart an' here's my hand!
+      Do you belong to Gideon's band?
+        Fight'n' fo' yo' home!"[1]
+
+A glance at Hugh gave them new life. Singing on, they halted at opposite
+ends of the beat, patted thighs, called figures, leaped high, crossed
+shins, cracked heels, cut double-shuffles, balanced, swung round the
+bottle, lifted it, drank, replaced it, and resumed their elliptical
+march to another stanza:
+
+     "He couldn't tote de whole worl' breed,
+      He couldn't tote de whole worl' breed,
+      He couldn't tote de whole worl' breed,
+      He los' de crap, but he save' de seed!
+        Do you belong to Gideon's band?
+      .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+          Fight'n' fo' yo' home!"
+
+Hugh moved on down. "Both at once," he had said, but on every
+account--their mother's, her daughter's, his father's--it must be both
+at once without a high word from him. On the bottom step he was about to
+speak, when a tall, flaxen-haired German in big boots and green cap and
+coat, meek of brow and barely a year or two his senior, came out from
+behind the stair and stepped between the dancers, silent but with a hand
+lifted to one and then to the other.
+
+"No," said Hugh to him. The alien's meekness vanished. He motioned
+toward the sick. His blue eyes flashed. But in the same instant he was
+jolted half off his feet by the lunging shoulder of one of the Hayles
+marching to the refrain:
+
+     "Do _you_ belong to Gideon's band?"
+
+His answer was a blow so swift that Hugh barely saw it. The singer fell
+as if he had slipped on ice. Yet promptly he was up again, and from
+right and left the brothers leaped at their foe. But while men rushed in
+and hustled the immigrant aft the negro who had saved Ramsey caught one
+twin as lightly as he had caught her, and Hugh, jerking the other to his
+knees, snatched up the bottle and whirled it overboard. A moment later
+he found himself backing up-stairs, followed closely by the pair. These
+were being pushed up from below by others, and, in lofty phrases hot
+with oaths, were accusing all Courteneys of a studied plan to insult,
+misguide, imperil, assault, and humiliate every Hayle within reach and
+of a cowardly use of deckhands and Dutchmen for the purpose.
+
+His replies were in undertone: "Come up! Hush your noise, your mother'll
+hear you! Come on! Come up!"
+
+On the boiler deck they halted. The crowd filled the stair beneath and
+he marvelled once more as he gazed on the two young Hectors, who, true
+to their ideals and loathing the obliquities of a moral world that left
+them off deputations, blazed with self-approval in a plight whose shame
+burned through him, Hugh Courteney, by sheer radiation.
+
+"And as sure," said Julian, "as sure as _hell_, sir, your life's blood
+or that of your kin shall one day pay for this! To-night we are
+helpless. What is your wish?"
+
+"My father's wish is that you go to your stateroom and berths and keep
+your word of honor given to him."
+
+"That, sir, is what we were doing when a hired ruffian----"
+
+"Never mind the hired ruffian. Charge that to me."
+
+"Oh, sir, it is charged!" said the two. "And the charge will be
+collected!" They went their way.
+
+[Footnote 1: [music]]
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE SUPERABOUNDING RAMSEY
+
+
+In his hurricane-deck chair, with eyes out ahead on the water, John
+Courteney gently took his son's hand as the latter, returning to his
+side, stood without a word.
+
+"Tucked in, are they, both of them?"
+
+No reply.
+
+"Hugh, I hear certain gentlemen are coming to ask me to put our deck
+passengers ashore."
+
+"You can't do it, sir."
+
+"Would you like to tell them so?"
+
+"I'd like nothing better."
+
+"Now that you've tasted blood, eh?"
+
+No reply.
+
+"It wouldn't be a mere putting of bad boys to bed, my son. It would be
+David and Goliath, with Goliath in the plural."
+
+"Can't I pass them on to you if I find I must?"
+
+"Of course you can. Hugh, I'm tempted to try you."
+
+"I wish you would, sir."
+
+"With no coaching? No 'Polonius to the players'?"
+
+"I wish you would."
+
+The father looked into the sky. "Superb night," he said.
+
+Again no reply.
+
+"Were you not deep in the spell of it when I found you here awhile ago?"
+
+"Yes, I was."
+
+"My son, I covet your better acquaintance."
+
+"You mean I--say so little?"
+
+"You reveal yourself so little. Even your mother felt that, Hugh."
+
+"I know it, father. And yet, as for you----"
+
+"Yes--as for me----?"
+
+"I've never seen you without wanting to tell out all that's in me." The
+pair smiled to each other.
+
+"And you say that at last, now, you can do it?"
+
+"Did I say that, sir?"
+
+"Not in words. But you seem all at once to be seeing things--taking hold
+of things--in a new way."
+
+"The things themselves are new, sir. They're small,
+but--somehow--they've helped me on."
+
+"Couldn't I guess one of them?"
+
+"I hardly think so, sir; they're really such trifles."
+
+"Well, for a first attempt, Ramsey."
+
+"Yes. How did you guess that?"
+
+"She's such a persuasive example of perfect openness."
+
+"Her mother's a much lovelier one."
+
+"No, Hugh; allowing for years, Miss Ramsey's even a better. But--another
+small thing--shall I mention it?"
+
+"Yes, please."
+
+"All these Hayles, to-night, bring up the past--ours."
+
+"Yes!" said Hugh, and said no more, as if the remark had partly unlocked
+something and then stuck fast.
+
+The questioner tried a smaller key. "What were you thinking," he asked,
+"when I joined you here to-night?"
+
+"When you--? Oh, nothing we're thinking of now."
+
+"At the same time, what was it?"
+
+"Why--something rather too fanciful to put into words."
+
+"All the same, let's have it."
+
+"Well, for one thing, seeing and feeling this boat, with all its light
+and life, speeding, twinkling on and on through the night like a swarm
+of stars, the thought came--and I was wishing I could share it with
+you----"
+
+The elder hand pressed the younger.
+
+"The thought that since infinite space--" The thought seemed to stall,
+take breath, and start again--"since infinite space is lighted only by
+the stars, the rush and roll of this universe through space is forever
+and ever--in the large--a night scene--an eternal starlight. Is that
+absurd--to you?"
+
+The father smiled: "Why, no. I merely--doubt it. All starlight is
+sunlight--near enough by."
+
+"Yes. But between stars there is no near-by, is there?"
+
+"That depends on who's looking, I think. We mustn't impute human eyes to
+God--or angels--or saints. You remember the word: 'Darkness and light
+are both alike to thee'?"
+
+"Yes," pensively said Hugh, rejoicing in this converse yet wondering why
+it made him feel so childish to speak his best while Hayle's twins
+showed up in so manly a fashion when they spoke their worst. "Yes, I
+thought of that, too. Yet I was glad to believe there will always be
+plenty of starlight for those who love it----"
+
+"Wow!" yelled Ramsey in his ear.
+
+With a gulp he whirled and faced her where, limp with laughter, she hung
+and swung on the captain's chair. Its occupant quietly rose. The old
+nurse wrung her hands, and Ramsey, in an agony of mirth and dismay,
+cringed back on her. Suddenly the maiden stood at her best height and
+with elaborate graciousness said:
+
+"I _hope_ I haven't interrupted!"
+
+The father's hand appeasingly touched the son's while playfully he said:
+"You have a hopeful nature, Miss Ramsey." And then, as her disconcerted
+eyes widened, he asked: "Where did you come from just now?"
+
+He saw that if she spoke she must weep. Instead she jauntily waved a
+whole arm backward and upward to the pilot-house. Then, her self-command
+returning, she remarked, for Hugh in particular: "It's nice up there.
+They don't snub you." She twitched a shoulder at him, made eyes to his
+father, and once more tinkled her laugh, interiorly, as though it were a
+door-bell.
+
+The captain was amused, yet he gravely began to ask: "Does your
+mother----?"
+
+"Know I'm out? She doth. First time I've been out o' bed this late in
+all my long and checkered career."
+
+"If she does, Miss Ramsey, will you go up to the pilot once more and
+tell him to land the boat at the wood-yard just this side of Bonnabel
+plantation?"
+
+Her mouth fell open: "Who, me? Tell the--?" She swept the strategist
+with a quick, hurt glance, but beamed again beneath his kind eyes. "_I
+get your idea_," she said, snatched the nurse's arm, and hurried off
+with her, humming and tripping the song she had quoted.
+
+The captain looked again into "infinite space." The wide scene was
+shifting. High beyond the _Votaress's_ bow the stars of the west swung
+as if they shifted southward. The moon crossed her silvering wake from
+larboard quarter to starboard. The _Antelope_ shone close ahead. "To me,
+Hugh," he lightly resumed, "this boat, full of all sorts of people,
+isn't so much like your swarm of stars as it is like just one little
+whole world."
+
+"Yes," said the son, facing him sidewise so that no Ramsey might again
+surprise them: "I see it that way too. Father"--the father had stirred
+as if to leave him--"I want to tell you some things about our past. But
+I can't tell them piecemeal. I must find some time when you're off
+watch."
+
+"And when Miss Ramsey's asleep?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why have you never told me before?"
+
+"I've tried for years. The power wasn't in me. I've had to grow up to
+it. But, as you say, 'now, at last,' I can do it."
+
+The captain turned away and looked up to the dim pilot-house. Out of it
+came the tranquil voice of the pilot who earlier had talked with the
+twins: "Caving bank above has planted snags at that wood-yard, sir.
+Whippoorwill Ferry's a better landing, on t'other side, head o' the
+crossing."
+
+"Well, Mr. Watson, land there."
+
+The boat was sweeping close by the west-shore village of Bayagoula, that
+lay asleep where the stream for a brief space widened to a mile. Her
+veering jack-staff hid the north star a moment, then crept to right of
+it and pointed up a five-mile reach of dim waters and dimmer shores,
+hard on the heels of the panting _Antelope._ But the captain's eye
+lingered behind and above him. Between him and the pilot-house, softly
+veiled by its moonlight shadow, stood in unconscious statuesqueness on
+the front overhang of the texas roof, between the towering chimneys,
+Ramsey.
+
+Her rippling curls and slim shoulders stood above the shade that
+enveloped the rest of her form and showed dark against the feeble light
+of the moon at her back. As he looked she uttered a droll sound--fair
+counterfeit of the harsh note a mocking-bird speaks to himself before
+his nightly outburst--and then broke forth in a voice as untrained, but
+as fresh and joyous and as reckless of reproof or praise, as the bird's:
+
+     "'O, the lone, starry hours give me, love,
+        When still is the beautiful night----'"
+
+At sight of a second and third figure he moved that way, while below the
+singer's feet sounded a mother's moan: "Ramsey! mon Dieu! my chile! come
+down from yondeh!"
+
+The girl's eyes stayed in the sky, but one mutinous foot so keenly smote
+the roof that her nurse, approaching behind, stopped short, and from
+Hugh came a laugh, a thin, involuntary treble, which caused Ramsey
+visibly to flinch.
+
+"Ramsey!" entreated her mother again, but----
+
+"Just this one moment, beloved mom-a! Listen, oh, listen, everybody! to
+my midnight thought!" The rhapsodist struck a stiffer pose and began
+with all her voice, "Since infinite space is lighted only by the stars!
+their rush and roll--te rum te riddle, te rum te ree----"
+
+"Ramsey!"
+
+"--Is an eternal starlight!" The girl hugged and kissed her black nurse:
+"Oh, mammy Joy! is that absurd to you?"
+
+"Ram-zee!" cried the mother. But a toll of the great bell silenced her.
+Another solemnly followed, and when a third completed the signal to
+land, the staggering footsteps of the vanished girl dragging old Joy
+with her in full retreat were a relief to every ear. As madame turned to
+say good night a last bleat came out of the darkness:
+
+"Please don't, anybody, tell about the _Quakeress_ to-night!"
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE COMMITTEE OF SEVEN
+
+
+"Hitherto," said the senator, in his stateroom, to the bishop and the
+judge, "there really has been no need to take any assertive step."
+
+He was explaining his slowness as head of the deputation and was glad,
+he said, to have a word apart with these two. The room could not seat
+seven and for the moment the other four were at the bar, where standing
+was so much easier than elsewhere.
+
+Their business, the seven's, he added, was with the captain, and
+officially the captain had gone off duty at eight o'clock and was on
+again only now, at midnight, in the "middle watch." Even yet there need
+be no hurry; what they wanted done could not be done before early
+morning, at Prophet's Island.
+
+The bishop approved. "Don't cross the bridge till you get to it," he
+quoted.
+
+The judge--whose elderly maiden sister was aboard and abed but
+awake and alarmed and amazed and astounded that he should be so
+helpless--assented, too, but thought there was now no call for further
+delay; Prophet's Island was nearer every moment and the sooner "those
+people" were well ashore the safer--and easier--for everybody.
+
+"I was giving our numbers time to grow," remarked the senator.
+
+"And the cholera time to spread?" queried the judge.
+
+"We're but a small minority yet," persisted the senator.
+
+"A minority always rules," smilingly said the bishop.
+
+The senator smiled back. "There are two or three hundred of those deck
+passengers alone," he responded.
+
+"Senator," said the judge, "what of that? We've taken upon ourselves to
+speak for all the cabin passengers on this boat, whether as yet they
+agree with us or not. They are as numerous as those foreigners, sir,
+and, my God! sir, _they_ are our own people. Self-preservation is the
+first law!"
+
+"Oh, surely you know," protested the senator, "I'm with you, heart and
+soul! We must extricate these people of our own from a situation whose
+desperateness most of them do not recognize. We'll go to the captain
+now, as soon as--as we must. But let us agree right here that whatever
+we require him to do we also require him to do of his own free will. He
+must shift no responsibility upon us. You have, of your sort, bishop, a
+constituency quite as sensitive as the judge's or mine, and we don't
+want to give any one a chance to start a false story which we might find
+it difficult to run down. And so we can hardly be too careful----"
+
+The absent four had returned while he spoke. "Sir," interrupted the
+general, whose th's were getting thick, "ththat is what we have
+been--too careful!"
+
+The hearts of the four were on fire. A chance word of the barkeeper,
+they said, had sent them to the stateroom of Hayle's twins, who, with
+tears of wrath, had confessed themselves prisoners; prisoners of their
+own word of honor--"after being knocked down----"
+
+"What?" cried senator, judge, and bishop.
+
+"Yes, sirs, one of them literally knocked down by the acknowledged
+minion of one Courteney, for having ventured to differ politically with
+another and for daring to mention the pestilence to a third."
+
+The seven poured out to the guards and started for the roof. The bell up
+there tolled for the landing at Whippoorwill Ferry. About to ascend a
+stair, they uncovered and stood aside while Madame Hayle and a cabin
+maid passed down on their way back to the immigrants' deck. By the time
+the roof was reached the boat was close inshore. The captain had begun
+to direct her landing. The engine bells were jingling. Tall torch
+baskets were blazing on the lower-deck guards, and another burial
+awaited only the running out of the big stage. Now it hurried ashore, a
+weirdly solemn pageant. The seven, looking down upon it, regained a more
+becoming composure. When the swift task was done, the torches quenched,
+and the boat again under way and her movements in control of the pilot,
+they once more looked for the captain. His chair was empty, but his room
+was bright and its door ajar. Within, however, was only the wholly
+uninspiring figure of Hugh, at a table, where he was just beginning to
+write. He rose and seemed sedately to count his visitors.
+
+"We are looking for the captain," said the senator.
+
+"He's down on the after lower deck, sir."
+
+"Oh!" The bushy brows of the inquirer lifted. "Will you send for him? We
+can't very well go down there."
+
+"That's true, sir," said Hugh, feeling the irony, "unless you wish to
+help." He looked from one to another, but none of the seven wished to
+help.
+
+"Do you mean to say," broke in the general, "ththat we can't sssee ththe
+captain of ththis boat unless we nurse the cholera?"
+
+"No, sir, I don't mean that, though he's very much occupied. If you will
+state your business to me I will send for him unless I can attend to it
+myself."
+
+"Why, my young friend," said the senator, "does that strike you as due
+courtesy to a delegation like this?"
+
+"No, sir, ordinarily it would not be, sir. But my father--I am the
+captain's son--knowing you were coming and what you were coming for,
+waited for you as long as he could. Just now he is extremely busy, sir,
+doing what he can--short-handed--for the sick and dying." The captain's
+son, in spite of himself, began to warm up. "Those hundreds of people
+down yonder, sir, are homeless, friendless, dumb--you may say--and in
+his personal care. He has left me here to see that your every proper
+wish has every attention. Gentlemen, will you please be seated?" He
+resumed his own chair and at top speed began again to write.
+
+It was a performance not pleasant for any one. He felt himself culpably
+too full of the resentful conviction that this ferment, whose ultimate
+extent nobody could predict, was purely of those Hayle twins' brewing,
+and he knew he was speaking too much as though to them and them alone.
+He was the only Courteney who could do this thing so badly, yet it must
+be done. Still writing, he glanced up. Not a visitor had stooped to sit.
+He dipped his pen but rose up again. "What can I do for you, sirs?"
+
+"We have told you," said the senator. "Send for the captain!"
+
+"Will you please say what you want him for?"
+
+"No, sir! We will tell him that when he comes!"
+
+"He'll not come, sir. I shan't send."
+
+The senator glared steadily into the youth's face, and the youth,
+forgetting their disparity of years, glared as steadily back. The bishop
+blandly spoke:
+
+"Senator, will you allow me, for an instant--? Mr. Courteney, you will
+admit that this steamboat is not your property?"
+
+"She's as much mine as anybody's, sir. I am one third owner of her."
+
+The bishop's pause was lengthy. Then--"Oh, you are! Well, however that
+may be, sir, your father ought to realize--and so ought you, sir--that
+we cannot consent to conduct an affair like this in a second-handed
+way."
+
+"It really isn't second-handed, sir; but if you think it is and if
+you're willing to put your request in writing and will dictate it to me,
+here and now----"
+
+The senator exploded: "Damn the writing!" He whirled upon the bishop:
+"Your pardon, sir!"
+
+"Some one had to say it," jovially answered the bishop. Everybody
+laughed. Hugh dipped his pen once more.
+
+"Shall I put that down, also?" he asked, looking to the bishop and the
+senator by turns.
+
+"Put what?--down where?" they asked. "What are you writing there,
+anyhow?"
+
+"Our conversation."
+
+The senator stiffened high: "For what, sir?"
+
+And the bishop asked, "A verbatim report to the captain?"
+
+"Yes, sir, and the newspapers."
+
+"Insolence!" exclaimed the general, but was hushed by the squire, though
+the squire's own brow lowered.
+
+"Who will vouch for your accuracy?" loftily asked the senator.
+
+"I'll send now for witnesses." The youth reached toward a bell-cord. But
+the senator lifted a hand between:
+
+"Stop, sir. There will be nothing to witness. Nevertheless you know, of
+course, that this is not the end."
+
+"I see that, sir."
+
+"When your passengers awake in the morning, your real, your cabin
+passengers, they will, they _shall_ awake to the deadly hazard of their
+situation. Gentlemen, there will be available landings beyond Prophet's
+Island. We shall reach Turnbull's Island by noon and Natchez Island
+before sundown. Meantime, sir, this mortal peril to hundreds of our best
+people is wholly chargeable to your captain."
+
+"Captain and owners," said Hugh.
+
+"Captain and owners! Good night, sir."
+
+"Good night, gentlemen."
+
+For half an hour the _Votaress_ headed west. Then the north star crept
+forward from starboard beam to bow and then back from bow to larboard
+beam. Plaquemine town, bayou, and bend swept past, and as she laid her
+course east for Manchac bayou, bend, and point a tranquil voice came up
+to the pilot-house from the darkness forward of the bell: "Where is
+Hugh, Mr. Watson?"
+
+"He's just turned in, sir."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+MORNING WATCH
+
+
+Twinkled quite away were the four hours of middle watch.
+
+All the gentler turnings of the journey's first hundred miles were
+finished and the many hundred miles of its wider contortions were well
+begun. One winding of thirty-five miles had earned but twelve of
+northward advance. But at any rate that was now far downstream. Baton
+Rouge, the small capital of the State, crowning the first high bank you
+reach, was some six miles astern. In the dark panorama of the shores,
+decipherable only to a pilot's trained sight, the unbroken procession of
+sugar estates was broken at last and the shining _Votaress_, having
+rounded a point from north to west, was crossing close above it with
+Seven Lakes and the Devil's Swamp on her starboard bow. The _Antelope_
+glimmered a short mile behind.
+
+It was the first mate's watch. On the hurricanedeck he paced at ease
+across and across near the front rail, where at any instant his eye
+could drop to its truer domain, the forecastle. The westerly moon hung
+high over the larboard bow. Now the boat ran so close along the lowland
+that in smiting the water each bucket of her shoreward wheel drew a
+separate echo from the dense wood, as if a phantom boat ran beside her
+among the moss-draped cypresses. Ramsey! what thrills you were missing!
+
+She knew it. In her sleep she lay half consciously resenting the loss.
+Under the next point a close turn led into a long northeastward reach,
+and as the _Votaress_ bore due north across it the morning star, at one
+flash, blazed out on the dark world and down the flood. Through her
+stateroom's high window its silvery beam found Ramsey in the upper berth
+and opened her eyelids with a touch. Staring on the serene splendor, she
+would soon have slept again, but just then the many lights of a large
+steamer glided out of the next bend above and Ramsey sprang to an elbow
+to watch its swift approach and await her own boat's passing call and
+the other's reply. Now the _Votaress_ tolled a single stroke, as if to
+cry: "Hail, friend, we take the starboard."
+
+With bird-like speed the shining apparition came on, and after a few
+seconds--that seemed endless--its soft, slow note of assent floated over
+the waters. Crossing the star's slender path on a long oblique, the
+wonder came, came on, came close, glittered by, and was gone; now
+lowland and flood lay again in mystic shadows, and the heavenly beacon
+of dawn, shedding a yet more unearthly glory than before, swung nearer
+and nearer to the _Votaress's_ course until it vanished forward of the
+great wheel-house as she headed northeast.
+
+The very pilot at the helm was not more awake than the reclining Ramsey
+as she pondered the hours, each one a year, that had passed since she
+came aboard. All their happenings, dark and bright; all their speeches;
+all their faces, male, female, aged, adolescent, juvenile, danced
+through her fancy with a variety and multiplicity of values which seven
+such little country-girl minds as hers, thought she, could hardly make
+room for. It seemed as though a shower of coined gold were overflowing
+her wee muslin apron of an intelligence and dropping through it. She
+could scarcely remain in the berth. Listen! Was her mother awake, in the
+lower one? The boat veered a trifle back northward and suddenly again,
+hovering over dim water and shore and blazing like a herald angel, was
+the morning star, a scant point or so to "stabboard." She chuckled,
+softly, at the word.
+
+Gently her name was called, beneath her: "Ramsey?"
+
+She let her face into the pillow and shook with the fun of it. If she
+should squeak half a note of reply she would be ordered to stay abed.
+Soon the mother rose and began stealthily to dress. No doubt it was to
+return to those poor Germans below. The thought was very sobering.
+Ramsey yearned to go with her, but knew she might as well ask leave to
+ride in the white yawl which, night and day, so incessantly, invitingly
+skimmed, zigzagged, foamed, and bounded after the _Votaress_, holding on
+to her fantail by its jerking painter.
+
+The yawl reminded her of the boy Hugh. He seemed to belong to
+the boat in much the same way as it. He _was_ a boy, nothing
+else--humph!--pooh!--though he seemed to think himself the elephant of
+the show. A boy, and yet with what a mind! Not that she should ever want
+one like it--whoop! what would she ever do with it? No wonder she had
+laughed in his face. Without laughter she would have been his tossed and
+trampled victim. Laughter was her ladder; the ladder up which the circus
+girl runs to sit on the elephant's shoulder.
+
+The lock of the stateroom door whispered. Her mother was going! Now she
+was gone! The daughter rose enough to look out on the gliding flood. It
+was day. But, night or day, how it intensified existence, this
+perpetual, tremulous passing of heaven and earth over and round and by
+and beneath one! Every least incident, indoors or out, was large and
+vivid, and a mere look from a window became a picture in the memory, to
+hang there through life. Nay, a sound was enough, too much. The remote
+peck-peck of that carpenter's hammer smote into her mind the indelible
+image of the only thing he could be making at such an hour. Trying to be
+deaf, she thought of Joy--timely thought! At any moment the old dear
+might steal in. She dropped from her berth, and when the actual invasion
+came, when Joy appeared, Ramsey was at the wash-stand, splashing like a
+canary, while strewn about the cramped place lay a lot of fresh attire,
+her Sunday best, brightest, longest.
+
+"Now, you needn't say one word!" she cried.
+
+The old woman bridled to say many, but before she could speak there was
+a fervent challenge to answer:
+
+"Do you realize all I've got to attend to to-day?"
+
+The nurse's mouth opened but another question was shot into it: "Has
+anybody told about the _Quakeress_?"
+
+There was a limit to forbearance. "Now, Miss Ramsey Hayle, ef dey is
+tell it, aw ef dey hain't--to yo' ma--dat's all right an' beseemly. But
+fo' you, dat ain't no fitt'n' story fo' you to heah!"
+
+Ramsey stared from her towel with lips apart. "Why, you--I'm going to
+hear it!--all!--this day!--or, anyhow, this trip!--from--from--" She
+fell upon the nurse's shoulder, convulsed.
+
+"F'om who' is you gwine hear it? Stop, missie, stawp! Dat's madness, dat
+laughteh. De Bible say' so! F'm who'--? Lawd! yo' head's a-wett'n' my
+breas'-han'kercheh!"
+
+Ramsey drew up, her eyes dancing, but went into a new transport as she
+replied: "From the baby elephant!"
+
+"No, you don't, Miss Ramsey Hayle! No, you don't! An' besides, befo' you
+heah de story o' de _Quak'ess_ you want to heah de story o' Phyllis."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+PHYLLIS
+
+
+From earliest childhood the Hugh whom it gave Ramsey such rapture to
+nickname had unconsciously worn the dim frown that seemed to her so
+droll because at once so scrutinous yet so appealing.
+
+To others that faint shade had never meant more than an inborn mental
+painstaking; a mind as steadily at work as the pulse; seemingly
+sluggish, really active. But Ramsey, in her stateroom, letting Joy dress
+her for all the Sabbath could mean afloat or ashore, could not accept
+such a thought. A feminine eagerness to read the masculine brow had
+promptly imputed to Hugh's a depth of mystery for which her romantic
+young soul demanded a romantic interpretation. Hence, mainly, her hunger
+for the story of the _Quakeress_. She had perceived, she thought, a
+relation between it and the clouded brow, and was bent on finding for
+the brow's owner as amazing a part in the tale as could be contrived by
+any piecing together of its facts which did not absolutely mutilate
+them. And these facts already she had begun to collect when by the
+mention of this "Phyllis" she discovered that old Joy had at least a
+share of the facts and under due pressure would yield them up.
+
+"Phyllis?" asked Ramsey, "who was Phyllis?"
+
+"Humph! Neveh hear o' Phyllis? Well, dey wuz reason fo' dat, too.
+Phyllis wuz de likeliest yalleh gal I eveh see, not-in-standin' she wuz
+my full fus' cousin."
+
+Now, one could be as dark as a sloe and yet have a cousin as yellow as a
+marigold, but Ramsey did not see it so. "How can that be?" she laughed,
+"when you are so out and out black?" The bare idea seemed too comical
+for human endurance.
+
+"I ain't no blackeh'n Gawd made me--oh, Lawd! missie, how I gwine button
+you up ef you shif' an' wriggle like dat? Phyllis wuz nuss to all de
+Co'teney chil'en. 'Caze dat same day when de new _Quak'ess_ come down de
+riveh wid dis same Mahs' Hugh, new-bawn, dah wuz yo' pa on his new boat,
+de _Conjuror_----"
+
+"Ow! the _Conqueror_!"
+
+"Yass'm, dat's what I say. And dah wuz yo' ma, an' me, o' co'se, and dah
+wuz Phyllis, my full fus' cousin--now, ef you cayn't stop a-gigglin' an'
+wrigglin' long enough fo' me to finish dis----"
+
+Ramsey was too unnerved to heed. "How could--" she insisted--"how could
+a--a mulatto girl be your first cousin?"
+
+"Now, you dess neveh min' how! Phyllis wa'n't no mullatteh, nohow. She
+wuz a quadroom! Heh mullatteh motheh wuz my own sisteh!"
+
+"Oh, you mean half-sister!"
+
+"I means whole sisteh! Miss Hayle, betteh you dess drap dat subjic' now,
+an' thaynk Gawd fo' yo' ign'ance!"
+
+"All right! all right! whole sister! go on! were you twins?" The querist
+gave a wild start of surprise at herself and sank to the floor.
+
+"Missie," sighed the old woman, "y'ain't neveh in yo' life stopped to
+think dat niggehs is got feelin's, is you?"
+
+The speech was hardly begun before the girl was up and about the
+protester's neck: "Hush! ple-ease hush! You've said it before, you've
+said it before, you've said it before, before!"
+
+The nurse's eyes filled: "Yass, an' what use it been? De wuss thing I
+know 'bout good white folks--an' when I says 'good' I means de
+best!--dat is, dat dey don't _believe_ niggehs is got feelin's!" It was
+hard to speak on, for Ramsey had pushed her into a chair and was in her
+lap.
+
+"They do! they do, mammy Joy, they do!" She fell to kissing her, first
+slowly, then wildly as Joy insisted:
+
+"No, dey don't. Ef dey did, Phyllis 'ud neveh 'a' come to de pass she
+came to. But dey don't! Some o' de bes' _believes_ dey believes, dat's
+all. Oh, I 'llow you, lots o' white folks is got--oh, Lawd! _don't_
+spile my breas'-han'kercheh!--is got mo' feelin's dan some niggehs; but
+lots o' niggehs is got _lots_ mo' feelin's dan some white folks. Mo' an'
+betteh! Now, my sisteh, my yalleh sisteh----"
+
+"Oh, never mind, there's the rising gong! I know your yellow sister must
+have had feelings. Tell about Phyllis--and the Courteneys--and the
+_Quakeress_."
+
+"Well, I will! Yo' plumb sot on gitt'n' de thing, an'----"
+
+"Yes, and it's not a fit story for me to ask _him_ about and you know
+I'll ask him if I have to! And besides, I just know mom-a's told you to
+keep me off the hurricane roof any way you can and as long as you
+can--listen! the big bell! we're meeting a boat, maybe half a dozen! And
+we're passing to labboard. Come! Come on!"
+
+At their own door they espied the passing craft: a single boat, not six;
+a tiny, cabinless, one-funnelled, unclean, crawling thing, dimly made
+out in the early dusk of the forested shore which it servilely hugged as
+if doing all it could to hide its grimy name and identity.
+
+"The _Fly-up-the-Creek_!" gasped Ramsey. "Oh, that _can't_ be all!" She
+sprang up a stair, dragging the old woman after, and on the
+hurricane-deck, near a paddle-box, stood for a moment in the wide glory
+of water, land, and early sky, agape again at the squalid object. Then,
+as the full humor of the thing struck her--but her behavior may as well
+go undescribed. Yet it could not have been so very bad, for the pilot
+high above at the wheel, Watson's "partner," glancing down from his side
+window, enjoyed it much; silently, it is true, unsmilingly; yet so
+heartily that he took a fresh bite of tobacco, chewed with energy, and
+thought of home.
+
+When the fit was over, old Joy had been pressed into a chair and the
+theme was once more Phyllis.
+
+"Why did they bring her to New Orleans?" was the question.
+
+"Who, Phyllis? She wuz fotch down fo' to be sold."
+
+Ramsey's gaze was roaming every sky-line, but at that word it flashed
+back: "How, sold? Pop-a's told me, himself, he never in his life sold
+one of his negroes!"
+
+"Is I said he did? Is I call' heh his niggeh? Ain't I done say she wuz a
+quadroom?"
+
+"Why," laughed Ramsey, "a quadroon's a negro!"
+
+"Not in de sight o' Gawd! My Lawd, dat's de shame on it!--dat de likes
+o' my baby kin say de likes o' dat! Oh, you kin _make_ a niggeh out'n a
+simon-pyo' white gal ef you dess raise heh wid de niggehs and treat heh
+like a niggeh; but----"
+
+Ramsey flushed: "Oh, I don't believe that!"
+
+"Look hyuh, chile! I ain't choosin' to tell about dat, but--I's seen it
+done! Time an' ag'in! An' Phyllis she see it done! Dat's how come
+Phyllis to be de kind o' Phyllis she come to be!"
+
+"What kind? Good, or bad? I don't want to hear about her if she was
+good."
+
+"She was bofe. But I ain't hawngry to tell about heh, naw 'bout de
+_Quak'ess_." The narrator shut her lips tight.
+
+The morning air was like a sparkling wine. Ramsey squared her slim
+shoulders and drank it. The turbid waters next the sunrise showed a
+marvellous lilac hue, their myriad ripples tipped with pink, silver, and
+gold. Up-stream the river opened widely to the west, but the _Votaress_
+bore northward across the foot of the reach, and soon it was plain that
+she was about to enter a "chute," whose vividly green, low, wooded shore
+on her larboard bow was a large island: an island of swamp and jungle,
+ancient fastness of an Indian prophet, hiddenly swarming with all the
+ravening and venomous brute, reptile, and insect life possible to the
+region. Prophet's Island, it was, yet no senator, bishop, general,
+judge, or squire was in sight.
+
+Ramsey had seen it on her down trip, when the boat, as required by law
+when descending the stream there, went eight miles round it in the main
+river. She had heard with awe that bit of history--not this
+history,--the drowning, by collision of a steamboat and a ship, of four
+hundred Creek Indians who were being deported to make room for the white
+man, and had felt herself grow older while she listened. But now what
+unmixed raptures awaited her in the narrow short cut! The recent
+presence of the _Fly-up-the-Creek_ away over here on this morning side
+of the flood was made clear; she had run the chute, where she had no
+right to be, coming down-stream.
+
+"My!" cried the girl, "I wish--oh, my, my, _my_, I wish I could be five
+people at once!"
+
+For here the boat's watchman sauntered by--a boat's watchman must be a
+world in himself! Yonder at the forward rail the first mate still paced
+athwart the deck. By the captain's chair stood both the elder
+Courteneys, their enthralling conversation all going to waste. Here
+rushed and quivered all the beautiful boat, her great human menagerie
+still unviewed, her cabin-boys laying her breakfast table, her
+cook-house smelling of hot rolls, the miracles of machinery pulsing on
+her lower deck, and down there an awful tragedy going on, with the sweet
+mother playing angel--oh, my, my!--and here, up yonder, was the pilot,
+by whose side one might presently look right into the narrow chute's
+greenwood walls and out over their tops--"Go on, mammy Joy, I can't ever
+listen to you, once we're in the chute!"
+
+"I ain't bust'n' to tell noth'n'. Phyllis ain't belong to yo' pa, nohow.
+She belong' fust to yo' grampa Hayle, same like my sisteh do, my yalleh
+sisteh--aw rutheh to yo' gramma. Yo' gramma she own' a place back o'
+Vicksbu'g, same like _us_ got back o' Natchez, whils' yo' grampa he
+stick to de riveh, same like yo' pa do now. But yo' grampa he outlive'
+yo' gramma nigh twen'y-five yeah'. An' 'bout two yeah' ayfteh yo' gramma
+die' my sisteh, my yalleh sisteh, she housekeep fo' yo' grampa--a shawt
+spell. Yo' ma she soon bruk dat up."
+
+"Why, that was a funny thing for mom-a to do."
+
+"H-it wuz a right thing! Dat's what it wuz."
+
+"But, mammy, grandpa died before I was born!"
+
+"An' what dat got to do wid de price o' beeswax? Yo' a-mixin' me up
+a-puppose! Afo' yo' grampa die'--well, I'll stop tell you quits de
+giggles.... Afo' he die', when Phyllis wuz growed up, an' 'bout a yeah
+ayfteh y'uncle Dan--de bacheldeh--de pilot--quit de riveh a spell fo' to
+run de Vicksbu'g plantation, yo' ma, down on de Natchez place, she speak
+up ag'in, an' ax' yo' grampa fo' to loan Phyllis to she. An' yo' grampa,
+sho' enough, sawnt heh down, bofe Phyllis an' de chile."
+
+"Chi--you skipped! You're skipping! like fury!"
+
+"Ef I skips I skips fo' de good o' yo' soul."
+
+Ramsey stared. "Why did mom-a borrow her?"
+
+"'Caze she couldn' buy heh. Yo' gramma she die' leavin' dat whole
+Vicksbu'g place an' people, bawn an' unbawn, to yo' grampa, fo' to pass,
+when he die', to y'uncle Dan, an' y'uncle Dan he wouldn' even 'a' loan'
+Phyllis ef he could 'a' perwent. Humph-ummm! he tuck on 'bout his
+'rights' like a sett'n' hen."
+
+"But what did mom-a _want_ to borrow her for?"
+
+"Well, I mowt say, fo' heh beauty; but ef I don't skip noth'n' I got to
+say she 'llow to p'otect heh."
+
+Ramsey stared again and suddenly fell into that soft, rippling laugh,
+keen, merry, self-oblivious, which forty excusing adjectives would not
+have excused to her nurse.
+
+"Protect her from--from wha-at?" She rippled again.
+
+"F'om herseff!--an' f'om him!--an' him f'om heh!--and de whole Hayle
+fambly an' de law o' Gawd f'om bofe! An' she done it, yo' ma!--up to de
+wery day he meet his awful en' in dat bu'nin' pilot-house, when----"
+
+"Ah-h-h! what pilot-house? You never told me----"
+
+"Anybody else eveh tol' you? No. Us Hayles-es ain't fon' o' dat story.
+What I ain't tell you ain't be'n ripe to tell. I don't tell noth'n'
+'tell it's ripe to tell, me!"
+
+"Oh, it's dead ripe now. Go on, go on!--Burning pilot-house--my uncle
+Dan--stop!... Hmm!... That's funny.... Why, mammy, how could he be my
+uncle if he--was burnt up--before I was born?"
+
+"Dat's yo' lookout. He wa'n't bu'nt up tell you wuz goin' on five. Yo'
+mixin' his las' en' wid yo' grampa's."
+
+"Oh, I see-ee! He was lost on the _Quakeress_!"
+
+"Well, thaynky, ma'am! Yo' perceivin' powehs is a-gitt'n' ahead o' de
+hounds. I wuz a-comin' to dat----"
+
+Ramsey interrupted. Her cry of ecstasy was not for the breakfast bell,
+which on the deck next below rang joyously up and down both guards and
+died away in the ladies' cabin. It was for a vision that rose before her
+and the _Votaress_; an illusion of the boat's whole speed being lost to
+the boat and given to the shore. Suddenly the fair craft seemed to stop
+and stand, foaming, panting, quivering like a wild mare, while the
+green, gray-bearded, dew-drenched forest--island and mainland--amid a
+singing of innumerable birds, glided down upon her, opening the chute to
+gulp her in without a twang of her guys or a stain upon her beauty.
+
+"Go on!" cried Ramsey, her eyes enthralled by the scene, her ears by the
+story:--"Mom-a borrowed Phyllis--go on!"
+
+"When yo' grampa gone," said Joy, "an' de will is read, yo' ma tell
+y'uncle Dan fo' to neveh mine his rights aw his lef's; he kin go on
+ownin' Phyllis and de chile, but, all de same, he cayn't have 'em. An'
+when he paw de groun' an' th'ow dus' on his back yo' pa dess--go an' see
+him. Wheneveh yo' pa dess go an' see anybody, you know----"
+
+Ramsey knew. She tinkled with delight.
+
+"But den come wuss trouble. 'Caze 'bout dat time----"
+
+About that time Ramsey whisked round and stood so as to give Hugh
+Courteney, as he came on deck, a square view of her young back. He
+noticed her better length of skirt.
+
+"Go on," she murmured. "Is he coming this way?"
+
+"Co'se he ain't. He gwine up to de pilot-house."
+
+"Humph, how _awful_ busy! That's just for grandeur. Go on." And while
+the leafy jaws of the chute drew them in and all the air was suddenly
+filled with the boat's sounds flung back from every rippling bough, tree
+top, and mass of draping vines, the nurse went on:
+
+"'Bout dat time yo' pa he git de hahdess ovehseeh he eveh did git, an'
+you can't 'spute de fact dat yo' pa he take' natchiully to hahd men, an'
+hahd men take natchiully to him. You kin say dat to his credits."
+
+"Yes," replied Ramsey, "yes," sighing, gesticulating, whimpering in
+ecstasies of sight as the walls of the watery lane cramped in to half
+its first width. They seemed to rush past of their own volition, while
+out beyond them on either hand the whole dense gray-green interwoven
+wilderness, with ceremonial stateliness, swung round on itself in slow
+time to the windy speed of the _Votaress_.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+"IT'S A-HAPPMIN' YIT--TO WE ALL"
+
+
+Nevertheless, "Go on!" cried Ramsey. "How could the overseer be hard on
+Phyllis if Phyllis was mom-a's maid?"
+
+"Phyllis fo'ce' him to it! 'Caze all dat time, while she sweet as roses
+wid yo' ma--so's to keep in cahoots wid heh an' not have noth'n' to do
+wid niggehs o' no breed, pyo', half, quahteh, aw half-quahteh--she so
+wild to git back to y'uncle Dan dat she----"
+
+"And to leave mom-a! The goosy-goosy! What for?"
+
+"Well, for one thing, by bad luck, f'om fus' sight, de ovehseeh he
+_fancy_ Phyllis. Y'un'stan'----"
+
+"I don't! I don't want to--Go on!"
+
+"Humph! Phyllis un'stan'. She un'stan' so well an' so quick dat de fus'
+drizzly night when de rain 'u'd spile de trail--de scent--she up wid de
+chile an' putt out."
+
+"For my uncle Dan! Walnut Hills! Go on!" The moving scene was forgotten
+though the chute was widening again.
+
+"Well, de ovehseeh, o' co'se, he _got_ to run heh down an' fetch heh
+back. An' same time de creeks an' bayous----"
+
+"Oh, now, that's the same old----"
+
+"Yass, oh, yass, de same ole! So ole an' common dat you white
+folks--what has all de feelin's----"
+
+"Now, just hush! You don't know anything about it! Go on! Go on! The
+bayous were--what?"
+
+"Bank full, dat's all. One place Phyllis an' him nigh got swep' away an'
+he drap' de chile."
+
+"Oh!... Oh!... Oh!"
+
+"He bleeged to do it, he tell yo' ma, fo' to save Phyllis--what ain't
+want'n' to be save'. Whils' de chile--wuz--de chile wuz drownded." The
+old woman moved to rise, but the girl, with a new expression in her
+face, prevented her.
+
+"Go on! What did mom-a do?"
+
+"Lawd, what could she do--widout yo' pa?"
+
+"Oh, I'd have done something. What did Phyllis do?"
+
+"Phyllis? Dess th'ash' de bed fo' th'ee days--eyes a-blazin' murdeh;
+th'ee days and de Lawd know' how many night'. Yo' ma done one thing but
+you don't want to know dat, I reckon."
+
+"What did she do? Did she turn Whig?"
+
+"Wuss!--ef wuss kin be. She tu'n'--dat day--Abolitionless. Ain't neveh
+tell me, but--you ax heh. Mebbe it wa'n't all 'count o' Phyllis. Mebbe
+it wa'n't plumb hoss-sensible nohow. But dat day-- You ax heh!"
+
+Ramsey flashed: "What are you telling me all this for?"
+
+"Lawd! An' how many time' is you say, 'Go on'?"
+
+"I meant about the _Quakeress_."
+
+"Well, ain't dis de story o' de _Quak'ess_? When----"
+
+"Stop! I'll tell it to you. I see it all."
+
+"You! Y'ain't see it de quahteh o' half a quahteh. Dat story is
+a-happmin' yit--to we-all--on dis boat!"
+
+The breakfast-bell rang again, and Hugh started down from the
+pilot-house. But Ramsey would ask the old woman one more question: "Is
+it happening to him, too?"
+
+"Co'se, him; all o' us; twins an' all. When us brung Phyllis down de
+riveh yo' ma wuz dead ag'in sellin' heh, an' when us git win' dat de
+Co'teneys want' a nuss yo' pa he dat glad he snap his fingehs. 'Us'll
+rent Phyllis to 'em!' he say. 'Dey's Hendry Clay Whigs; dey'd ought to
+treat heh fine.' (Dat wuz his joke.) An' yo' ma make answeh: 'Ef dey
+don't, us kin take heh back! Betteh dat dan sell heh! Nobody o' de Hayle
+blood shayn't do dat whils' I live.'"
+
+Hugh was near. "Good morning!" sang Ramsey. They met at the head of a
+stair. She turned away and looked out beyond the jack-staff as radiantly
+as if she had just alighted on the planet. The chute was astern. A new
+reach of open water came, sun-gilt, to meet them, and on either hand the
+low, monotonous green shores crept southward a mile apart.
+
+She faced again to Hugh. "Isn't this God's country?"
+
+"In a way," the youth admitted with a scant smile.
+
+She glanced about. "Most beautiful river in the world!" she urged, and
+when he faltered she cried: "Oh, you're prejudiced!" She turned half
+away. "I know one thing; I wouldn't let _my_ grandfather prejudice
+_me_."
+
+A new thought struck her: "Oh!... I've just heard all about it!... And
+it helps to explain--you!"
+
+He enjoyed the personality. "Heard all about what?"
+
+"Phyllis!" She jerked up and down. His smile vanished; his lips set; he
+turned red.
+
+Ramsey was even more taken aback than he or old Joy. She knew the pilot
+was looking down on her, the mate glancing back at her. Yet she laughed
+and prattled and all at once frowningly said: "But one thing I just
+can't make out! What on earth had the _Hayle blood_ to do with any right
+or wrong of selling Phyllis? Do you know?"
+
+Hugh reddened worse, and in that instant, outblushing him, she saw the
+truth. "Never mind!" she cried. "Oh, did I stop you? Go on!--I--I mean
+go on down--to breakfast!"
+
+"Won't you go first?"
+
+"No, thank you; go on! Please, go on!" Glancing up to the pilot and
+catching his amused eye, she pointed distantly ahead. "What is that high
+bank on the--the stabboard shore?" she asked him.
+
+"Why"--his tobacco caused but a moment's delay--"nothing much. They call
+that Port Hudson."
+
+"Thank you!" She darted below, where Hugh was already gone. As she
+started she caught sight of the twins. They had just come up on the far
+side of the boat and were approaching the mate. Still flushed, but
+straight as a dart, at the stair's foot she turned on her attendant and
+with brimming eyes said softly: "I don't want any breakfast. I'm going
+to the lower deck--to find mom-a."
+
+"You shayn't! You'll git de cholera!"
+
+"Pooh, the cholera!--after what I've got!--I'm going to tell mom-a on
+you!"
+
+"On me--me! Good Lawd! Go on, I's wid you!"
+
+"You'd no right to tell me that story!"
+
+"Missie, I on'y tol' you fo' to stop you. You said yo'se'f you gwine ax
+him all about it."
+
+"Oh, him!" The girl laughed, yet showed new tears. "I don't mind him; I
+mind the story! I don't even care who it's about, Hayles or no Hayles!"
+
+"Why, den, what does you care----?"
+
+"I care _what_ it's about." She suddenly looked older. "Oh, I'm all over
+bespattered with the horrid----"
+
+"Y'ain't. Y'ain't de sawt fo' dat. Look at yo' ma. She have bofe han's
+in it. Is she all oveh bespattud?"
+
+"Oh, you! You know nothing could ever bespatter mom-a!... I'm going to
+her to get clean!"
+
+"Dat's good!" A shrewd elation lit up the black face. "Go on! As you say
+yo'se'f, go on!"
+
+Ramsey started away but with an overjoyed gasp found herself in her
+mother's arms. She pressed closer while the three laughed, and when the
+other two ceased she still mirthfully clung in that impregnable
+sanctuary. Suddenly she hearkened, tossed her curls, and stood very
+straight. Two male voices were coming down the stairs.
+
+"We cannot," said one, "submit to this alive!"
+
+"Yes," said the other, "we can. It's just _we who_ can--till the day we
+catch them where they've got us to-day!"
+
+"And what, now, is this?" smilingly inquired Madame Hayle as her twin
+sons halted before her.
+
+The young men uncovered. They were surprisingly presentable after the
+night they had spent. Julian, in particular, looked capable and proud of
+their waywardness.
+
+"Good morning," put in Ramsey, on her mother's arm. "See those little
+houses up on that bank? That's Port Hudson. Up there they can see away
+down the river, past Prophet's Island, and at the same time away
+up-stream. If we were on the hurric--" She made a start, but her mother,
+while addressing the twins, restrained her.
+
+"Well," she asked, "you cannot submit--to what?"
+
+"We are ordered ashore!" said Julian.
+
+"At the next landing!" quavered Lucian--"Bayou Sara!"
+
+Ramsey slipped from her mother and gazed at the twins with her eyes as
+large as theirs. "You shan't go!" she broke in. "Where's Hugh?" She
+darted for the cabin, old Joy following. Julian glared after them.
+
+"See?" he said to his mother. "You don't see--the plot? It's a plot!--to
+compromise us!--you and her included!"
+
+"Before this boat-load of witnesses!" chimed Lucian.
+
+Him the mother waved to a remote chair. "Bring me that," she said, for a
+pretext, and turned privately to Julian, speaking too swiftly for him to
+reply: "Was it part of that plot that you was both on that lower deck
+laz' night? No? But in the city those laz' two-three day' in how many
+strenge place' you was--lower deck of the whole worl'--God only know',
+eh?--unless maybe also the devil--an' the scavenger? That was likewise
+part of that plot aggains' us? No? But anny'ow that comity of
+seven--h-ah!"--she made a wry face--"that was cause' by the wicked
+plotting of those Courteney'? An' that diztrac' you so bad this morning
+that you 'ave not notiz' even that change' face on yo' brotheh?--or that
+change' voice, eh? An' him he's too affraid to tell you how he's feeling
+bad! As faz' as you can, take him--to his room--his bed--an' say you,
+both, some prayers. He's godd the cholera."
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+RAMSEY WINS A POINT OR TWO
+
+
+There was half an hour yet before the first mate's watch would end.
+
+He had risen from the captain's seat on the approach of that middle-aged
+pair who in the first hour of the voyage had enjoyed seeing Hugh and
+Ramsey together; a couple whose home evidently was far elsewhere--if
+anywhere--and who as evidently had seen the world to better advantage
+than most of the _Votaress's_ passengers. As he rose Hugh and Ramsey
+came up near one of the wheels. Seeing them start directly for him, he
+made a heavy show of attention to the married pair.
+
+While the quick step of the two younger people brought them near, the
+husband began to reply to the mate: "Why, to the common eye, tiresome, I
+dare say. To the artist--I wonder! It's the only much-travelled river in
+the world whose most imposing sight is always the boat."
+
+"It isn't!" whispered Ramsey to Hugh. Then openly, yet decorously,
+"Ahem!" she said as they lapsed into waiting attitudes. But the mate was
+not to be ahemmed, and while he hearkened on to the critic she could do
+no better than hammer the small of her back and smooth into it a further
+perfection.
+
+"At the same time," continued the stranger, "it's immensely interesting;
+politically as to its future, scientifically as to its past." He turned
+to his wife: "Look, for instance, at this bit of it right here." A
+trained art in his pose and gesture caused Ramsey and old Joy to look as
+he prompted. "This is Fausse Riviere Cut-off," he continued, and the
+mate said it was--'False River'.
+
+"Yes. Now, barely two generations ago"--he animatedly took Ramsey into
+his glance--"this stream suddenly abandoned twenty-odd miles of its own
+tremendous length and width and sprang through this two-mile cut-off."
+There was such fervor in his tone, and in his wife's mien such vivacity
+of interest, that the amazing event stood before Ramsey as if it had
+just occurred.
+
+"You've read books about this river!" she said.
+
+"A few, drifting down it by flatboat."
+
+"Oh, by Christopher!" broke out the mate, "I remember you now! Yo're
+that play-actor! Yo're the man, by gad! who hauled me into yo' skiff
+half roasted and half drownded when the _Quakeress_ was a-burnin'! By
+George, look here! What do you want on this boat, that you ain't already
+got? Name it, sir, just name it! Oh, by hokey, sir, I----!"
+
+Smilingly the actor shook his head while his wife beamed delightedly.
+"We haven't a want ungratified," he answered.
+
+"Oh, please!" put in Ramsey, "yes, you have--one!"
+
+"Have we, mademoiselle? Surely we have if you have."
+
+The mate interposed. "That's a daughter of Gideon Hayle, sir--as good a
+captain, by Joe, as ever took out a boat----"
+
+The wife nodded gayly. "We know him," she said.
+
+"Oh!" laughed Ramsey, scanning the pair up and down.
+
+"What is it we want, worthy daughter of Gideon Hayle?" asked the
+player--"you and my wife and I--and your--this is your brother, is he
+not?"
+
+Ramsey's mouth and eyes spread wide. She turned to Hugh and at sight of
+his heavy face whisked round again with her handkerchief to her lips.
+The mate spoke for her:
+
+"That's Captain Courteney's son, sir."
+
+"What Miss Hayle wants--" began Hugh----
+
+"What _we_ want," said Ramsey----
+
+"Yes," said Hugh, "what we want is the recall of----"
+
+"An order," broke in the mate. "I know; my order for them two twins to
+go ashore. You can't have that, Hugh."
+
+"We can!" said Ramsey, with tears in her laugh.
+
+"No, sir-ee!" said the mate. "Ashore they go!"
+
+"Ashore they don't!" said Ramsey. "You just told this gentleman you'd do
+anything he----"
+
+"I'd do anything he--yes, but"--the speaker looked beyond her--"Why, Mr.
+Play-actor, them two young Americans come up here a-smellin' o'
+buckwheat cakes and golden syrup, when they and some others--a general
+and a senator, wa'n't they?--had had some political tiff with you----"
+
+"Oh, not political at all! There's a proposition--I had no idea it was
+theirs--to land our deck passengers on----"
+
+"On Turnbull's or Natchez Island!"
+
+Ramsey breathed an audible amazement.
+
+"Exactly," said the player. "Well, I had the ill luck to call their
+scheme a bad name or two."
+
+"Good! Now, sir, up they come here _a-demanding_ o' me to put you
+ashore, 'where he'll get himself lynched,' says they."
+
+"Oh, bless my soul!" cried the actor. "If that was all and you want to
+please us, just let them alone."
+
+The mate smiled to Hugh and shook his head. "It wa'n't all. _You_ know
+it wa'n't. Gad, Mr. Hugh, they got to go!"
+
+"Oh, they must not!" begged both players. A few steps away the bishop
+and the judge were holding an earnest conversation with the grandfather
+Courteney, and his eye tried to call the mate. But Ramsey, holding to
+Hugh by his sleeve, gave the old gentleman a toss of her chin, a jerk of
+her curls, and took the mate by a coat button. Her slim, silken figure
+intercepting him, and his rude bulk smiling down into her upturned face
+with a commanding yet amiable restiveness, made a picture to the players
+and to the distant pilot, but much more than a picture to the captive
+himself. He had thought he had been fending off the banter of a child,
+but now, suddenly, this was not a child. A being was here not entirely
+mundane nor quite supernal yet surpassing all his earlier knowledge of
+feminine quality, something for which a year's hard thinking would not
+have found him a definition. Holding his button, she spoke low:
+
+"Please change that order." What mysterious compulsion there was in that
+"please"! Her fingers tapped Hugh. "_He_ wants it changed--for me. We'll
+be responsible!"
+
+"Oh, you will!" The big man did not look at Hugh; his smile broadened on
+their common captor. Her answering eyes laughed, but even in them, deep
+down, he saw a pleading ardor at once so childlike, so womanly, and so
+celestial that suddenly the deck seemed gone.
+
+"Please change it! quick!" she murmured again, "for us!"
+
+He felt an inward start and saw a vision--of the future--with those two
+in the midst of it. His brightening glance went belatedly to Hugh, and
+verily there was more of Hugh also than he had ever seen before, but the
+crass significance of his smile was quite lost on the pair.
+
+"Yes," insisted Ramsey, "_we_ want it changed, him and me--I mean he and
+I!"
+
+The big man's laugh drowned hers. "Oh, it's plain either way. Well, by
+George! that _is_ an argument. You and him! Gad, the case is covered!
+You and him has got me--by the hind leg!" He began to turn away, for
+yonder, apart from commodore, judge, and bishop, but with Madame Hayle
+at his side, stood the captain, giving him a sign which he promptly
+passed on up to the pilot. "By the hind leg," he repeated, whereat a
+titter broke from the averted face of old Joy, while Ramsey stood agape
+at her success.
+
+"They _stay_--the twins--stay _aboard_?" she asked the actors, Hugh, and
+the mate in turn.
+
+"Lord, yes!" said the latter.
+
+On tiptoes of gratitude she had parted her lips to say more, when the
+air overflowed with the long bellow of the boat. "Oh," she cried
+protestingly in the din, "but that's to land!"
+
+His reply was unheard, but a shake of his head reassured her as he moved
+toward the elder Courteneys, whom bishop and judge had left, and who now
+stood alone awaiting him. She faced Hugh. He was telling the actor's
+wife that this landing was to get a physician. Ramsey touched him and
+spoke low:
+
+"We're going to have an awful time. Don't you think so?"
+
+He did not say. The great bell tolled thrice. She waved him to look at
+the people ashore, of all sorts and shades, coming down to the
+wharf-boat to see them, but suddenly, invited by a glance from his
+father, he stepped away to him. "Humph!" she laughed to old Joy, and
+started to join her mother, who was leaving the deck. But the mother
+motioned her back. "Where are you going?" whined Ramsey.
+
+"To Lucian."
+
+The daughter halted, aghast. "Has he got it?" But her mother went on
+without reply. She turned to the players and, when they smiled
+invitingly, rejoined them. When she inquired their name they said it was
+Gilmore.
+
+"Will you tell me about the _Quakeress_?" she asked.
+
+The husband said he would. "But you don't mean now," he qualified, "when
+so many things are happening?"
+
+"N-no," she replied grudgingly, and presently added: "I'm afraid my
+brother's got the cholera." But then she brightened triumphantly.
+"Anyhow," she said, "the mate didn't know that." The engine bells
+jingled, the wheels paused, and the shore appeared to drift down upon
+them, pushing the crowded wharf-boat before it. "What d'you reckon this
+beautiful boat is saying to herself right now?" she asked.
+
+"She ought to say," critically put in the bishop, behind her, to the
+senator, while she turned and cast her head-to-foot scrutiny up and down
+the two, "that for the welfare of that wharf-boatful of men and boys,
+and of the homes they live in, she'd best not land, after all."
+
+"That's what she _is_ saying!" defensively cried Ramsey, and, sure
+enough, while she laughed the scape-pipes roared and the wheels backed
+till the wharf-boat stood still. At the same time the pilots changed
+watch. The captain sauntered to the forward rail. The commodore, with
+the mate and Hugh, went below. So closely did the actor's eyes follow
+them that Ramsey asked: "What are they going to do?"
+
+"Going ashore in the yawl, I hope, for a doctor."
+
+"And medicines," added some one.
+
+"And for a priest," disparagingly said the smiling bishop as they moved
+to the shoreward edge of the roof. "Large demands our deck passengers
+are making."
+
+"An outrage!" said the senator. "It's an outrage that they, who wouldn't
+have dared whimper a month ago in their own country, should be allowed
+to behave this way here!"
+
+"It isn't!" said Ramsey, squarely in his face. There was a general
+start, old Joy groaned, and Ramsey's eyes, though still in his, looked
+frightened; yet there was in her tone and bearing something so pertinent
+and worthy, even so womanly, that she had nearly every one on her side
+in a moment and the two players audibly murmured approval.
+
+The senator grew benign. "My fair young lady," he said, "if your father,
+Gideon Hayle, were captain here he'd have those people off this boat in
+short metre."
+
+"He wouldn't!" said Ramsey. Her eyes flashed and widened. Then as they
+darted round upon the actor her most tinkling laugh broke out, and she
+caught his wife's arm and rocked her forehead on it, the laugh recurring
+in light gusts between her words as they came singingly: "He wouldn't
+... he wouldn't ... he wouldn't."
+
+"There they go," said a voice, and down on the waters directly beneath
+appeared the white yawl like a painted toy, but full of men. The
+commodore was there and the mate. Beside the mate sat the young German
+who had fought the twins.
+
+"That's the one they call Otto," said Ramsey, though how she knew is to
+be wondered; and somebody, to amplify, added:
+
+"Otto Marburg. They're taking him along so the others will be quiet till
+he comes back."
+
+"Humph!" said Ramsey, arching her brows to old Joy and the Gilmores and
+by her own glance directing theirs to the aftermost figure in the yawl.
+It was Hugh. He was steering.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THIS WAY TO WOMANHOOD
+
+
+Noon came with a beauty of sky as if it smiled back to the smiles of a
+land innocent of pain, grief, or strife.
+
+It found the _Votaress_ under full headway, with a physician aboard and
+Bayou Sara one great reach and two great bends behind. In a stateroom of
+her texas, by madame's grateful acceptance of the captain's offer, lay
+Lucian, torn with pain but bravely meek, with Julian in close
+attendance, Ramsey excluded, and the mother looking in often, though
+very busy yet with the doctor on the lower deck.
+
+In the middle of the forenoon, invited by the captain, the bishop had
+held divine service in the ladies' cabin and, praying for his country,
+found himself praying also, resoundingly and with tears, for the
+"strange people" down under his bended knees, while out on the boiler
+deck the disputation concerning them steadily warmed and spread, the
+committee of seven feeling themselves for the moment baffled but by no
+means beaten--baffled, for their casual brush with Ramsey had most
+surprisingly, not to say unfairly, discredited their cause. "Gideon
+Hayle's daughter" had become as universally known by sight as "John
+Courteney's son," and all about among the male cabin passengers her
+method of debate--"It won't! They don't! He wouldn't! We
+shouldn't!"--with a mirth often provokingly unlike hers--was the fashion
+and had won two or three small victories.
+
+"The side that laughs, nowadays and hereabouts," agreed the two players,
+"wins." But they said it aside from Ramsey, who, they had begun to fear,
+would be sadly spoiled, the juveniles were so humbly looking up to her,
+and so many grown-ups sought her to draw out her brief but prompt
+utterances upon the situation and repeat them elsewhere to those who
+liked their seats so much more than anything else. They tried to keep
+her with them and off the absorbing theme and were not without success.
+
+Just now the word had run all through the boat that the next turn would
+bring her into the "Raccourci," or, as every one but the players called
+it, "Raccourci Cut-off." Counting up-stream, it was the second of four
+great shortenings of the river, which, in the brief century and a half
+since the country had become a white man's possession, had reduced a
+hundred and twenty miles of its wandering course to half as many within
+a straight overland distance of thirty. Wonderful to Ramsey was the
+story of it. The kindly Gilmore told it with a pictorial and personal
+interest that made it seem as if he himself had planned and supervised
+the whole work. One of the shortenings was Shreve's Cut-off, made only
+twenty-one years before this birth year of the _Votaress_. Yonder it
+lay, just veering into the remotest view, where Red River, over twelve
+hundred miles from its source in the Staked Plains beyond the Rocky
+Mountains, swept, two thousand feet wide, into the Mississippi without
+broadening the "Father of Waters" a yard.
+
+Yet why look there, so distantly, when here between, right here under
+the boat's cut-water, was the Raccourci, barely four years old? The
+_Votaress_ was in it, half through it, before either Ramsey or Mrs.
+Gilmore could be fully informed, and now their attention was beyond even
+their own command. For yonder ahead, miles away in Shreve's Cut-off,
+riding the strong current under Turnbull's Island, came the _Regent_,
+finest and speediest of Gideon Hayle's steamers.
+
+So late in the season her passengers were few and she was not utterly
+smothered in a cargo of cotton bales, yet her freight deck showed a
+goodly brown mass of them, above which her snowy form gleamed against
+the verdant background of the forested island, as dainty as a swan,
+while her gliding stem raised on either side a silver ribbon of water
+that arched itself almost to her gunwales.
+
+"Each to her own starboard," answered the _Regent's_ mellow bell to the
+bell of the _Votaress_. Her whistle whitened and trumpeted in salute,
+and on jack-staff and verge-staff her rippling flags ran up and dipped,
+twice, thrice, to the answering flags of the Courteney boat. Well
+forward on her hurricane-deck her captain, whom many on the _Votaress_
+pointed out by name, stood alone. Amid-ships her cabin-boys lined her
+cook-house guards. Her negro crew swarmed round her capstan with their
+chantey-man on its head and sent over the gliding waters the same
+stalwart perversion of the wilderness hymn of "Gideon's Band" to which
+the twins had danced the night before. Now the lone, high voice of the
+leader sang:
+
+     "Fus' come de animals, two by two,
+      Fus' come de animals, two by two,
+      Fus' come de animals, two by two,
+      De elephantine and de kanguiroo,"
+
+and now, while he held the key-note through the refrain's whole first
+line, the chorus rolled up from an octave below:
+
+     "Do you belong to Gideon's Band?
+      Here's my heart an' here's my hand!
+      Do you belong to Gideon's Band?
+        Fight'n' fo' yo' home!"
+
+No song is so poor that it may not thrill a partisan devotion. Ramsey
+stood on her toes. Down in his berth and in torture the shut-in Lucian
+faintly heard, turned his gaze to his brother, whispered "the _Regent_!"
+and listened for another verse. The boats were passing widely apart, and
+when it came only memory made its foolish lines plain to his doting ear:
+
+     "Nex' come de hoss and den de flea,
+      Nex' come de hoss and den de flea,
+      Nex' come de hoss and den de flea,
+      De camomile and de bumblebee.
+        Do you belong to Gideon's Band?
+     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+          Fight'n' fo' yo' home!"
+
+On the last line the singers were half a mile downstream, in Raccourci
+Cut-off, and Ramsey and the _Votaress_ were well started up the ten-mile
+reach from Red River Landing to Fort Adams.
+
+How swiftly and incessantly the scene changed. Down in a stateroom near
+the boiler deck some beginner on the horn was dejectedly playing "A Life
+on the Ocean Wave," but even with pestilence aboard and a brother
+stricken with it what an exalted, exalting life was a life on this
+mighty stream! Flat lands? Flat waters? It was the highest, widest
+outlook into the world of nature and of man she had ever had.
+Monotonous?--when one felt oneself a year older to-day than yesterday
+and growing half a month's growth every hour? In yesterday's
+childishness she had begun at Post Forty-six to keep count of all the
+timber rafts and flatboats met, and here in this long stretch came three
+more of the one and five of the other, with men hurrahing to her from
+them--men as wild as the wilderness, yet with homes and families away
+back up the great tributaries and their tributaries. And here were
+mile-wide cotton fields, with the black people hoeing in them and
+looking no bigger than flocks of birds feeding. And here came another
+steamboat--and yonder another! The very drift logs, so countlessly
+frequent, vast trees from vast forests, some of them not yet dead, told
+to her sobering mind in tragic dumb show as they came gliding and
+plunging by, the age-long drama of their rise, decline, and fall.
+Unbrokenly green, yes, forever the one same green, were the low willow
+and cottonwood jungles of the creeping shores; but while the "labboard"
+shore was still Louisiana the "stabboard" was now her own native
+Mississippi.
+
+Yes, these wild shores were States--States of the great Union, the
+world's hope; Jackson's, Clay's, Webster's Union, which "must and shall
+be preserved," "now and forever, one and inseparable." Somewhere between
+these shores, moreover, and not behind but away on up-stream, probably,
+Mr. Watson said, in Dead Man's Bend, was, once more, the _Antelope_. In
+the long wait at Bayou Sara, where Hugh and the outlandish Otto--who
+could speak French--had found the priest while the commodore and the
+mate were getting the doctor, the _Antelope_ had reappeared, swept up,
+and foamed by, and now was so far ahead that in hardly less than another
+hundred and sixty miles could she be again overtaken. But to Ramsey,
+even without the _Antelope_ or any or all of the sights and facts of
+landscape and history, no moment could go stale while the tale of
+Phyllis and the _Quakeress_ waited like funds in a bank, and while the
+commodore, the captain, and Hugh, the pilots, the mate, the Gilmores,
+the judge, general, bishop, squire, senator, Otto Marburg in his green
+coat, and dozens and scores of others were all over the boat, each more
+and more a story, a study, as hourly she grew older.
+
+On the bench close behind her in the pilot-house a lady with needlework,
+a gentleman with _De Bow's Review_ (the squire's sister and
+brother-in-law), had begun to talk with the Gilmores and presently
+mentioned the twins, speaking in such a tone of doom as to give Ramsey a
+sudden panic.
+
+"It's fine!" said the husband, praising Julian's devotion to his
+stricken brother. "And they are fine. Their faults--which you've had
+occasion to discover, sir--are spots on the sun; the faults, madam, of
+all our young Southern gentlemen----"
+
+"Would you say of all?" asked the actor's wife.
+
+"No!" said the other lady, "no, not of all!" and her husband was glad to
+stand corrected.
+
+"No," he admitted, "but still of almost all; faults of which we may
+almost say, sir, that we may almost be proud!"
+
+"Oh, well," begged his wife, "please almost don't say it! They're the
+faults of our 'peculiar institution' and I wish our 'peculiar
+institution' were--" She sewed hard.
+
+"In the deep bosom of the ocean buried," suggested her husband to the
+players. "Why, honestly, so do I. But it's not, and can't be, and as
+long as it can't be we----"
+
+"Oh, well," said his wife, "don't let's begin on that."
+
+Reckless of institutions Ramsey turned. "Is my brother worse?" she broke
+in, but a white-jacket entered with the dinner-bell and spoke softly to
+old Joy. "Yes," said Ramsey to him, "I'm Miss Hayle. What is it? Is my
+brother worse?"
+
+"Miss Hayle, Mr. Hugh Co'teney make his comp'ments----"
+
+Ramsey laughed in relief.
+
+"Yass'm, an' say' cap'm cayn' come to de table an' yo' ma she cayn't
+come----"
+
+"I know she can't. Is my brother----?"
+
+"And de commodo' he at de gemp'men's table, an' so he, Mr. Hugh, he
+'p'inted to de ladies' table, an' will you please fo' to set in de place
+o' yo' ma?"
+
+"Oh, rid-ic-ulous! Who? me? I?" The laugh grew plaintive.
+
+"Yes, you; why not?" said the pilot at the wheel, with his eyes fixed
+far up the river.
+
+But Ramsey glanced at her short skirts and laughed to all by turns: "Oh,
+it's just some ridiculous mistake!"
+
+"No, miss, 'tain't no mistake. All de yetheh ladies incline de place."
+Every one laughed. "Oh, he on'y off' it to one! But when she say fo' to
+off' it to you den dey all say de same; yass'm, sawt o' in honoh o' yo'
+ma."
+
+"They're afraid that seat'll give 'em the cholera," said the pilot in
+grim jest, still gazing up-stream, but the ladies cried out in denial
+for all their sex.
+
+"I accept," said Ramsey, with a downward pull at her draperies. "How's
+my brother?"
+
+"Thank y'ma'am," was the bowing waiter's only reply. He tripped down the
+pilot-house steps and away.
+
+"Your brother," said the squire's sister as they all followed, "isn't in
+nearly so much pain, we hear."
+
+Ramsey flashed: "Does that mean better--or worse?"
+
+"Why--we--we can't always be sure."
+
+"Ringading tingalingaty, ringadang ding!" sang the festive bell up and
+down the deck to which they began to descend by a narrow stair, old Joy
+at the rear. Madame Hayle, ascending by another with the Bayou Sara
+priest, espied the nurse and beckoned her. The pilot, high above,
+observed the three as they met, although his ear was bent to a
+speaking-tube. Now he answered into it: "Yes, sir.... Yes, close above
+the point--Point Breeze, yes, sir."
+
+As he resumed his up-stream gaze he saw old Joy, still at the stair,
+stand as if lost and then descend alone while madame and the priest
+moved toward the sickroom. The helm went gently over and the _Votaress_
+rounded the point, but the priest waited outside where madame had gone
+in, and when the door reopened enough to let one out it was Julian who
+grimly confronted him, holding a pen, half concealed.
+
+"My brother declines to see you, sir."
+
+A flash came from the eyes of the priest, but the youth repeated: "My
+brother _declines_ to _see_ you, sir."
+
+The visitor caught breath to speak, but the great bell pealed for
+another landing and burial, and madame came out. She addressed him a few
+words in French, and with an austere bow to Julian he humbly turned away
+at her side.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+LADIES' TABLE
+
+
+Hugh stood at the head of the midday dinner-table, waiting for a full
+assembly of its guests. The Vicksburg merchant and his wife, the planter
+from Milliken's Bend and his wife, also stood at their places.
+
+The two ladies glanced about as if listlessly noting the cabin's lavish
+arabesques and gilding, while each really studied and knew the other was
+studying the captain's son. For this tale which we tell, they saw. It
+was "a-happmin'" before their eyes and, in degree, to themselves. Hugh
+and his father, the commodore and madame, the first mate, the twins,
+Ramsey, and the committee of seven--who, we shall see, were not taking
+discomfiture meekly--were scarlet threads in the story's swiftly weaving
+fabric--cogent reasons, themselves, why these two ladies had helped vote
+Ramsey to the seat next Hugh.
+
+His face, Hugh's, was not easy reading. Certain shadows cast on it by
+that part of his mind just then busiest were quite unintelligible.
+Deciphered they would have meant a solemn joy for his broadening
+accountability; an awesome anxiety and distressed eagerness to meet and
+fill that accountability as fast as it broadened. He was just then
+recalling one of Ramsey's queries of the evening before, when she had
+seemed so much younger than now, and when, nevertheless, a germ of
+fellowship had sprung up between them; that word of hers about "feeling
+oneself widen out of oneself," etc. He did not at present feel himself
+nearly so much as he felt things round about him growing and growing.
+
+The _Votaress_ had grown, grown wonderfully, and the story happening,
+the play being acted on her three decks at once, was neither story nor
+play to him. Which fact was one of the few things the two gentle
+students of his face made out to read. However, it quite rewarded them;
+it went, itself, so well into the story.
+
+And certainly, as even the Gilmores would have said, it is not when our
+spiritual vision sees things at their completest values that _all_ the
+world's a stage and its men and women _merely_ players. Nor is it at our
+best that we discern our own story, as a story, while it happens. It is
+a poor eye that sees itself. When Ramsey arrived at the table Hugh's
+gaze was so big with the reality, not the romance, of things on all the
+three decks that she had to laugh a little to keep her balance.
+
+Yet her question was an earnest and eager one: "Is my brother better, or
+is he worse?"
+
+The toll of the bell on the deck above--to land, as we have said, near
+Point Breeze--came like a spectral reply, invoking, as it did, new
+trouble unknown to her though just beneath her feet.
+
+"He's better not to be worse," said Hugh, and when she frowned
+whimsically he explained: "His sickness is not quite the same as that on
+the lower deck."
+
+"How is it different?" she asked, unconsciously keeping the whole
+company of the ladies' table on their feet. At the gentlemen's table,
+just forward of them and tapering slenderly away in the long cabin's
+white-and-gilt perspective, that grosser majority who had come only to
+feed were mutely and with stooped shoulders feeding like pigeons from a
+trough, and far down at its end the white-haired commodore had taken his
+seat, with senator, judge, squire, general, and the seventeen-year-old
+Hayle boy nearest him on his right and left. The bishop was not there.
+He was at the ladies' table, paired with the judge's sister"--a leaden
+load even for a bishop.
+
+"Your brother's illness is so much slower," Hugh said.
+
+"So, then--he--he had it when he came aboard?"
+
+"He had it when he came aboard," assented Hugh, moving for the group to
+be seated. "But----"
+
+"Wait," said Ramsey. "Mustn't we all be as gay and happy as we can?" And
+when every one but the judge's sister playfully said yes she turned to
+the Vicksburg merchant: "Then will you change places with Mr. Gilmore?"
+
+Faith, he would! It paired him with the actor's wife, and his wife with
+the actor. Gayety began forthwith. "And will you change--with--with
+you?" Ramsey asked the planter of Milliken's Bend and the squire's
+brother-in-law.
+
+Indeed they would. The change not only paired each with the other's wife
+but brought the brother-in-law next to Ramsey. Underfoot meantime the
+engine bells jingled, overhead the scape-pipes roared, and in every part
+the boat quivered as her great wheels churned or was strangely quiet as
+they paused for another signal. So all sat down, well aware what the
+landing was for, and began blithely to converse and be waited on, as if
+the world were being run primarily for their innocent delight.
+
+What a Sabbath feast was there spread for a bishop to say grace upon,
+and what travellers' hunger to match it. Among Hugh and Ramsey's dozen,
+if no further, how the conversation rippled, radiated, and out-tinkled
+and out-twinkled the fine tablewares. One almost forgot his wine or that
+the boat and her wheels had stopped; might have quite forgotten had not
+certain sounds, starting in full volume from the lower deck but arriving
+under the cabin floor faint and wasted--emaciated, as you might
+say--stolen up and in. A diligent loquacity contrived to ignore the most
+of them. The soft chanting of the priest as he walked down the
+landing-stage and out upon the damp brown sands, followed by the bearers
+of the new pine box and by a short procession of bowed mourners,
+perished unheard at the table; but many noises more penetrative were
+also much more discomfiting, and it was fortunate that the talk of the
+bishop and others could charm most of them away even from the judge's
+nervous sister, who, nevertheless, amid such remote themes as Jenny
+Lind, Nebraska, coming political conventions, and the new speed record
+of the big _Eclipse_ in the fourteen hundred and forty miles from New
+Orleans, could not help a light start now and then. It was good, to Hugh
+and to Ramsey, to see how the actor, Gilmore, despite this upward
+seepage of ghostly cries--faint notes of horror, anguish, and
+despair--attenuated groans and wailings of bodily agony--held the eyes
+of the ladies nearest him with tales of travel and the theatre, and
+mention of the great cut-off of 1699, which they would soon pass and
+must notice. But quite as good was it to the wives of Vicksburg and
+Milliken's Bend to observe with what fluency Hugh, commonly so quiet,
+discoursed to Mrs. Gilmore and to Ramsey on other river features near at
+hand: Dead Man's Bend, Ellis Cliffs, Natchez Island, the crossing above
+it, Saint Catherine's Creek, and Natchez itself.
+
+"Where I was born!" said Ramsey. "Largest town in Mississippi and the
+most stuck-up."
+
+The other Mississippians laughed delightedly.
+
+"We stop there," said Hugh, "to put off freight."
+
+"Mr. Courteney," asked Ramsey, "what _is_ a 'crossing'?"
+
+There were new lower-deck noises to drown and Hugh welcomed the slender
+theme. "The channel of a great river in flat lands," he said, "is a
+river within a river. It frets against its walls of slack water----"
+
+"I see!--as the whole river does against its banks!"
+
+"Yes. Wherever the shore bends, the current, when strong, keeps straight
+on across the slack water till it hits the bend. Then it swerves just
+enough to rush by, and miles below hits the other shore, swerves again,
+and crosses in another long slant down there."
+
+"Except where it breaks through and makes a cut-off!"
+
+"But a cut-off is an event. This goes on all the time, in almost every
+reach; so that pilots, whether running down-stream in the current or
+up-stream in the slack water, cross the river about as often as the
+current does."
+
+"Hence the term!" laughed Ramsey.
+
+"I think so. You might ask Mr. Watson."
+
+"No, I'll ask him what a reach is--and a towhead--and a pirooter--oh,
+don't you love this river?"
+
+While the talk thus flowed, what delicacies--pastries, ices, fruits--had
+come in and served their ends! But also against what sounds from the
+underworld had each utterance still to make headway: commands and
+threats and cries of defiance and rage, faint but intense, and which all
+at once ceased at the crack of a shot! The judge's sister let out a soft
+note of affright and looked here and there for explanation. In vain. The
+Vicksburg merchant lightly spoke across the table:
+
+"Shooting alligators, bishop?"
+
+"Oh!" broke in the judge's sister, aggrieved, "that was for no
+alligator." She appealed to a white-jacket bringing coffee: "Was that
+for an alligator?"
+
+"I dunno'm. Mowt be a deer. Mowt be a b'ar."
+
+His bashful smirk implied it might be none of the three. Ramsey looked
+at Hugh and Hugh said quietly to a boy at his back:
+
+"Go, see what it is."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+RAMSEY AND THE BISHOP
+
+
+"High water like this," casually said the planter, next to Ramsey,
+"drives the big game out o' the swamps, where they use, and makes 'em
+foolish."
+
+"Yes," said the bishop. "You know, Dick"--for he and the planter were
+old acquaintances--"not far from here, those long stretches of river a
+good mile wide, and how between them there are two or three short pieces
+where the shores are barely a quarter of a mile apart?"
+
+"Yes," replied Dick and others.
+
+"Well, last week, on my down trip, as we rounded a point in one of those
+narrow places, there, right out in mid-river, was a big buck, swimming
+across. Two swampers had spied him and were hot after him in a skiff."
+
+"Oh," cried Ramsey, "I hope he got away!"
+
+"Why, _I_ partly hoped he would," laughed the bishop, "and partly I
+hoped they'd get him."
+
+"Characteristic," she heard the planter say to himself.
+
+"And sure enough," the tale went on, "just as his forefeet hit the
+bank--" But there Hugh's messenger reappeared, and as Hugh listened to
+his murmured report the deer's historian avoided oblivion only by
+asking:
+
+"Well, Mr. Courteney, after all, what was it?"
+
+"Tell the bishop," said Hugh to the boy.
+
+"'T'uz a man, suh," the servant announced, and when the ladies exclaimed
+he amended, "leas'wise a deckhan', suh."
+
+"Thank Heaven!" thought several, not because it was a man but because
+the bells jingled again and the moving boat resumed her own blessed
+sounds. But the bishop was angry--too angry for table talk. He had his
+suspicions.
+
+"Did deckhands make all that row?"
+
+"Oh, no, suh; not in de beginnin', suh."
+
+"Wasn't there trouble with the deck passengers?"
+
+"Yassuh, at fus'; at fus', yassuh; wid dem and dey young leadeh. Y'see,
+dey be'n so long aboa'd ship dey plumb stahve fo' gyahden-sass an'
+'count o' de sickness de docto' won't 'low 'em on'y some sawts. But back
+yondeh on sho' dey's some wile mulbe'y trees hangin' low wid green
+mulbe'ys, an' comin' away f'om de grave dey make a break fo' 'em. But de
+mate he head' 'em off. An' whilse de leadeh he a-jawin' at de mate on
+sho', an' likewise at de clerk on de b'ileh deck an' at the cap'm on de
+roof----"
+
+"In a foreign tongue," prompted the bishop, to whom that seemed the
+kernel of the offense.
+
+"Yassuh, I reckon so; in a fond tongue; yassuh."
+
+"About his sick not having proper food?" asked Ramsey.
+
+"Yass'm--no'm--yass'm! An' whilse he a-jawin', some o' de crew think dey
+see a chance fo' to slip into de bresh an' leave de boat. An' when de
+mate whip' out his 'evolveh on 'em, an' one draw a knife on him, an' he
+make a dash fo' dat one, he--dat deckhan'--run aboa'd so fas' dat he
+ain't see whah he gwine tell it's too la-ate."
+
+The bishop tightened his lips at Hugh and peered at the cabin-boy: "How
+was it too late?"
+
+"De deckhan' he run ove'boa'd, suh."
+
+The ladies flinched, the men frowned. "But," said the querist, "meantime
+the mate had fired, hmm? Did he--hit?"
+
+"Dey don't know, suh. De deckhan' he neveh riz."
+
+"Awful!" The bishop and Hugh looked steadily at each other. "So that
+also we owe to our aliens!"
+
+"Yes," said Hugh.
+
+"We don't," said Ramsey softly, yet heard by all.
+
+Across the board Mrs. Gilmore said "Oh!" but in the next breath all but
+the judge's sister laughed, the bishop, as Hugh and he began to rise,
+laughing most.
+
+"Wait," said Ramsey, laying a hand out to each and addressing Hugh. "How
+are those sick downstairs going to get the right food?"
+
+The cabin-boy almost broke in but caught himself.
+
+"Say it," said Hugh.
+
+"Why, dem what already sick dey a-gitt'n' it. Yass'm, dey gitt'n' de
+boat's best. Madam Hayle and de cap'm dey done see to dat f'om de staht.
+H-it's de well uns what needs he'p."
+
+"But," said Ramsey, still to Hugh, "for sick or well--the right
+food--who pays for it?"
+
+"The boat."
+
+"Who pays the boat?" she asked, and suddenly, blushing, saw her
+situation. Except the bishop and the judge's sister, who were conversing
+in undertone--except them and Hugh--the whole company, actually with
+here and there an elbow on the board, had turned to her in such bright
+expectancy as to give her a shock of encounter. But mirth upheld her,
+and leaning in over the table she shifted her question to the smiling
+bishop: "Who pays the boat?"
+
+"The boat? Why--ha, ha!--that's the boat's lookout."
+
+"It isn't," she laughed, but laughed so daintily and in a gayety so
+modestly self-justified that the group approved and the Vicksburg man
+asked her:
+
+"Who ought to pay the boat?"
+
+"We!" she cried. "All of us! It's in the Bible that we ought!" She
+looked again to the bishop. "Ain't it?"
+
+"Why, I don't recall any mention of this matter there."
+
+"Nor of strangers?" she asked, "nor of sick folks?" and her demure
+mirth, not flung at him or at any one, but quite to itself and for
+itself, came again.
+
+"Ah, that's another affair!" he rejoined. He felt her and Hugh, with
+half the rest, saying to themselves, "It is not!" but was all the more
+moved to continue: "My fair daughter, you prepare the way of the Lord.
+Brethren and sisters, I want you to gather with me here as soon as
+those yonder are through"--a backhanded toss indicated the children's
+table, whose feasters showed no sign that they would ever be through
+at all. "We must--every believer--and whosoever will--on this
+passenger-deck--spend an hour--more if the spirit leads--in prayer
+for this pestilence to be stayed." He fastened his gaze on Hugh; no
+senator was present to overtop him now, and certainly this colt of John
+Courteney's should not. Yet the largeness with which the colt's eyes
+stared through and beyond him was significant to all.
+
+"And we must do more!" he persisted.
+
+"We shall," said Hugh.
+
+"We must!" said the bishop; "we must beseech God for a spiritual
+outpouring. We have on this boat the stranger of our own land and the
+sick of our own tongue: the stranger to grace and the sick in soul, who
+may be eternally lost before this boat has finished her trip; and as
+much as the soul's worth outweighs the body's is it our first duty to
+help them get religion!"
+
+With her curls lowered nearly to the table Ramsey--ah, me!--laughed. Her
+notes were as light as a perfume, but to the bishop all perfumes were
+heavy. He turned to the actor. "Isn't that so, brother?"
+
+"Oh, bishop, you know a lot better than I do."
+
+"He doesn't," tinkled Ramsey, and, as the bishop swung back to her--"Do
+you?" she ingratiatingly challenged him. "No, you don't! You know you
+don't!"
+
+The company would have laughed with her if only to save their face, and
+when he made a very bright retort they laughed the heartier. They rose
+with Hugh. Ramsey said she wished she knew again how her brother was,
+and Hugh sent his servant to inquire. As all loitered aft, the bishop
+held them together a moment more.
+
+"You don't object to such a meeting?" he asked Hugh.
+
+"Not if you don't alarm or distress any one. The doctor forbids that."
+While Hugh so replied, the circle was joined by the commodore. The
+bishop flared:
+
+"Doctors always forbid! How can we exhort sinners without alarming or
+distressing them?"
+
+Hugh's answer was overprompt: "I don't know, sir."
+
+But Ramsey, drawing the Gilmores with her, came between. "Just a bit
+ago," she said to the bishop, "didn't you say yes, we must all be as gay
+and happy as we can?"
+
+"I did, verily. But surely that shouldn't prevent this."
+
+"Oh, surely not!" exclaimed both the players.
+
+"It needn't," said Ramsey. "But if we five"--Gilmores, Courteneys, and
+herself--"and some others--help you with your meeting to-day will you
+help us with ours to-morrow?"
+
+"If I can, assuredly! But how will you help me to-day, my young sister?"
+
+On three fingers the young sister--so lately his daughter--counted:
+"First, we'll get the people to come; we'll tell them you're not going
+to alarm or distress anybody. Second, if you forget and begin to do it
+we'll remind you! And, third, we'll take up the collection!"
+
+The senator laughed so much above the rest that the bishop colored as he
+said: "I never exhort and collect at the same time."
+
+"Oh-h!" sighed Ramsey. "We must collect, you know, to pay our share,
+each of us, for the care of the sick. And we can't collect to-morrow;
+we'll all be so busy getting up our own meeting." Her eyes wandered to
+the senator, so fervently was he urging some matter upon the commodore.
+
+"What," asked the bishop, turning to the players, "is to-morrow's
+meeting to be for?"
+
+"Why," brightly said the wife, "just to keep every one as gay and happy
+as we can." But Ramsey added: "And to raise money for the not-sick
+emigrants, to get them the right food."
+
+"Ho, ho! Another collection!"
+
+"No, only admission fees. Six bits for the play, four bits for the
+dance."
+
+Half offended, half amused, the bishop swelled. "And you ask me"--he
+laughed, but she had turned away and he reverted to the players--"on top
+of our prayers for God's mercy upon our bodies and souls you ask me to
+help get up a play and a dance!"
+
+Eagerly, amid a general merriment that was not quite merry, the Gilmores
+answered with amused disclaimers for themselves and copious excuses for
+him. Ramsey's eyes, like Hugh's, were on the commodore and the senator,
+who were starting off together. The commodore's nod called Hugh and he
+moved to overtake them. The boy whom Hugh had sent to the texas,
+returning, sought to intercept him, but Hugh passed on and the messenger
+found Ramsey. She had just been rejoined by her old nurse, and to both
+servants her questions were prompt and swift. Their low replies plainly
+disturbed her, and she wheeled to the bishop where he still stood
+addressing the Gilmores and a dozen others in a manner loftily
+defensive. He forestalled her speech with good-natured haste. "Now, if
+our gay and happy young sister will ask me to do something befitting a
+minister of the gospel," he began----
+
+"Amen to dat!" said old Joy, and as Ramsey's eyes showed tears the
+speaker paused.
+
+"All right," she quietly said. "Come to my sick brother. Won't you,
+please?"
+
+"Why--why, yes, I--I will. Cer-certainly I will. Yet--really--if I'm
+forbidden to alarm him"--his smile could not hide his sense of mortal
+risk.
+
+"Oh, he's already alarmed!"
+
+"He's turrified!" softly said old Joy.
+
+"Why, then, the moment we're through our meeting----"
+
+"Don't begin it!" said Ramsey. "It can wait heaps better than he can.
+He's waiting now and begging for you. Come! You needn't be afraid; I'll
+go with you!" She laughed.
+
+"No!" cried Joy. "Lawd, Mahs' Bishop, she mus'n't!"
+
+"She need not," said the bishop. "But for me to go now, before I--why, I
+couldn't come back and mingle----"
+
+"Oh, come!" The girl drew him by the sleeve. But the Gilmores held her
+back and he went on alone, his face betraying a definite presentiment as
+he glanced round in response to a clapping of hands.
+
+"Oh, thank you!" cried Ramsey. "Gawd bless you!" droned Joy. "We'll run
+your meeting while you're gone!" called Ramsey. "And we'll pray for you!
+Won't we?" she asked the players, and they and others answered: "Yes."
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+BASILE AND WHAT HE SAW
+
+
+For these twenty hours of constant activity one young passenger, save
+only when asleep in his berth, had contemplated the _Votaress_ and her
+swarming managers and voyagers with a regard different from any we have
+yet taken into account. The Gilmores, softly to each other, termed him
+"a type." To the face of nature he seemed wholly insensible. As the
+gliding boat incessantly bore him onward between river and sky, shore
+and shore, he appeared never to be aware whether the forests were gray
+or green, the heavens blue or gray, the waters tawny or blue. No
+loveliness of land or flood could deflect his undivided interest in
+whatever human converse he happened to be nearest as he drifted about
+decks in a listless unrest that kept him singled out at every pause and
+turn. His very fair intelligence was so indolently unaspiring, so
+intolerant of harness, as we may say, and so contentedly attuned to the
+general mind, mind of the multitude, that the idlest utterance falling
+on his ear from any merest unit of the common crowd was more to him than
+all the depths or heights of truth, order, or beauty that learning,
+training, or the least bit of consecutive reasoning could reveal.
+Earlier he had not lacked books or tutelage, but no one ever had been
+able to teach him what they were for. This was Basile Hayle, the
+overdressed young brother of the twins. Now that his seventeen years had
+ripened in him the conviction that he was entitled, as the phrase is,
+"to all the rights of a man and all the privileges of a boy," he seemed
+yet to have acquired no sense of value for any fact or thought beyond
+the pointblank range of the five senses. He could not have read ten
+pages of a serious book and would have blushed to be found trying to do
+it.
+
+He was not greatly to blame. That way of life was much the fashion all
+about him, and he was by every impulse fashionable. Moreover, as he
+measured success by the crowd's measure, it was the way of life oftenest
+successful, the way of his father. He did not see the difference between
+the father's toiling up that way and his idling down it. So, at any
+rate, agreed the indulgent Gilmores, reading him quite through in a few
+glances, while all about the boat those who thought they knew best
+pronounced him more like Gideon Hayle in his regard for "folks just as
+folks" than were either the twins or the sister, from all three of whom
+his impulses kept him amiably aloof.
+
+Of the three brothers certainly he had soon become the most widely
+acceptable among not only the young people of the passenger guards but
+also the male commonalty of the boiler deck. In a state of society which
+he, as "a type," reflected they saw themselves; saw their own spiritual
+image; their unqualified straightforwardness, their transparent
+simplicity of mind and heart, their fearlessness, their complacent
+rusticity, their childish notions of the uses of wealth, their personal
+modesty and communal vanity, their happy oblivion to world standards,
+their extravagance of speech, their political bigotry, their magisterial
+down-rightness, their inflammability, and their fine self-reliance. They
+saw these traits, we say, reflected in him as in a flattering
+hand-glass, perceived the blemishes rather plainer than the charms, and
+liked them better.
+
+So it was that our friend the senator had early discovered Basile and
+later had found a capital use for him. In him he saw a most timely
+opportunity, one not afforded by anybody besides. He showed the youth
+marked attentions, affirming in him all the men's rights and boys'
+privileges he had ever thought of, got him assigned to his sick
+brother's place at table, presented him to the committee of seven,
+called him Gideon by mistake, and at the right moment made him an
+instrument, not to say tool, by diverting his idle course through the
+crowd into a highly successful soliciting of signatures to the
+committee's, or let us say his own, the senator's, petition.
+
+Unlucky task! An exceptional feature of the _Votaress_ was that her
+passenger guards ran aft in full width all round her under the stern
+windows of the ladies' cabin. Beneath, the lower deck ended in a fantail
+of unusual overhang, around whose edge curved the stout bars of the
+"bull-ring," to fence it off from the billowing white surge that writhed
+after the rudder blade and the trailing yawl, so close below. Among the
+petition's subscribers were several pretty girls of an age at which
+their only important business was beauty and levity and who gave small
+heed to the document's purport, readily assuming that nothing _they_
+were asked to sign needed to be taken seriously. There was much laughter
+over the performance. They turned it into a "Signing of the
+Declaration," patterned after the old steel engraving. One of them, as
+the scroll lay open on the rail under her pen hand, unwittingly set foot
+in a scrubbing bucket kept there with a line attached for bailing water
+from the river, and was so unnerved by the fun of it that all at once
+the scroll flirted back into scroll form and fell through the whirling
+air that eddied behind the boat. Yet it had the luck to drop upon the
+deck below, and there presently an immigrant stood mutely gazing up with
+it in his lifted hand. Otto Marburg came and stood looking up beside
+him.
+
+Dropping the bucket's line through the balusters under the rail, Basile
+stepped over the guards and proceeded, while the girls acted out their
+girlish distresses, to let himself down. The foolish exploit was
+sufficiently unsafe and painful to be its own reward, the rough line
+cutting his hands and forcing him, as soon as he dared, to drop into the
+arms of the two men. With them and others he passed from sight between
+the great wheels but soon was with the pretty signers again, coming up
+alone by way of the cook-house and pantry. His hands showed ugly red
+scars as he brushed away a few flies that liked his perfumery and had
+stubbornly followed him from below.
+
+But the fun was over. It was not his galled palms but his pallid face
+that struck the young company with a frank dismay. His whole bearing was
+transformed and betrayed him smitten with emotions for which he found no
+speech. Had it made him ill, they asked, going down by that dreadful
+rope? No, he was not ill at all. But when they vacantly proposed to
+resume the signing he exclaimed almost with vehemence that he had names
+enough, and left them, to return the petition to the senator.
+
+This was an incident of the forenoon. As he delivered the paper the
+senator spoke a pleased word and then gazed on him in surprise. "Why,
+what's the matter? Sick?"
+
+"No, I'm not sick."
+
+"But, look here, where--where's your own signature?"
+
+"You can't have it."
+
+"Oh, you want to sign, don't you?"
+
+"No." A sudden anguish filled the boy's face. "Not for all the gold in
+California. God A'mighty, sir, I've been down there and seen those
+people!"
+
+"Oh! my! dear! fellow! If we let mere sights and sounds--of things that
+can't be helped--upset us--There's the dinner-bell--come, have a
+cocktail with me--a Rofignac!... Ah! general--judge--wet your whistle
+with us?"
+
+The general and the judge, accepting, looked sharply at Basile.
+"Why--what's the matter? Sick?"
+
+But he went with them to the bar and to the board.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+A STATE OF AFFAIRS
+
+
+Watson was in the pilot-house, though not at the wheel.
+
+So early of a Sabbath afternoon, in the middle of his partner's watch,
+he might well have been in his texas stateroom asleep, but to a
+Mississippi River pilot Sunday afternoon, or any afternoon, or forenoon,
+or midnight, or dusk or dawn, on watch or off, the one thing in this
+world was the river. Else what sort of a pilot would he be, when the
+whole lore of its thousands of miles of navigation was without chart,
+light, or beacon, a thing kept only in pilots' memories, a lamp in a
+temple?
+
+Glancing down forward of the bell, he was reminded of a certain young
+lady the sight of whom on the previous evening just after his brush with
+Hayle's twins, standing there before Hugh Courteney with her arms
+akimbo, had led him to say: "If that's to be the game I'm in it." He
+wished she were there now, or up here again in the pilot-house asking
+her countless questions about this endlessly interesting world's
+highway. He would be answering that the mouth of Red River was now
+twenty miles behind, the mouth of Buffalo Bayou ten and of Homochitto
+River four; that right here they were in the great cut-off of a hundred
+and fifty-odd years before. He would say they were passing up the west
+shore because the current was over yonder on the east side, Palmetto
+Point, and that behind there, inland, lay the great loop of still water
+which had once been part of the river. He would explain that now the
+slender Homochitto ran through that still water lengthwise, for miles,
+until, within forty rods of the Mississippi, it recoiled again to launch
+in at last farther down, opposite Black Hawk Point, still in sight
+astern. And he would tell how, over here on this west side, Red River
+was yet only four miles away and actually sent Grand Cut-off Bayou
+across into the Mississippi, but likewise swerved away southward through
+seven leagues more of wet forest before it finally surrendered to the
+mightier stream. All this would he tell, without weariness, to one who
+loved his great river.
+
+Yet really he was in the pilot-house at this time not chiefly for the
+river, nor the girl, nor the _Votaress_, though the _Votaress_ was new,
+with kinks of character quite her own and important to be learned. He
+was there because the stateroom given Hayle's twins in the texas was
+next to his, and they, rarely in their life having restricted themselves
+to tones of privacy and being now especially in a state of storm and
+stress, had made sleep impossible even to a pilot off watch after a
+midday Sunday dinner. Lounging in his berth, he had overheard things
+which ought to be told to one Courteney or another early, though, of
+course, casually.
+
+Meantime he enjoyed not telling his partner, at whose back he quietly
+chatted while the partner stood with hands and foot on the wheel and
+with eyes well up the river, holding the jack-staff close to his "mark"
+far ahead in the next bend.
+
+"I couldn't stay," drawled Watson. "Noth'n' 'twixt the sick one an' me
+but a half-inch bulkhead."
+
+"Cholery can't scratch through a half-inch bulkhead," said the partner.
+
+"Sounds kin. Funny what little bits o' ones kin. An' the sawt o' keen,
+soft way he hollas an' cusses through his sot teeth an' whines an' yaps
+into his piller--why, he's suffered enough by now to be dead five times
+over."
+
+"That sufferin', that ain't the peggin'-out stage."
+
+"No, I know that, an' I don't misdoubt but what he's a-goin' to git
+well."
+
+"Hmm!--sorry fo' that. What's goin' to kyore him?"
+
+"His simon-pyo' cussedness! He's so chuck full of it--looks like it's
+a-p'isonin' the p'ison o' the cholery."
+
+"Pity!" said the partner.... "Humph! _Now_ what's up?"
+
+To see what was up, Watson rose and looked down. On the roof below,
+evidently having come there for privacy, were the commodore, the
+senator, and Hugh. Watson loitered from the pilot-house and disappeared.
+
+Down on the roof the commodore and the senator conversed across Hugh's
+front. The statesman, with heavy "dear sirs" and heavier smiles, was
+buttonholing the elder Courteney, who at every least pause affably
+endeavored to refer him to Hugh. The grandson's turn to speak seemed not
+to have arrived. The senator was trying to keep it from arriving and
+Hugh was glum. Hence it may be doubted if the senator's cigar was really
+cocked as high, or that his silk hat was as dingy, his very good teeth
+as yellow, his cheeks as hard, or his forehead as knotty as they
+appeared to Hugh, or that his tone of superiority, so overbearing last
+night, so ingratiating to-day, was any worse for the change. Hugh was
+biassed--felt bias and anger as an encumbering and untimely weight. In
+self-depreciating contrast he recalled a certain young lady's airy,
+winning way--airy way of winning--and coveted it for himself here and
+now: a wrestler's nimble art of overcoming weight by lightness; of
+lifting a heavy antagonist off his feet into thin air where his
+heaviness would be against him. His small, trim grandfather had it, in
+good degree; was using it now. Would it were his own in this issue,
+where the senator held in his hand the folded petition, having already
+vainly proffered it to the commodore, who had as vainly motioned him to
+hand it to Hugh. Would the art were his! But he felt quite helpless to
+command it, lacking the joyous goodness of heart which in the young lady
+so irresistibly redeemed what the senator, the bishop, and the judge's
+sister, to themselves, called her amazing--and the Gilmores to each
+other called her American--bad manners. It made Hugh inwardly
+bad-mannered just to feel in himself this lack, and tempted him to think
+what a comfort it would be to apply the wrestler's art physically and
+heave the senator overboard.
+
+Said that gentleman--"For you saw I wouldn't let the matter come up at
+the table. A lot of those men who signed this paper--which your grandson
+suggested last night, you know--" He smiled at Hugh. "Now, I am never
+touchy, and I know, commodore, that you're not. But, Lord, so many of
+us--maybe Democrats a little more than Whigs--are! We take our politics,
+like our bread, smokin' hot." He put away his smile. "My dear sir, to us
+the foreigner--as you saw last night at supper--has become a political
+problem, a burning question. Yet I propose to keep this whole subject so
+unmenacing to you personally, you owners of this boat, that I won't let
+a word be risked where any one might take even a tone of voice
+unkindly."
+
+"So, then, Hugh can take care of it."
+
+The senator tossed a hand in amiable protest: "Oh, sir, you see it much
+too small! My half of it is large enough for me, with forty times this
+young gentleman's experience. I don't see just this one boat and trip
+and these few hundred native-American citizens in deadly contact with a
+few hundred of Europe's refuse. I see--your passengers see--we view with
+alarm--a state of affairs--and a test case!"
+
+The old commodore's eyes flashed to retort, but the senator forced a
+propitiative smile, adding: "However, let that pass just now, here's
+something else."
+
+"Is it also in that paper?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Tell it to Hugh--or let him read it."
+
+But as the old gentleman would have moved away, the senator, ignoring
+the suggestion, stepped across his path:--
+
+"Last night, commodore, this matchless new boat"--he paused to let the
+compliment sink in, his eye wandering to Watson, who had sauntered down
+from the texas roof--"this _Votaress_, swept past everything that had
+backed out at New Orleans ahead of her."
+
+"Built to do it," put in Hugh while the commodore, by a look, drew
+Watson to them and the senator flowed on.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+A SENATOR ENLIGHTENED
+
+
+"But, lying at Bayou Sara this morning," said the senator, "everything
+worth counting left us behind again."
+
+"For the time being," said Hugh.
+
+"Good for you," said the senator. "Mr. pilot, this paper, of a hundred
+signatures, petitions this boat to put off her foreigners at Natchez
+Island. If that is refused, when and where are we likely to overhaul the
+_Antelope_?"
+
+"_Antelope_? Let's see. We'd still be a-many a bend behind the
+_Antelope_ at sundown but fo' one thing. At Natchez she's got to
+discharge an all-fired lot o' casting an' boilers, things she can't put
+ashore 'ithout han'spikes, block-an'-taickle an' all han's a-cuss'n' to
+oncet. Like as not we'll catch her right there."
+
+"Good again; sundown!" said the senator. "Now, commodore, this petition
+begs----"
+
+The commodore tried to wave him to Hugh but the senator's big hand
+gently prevented. "It begs," he went on, "and every friend of Gideon
+Hayle and John Courteney on this boat insists, that Madame Hayle be
+required to leave this suicidal work she's doing and with her daughter
+and youngest son be put aboard the _Antelope_ to join her husband ahead
+of all bad news." With his under lip pushed out he smiled into the
+commodore's serene face.
+
+Hugh spoke. "The _Votaress_ being slow?" he inquired.
+
+"Not at all! But, my young friend, the _Votaress_ can't hold funerals
+and outrun the _Antelope_ at the same time."
+
+The commodore had turned to Watson: "Want to see me?" The two moved a
+few paces aft.
+
+"Then it isn't," Hugh asked the senator, "that your hundred signers of
+this thing are afraid madame will get the cholera?" He took the
+petition's free end between thumb and finger and softly pulled. But its
+holder held on.
+
+"Why, yes," said the holder-on, "we fear that, too. Good Lord, she may
+have the contagion now!" It gave him grim amusement to note that the
+grandson's face was as quiet as the old man's, yet as hard and heavy as
+any of the _Antelope's_ big castings. He thought how much better it were
+to have this chap for an adherent than opponent.
+
+"Yet you're all willing," slowly pressed Hugh, while--with their pull on
+the paper increasing--they here and the commodore and Watson yonder
+returned the bow of the bishop as he came from below and passed on up to
+the sick-room--"you're willing to send the cholera aboard the
+_Antelope_?"
+
+"Willing, my God, no, sir! compelled!--to risk it--for the sake of
+Gideon Hayle and his people and of you and yours, in a great public
+interest centring in you and them." The speaker smilingly tapped the
+hard-pulled document so lately urged upon the grandfather. "We couldn't
+_write_ that--in this paper. When I've explained _that_ I'll hand you
+_this_--don't pull it."
+
+"Well, then, let go of it," said Hugh, with a light jerk which put it
+wholly into his possession.
+
+The senator's eyes blazed, but when he saw that Hugh's, though as much
+too wide as his own, looked out of a face as set and hard as ever, he
+recovered his suavity, puffed his cigar, waved it abroad, and said:
+"That's all right. Take that to the captain at once, will you?"
+
+"No," replied Hugh, the wrestler's nimble art being as far, far away
+from him as the "happy land" of the children's hymn, which the cornet
+was essaying below.
+
+"No?" questioned the tolerant senator.
+
+"No." Small knots of passengers, the squire in one, the general in
+another, had drawn within eavesdropping range and Hugh lowered his
+voice. "Not till I hear what you couldn't write," he said. "When you've
+explained _that_ I'll hand him _this_. No one's in his room, come
+there."
+
+As they reached its door and the senator passed in, Hugh was joined by
+the grandfather and Watson and detained some moments in private council,
+with Watson as chief speaker. Then the commodore returned leisurely
+forward toward the captain's chair while Watson sought the texas roof
+and pilot-house, and Hugh shut himself in with the senator.
+
+They sat with the writing-table between them. "I wish," said the
+senator, "I had a son like you. I'd say: 'My son, the worst notion in
+this land to-day is that always the first thing to do is fight, and that
+the only thing to fight with is hot shot. Don't you believe it! Don't
+think every man's your enemy the moment he differs with you. He may be
+your best friend. And don't think every enemy wants to stab you in the
+back.' But, Lord! I needn't offer a father's advice to you, with such a
+father--and grandfather--as you've got.
+
+"Now, here we are. It's idle for me to tell you what we wanted to put in
+that paper and couldn't, if you can't believe that maybe, after all, I'm
+a peacemaker and your friend, hunh? I don't set up to be your only
+friend or only your friend or your friend only for your sake. Frankly,
+my ruling passion is for the community as a whole; the old Jacksonian
+passion for the people, sir. If I'm meddling it's because I see a
+situation that right on its surface threatens one misfortune, and at
+bottom another and bigger one, to them, the people--a public misfortune.
+I don't want to avert just the cholera, here to-day, gone to-morrow; I
+want to avert the lasting public misfortune of a Courteney-Hayle feud.
+There, sir! That's my hand! Cards right down on the table! Oh, I'm
+nothing if not outspoken, flat-footed! A lot of those signers don't see
+that bottom meaning. They don't need to. But, sir, _you_ know--your
+grandfather's always known--that by every instinct the Hayles, even to
+the sons-in-law, are fighters. They don't know any way to succeed, in
+anything, but to fight. It's the Old Hickory in them. Old Hickory always
+fought, your Harry of the West has always compromised. The Hayles loathe
+tact. They don't know the power of concession as you Courteneys do. And
+that's why your only way to succeed with them is to _con_cede something.
+Not everything, not principle--good Lord, not principle! yet something
+definite, visible, conciliatory, hunh?
+
+"Mind you, I hold no brief for them. I know those twins haven't behaved
+right a minute. But no Hayle's been let into this affair, from first to
+last."
+
+The falsehood was so rash a slip that its author paused, but when Hugh's
+face showed no change he resumed: "Sir, it is in your interest we ask
+you to put those foreigners off. If you don't you'll rouse public
+resentment up and down this river a hundred miles wide for a thousand
+miles. And if, keeping them aboard, you don't put Madam Hayle and her
+daughter on some other boat, and anything happens to them on this one,
+you'll have Gideon Hayle and his sons--and his sons-in-law--for your
+mortal enemies the rest of your lives, long or short--and with public
+sympathy all on their side. Oh, I'm nothing if not outspoken! Why, my
+dear boy, if you don't think I'm telling you this in friendship----"
+
+"Call it so. But stop it, at once."
+
+"Why--you say that--to me?"
+
+"I do. Stop it, at once, or we'll call it----"
+
+"Ridiculous! What will you call it, sir?"
+
+"Mutiny. The captain has so ordered--and arranged."
+
+The inquirer drew breath, leaned forward on an elbow, and stared. The
+stare was returned. The senator began to smile. Hugh did not. The smile
+grew. Hugh's gaze was fixed. The smiler smiled yet more, but in vain.
+Abruptly he ha-haed.
+
+"We'll call it that till you prove it's not," said Hugh.
+
+"Did you ever hear of a poker face?" asked the senator.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"You've got one, now; youngest I ever saw. I wish I had it--haw, haw!
+Where'd you find it? I doubt if ever in your life you've had any real
+contact with any real guile."
+
+"I have," said Hugh, very quiet, very angry, yet with a joy of
+disclosure, communicative at last by sheer stress of so much kept
+unsaid. "And I've never got over it."
+
+"Well, well! When was that?"
+
+"All through the most important ten years of my life."
+
+"Of your life! Good gracious! Which were they?"
+
+"The first ten. A guile seemingly so guileless that yours, compared with
+it, is botch work."
+
+The two were still looking into each other's eyes when the latch clicked
+and John Courteney stepped in.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+"PLEASE ASSEMBLE"
+
+
+Out from behind Fritz Island the _Votaress_ swept northward into a
+deluge of light from a sun just finishing the first half of his
+afternoon decline.
+
+Before her lay, far and wide, an expanse of river and shore so fair,
+without a noticeable sign of man's touch, that one traveller of
+exceptional moral daring--conversing with the Gilmores and
+Ramsey--personified the scene as "Nature in siesta." At the steamer's
+approach the picture--or, as the daring traveller might have insisted,
+the basking sleeper--seemed to awaken and in a repletion of smiling
+content to stir and stretch and every here and there to darken and
+lighten by turns as though closing and opening upon the intruder a
+multitude of eyes as unnumbered as those of a human sort that looked on
+the scene, the sleeper, from the beautiful boat.
+
+So for several minutes. Then the _Votaress_ curved into the west till
+the great twin shadows of her chimneys crept athwart the pilot-house and
+texas, while more than one passenger of the kind who tell all they know
+to whoever will hear said that yonder bright mass of cottonwoods and
+willows, bathing in sunlight directly up the stream, with open water
+shimmering all round it, was Glasscock Island; that Glasscock Towhead
+lay hidden behind it just above, and that a towhead was an island in the
+making. The whole view was such a stimulus to the outpouring of
+sentiment as well as of information, that one young pair, each
+succeeding flutter of whose heart-strings was more tenderly entangling
+them, agreed in undertone that the river's incessant bendings were steps
+of a Jacob's ladder with these resplendent white steamers for ascending
+and descending angels.
+
+"Yonder comes another now," said both at once. They pressed forward to
+the foremost boiler-deck guards, among the many sitters and standers who
+were trying to determine, by the ornamental form of the stranger's
+chimney-tops or the peculiar note of her scape-pipes, before her name
+might show out on paddle-box or pilot-house, whether she was the
+_Chancellor_, the _Aleck Scott_, the _Belle Key_, or the _Magnolia_. To
+be either was to be famous. The next moment she swept into view on the
+island's sunward side, as pre-eminent in all the scene as though the sun
+were gone and she were the rising moon. The moon was not her equal in
+the eyes of those beholders. On every deck, from forecastle to after
+hurricane roof, there were big spots of vivid color, red, green, blue,
+never seen in the moon and which were quickly made out to be a
+high-piled freight of ploughs, harrows, horse-mills, carts, and wagons
+destined for the ever-widening Southern fields of corn and cotton, sugar
+and rice. The passenger with the pocket spy-glass--there is always
+one--proclaimed that her boiler deck was hung full--as no deck of the
+moon ever is--of the finest spoils of the hunt: geese, swan, venison,
+and bear; while the nakedest eye could see at a glance that from forward
+gangway to sternmost guard her bull railings were up, and a closer
+scrutiny revealed that the main load of her freight deck was every
+farm-bred sort of living four-footed beast: horses, mules, beeves, cows,
+swine, and sheep. She did not pass near though unaware of the distress
+she avoided; but in courtly exaggeration she sent across the intervening
+mile a double salute, white plumes of sunlit steam from her whistle--the
+new mode--and the gentler voice of her bell, the older form. The course
+of the _Votaress_ lay on the island's eastern side, and the hail and
+response of the two crafts had hardly ceased to echo from the various
+shores, or hats to wave and handkerchiefs to flutter, when the flood
+between them began to widen, a thousand feet to the half minute, and
+they parted.
+
+At the same time, from the middle of the boiler deck floated a sound
+ordinarily most welcome but at this time a distasteful surprise: the
+dinner-bell again. Not with festal din, however, it called, but with
+each solitary note drawn out through a full second or more,
+church-steeple fashion, and with a silken veil tied on its tongue to
+give each stroke a solemn softness and illusion of distance. Small
+wonder that the most of the company, just risen from "a plumb bait,"
+turned that way and stared, seeing old Joy, with joyless face, tolling
+out the notes in persistent monotone while in front of her stood the
+Gilmores at either side of a chair, and on the chair, also standing, the
+daughter of Gideon Hayle. With her hands and eyes fastened upon a
+written notice and with the bell tolling steadily at her back she
+tremblingly read aloud:
+
+"Fellow travellers: Please assemble at once in the ladies' cabin to
+supplicate the divine mercy for a stay of the scourge on this boat, and
+in concerted worship to seek spiritual preparation for whatever awaits
+us in the further hours of our voyage. In the absence of Bishop
+So-and-So, who is ministering to the sick, and at his request, the
+meeting will be conducted by the celebrated comedians Mr. and Mrs.
+Gilmore, late of Placide's Varieties, New Orleans."
+
+The art of advertising being then in its swaddling-bands, this specimen
+of it struck its hearers as really creditable. While it was being read
+two or three men rose, and one, uncommonly shaggy and of towering
+height, could hardly wait for the last word before he responded with the
+voice of a hound on the trail: "By the Lord Harry, sis', amen! says I,
+that's jest my size! I'm a Babtis' exhorteh an' I know the theatre
+air the mouth o' hell, but ef you play-acto's good enough to run a
+prah-meet'n, I'm bad enough to go to it. Come on, gentle_men_, the whole
+k'boodle of us, come on."
+
+Some brightly, some darkly, a good halfdozen followed him into the
+cabin; but the most remained seated, staring at Ramsey from head to foot
+and back again, some brightly, some darkly, while the bell persevered
+behind her. She sunk to her knees in the chair. Gilmore addressed that
+half of the company on his side of her: "Please assemble at once, will
+you, all, in the ladies' cabin."
+
+And his wife, on her side, repeated: "Will you all please assemble at
+once in the ladies' cabin."
+
+A few more rose, but still the many, brightly or darkly, only stared on,
+the bell persisting. The kneeling Ramsey again began to read:
+
+"Fellow travellers: Please assemble at once in the ladies' cabin to
+supplicate the divine mercy for a stay of the scourge on this boat, and
+in concerted worship----"
+
+"Oh, well!" some one laughingly broke in, "if that's your game--" and
+the whole company, in good-natured surrender, arose and went in. But the
+"bell-ringers," as they were promptly nicknamed, passed on to further
+conquests.
+
+When at length they turned to join the assemblage the four had doubled
+their number. With Ramsey was the commodore. With the actor was Watson.
+With Mrs. Gilmore came old Joy, and, strange to tell, due to some magic
+in the tact of the senior Courteneys, the senator, no longer making
+botch work of his guile, walked with Hugh, displaying a good-natured
+loquacity which he was glad to have every one notice and from which he
+ceased reluctantly as they parted, finding no place to sit together. The
+player and his wife, over-looking the throng, complacently discovered
+standing-room only, and the meeting which Hayle's daughter had pledged
+herself and them to "run" was running itself. For hardly had they
+entered the saloon when, from a front seat and without warning, the
+exhorter exploded the stalwart old hymn-tune of "Kentucky," and soon all
+but a scant dozen of the company followed in full cry, though hardly
+with the fulness of the leader's voice, that rolled through the cabin
+like tropical thunder:
+
+     "'Whedn I cadn read my ti-tle cle-ah
+        Toe madn-shudns idn the-e ske-ies
+      I'll bid fah-wedl toe ev'-rye fe-ah
+        Adn wipe my weep-ign eyes.'"
+
+From the chairman's seat the actor kept a corner of one eye on Ramsey
+and as the hymn's last line rolled away he stood up. She had not sung,
+but neither had she laughed. No one could have seen the moment's huge
+grotesqueness larger, yet to the relief of many she had kept her poise.
+In her mind was the bishop, overhead in the texas, consciously
+imperilling his life to save her brother's soul, and in the face of all
+drolleries she strenuously kept her ardor centred on the gravest
+significancies of the hour, as if the bishop's success up there hung on
+the efficiency with which this work of his earlier appointment should be
+done, down here, in his absence. She saw in the exhorter a tragic as
+well as comic problem. Nor was he her only perplexity. Another, she
+feared, might easily arise through some clash of any two kinds of
+worshippers each devoted to its own set forms. Certain main features,
+she knew, had been carefully prearranged, yet as the actor stood silent
+about to ask the Vicksburger to lead in prayer she tingled with all the
+exhilaration a ruder soul might have felt in hunting ferocious game or
+in fighting fire. Her soul rose a-tiptoe for the moment when the
+Presbyterians, who also had not sung, should stand up to pray, while the
+few Episcopalians, kneeling forward, and the many Baptists and
+Methodists, kneeling to the rear, should find themselves face to
+face--nose to nose, anxiously thought Ramsey--with only the open backs
+of the chairs between. She was herself the last to kneel, kneeling
+forward but doubting if she ought not to face the other way, hardly
+knowing whether she was a Catholic or a Methodist; and she was much the
+last to close her eyes. But the various postures were taken without a
+jar and the modest Vicksburger prayed. His words were neither impromptu
+nor printed, but, as every one quickly perceived and Ramsey had known
+beforehand, were memorized and were fresh from the pen of the actor.
+Diffidence warped the first phrase or two, but soon each word came
+clear, warm from the heart, and reaching all hearts, however borne back
+by the rapturous yells with which the exhorter broke in at every pause.
+
+"And though to our own sight," pleaded the supplicant, "we are but atoms
+in thy boundless creation, we yet believe that prayer offered thee in
+love, humility, and trust cannot offend. Wherefore in this extremity of
+grief and disaster we implore thee for deliverance."
+
+Close at Ramsey's back, in the only seat whose occupant her diligent eye
+had failed to light on, a kneeler heaved a sigh so piteous that it
+startled her like an alarum.
+
+But the prayer went on: "Drive from us, O Lord, this pestilence. Allow
+it no more toll of life or agony. Have mercy on us all, both the sick
+and the sound."
+
+"Have mercy," moaned the suffering voice behind, and Ramsey, suffering
+with it, wished she had been Methodist enough to kneel with her face
+that way.
+
+"Spare not our earthly lives alone," continued the supplicant, "but save
+our immortal souls. Pardon in us every error of the present moment and
+of all our past. Forgive us every fault of character inherited or
+acquired."
+
+"God, forgive!" sighed the voice behind, in so keen a contrition that
+Ramsey, while the supplication in front pressed on, found herself in
+tears of her own penitence. The mourner at her back began responsively
+to repeat each word of the prayer as it came and presently Ramsey was
+doing likewise, striving the while, with all her powers, to determine
+whose might be the voice which distress so evidently disguised even from
+its owner.
+
+"Enable us, our Maker," she pleaded in time with the voice behind, that
+followed the voice in front, "henceforth to grow in thy likeness, and in
+thy strength to devote ourselves joyfully to the true and diligent
+service of the world wherein thou hast set us. Grant us, moreover, we
+pray, such faith in thee and to thee that in every peril or woe, to-day,
+to-morrow, or in years to come, we may without doubt or fear commit all
+we have, are, and hope for, temporal or immortal, alike unto thee. And,
+finally, we beg thee to grant us in this immediate issue a courage for
+ourselves and compassion for all others which, come what may, living or
+dying, will gird us so to acquit ourselves that in the end we may stand
+before thee unashamed and by thy mercy and thy love be welcomed into
+thine own eternal joy."
+
+"Amen!" cried the exhorter and burst anew into song:
+
+     "'Chidl-dredn of the-e heabm-lye kiggn,
+      As we jour-nye sweet-lye siggn.
+      Siggn----'"
+
+He ceased and flashed a glance, first up to Hugh, whose hand lay on his
+shoulder, and then over to the standing player. A hush was on the
+reseated company, and its united gaze on Ramsey and the mourner who with
+her had been audibly following the prayer. Two seats from her Mrs.
+Gilmore vainly tried to catch her eye. The penitent was in his seat
+again. He bent low forward, his face in his hands, and face and hands
+hid in his thick fair locks. Ramsey had turned toward him with a knee in
+her chair, a handkerchief pressed fiercely against her lips, and her
+drowned eyes gazing down on him. But as the actor was about to speak she
+wheeled toward him and stood with an arm beseechingly thrown out, her
+voice breaking in her throat.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+ALARM AND DISTRESS
+
+
+"It's Basile!" she cried. Then, one after another, to the exhorter, to
+Hugh, to each of the two Gilmores separately: "This is wrong, all wrong!
+You said we mustn't alarm or distress any one--and we mustn't!" She
+tried to face her chair round to the bowed head, and Hugh, at a touch
+from his grandfather, moved to her aid. Mrs. Gilmore too had started but
+was kept back by others, whispering with her on the edges of their
+seats.
+
+"It's all wrong," insisted Ramsey to Hugh close at hand, "and we mustn't
+do it! You said we mustn't!"
+
+The exhorter was gratified, not to say flattered. "H-it ain't none of it
+wrong, my young sisteh," he called across. "Ef yo' bretheh's distress ah
+the fear o' damnation it's all right and Gawd's name be pra-aised!"
+
+"Amen!" groaned one or two of the undistressed majority, while old Joy
+modestly pressed up from the rear.
+
+"Please, good ladies an' gen'lemens," she said as she came, "will you
+please fo' to lem-me thoo, ef you please? Dat's my young mahsteh, what I
+done nu's' f'om a baby. Ef you please'm, will you please suh, fo' to
+lem-me pass, ef you please?" In gentle haste she made her way, many eyes
+following, and heads swinging right and left to see around the heads
+that came between. The goal was reached just as Ramsey, in her turned
+seat, leaned to lay fond hands on her brother's locks. But Hugh
+interposed an arm.
+
+"No," he said, "we mustn't do that either."
+
+"No!" said Joy, "dat's right! Fo' de Lawd's sake tek heh clean away--ef
+you kin. An' ef you please, good ladies an' gen'lemens, fo' to squeeze
+back a leetle mite----?"
+
+They squeezed the mite and she knelt by the boy. The sister knelt too,
+but as she left her chair Hugh, taking it, put himself between her and
+her brother. The actor was the only one left standing.
+
+"Sing, will you, please," he said--"and will you all sing
+
+     "'There is a land of pure delight--'
+
+Mrs. Gilmore, will you raise the tune?"
+
+But the exhorter was too quick for them and "riz" it before the request
+was fairly uttered. All sang, and over all easily soared the voice of
+the zealot:
+
+     "'Thah is a ladnd o' pyo' de-light
+        Whah saidnts ib-maw-tudl reigdn.
+      Idn-fidn-ite day dis-pedls the-e night
+        Adn pleas-u'es badn-ish paidn.'"
+
+Now he rolled his enraptured eyes and now his quid, spat freely on the
+rich carpet, beat time on one big palm with the other and on the floor
+with one vast foot, while through the song like a lifeboat through
+waves, undisturbed and undisturbing, cleft the steady speech of the
+nurse to the boy. Regardless of the precaution just urged for Ramsey,
+her arm fell over his bowed form.
+
+     "'Thah eveh-last-ign sprign a-bi-dns
+      Adn nev-eh with-'rign flow-ehs--'"
+
+--ran the hymn, and straight through it, heard everywhere, pressed mammy
+Joy's tearful inquiry:
+
+"Is you got religion, honey boy, aw is you on'y got de sickness? Tell
+me, honey, which you got? Is you got bofe?"
+
+The lad moaned, shook his head, and suddenly sat up, and cried to his
+kneeling and gazing sister: "Neither! Great God, I'm not ready for
+either!"--his words, like old Joy's, cutting squarely across the hymn as
+it continued:
+
+     "'Death like a nor-rah streabm di-vi-dns
+      This heab'-mly ladnd frobm ow-ehs.'"
+
+Ramsey stood. "Well, don't be alarmed or distressed!" she half laughed,
+half wept, while the nurse crooned:
+
+"Honey boy, ef you ain't yit got de sickness----"
+
+"I don't know!" he cried, so loudly that only the Methodists and
+Baptists sang on. He sprang up and glanced round to the judge, the
+general, the squire, the senator, exclaiming: "I've been right in
+it!--to get back that infernal petition of yours when I dropped it! I've
+all but touched the dying and the dead! I've been handled all over by
+men who'd been handling them! Whatever I've caught from them I'll know
+is a judgment! For at last I've got a sense of sin! Right down under
+here behind this boat's engines I got it! I want you-all people to pray
+for me! I've been an awful sinner for years!"
+
+"So have I!" wept Ramsey aloud.
+
+"Praise de Lawd!" said Joy, from her knees.
+
+Mrs. Gilmore drew Ramsey backward and shared a chair with her. The
+exhorter and a stout few hung to the hymn--
+
+     "'Whi-dle Jur-dan ro-dled be-tweedn,'"
+
+--and the terrified boy talked on through everything, no one edging away
+from him as the wise might in these days.
+
+"I'm not fitt'n' to die, Mr. Gilmore," he said. "That petition's not my
+worst sin--by half--by quarter. But it's opened my eyes. You-all that
+got it up, and you-all that signed it, it would open yours, one look
+below; and I want you-all, right here, now, to tell God you take it
+back, before he lays his curse on me! You can manage that somehow, Mr.
+manager, can't you? Can't somebody pray it? Or--or can't--can't you vote
+on it?"
+
+"Yes," broke in Ramsey, clung to by the player's wife but standing and
+glancing from the player so directly to the senator that all looked at
+him, "vote! vote!"
+
+He gave the player the sort of nod one gives an auctioneer, and the
+singers stopped. "I think we can," said the actor, "and that if the
+senator votes yea so will every one. All in favor of withdrawing the
+petition raise the right hand. It is unanimous."
+
+The exhorter was up. "Mr. play-actoh, that's all right. I neveh signed
+that trick, nohow. So fah so good, fo' a play-acto's church--ef you kin
+git sich a church into the imagination o' yo' mind! But vot'n' ain't
+enough!" He pointed to Ramsey, fast in Mrs. Gilmore's arms, and to her
+brother, in old Joy's. "Vot'n' don't take heh--naw him--out'n the gall
+o' bittehness naw the bounds o' iniquity. Oh, my young silk-an'-satin
+sisteh, don't you want us to pray fo' you?"
+
+Ramsey's courage was tried. Many gazers, but particularly the judge's
+sister, seemed, by their eyes, crouching to pounce on her whether she
+answered yea or nay. "I know," she said, in tears again, and
+unconsciously wringing her hands, "I know I ought to, but--but I--I'm
+afraid there isn't time. For I want--oh, I--I want to vote again! I want
+to vote to take up a collection, and a big one, for those people
+down-stairs that mom-a's with. And then we can pray for her--and for
+Captain Courteney. Mom-a's a Catholic but it's in her Bible the same as
+in any: 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.'" The
+last word was but a breath on her quivering lip. Facing the actor she
+stood and waited. Joy was getting Basile away.
+
+"It is moved by the last speaker," said the player, "and seconded
+by"--he glanced inquiringly about--"by several--that we make an
+immediate contribution for the benefit of our deck passengers, who are
+in dire need, and that----"
+
+"That we make it a big one!" repeated Ramsey.
+
+"All in favor--" he said. "Unanimous. I will ask Mr. Courteney and Miss
+Hayle to take up the collection."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dispersal of the meeting found the lady of Milliken's Bend with the
+judge's sister. The judge, joining them, reported that the laughing
+Ramsey's collection was double that of the solemn Hugh. The sister's
+eyes snapped as she put in: "She made me double my contribution." Ramsey
+passed at a distance. "It's a shame to keep short dresses on a girl of
+that age and of her--her----"
+
+"Spontaneity?" asked the judge. "I like spontaneity, even exuberance, at
+times."
+
+"Well, I don't," said the sister.
+
+"No," murmured the judge. These two, who were to get off at Natchez,
+were just beginning to be enjoyed--as types. The sister was one who had
+all her life complained of "enlargement of the spleen" and even oftener
+of a "bitter mouth." On which the judge's only comment was: "Hmm!" Just
+now, as to Ramsey, he grew daring.
+
+"Her dress," he said, "is longer than it was yesterday."
+
+"It's a mile too short."
+
+"As much as that?"
+
+"I wish you were not going to leave us so soon," said the lady of the
+Bends, and then bravely added, of Ramsey: "Her dresses are short by her
+own choice, old Joy says."
+
+"Shouldn't doubt it a moment."
+
+"Yes, she keeps them short to keep her mother young. I think that's
+right sweet of her, don't you?"
+
+"No," replied the sister, and went to lock her trunks.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+PILOTS' EYES
+
+
+Once more the hurricane deck. What space! What freedom! Again from the
+airy, sun-beaten roof, that felt as thin underfoot as the levelled wing
+of an eagle, the eye dropped far below to where the tawny waters glided
+to meet the cleaving prow or foamed away from the smiting wheels. Again
+the dazzled vision rose into the infinite blue beyond clouds and sun, or
+rested on the green fringes of half-drowned shores forever passing in
+slow recessional.
+
+Four in the afternoon. Esperance Point rounded and left astern in the
+east. Ellis Cliffs there too, whitening back to the western sun. Saint
+Catherine's Bend next ahead, gleaming a mile and a quarter wide where it
+swung down from the north. And the _Votaress_ herself! Once again that
+perfect grace in the faint up-curve, at stem and stern, of the low white
+rail that rimmed the deck. Again, above the stained-glass skylights of
+the cabin, the long white texas, repeating the deck's and cabin's lines
+in what Ramsey called a "higher octave," its narrow doors overhung with
+gay scrollwork, and above its own roof, like a coronet, the pilot house,
+with Watson just returned to the wheel. Once more the colossal,
+hot-breathing twin chimneys, their slender iron braces holding them so
+uprightly together and apart, the golden globe--emblem of the Courteney
+fleet--hanging between them, and their far-stretched iron guys softly
+harping to one another in the breeze. All these again, and away out
+beyond the front rail, with a hundred feet depth of empty air between,
+the jack-staff, high as a pine and as slim for its height as a cane from
+the brake, its halyards whipping cheerily, the black night-hawk at its
+middle, a golden arrow at its peak.
+
+John Courteney, coming up into this scene, laid a hand on his solitary
+chair at the forward rail but then paused. Between the chair and the
+skylights behind it stood the squire's sister and brother-in-law and
+Ramsey. Yes, they eagerly agreed with him, the view ahead was certainly
+dazzling. Ramsey would have asked a question, but the husband remembered
+the contagion from whose field below the captain had just come, the wife
+noticed that the presence of ladies would keep the captain standing, and
+the three, remarking that such a scene was too brilliant to confront,
+moved aft. As they went, Watson, up at the wheel, and Ned, his partner,
+lingering by him, had a half-length view of them, their lower half being
+hid by the cabin roof, close under whose edge their feet passed, where
+its shadow kept the deck cool. The wife still had her embroidery, the
+husband his De Bow. By certain changes about Ramsey's throat and
+shoulders Ned noticed that she was in yet another dress, whose
+skirt--such part as showed above the cabin roof--was in flounces almost
+to the waist. He would tell that at home to his wife and daughter, who
+now and then depended on him for fashions, with striking results.
+Watson, too, noticed Ramsey, yet his chief attention remained, as
+steadily as his gaze, on his steering-mark far up in the bight of the
+sunlit bend, at the same time including, here below, his seated
+commander.
+
+"Cap' ought to be pootty tol'able tired, Ned."
+
+"Well, now, he jest ought!" The partner dropped back and perched on the
+visitor's bench, whence he could still see the river though not the
+closely intervening cabin--and texas roofs; and all the two said later
+was without an exchange of glances. Watson thought the captain would
+"rest more now, on watch, than what he did before, off," having got
+matters running so much smoother down below; though the cholera was
+"a-growin', straight along."
+
+Ned told of his pleasure in seeing Hugh conduct the senator down to the
+devotional services: "Lard, they hev done him brown, ain't they?--atween
+'em, Hugh and Hayle's girl?"
+
+"With some help," said Watson, modestly. "That petition--ef th's
+anything else aboard this boat as dead as what it is"--he ran into
+inelegancies.
+
+Ned offered to bet it was not dead inside the senator, and Watson
+admitted that the statesman would probably never forgive the "genteel"
+way he had been euchred; though like euchre, he said, a lot of it was
+luck.
+
+"But, man! the bluff he _kin_ put up! Couldn't believe my eyes when we'd
+passed the hat an' adjourned an' I see him a-standin' at the fork o' the
+for'a'd stairs, ag'in the trunk room, same ole bell-wether as ever,
+a-makin' a _bully_ speech to Madame Hayle an' that Marburg chap down in
+the gangway, foot o' the steps, an' a-present'n' him our
+'oblations'--says he--meanin' the swag!"
+
+"An' her a-translat'n' for him!" said Ned, fancying the scene, with the
+senator, under his mask, "a-gritt'n' his tushes!" and Watson, to
+heighten it, told of Hugh and the actor at one head of the double stair,
+and Mrs. Gilmore and Ramsey at the other--"a-chirpin' him on, an' the
+whole b'iler deck, ladies and gents, takin' it in, solid!"
+
+The senator was long-headed. "Yes, an' yit Hugh's throwed him fair jest
+by main strength an' awk'ardness."
+
+"I dunno!" said Ned. "It wuz long-headed, too, fo' Hugh an' the
+play-acto's to give him the job."
+
+"It wuz long-headed in her who put 'em up to it."
+
+"Oh, look here! _She_ didn't do that, did she?"
+
+"'Less'n I'm a liar," replied Watson, eyes front.
+
+"Hunh! Wonder which! Say, Wats'; on the b'iler deck--did she have on
+this gownd she's a-wearin' now?"
+
+"No," said Watson, tardily, with eyes still up-stream.
+
+"Not wast'n' yo' words," said the inquirer.
+
+"No."
+
+"A short answer turneth away wrath, I s'pose."
+
+"It turneth away discussion o' ladies' gownds."
+
+"Lard! I don't discuss 'em to excess. Noticed hern--its upper works--an'
+a flounce or two--an' sort o' wondered as to the rest of it, how much
+water it's a-drawin'. Anything li-bell-ious about that?"
+
+"No, considerin' the source."
+
+Ned slipped from the bench to go, but Watson looked back with a light
+beckon of the head and he turned to the wheel. Thence he glanced down
+over the breast-board, over the forward eaves of the texas, down to the
+skylight roof and upon several persons. First, the boat's commander. He
+was leaving his seat at the approach, from the head of a boiler-deck
+stair, of Madame Hayle and the doctor. On the skylight roof, near the
+bell, were the two players, just greeting Hugh as from the other side he
+reached the deck and stepped up to their level. On the same roof, midway
+between these and the front of the texas, were the squire's sister and
+her husband returning from their search for shade. And lastly, close
+after them, came Ramsey, a source of general astonishment. For the gown
+she was in and whose lower possibilities had aroused Ned's avowed and
+Watson's concealed interest was her mother's and swept the deck.
+
+Madame Hayle grew more beautiful as with a play of indignation which
+wholly failed to disguise her pleasure she cried: "By what
+_per_-mission? by what _per_-mission have you pud--my--clothes?"
+
+The girl would have flown to her arms but the doctor forbade, and for
+second choice she set up a dainty tripping to and fro athwartships;
+dipping, rising, skipping, swaying, bridling, like a mocking-bird on a
+garden wall. It made Ned and Watson themselves worth seeing.
+Professional dignity set their faces like granite though every vein
+seethed with a riot of laughter. But the laughter's chief cause was not
+Ramsey.
+
+"Look at Hugh," muttered Watson, gently drawing down the wheel for the
+_Votaress_ to sweep round into a northward reach at whose head Natchez
+Island would presently show itself. To look at Hugh took nerve, but in a
+moment----
+
+"Look at her," said Ned.... "There! she tipped her nose at him!"
+
+"She didn't!"
+
+"She did. Wats', yo' game ain't never goin' to work."
+
+"Ned, y'ain't got the sense of a loon."
+
+"Well, I swear I've got more'n Hugh--or her."
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+WORDS AND THE "WESTWOOD"
+
+
+Down on the roof, while Ramsey's mother started with the physician
+around the skylights for the texas, and Hugh and Gilmore conversed with
+the captain, Mrs. Gilmore, her hands on Ramsey, said to madame:
+
+"I want her now, to begin to make ready for tomorrow evening. My
+dear"--to the girl--"I've a dozen dresses that will become you better
+than this one."
+
+"Long?" cried Ramsey. "I'll take the lot!" She felt Hugh distantly
+looking and listening.
+
+"We won't trade on Sunday," laughed Mrs. Gilmore; "but you
+mustn't"--scanning her approvingly--"ever put on a short dress again."
+
+"Ho-oh, I never will!" said Ramsey, with a toss meant for Hugh, who went
+by, hurrying aft to meet a newcomer. She started after him. Madame
+Hayle, in that direction, had gone into the sick-room, whence Ramsey's
+brother Julian, with barely a word to his mother, had come out. Stepping
+down into the narrow walk between the roofs of cabin and pantry and
+glancing over his shoulder upon the company about the bell, he winced at
+sight of his sister's attire. Yet he kept his course and was well
+started aft before he saw that he was being met by some one in the
+narrow way, and by whom but Marburg. It was that alien whom Hugh was
+hastening to reach and on whom Ramsey was staring. He had come up from
+the engine room through the steward's department, by the unguarded route
+which Basile's ascent had revealed, and now came face to face with a foe
+where there was room only for friends to meet and pass. So said the eyes
+of each to each, but just then a quick footfall on the cabin roof,
+behind and somewhat above him, caused Julian to face round and he
+confronted Hugh.
+
+"Mr. Hayle," was Hugh's word, "what will you have, sir?"
+
+"Nothing, sir, of you! What will _you_ have of _me_, sir?"
+
+Ramsey glided by both and halted before the exile, whose scowl vanished
+in a look so grateful and supplicating that her words, clearly meant to
+justify his presence, caught in her throat: "What will you--have, sir?
+My mother?--back again?--and the doctor?"
+
+"Yes," he replied, and then added in German with an anguish of gesture
+which was ample interpretation, "yes, for _my_ mother! for my little
+brother! Ah, God! he is not dead! He is yet alive! His arms are as
+supple as _these_. There is color still in his cheeks!"
+
+She stood dumb with horror. Yet she woke to action as, close beside her,
+she heard her brother snarl at Hugh:
+
+"I'll go where I please! Who stops me, God pity him!"
+
+She dropped nimbly from the skylights' overhang to the alien's level and
+with looks as beseeching as his waved him back a step. Then with the
+same mute entreaty she faced Julian and Hugh. But there was a ludicrous
+contrast, visible to all, between Hugh's phlegm and her brother's pomp,
+and by a flash of feminine instinct she divined the best mood with which
+to match it. Grimly elated, Hugh saw what was coming. Julian saw, and
+groaned a wearied wrath. The captain, the commodore--for the commodore
+had returned--the Gilmores, the Yazoo couple, the pilots overhead, all
+waited with lively and knowing gaze. She went limp, hid her face,
+swayed, sank to one knee, and filled the whole width of the narrow
+passage with arms and draperies, the meanwhile breaking into a laugh so
+wholly soliloqual that the two players became learners. But again she
+sprang erect and had hardly thrown her curls back from her blushing face
+when her mother, the bishop, and the doctor stepped from the sick-room,
+and madame addressed the immigrant:
+
+"Ah, ritturn, if you ple-ease. Me, I am ritturning!"
+
+"Yes," chimed the bishop and the doctor; "yes, at once!" and the exile,
+with pleading looks to Ramsey, to the others by turn and to her again,
+went below. Madame and the physician began to follow.
+
+"How's Lucian?" called Ramsey after them.
+
+"Getting well," replied both. They passed behind the wheel-house and
+only the pilots knew that at its corner Madame Hayle stopped where she
+could still see and hear. All others kept their eyes on Julian, who was
+in a redder heat than ever, and on Hugh, who was addressing him in a
+depth of tone that amused the Gilmores almost as keenly as it did
+Ramsey, who had rejoined them at his back. Suddenly he faced around.
+
+"If Miss Hayle," he said, "would as soon go below----"
+
+Miss Hayle sang her reply, bugled it: "She would no-ot."
+
+Hugh stepped down into her brother's path and faced him again: "You have
+written your father a letter----"
+
+Julian's head flew up but bent in slow avowal.
+
+"To be put aboard the _Antelope_," pursued Hugh----
+
+The head went higher: "Well, sir?"
+
+"To outrun this boat."
+
+"And--if--I--have, sir?"
+
+"Why, yes," murmured the squire's brother-in-law and sister, to the
+Gilmores, "suppose he has?"
+
+"So have I," said Hugh to Julian. He glanced up to the Yazoo couple and
+then to the bishop self-isolated near the sick-room door. Ramsey and the
+couple laughed. Hugh turned her way again: "If Miss Hayle----"
+
+"She wouldn't," said Ramsey, laughing more.
+
+"Well, sir!" drawled the waiting Julian, to Hugh.
+
+Hugh waved a hand toward the bishop: "That gentleman has risked his life
+for your sick brother."
+
+"Yes," said Ramsey. The bishop scowled up the river. Julian scowled at
+Hugh.
+
+"Well, sir?" he once more challenged.
+
+"He was told he was wanted as a minister," said Hugh.
+
+"_Well, sir?_"
+
+"He was wanted merely to get your letter off secretly."
+
+"You lie!"
+
+"Oh!" sighed the Yazoo pair. Ramsey shrank upon Mrs. Gilmore.
+
+"Not at all," said a quiet voice overhead and the eyes of Julian,
+blazing upward, met Watson's blazing down.
+
+"Come," said the player's wife to Ramsey, "come away."
+
+"I won't," tearfully laughed Ramsey, and Mrs. Gilmore and the squire's
+sister had to laugh with her.
+
+"The lie," said Hugh, "will keep. Your letter is such that the bishop
+declines to touch it."
+
+The bishop swelled. Julian recoiled and, glancing behind him, confronted
+his mother.
+
+"My son," she began, but he whirled back to Hugh.
+
+"You keyhole spy!" he wailed; "you eavesdropping viper!"
+
+Ramsey came tiptoeing along the edge of the pantry roof to light down
+between them but he imperiously motioned her off, still glaring at Hugh
+and gnawing his lip with chagrin. "Oh, never mind!" was all he could
+choke out; "never you mind!" He ceased again, to catch what Hugh was
+replying to him. Said Hugh:
+
+"I'll take your letter and send it with my own."
+
+"No, sir! No, you grovelling sneak!"
+
+"Mais, yass!" called Madame Hayle from her place, and Ramsey laughed
+from hers, but a new voice arrested every one's attention. The bishop
+wheeled round to it with an exclamation of dismay that was echoed even
+by Julian. In the sick-room door stood Lucian, half dressed and feebly
+clinging to the jamb.
+
+"Let him do it, Jule!" he cried in a tremulous thin voice. "Take the
+whelp at his word! Don't you see? Don't you see, Jule? We'll have him in
+a nine hole. It'll be hell for him if he puts it through and worse if he
+slinks it!" He tried to put off the bishop's sustaining arm.
+
+A light of discernment filled Julian's face. There was no time to
+ponder. He had always trusted Lucian for the cunninger insight and did
+it now though Lucian lay in the bishop's arms limp and senseless. He
+drew forth the letter. Gayly stooping over the skylights Ramsey reached
+for it and passed it to Hugh. Julian sprang up to the bishop, who had
+borne Lucian into the sick-room and now filled its door again, waving a
+cheerful reassurance.
+
+"A mere swoon," said the bishop; "all right again."
+
+"It may be all right up there," the squire's sister began to say to the
+actor's wife--and hushed. But Ramsey had heard, as she watched her
+mother hurry below to the young Marburg brother lying as limp and
+faintly pink in death as her brother up here in life; heard, and thought
+of the perils in store for Hugh and his kin and her and hers unless this
+sweet, wise mother could charm them away as sunlight charms away
+pestilence. Mr. Gilmore called her:
+
+"Come, we've lots to do."
+
+But how could one come just then? A slight turn of the boat's head was
+putting Natchez Island close on her larboard bow and, seven miles away,
+bringing hazily into sight Natchez herself, both on her bluffs and
+"under-the-hill." Nay, more; abreast the _Votaress_ was another fine
+boat. The _Westwood_, she was named. Her going was beautiful, yet the
+_Votaress_ was gradually passing her. The Yazoo pair knew her well. When
+they made salute toward two men who stood near her forward skylights,
+one of them returned it.
+
+"Why should he be so solemn?" asked the wife.
+
+"Why shouldn't he?" laughed Ramsey.
+
+"Because he's a mere passenger, on his wedding tour."
+
+"Humph!" said Ramsey. "Weddings are solemn things. Is that other man the
+captain?" she asked the husband.
+
+"No, I regret to say, he's only her first clerk."
+
+"Why should you regret to say it?" inquired the girl; but the wife, too,
+had a question:
+
+"Do you think there's anything wrong?"
+
+"N-no, oh, no."
+
+The _Westwood's_ clerk made a sign to Captain Courteney. The captain
+glanced up to Watson, and the two boats, still at full speed, began to
+draw sidewise together. But Ramsey's liveliest interest was in the
+_Westwood's_ crew, who, far below about her capstan, were paying their
+compliments to the newer, larger, speedier boat in song and refrain with
+stately wavings and dippings of ragged hats and naked black arms. Now
+the boats' guards almost touched and their commanders spoke so quietly
+together that she did not hear their words. But she noted the regretful
+air with which John Courteney shook his head to the _Westwood's_ clerk
+and then to the passenger, and the _Westwood_ began again to drop
+behind. Hugh came near, paused, and glanced around.
+
+"Looking for the commodore?" she asked.
+
+"I thought you went down with Mrs. Gilmore," he replied, "to rehearse
+your part in the play."
+
+"Commodore's down on the lower deck," she said; "freight deck--with
+mom-a--and the bishop."
+
+Hugh showed astonishment. "The bishop?"
+
+"Yes, mom-a made him go." She laughed. "Some of the sick folks down
+there are Protestants and were threatening to turn Catholic. Is anybody
+sick aboard the _Westwood_?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then where's her captain?"
+
+Hugh made no reply but to meet her steady gaze with his own till she
+asked in a subdued voice: "Cholera?"
+
+Hugh nodded. Each knew the other was aware of the song that floated up
+after them from the boat behind.
+
+"What did the bridegroom want?" asked the girl.
+
+"Wanted to give us a thousand dollars to take his bride--with him or
+without him--aboard the _Votaress_."
+
+"But when he heard how much worse off we are--" prompted she.
+"Yes."
+
+"But, Mr. Hugh----"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Anyhow, this boat hasn't got that boat's trouble!"
+
+"No," said Hugh, and knew they were both thinking of his father.
+Together they stood hearkening to the last of the _Westwood's_ song:
+
+     "'Ef you git dah befo' I do--
+        _O, high-low!_--
+      Jest tell 'em I'm a-comin' too--
+        _John's gone to high-low!_'"
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+STUDYING THE RIVER--TOGETHER
+
+
+They did not tie to the wharf-boat at Natchez. At that stage of water
+there was good landing a few yards below, where the sandy bank was not
+too wet to walk across to a higher one which floods never reached, close
+under the bluff. Here had left the boat half a dozen passengers
+including the judge and his sister. So good-by to that lady. Never would
+_she_ have set foot on the _Votaress_ had she dreamed she was to be
+"dumped off" on such a spot. She believed that girl of Gideon Hayle's
+had laughed as she went up the perilous stage plank. And really there is
+no proof to the contrary.
+
+Another incident awoke in Ramsey no mirth. Yet she never forgot it. It
+occurred on the upper, greener level that overlooked, across the river,
+a great sweep of Louisiana lowlands at that moment bathed in a golden
+sunset. The same light fell upon the incident itself--the Marburg lad's
+burial; fell upon the bent mother standing behind the priest and between
+her elder son and Madame Hayle, surrounded by her fellow exiles, many of
+whom, with faces hidden like hers, wept more for her bereavement than
+they had earlier done for their own. So the rude pine coffin descended
+into the unhallowed ground. From the hurricane-deck Ramsey looked down
+with wet eyes to the meek mourner returning aboard on the arm of her
+Otto. Thinking how easily in the play of chance the lost brother might
+have been saved and her saved brother lost, and recalling the plight of
+the _Westwood_, she suddenly realized that no one could tell who might
+go next--"to high-low." Otto Marburg, glancing up, saw her tears, and
+would have paused but for the sacred burden on his arm.
+
+At the same time, for eyes, even wet eyes, as lively as Ramsey's there
+were livelier things to see. Hugh had gone ashore and up to the
+wharf-boat, crossed it, and boarded the busy _Antelope_ with several
+letters in hand, the twins' letter among them. Said the squire's
+brother-in-law:
+
+"That boy must know the danger to him there is in that document," and
+the planter of Milliken's Bend agreed.
+
+So did their wives. There was "everything in it he wouldn't want there
+and nothing he would want."
+
+He was doing the "brave thing," they all said, and the wives called it
+too brave. The brave thing, they thought, "ran a slim chance against
+Hayle's twins."
+
+"My dear ladies," said the planter, "it runs the only chance he has. The
+brave thing is the only thing those two young fire-eaters have any
+respect for." He stopped short; Ramsey had overheard. Yet she kept a
+pretty front.
+
+"Why do you call him 'that boy'?" she laughingly asked.
+
+"Well, really, because," replied the planter, twinkling, "he's so much
+more than a boy. Don't you think so?"
+
+She gave him a sidelong glance, twitched her curls, and looked down
+ashore. Her mother was there with the "boy's" grandfather. They were
+getting into a rickety hack. Now Hugh joined them from the _Antelope_,
+and they went whipping up the steep road across the face of the bluff
+and into the "stuck-up" Natchez atop the hill. She guessed their errand.
+
+Meantime the _Westwood_ had reached the wharf-boat, put her bridal pair
+aboard the _Antelope_, and backed out again so promptly that as the
+_Antelope_ cast off and started after her she had rounded Marengo Bend
+and was showing only her smoke across Cowpen Point. And now reappeared
+Madame Hayle, the commodore, and Hugh, bringing with them--welcome
+sight--two sisters of charity. The moment they touched the lower deck
+the _Votaress_, with John Courteney on her roof, backed away, and soon,
+in the first bend above, any eye could plainly see the _Westwood_, still
+less than four miles off across country though eight by the river, with
+the _Antelope_ four miles behind her and four ahead of the _Votaress_.
+Said the pilot, Ned, to Ramsey, pulling the wheel down to head into the
+crimson west:
+
+"Four 'n' four's eight, ain't it? Used to be. Can't tell what'll change
+on this river. When Lake Concordia, over here in Louisiana, was part o'
+the river, an' Vidal's Island, in its middle, was in the river, this
+bend wa'n't jest eight mile' round, it wuz twenty. These are _the_
+bends. F'om here to Cairo we got to run one etarnal wriggle o' six
+hund'd 'n' eighty mile' to make three hund'd 'n' seventy."
+
+"Oh, I'm glad of it! At least--ain't--ain't you?"
+
+He shook his head: "Not this run." The supper bell rang and Ramsey fled,
+but he repeated: "No, not this run!" He turned and looked back upon
+Natchez bluff far behind the steamer's wake. "I wished every last Hayle
+on this blessed boat wuz off o' her an' 'top o' you!"
+
+On that bluff, in colonial days, had stood Fort Rosalie, whose dire
+tragedy Ramsey, down in the cabin, found Gilmore, at table, recounting
+to Hugh and others: murder of its French settlers by Natchez Indians and
+the extermination of the Natchez tribe by the French from New Orleans.
+He was brief, and for a good ending went on to recall his own first
+sight of the spot, before the time of steamboats, when Natchez was a
+village; how, as his low broadhorn came drifting down around this point
+close above it, the bold rise swung into view, crowned with pines, its
+lower parts evergreen with the bay magnolia, and its precipitous front
+lighted up, as now, with the last beams of day. He made it seem so fair
+and important that Ramsey's native pride and a shame of her previous
+blindness almost drove her from the board to take a last look at it from
+the stern guards; but she was again in her mother's seat and again very
+hungry. He was good company to every one, the actor; always acting, yet
+always as natural as if acting and nature were one; a quiet education to
+Hugh, an unfailing joy to his wife, and both to Ramsey.
+
+After supper the players got out an old two-act play for the next
+evening's entertainment. They cast Hugh and Ramsey for two small roles,
+and for two larger ones found a young brother and sister--of
+Napoleon--at the mouth of the Arkansas--who would have just time to act
+them before leaving the boat. Supper had prevented its guests from
+seeing the _Votaress_ turn Giles's Bend and Rifle Point and meet another
+boat as glittering as she and pass Lake Saint John and Fairchild's
+Bend--where the river widened to three miles about Fairchild's double
+island. Wherefore the indulgent Gilmores, on Ramsey's pleading, elected
+to coach first the brother and sister--of Napoleon--letting Hugh ascend
+to the starlight of the roof and Ramsey follow attended once more by old
+Joy.
+
+She met Hugh at the foot of the pilot-house steps. "We are postponed!"
+she said, "you and me--I!"
+
+"Yes. Do you know for what?"
+
+"Yes, because those other two parts are so much bigger than ours, and
+because--I d'n' know--I believe they think I'm sleepy--ha, ha! I'm glad,
+for _I_ want to study this _river_, all I can, day and night. And
+you--must, mustn't you?"
+
+"Yes," he said, which was all he was to say in the play.
+
+Half-way up the steps she halted: "You're to be a captain on it yourself
+as soon as you're fit, ain't you?"
+
+"If that time ever comes."
+
+"Phew! how modest" She stared an instant, turned her back, clasped the
+rail, and with her forehead on her arms laughed till Hugh was weary--not
+necessarily long.
+
+He spoke: "Here come the _Westwood_ and the _Antelope_."
+
+"Where?" She glanced round, sprang up the steps, and soon was making
+room for him beside her at a larboard window behind Watson. Looking
+thence across the long, slim neck of Cole's Point they saw the two boats
+coming back westward in the upper reach of the fourteen-mile eastern
+loop they were running to make two miles into the north. Now the
+_Westwood_ passed and now the _Antelope_, their skylights glinting like
+fireflies through the intervening tree tops, and Watson showed how to
+tell them apart by night. Presently they turned north again and
+vanished, leaving the mighty stream to its three students.
+
+"It'll cut off this whole fourteen mile' some day," said Watson; but the
+other two, in their dim nook, remained silent. He knew that sort of
+silence. When Ramsey by and by spoke, her words were to Hugh exclusively
+and in undertone.
+
+"The _Quakeress_--Oh, I didn't mean----!"
+
+"That's all right," said Hugh. "The _Quakeress_----!"
+
+"Oh, I meant the _Antelope_! She'll soon be in the lead again?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"With both those letters."
+
+"Both."
+
+"Ain't you glad I didn't mean the _Quakeress_?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, you're glad I didn't mean Phyllis, ain't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Would you really be willing to tell me about Phyllis?"
+
+"I would."
+
+"You wasn't willing--before--was you?--were you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What's changed your mind?"
+
+"Lawd, missy!" sighed the forgotten Joy.
+
+But Ramsey insisted: "What's changed it?"
+
+"You, chiefly."
+
+"I haven't," very quietly said the girl.
+
+"You have."
+
+Ramsey glanced cautiously at Watson, but the pilot's eyes were a league
+ahead. Hers returned to Hugh. "Wasn't it my brothers changed your
+mind--the twins?"
+
+"They helped."
+
+She looked him over absently: "I love my brothers."
+
+"I don't," said Hugh.
+
+She stared again and slowly remarked: "You haven't got to.... You're
+powerful queer, ain't you?"
+
+"Not by choice."
+
+"I'm queer. Wish I wasn't--wa'n't--weren't--but I am."
+
+"Yes," said Hugh, "you are."
+
+She tilted her chin, stepped to Watson's side, and called down over the
+breast-board to the Gilmores, who had finished with their two pupils for
+a time and had taken chairs with a newly found young married pair on the
+texas roof:
+
+"Oho, down there!"
+
+"Oho!" the group answered.
+
+"Do you want us to stay up here?" asked Ramsey. "'Cause if you do we'll
+come right down. Or if you'd rather we'd come down we'll stay up here!"
+It was a new note.
+
+The players laughed. "It's the long dress says that," they observed to
+the other pair.
+
+"It certain'y is," replied they; which is Southern form for "probably."
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+PHYLLIS AGAIN
+
+
+About eleven o'clock that same Sunday evening the _Votaress_, at full
+speed, was in a part of the river whose remarkable character sustained
+the son of John Courteney and the daughter of Gideon Hayle in the theory
+that their interest in it was all that had brought them to--all that
+detained them in--the unlighted pilothouse, on the visitors' bench,
+beside Watson. Below, the passengers were for the most part once more in
+slumber. The exhorter had loudly sung himself to sleep:
+
+     "'Mahch-ign thoo Im-madn-uedl's groudnd
+       Toe fahr-eh wordlds odn high.'"
+
+Madame Hayle was in her stateroom and berth, deep in sleep under the
+weight of her toils and assured by the players that Ramsey should go to
+bed when they did. Basile, too, slept, but talked and tossed in his
+sleep, while old Joy, sent to him by Ramsey and the Gilmores, crouched
+outside his door and dozed with an ear against it. The Yazoo squire, his
+children, his sister, her husband, the Vicksburgers, and they of
+Milliken's Bend, purposing to be called up an hour before day to leave
+the boat at their proper landings, had "retired" early, saying fond
+good-bys and hoping to meet every one again. The ladies had astonished
+Ramsey with kisses, given, doubtless, she thought, because her father
+was a hero and her mother a saint. The squire's brother-in-law had
+assured her that her brothers, all three--as Southern boys always, or
+almost always, did--would come out all right--every way; but on being
+asked for details he had slipped away to give his De Bow to the
+commodore and his last good-by to Hugh.
+
+The actor and his wife, however, were as broad awake as Watson. Loving
+the lone starry hours for the hours' own starry sake and having for Hugh
+and Ramsey a certain zeal unconfessed even to each other, they were yet
+in view from the pilot's wheel and visitors' bench at this hour of
+eleven, staying up as willingly as nightingales with the young husband
+and wife who had agreed with them that somebody's mental radius
+"certain'y had" lengthened as suddenly as her gown.
+
+This young pair were expecting to go ashore within the next half-hour at
+"New Carthage," a city of seven houses, nearly opposite another of equal
+pride called Palmyra, and some four miles above the head of Hurricane
+Island, whose foot the _Votaress_ was then passing. They and the
+Gilmores were still down at the forward edge of the texas roof, the
+players finding the Carthaginians very attractive: fluent on morals,
+cuisine, manners, steamboats, the turf, fashions, the chase; voluble on
+the burdensomeness of the slave to his master, the blessedness of the
+master to his slave; but sore to the touch on politics and
+religion--with their religion quite innocently adjusted to their
+politics--and promptly going hard aground on any allusion to history,
+travel, the poets, statistics, architecture, ornithology, art, music,
+myths, memoirs, Europe, Asia, Africa, homoeopathy, or phrenology. It
+entertained the players just to see how many things the happy lovers
+knew nothing about and to hear them state in some new form, each time
+they backed off a sand-bar of their own ignorance, that they had seen
+the world, sucked the orange, yet found no spot of earth so perfect to
+live in as New Carthage.
+
+The briefest sittings at such entertainment had been enough for Hugh,
+too much for Ramsey, and had driven them back, twice and thrice, to that
+fairer world on high in the pilot-house, where they could study the
+river undistracted. There and thence, now together, now apart, they had
+gone and come all through Watson's watch, moved by Hugh's duties or her
+caprice. Their each new meeting had been by accident, but it is odd how
+often accidents can occur--"at that stage o' the game," thought the kind
+pilot, and on each recurrence he noticed that they had got a bit farther
+on in the story of Phyllis.
+
+"How long is this island, Mr. Watson?" inquired Ramsey, as if islands
+were all she was sitting up for.
+
+"Two mile' 'n' a half. D'd you ask me that before? I don't hear much
+behind me if it ain't hove right at me." Stalest device of the
+sentimentalist--the self-sacrificing lie! But Watson cared not for its
+staleness if it might promote the game. And the game, though as
+wanderingly as the river, went on. Without strict order of time, now on
+the bench, now on the roof, early and late, here is how it went:
+
+"You're not afraid of my brothers, are you? I'm not."
+
+"I'm afraid for them. And for my father and grandfather. And for your
+father and your mother."
+
+"Good gracious!" laughed Ramsey, then mused, and then asked: "Ain't you
+afraid for me?"
+
+Hugh said nothing, and thenceforth her tone grew more maidenly though
+her words remained childlike enough.
+
+"I know why you want to tell me about Phyllis," she added more softly.
+"You think if you don't my brothers will."
+
+"They don't know the facts," murmured Hugh.
+
+"Don't they think they do? And ain't that the trouble?"
+
+"Yes." Hugh thought her insight surprising, while she enjoyed the
+spiritual largeness she fancied she saw in his immobile features. "Yes,"
+he repeated, "they think they do; that's the trouble, much of it."
+
+"How do you know they don't?"
+
+"By what they believe and by what I know."
+
+"How do you know you know?"
+
+"By my own eyes and Phyllis's own lips."
+
+"Would she tell you things she never told any one else?"
+
+"Yes, things she never dared tell any one else."
+
+Ramsey pondered, laughed, and pondered and laughed again: "Why, most of
+that time you was--you were--nothing but a little toddler. Didn't she
+love you?"
+
+"She hated me."
+
+Ramsey flinched but quickly laughed a bright unbelief to the youth's
+face, a face which might as well have been a wood-carving. "Oh," she
+cried, "how ridiculous!"
+
+"She used to flog me, cruelly."
+
+Ramsey gasped: "And you never told? Oh, why--why----?"
+
+"She said she'd kill me--and my mother. And she'd have done it,
+somehow."
+
+"But she's been dead ten years!"
+
+"Has she?"
+
+"Why, of course! Wasn't she on the _Quakeress_ when----?"
+
+"So was I."
+
+Ramsey flinched worse and stared away with lips apart, wondering if that
+was what gave him that look.
+
+"But Phyllis," she resumed, "was lost."
+
+"Was she?"
+
+"Why ... wasn't she? Mammy Joy says my uncle--in the blazing
+pilot-house--did you know my uncle Dan?"
+
+"Yes. That night, half an hour before the burning----"
+
+"Oh! was it at night?"
+
+"Yes. I was sitting with Phyllis, behind him, with him at the wheel, as
+we're sitting now behind Mr. Watson."
+
+"Uncle Dan didn't hate you, did he?"
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+"Then why didn't you tell him about Phyllis? He was her master, you
+know."
+
+"I did. He wormed it out of me. He was like you--in some things."
+
+The questioner flashed and stared but then dropped her eyes. "Did
+he--have red curls?"
+
+"Yes, redder than yours."
+
+"Humph!" ... She mused.... "I'm tired here. Let's go down by the
+Gilmores and walk--'thortships!"
+
+They went. "Well?--about Phyllis? What did she whip you for? Being bad?"
+
+"Bad or good was all one to Phyllis."
+
+"Wasn't--weren't--weren't you ever bad, Mr. Hugh?"
+
+"Frequently."
+
+"How were you bad?--steal jam?--eat green plums?"
+
+"Yes; had fights, went in swimming--in snake holes----"
+
+"D'd you tease your sisters?--pull their hair?--let the sawdust out o'
+their dolls?"
+
+"Yes, yes, all that."
+
+"Hmm! that's nothing. Basile and I--Ain't you going on? Of course, if
+you don't want to I--I shan't worm. Why did Phyllis--oh, pshaw!"
+
+With the exclamation came such one-sided mirth that Mrs. Gilmore looked
+round. But her husband said there would never be anything to look round
+for while "that laugh" kept its quality.
+
+Presently Hugh found himself murmurously "going on" and Ramsey
+listening. It was a great moment in both lives. If we cannot see it so,
+no matter; but in still depths of perception below all formulated
+thought both the youth and the girl were aware, separately, that the
+story of Phyllis was not the largest fruit of the hour.
+
+Phyllis, Hugh said, had not hated him alone. In her heart had burned a
+pure flame of wrath against every member--save one--of the fair race to
+which she belonged by three-fourths of her blood but by not one word of
+human law. Wronged for the race she disclaimed, she hated the race that
+disclaimed her. Hated even the mothers of Hugh and Ramsey, who abhorred
+slavery, a slavery enthralling men, women, children in whose veins ran
+not four only but eight and sixteen times as much masters' blood as
+slaves'. She hated them because all their sweet abhorrence found no
+deliverance or revenge for her. Mitigations there were, but mitigations
+she loathed. The uncompromising quality of her hatred was one thing that
+had made dissimulation easy, and through all Hugh's childhood she had
+practised it perfectly in every relation and direction on every one but
+him. Another easement had been her indomitable, unflagging triple
+purpose to be free, to be reunited to her master, and to be revenged.
+
+And a third, craftily won through the trustfulness of Hugh's Quaker
+mother, had been the opportunity to wreak the frequent overflow of her
+resentments on him. The fact that he was almost of the exact age of her
+own lost offspring had forever goaded her, and to him, with each
+maltreatment, she had told again her heart's whole burden, outermost
+wrong, innermost rage, thus recovering poise to treat his sisters and
+brother with exemplary care and tenderly to discuss with their mother
+Hugh's precocious reticence and gravity. Always she had held a
+self-command cunningly tempered in the fire of her triple resolve and
+fitted to the desperate chances with which she unceasingly crossed
+daggers. She never tired of telling her little white slave that, having
+herself once got the lash, she was only paying interest on it through
+him. Him, at least, she would teach to hate slavery as she hated it.
+
+Hugh's listener moved as if to touch him. A boat was coming by. They
+paused in their "thort-ships" walk and with a slight choke in her voice
+Ramsey asked: "You know what I hope?" Her voice went lower. "I hope you
+learned."
+
+"That's the strangest part," said Hugh. "I did."
+
+The boat passed, a cloud of burning gems. "Go on," said Ramsey, "I can
+see that and hear you at the same time."
+
+But Hugh's mind was too masculine for such legerdemain and though she
+sighed and sighed again he waited until the vision grew dim astern.
+Then, as he was about to resume, she interrupted.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+THE BURNING BOAT
+
+
+"Where was the commodore all that time?" she asked.
+
+"In Europe. We did business there too. It wasn't all river and boats
+those days."
+
+"Humph!" She preferred it to be all river and boats.
+
+"But at length," said Hugh----
+
+"What length?"
+
+"Ten years. Grandfather was coming home, to stay. We were all to go up
+to Saint Louis on the _Quakeress_."
+
+"Phyllis too?"
+
+"Yes, to meet him there and bring him back with us."
+
+"Ten years!" marvelled Ramsey. "Hadn't Phyllis ever heard from my--from
+Walnut Hills?"
+
+"Now and then, yes; and when those ten years seemed to have worn her,
+body and soul, to the breaking point----"
+
+"You're strange. You feel tender to her yet."
+
+"Perhaps I do. One day--night--she got word--I heard it from my nursery
+bed--she got news; news that to her was as good and as bad as news could
+be."
+
+"That _he_ was on the river again!" guessed Ramsey.
+
+"Yes, relearning it--it changes so fast, you know--and that your father
+had asked my father to employ him; for he didn't want to go with your
+father."
+
+"No, Hayles will _fight_ for Hayles, pop-a says, but they won't work for
+them."
+
+"Also that he was going to be married. But Phyllis told my mother so
+meekly that the past was all past----"
+
+"And she'd seemed so good for so long, I suppose."
+
+"Yes--that even my father thought it _was_ past, and when we went aboard
+the boat and it started up the river, there at the wheel was your uncle
+Dan."
+
+"You didn't dare tell on her?--Oh, you were only ten years old!"
+
+"It wasn't that. I was older than I am to-day. But if I told a word I'd
+have to tell all, and by that time she'd made me believe that about all
+the guilt was mine."
+
+"Yours! Well, and then? Was his lady-love on the boat?"
+
+"No, but a passenger who came aboard at Natchez turned out to be the
+overseer Phyllis had once run away from."
+
+"Oh! oh! the man who lost the child! What a difference that must have
+made!"
+
+"Difference a wind makes to a fire. And yet for a time things ran along
+as smoothly as the old boat."
+
+"She wasn't any older than you."
+
+"For a boat she was, several times. Mr. Watson," asked Hugh from the
+roof between the Gilmores and the pilot, "what's the average age of a
+boat on this river?"
+
+"Average age? Well, it varies! Say about five year'."
+
+Hugh's voice dropped again. "The overseer being aboard, Phyllis and I,
+to be clear of him, were allowed free run of the roofs, and I being the
+captain's son it was so natural to see us often in the pilot-house----"
+
+"And she was so wary, and you were so silent----"
+
+"Yes--that no one noticed anything and the past still seemed past. One
+day your uncle Dan told me of your twin brothers. They'd spent half a
+year with him."
+
+"Which mom-a's sorry for to this day. They worship him yet, she says. Go
+on; skip their visit."
+
+"Well, when we reached Saint Louis I knew that he and Phyllis had agreed
+on something perfectly joyful to her. I don't know even now--what it
+was. She was to be set free, but that was only a small part."
+
+"Skip again. The commodore joined you?"
+
+"No, he failed us. We had to turn back without him."
+
+"But with Uncle Dan, of course?"
+
+"Yes, in wedding clothes. And with the overseer and with Phyllis. She'd
+tried to run away again, in Saint Louis, but she couldn't do it without
+my mother's help, and my mother, though she declared the laws were
+shameful, wouldn't break them."
+
+"I'd 've broken them!" whispered Ramsey. "Well, you turned back?"
+
+"Yes, and I saw at once there was something horribly wrong. Day and
+night Phyllis was frantic. She hid her feelings from others,
+wonderfully, but she poured them out on your uncle Dan. It was then he
+suspected how she'd been treating me, and coaxed me to tell him; and
+when he told her I'd told him and that he would tell she saw she was at
+the end of everything and I thought that now she would whip me to
+death."
+
+"Stop! Stop!" The two were again in the pilot-house, but Watson, just
+then jingling his engine bells, was too busy to heed anything not "hove
+at him." His big bell had sounded for New Carthage, and John Courteney
+had appeared down forward of it, but neither Hugh nor Ramsey was enough
+diverted to answer the parting hail of the town's two residents joyfully
+going ashore. "I can't stand it!" she ran on. "I won't hear it!"
+
+"But I must tell you," murmured Hugh.
+
+"Why must you?"
+
+"Because of what you have already heard and will hear and because you
+are you; who you are; what you are."
+
+"Mr. Hugh, I'm the same I was last night when you and your father were
+talking poetry and trying to get rid of me!"
+
+"Not quite."
+
+"Well, go on; they quarrelled and you thought your hour had come--it
+seems it hadn't. Go on--if you 'must.'"
+
+"I must," he said, and went on. "I had picked up, that day--it was the
+third day out and we were down in these bends and had taken on nearly
+half a load of cotton--I'd picked up, where your uncle Dan had dropped
+it, a small paper box of fusees--you know?--matches that you can't blow
+out. Childlike, guiltily, I kept them. In their quarrel, that night,
+Phyllis ended by imploring your uncle Dan not to tell on her. I never
+knew what supplication was till then. She wept on her knees, clinging to
+his. When she had to leave him, to put me to bed, he made her promise
+never again to do me the least hurt, and swore that if she did he'd sell
+her to the overseer.
+
+"We went. I was afraid that down in the stateroom she'd find the fusees
+in my pocket and that I should go to jail as a public thief. But she
+stood me in the middle of the room, threw herself on my berth, and
+writhed and hid her face and beat her head and looked at me a
+hundredfold more murderously than your uncle Dan had ever looked at her.
+So once, while she lay still a moment, I slipped out onto the guards,
+and as I lifted my hand to throw the fusees into the river she caught it
+in hers, it and them. Then for the first time in my life I resisted her.
+I fought. Do you know what a cow-eat is?"
+
+Ramsey stared. "No. Is it a way of fighting?"
+
+It was not a way of fighting. Cattle often eat deep holes into cotton
+bales. "Ah, yes!" The tale went on.
+
+"I fought her, and somehow the fusees, the whole box, got lighted and
+were dropped. Whether she dropped them purposely or not, or I dropped
+them, I'll never know; but they fell just over the rail, among the
+cotton bales, and we saw the lint in a cow-eat about three tiers down
+flash like gunpowder. She snatched me back into the stateroom, shut the
+door, and stood clutching me wildly and listening. 'Say your prayers,'
+she said, and knelt with me. She'd never knelt with me before. When I
+finished she had me go over them again. She did not say them with me,
+only whimpered and whispered, and fluttered her hands on my head and
+back. She made me begin once more, but before I was half through we
+heard the watchman run along the roof close over us and cry: 'Fire!' She
+lifted me to my feet, whispering, 'Now! Now!' and began to put a
+life-preserver on me, still saying over and over nothing but 'Now! Now!
+Now!' until the sounds of alarm were everywhere, and just as she sprang
+into the next stateroom to rouse the other children my mother came into
+it from the main cabin. I got my little brother into my room and was
+dressing him there while my mother dressed one sister and Phyllis the
+other, when your father's overseer, who had once followed the river
+himself, came down the cabin shouting to every one to come out and go
+forward and was kicking in every door he found locked. At ours he told
+my mother not to mind the smoke--which had grown thick and choking--but
+to rush us all straight through it to the boiler deck and down the
+forward stairs, and on her life not to stop for life-preservers but to
+go at once. So she and Phyllis ran with the three little ones; but I,
+childlike again, had got the notion that life-preservers were forbidden
+and was so long getting mine off that Phyllis turned back for me.
+
+"That delay saved my life, for, as we ran out into the cabin together,
+the smoke in front of us, forward, turned red and then went all to
+flame, and right in the midst of it, hurrying toward us, we saw the
+overseer. He tripped on a hassock or something and fell and the flame
+literally swallowed him alive. We sprang through an open stateroom and
+climbed a wheelhouse stair to the hurricane deck. There we saw no one,
+but through the crackle and roar of the flame, which a light breeze
+behind us sent straight up into the darkness, I heard the voice of my
+father, twice, at his post in front of the skylights, and the answer of
+the engine bells showed that your uncle Dan and the engineers were
+sticking to their places. We were landing in a strong eddy under a point
+and didn't have to round to. The boat was wonderfully quiet. I even
+heard--probably because the shore was so close ahead of us--the first
+mate--same that's with us here now--heard him ordering the stage run out
+over the water, as always when about to land. I heard the clerks and
+others telling the passengers to 'keep cool' and 'not crowd,' saying
+there was room and time for every one.
+
+"The pilot-house was burning brightly on one side but it was so wrapped
+in smoke that your uncle Dan was hid from Phyllis and me till the boat
+hit the bank. Then the breeze gave us a glimpse of him as it curled the
+whole blaze forward so that it overarched the people who filled the
+front stairs and gangway, waiting to swarm off across the stage. That
+brought panic and the panic brought death. Some male passengers--we
+couldn't see, but our hearing was like sight--had got all the women and
+children to the front of the crowd and a few even partly out on the
+stage, over the water, to be the first put ashore.
+
+"When the boat's nose struck the shore the back part of the crowd
+thought the landing was made and began to push, and there were no men in
+front to push back--for some of the boat's family, missing Phyllis and
+me, had run aft to find us--and when that smoke rolled down on every one
+the push became a rush and suddenly two or three women were screaming at
+one edge of the stage, with nothing to lay hold on but one another.
+
+"We heard their cries and the cry of the crowd, through the crackling of
+the fire. My mother tried to save them, with her three children clinging
+to her, and the whole six fell into the black shadow of the freight
+guards and the swift eddy drew them under the boat's hull before a thing
+could be done except that two of our men jumped in and sank with them."
+
+Ramsey covered her face. "What did your father do?"
+
+"He let himself down by one of the derrick posts. As he did so, and when
+they who had tried to rescue us had failed, the mate, who is a famous
+swimmer, sprang overboard, as near the larboard wheel as the fire would
+let him, struck out round it, climbed up on it into the paddle-box, and
+tried to reach the cabin deck by the kitchen stair. But a sweep of the
+flames drove him back into the river, and he was just sinking when Mr.
+Gilmore, you know, drew him into his skiff.
+
+"At the same time your uncle Dan came tumbling down from a pilot-house
+window and staggered with us back to the stern rail, for all the stairs
+were burning. It was idle to call for help. The whole thing had lasted
+but a minute or two. Phyllis didn't want help and we had just that
+instant to get down in.
+
+"Those who had gone ashore could not see us. The smoke hid us. So did
+the texas. Your uncle Dan dragged a mattress out of it and dropped it
+over the stern, away down onto the fantail, scores of feet below. The
+flames made the boat's shadow as black as ink. We thought the yawl was
+down there, but some of the crew had swum out from the shore and pulled
+away in it to pick up the mate--and us, of course, if we were with him.
+
+"Your uncle, though fearfully burnt, took me on his back and showed
+Phyllis how to climb down beside him by the bracket work and posts and
+balustrades of the guards, as I could have done, but he wouldn't let me.
+
+"If the wind had been the other way we should have perished right there.
+But the guards of the ladies' cabin ran round the stern, as they do on
+this boat, and her fantail, below, stretched still farther aft. So we
+got down to those guards easily. But in the ladies' cabin the fire had
+worked aft faster than outside, and on those guards the heat was
+torture. We could only hang from them and drop. Your uncle went first,
+then Phyllis and then I, he catching us, for down there he had light
+enough, looking up, and as we fell the flames shot through the cabin
+stern windows. He caught us, but then he said, 'I'm gone, Phyllis,' and
+crumpled down at her feet. Then I cried for help but Phyllis said we
+didn't need to call, and we didn't. We'd been seen at last, on the
+guards as we climbed down. They called to us to stick to the boat till
+swimmers could reach us. But we couldn't. The wind had turned, the heat
+was worse than ever, the fire had parted the boat's lines and she was
+being blown out into the current. Then your uncle struggled half up
+again and helped Phyllis get the mattress outside the bull railings,
+where I climbed out and held it. He asked if I could swim and when I
+said yes he warned me not to swim to the shore as the river was falling
+and the bank caving, but to float with the mattress and call till I was
+picked up. So I went over with it. But it twisted away from me. I swam
+to a floating cotton bale, one with a flicker of fire still on it, as it
+drifted up-stream in the eddy. At the same time I'd heard your uncle and
+Phyllis strike the water together, and a moment later I saw them--their
+heads. She was holding to the mattress with one hand and to him with the
+other. But presently I heard her give a low wail and saw him slip from
+her and sink. Then the smoke came down between us, and by and by the
+returning yawl, whose men had heard my calls and had seen Mr. Gillmore's
+skiff pick up the mate, found me on the cotton bale and had barely
+lifted me in when I fainted away."
+
+Ramsey covered her face again. It would have been joy to her to let one
+of the drops that melted through her fingers fall on Hugh's hand.
+
+Watson cleared his throat. "Sort o' inquirin' fo' one o' you, down on
+the roof," he said without looking back. He was a man not above
+repeating himself for a good end. "Third time they've sung out to me,
+but--up here I off'm don't notice much f'om anywheres 'at ain't hove
+right at me."
+
+Ned entered and silently took the wheel.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+A PROPHET IN THE WILDERNESS
+
+
+Through all the middle watch of Sunday night, with her Ned quite alone
+in the pilot-house, the _Votaress_ came and passed from crossing to
+crossing, up reaches, through chutes, around points and bends, a meteor
+in harness. Such she seemed from the dim shores. So came, so passed,
+before the drowsy gaze of that strange attenuated fraction of humanity
+which scantily peopled the waters and margins of the great river to win
+from it the bare elements of livelihood or transit, winning them at a
+death-rate not far below the immigrant's and in a vagabondage often as
+wild as that of the water-fowl passing unseen in the upper darkness.
+
+If to the contemplation of the Courteneys, father and son, the fair
+craft, "with all her light and life, speeding, twinkling on and on
+through the night," was "a swarm of stars," or "one little whole world,"
+how shall we see her--with what sense of wonder and splendor--through
+the eyes of the flatboatman or the swamper, the raftsman, the island
+squatter, the trading-scow man, the runaway slave in the canebrake, the
+woodyard man, or the "pirooter"--that degenerate heir, dwarfed to a
+parasite, of the terrible, earlier-day land-pirates and river-wolves of
+Plum Point and Crow's Nest Island? To such sorts, self-described as
+human snapping-turtles and alligators, her peacock show of innumerable
+lights was the jewelled crown of the only civilization they knew,
+knowing it only with the same aloofness with which they knew the stars.
+She woke them with the flutter of her wheels as of winged feet and
+passed like a goddess using the river's points and islands for
+stepping-stones, her bosom wrapped in a self-communion that gave no
+least hint of its intolerable load of grief and strife.
+
+Not until she entered the great bend of Vicksburg did she once come into
+contrast with anything that could in any degree diminish her regal
+supremacy. There, as day was breaking, she entered the deep shadow of
+the southernmost "Walnut Hill." The town on its crest was two hundred
+feet above her lower deck, and the stiff Yazoo squire, his kindly
+brother-in-law and sister and the Vicksburg merchant and his wife,
+waiting down there while she slowed up to the wharf-boat at its foot to
+let them and others off, were proud of the bluff and of the two miles of
+sister hills hid by it and the night. Even overproud they were. The two
+husbands and wives silently wished for that lover of wonders, the
+sleeping Ramsey, that they might enjoy her enjoyment of the sight, who,
+though from exalted Natchez, never had beheld so vast an eminence or a
+city stuck up quite so high.
+
+But Ramsey, far removed in her new, sweet-smelling berth, did not stir
+from a slumber into which she was throwing all the weight of an
+overloaded experience. She was paying large back taxes to sleep and had
+become so immersed in the transaction that her mother's rising,
+dressing, and stealing away lifted, this time, not one of her eyelashes.
+In not a sigh or motion did she respond to the long, quaking,
+world-filling roar of the _Votaress's_ whistle, nor to John Courteney's
+tolling of her great bell, nor to the jingle of lesser bells below, nor
+to any stopping or reversing or new going ahead of her wheels either for
+landing or for backing out and straightening up the river again. She
+slept on though these were the very Walnut Hills of her uncle Dan's and
+Phyllis's dark story; persevered in sleep though John Courteney's son,
+her profoundest marvel, was once more up and out, with the story still
+on his heart and "a-happmin' yit." It was one of its happenings that,
+very naturally, though quite unreasonably, he begrudged the sleeper's
+absence from texas roof and pilot-house.
+
+The _Votaress_ was under full headway, with Vicksburg astern, Watson
+again at the wheel and the captain in his chair. The most northerly of
+the Walnut Hills were on the starboard bow. Beyond them the sun, rising
+into thunder-clouds, poured a dusty-yellow light over the tops of their
+almost unbroken woods, here and there brightening with a strange
+vividness the tilled fields and white homestead and slave quarters of
+some noted plantation. Between the hills and the river lay a mile's
+breadth or more of densely forested swamp, or "bottom," swarming with
+reptiles great and small, abounding in deer, bear, and panther, and from
+which, though the buffalo had been long banished, the wolf was not yet
+gone. On the skylight roof, close "abaft the bell," as Ramsey would have
+said, stood the commodore and Hugh. They had just met there and after a
+casual word or so Hugh was about to say something requiring an effort,
+when they were joined by the exhorter.
+
+"Mawnin', gentle-_men_," he said. "Now, what you reckon them-ah po'
+Gawd-fo'-saken'd Eu-_rope_-ians down-stahs air a-thinkin' to theyse'v's
+whilst they view this-yeh lan'scape o'? D'you reckon they eveh, ev'm in
+they dreams o' heav'm, see sich
+
+     "'Sweet fiel's beyond the swellin' flood
+       Stand deck' in livin' green'?
+
+"I tell you, gentle-_men_, as sho' as man made the city an' Gawd made
+the country, he made this-yeh country last, when he'd got his hand in!
+You see that-ah house an' cedah grove on yan rise? Well, that's the old
+'Good Luck Plantation.' Gid Hayle 'uz bawn thah. His fatheh went to Gawd
+f'om thah an' lef' it to Dan, the pilot, what 'uz lost on the
+_Qua'_--Hell! listen at me! As ef _you_ didn't know that, which ev'y
+sight o' you stahts folks a-talkin' about it! But, Lawd! what a country
+this-yeh 'Azoo Delta is, to be sho'! Fo' craps! All this-yeh Mis'sippi
+Riveh, you mowt say, fo'm Cairo down, an' th' 'Azoo fo' the top-rail!
+Fo' craps--an' the money-makin'est craps! An' jest as much fo' game! Not
+pokeh but wile game; fo'-footen beasts afteh they kind an' fowl afteh
+they kind. An' ef a country's great fo' craps _an'_ game, what mo' kin
+it be great faw what ain't pyo' Babylonian vanity an' Eu-_rope_-ian
+stinch?"
+
+The commodore admitted that game was a good thing and that crops were
+even better.
+
+"No, sir-ee! Game comes fust! Man makes the craps but Gawd made the
+game! It come fust when it fust come an' it comes fust yit! Lawd
+A'mighty! who wouldn't drutheh hunt than plough, ef he could hev his
+druthehs? But the game ain't what it wuz, not ev'm in this-yeh 'Azoo
+country an' not ev'm o' the feathe'd kind. Oh, wile turkey, o' co'se,
+they here yit, by thousan's, an' wile goose, an' duck, an' teal, by
+hund'eds o' thousan's, an' wile pigeon, clouds of 'em, 'at dahkened the
+noonday sun. Reckon you see' 'em do that, ain't you? I see' it this ve'y
+season. But, now, take the pelikin! if game is a fah' name fo' him--aw
+heh, as the case may be; which that bird--nine foot f'm tip to tip, the
+white ones--use' to be as common on this riveh as cuckle-burrs in a
+sheep's tail!" The jester laughed, or, more strictly, exhaled his mirth
+from the roof of a wide-spread mouth in a long hiss that would have been
+more like an angered alligator's if alligators used fine-cut tobacco. It
+was addressed to the commodore; for Hugh, his grandfather's conscious
+inferior in human charity, had turned the squarest back--for its
+height--aboard the _Votaress_, to gaze on a wonderful sight in the
+eastern sky. The exhorter resumed:
+
+"Why, I ain't see' a pelikin sence I use' to flatboat down to
+Orleans--f'om Honey Islan' an' th' 'Azoo City. 'Pelikin in the
+wildeh-_ness_,' says the holy book, but they 'can't stan' the
+wildeh-_ness_!' They plumb gone!--vamoost!--down to the Gulf!--what few
+ain't been shot!" He grew indignant. "An' whahfo' shot? Faw noth'n'!
+Jeemany-crackies! gentle-_men_, it makes my blood bile an' my bile go
+sour! Ain't no bounty on pelikins. Dead pelikins ain't useful--naw
+awnamental--naw instructive, an' much less they don't tas'e good. No,
+suh, they jess shot in pyo' devil-_ment_ by awngawdly damn fools--same
+as them on this boat all day 'istiddy a-poppin' they pistols at ev'y
+live thing they see'--fo' no damn' reason in the heab'ms above aw the
+earth beneath aw the watehs undeh the earth--Lawd! it mighty nigh makes
+me swah! An' I feel the heab'mly call--seein' as that-ah tub-shape'
+Methodis' bishop _h-ain't_ feel it--fo' to tell you, commodo', you-all
+hadn't ought allowed that hell-fi'ud nonsense on Gawd's holy day."
+
+Even to his grandfather's response Hugh paid no visible attention. The
+eastern sky had become such a picture that down forward at the break of
+the deck John Courteney rose eagerly from his chair and looked back and
+up to be sure that his son was one of its spectators. Yes, Hugh was just
+casting a like glance to him and now turned to invite the notice of his
+grandfather. The thunder-clouds had so encompassed the sun that its rays
+burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning,
+bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence
+they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe
+darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking
+this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a
+watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp under
+the hills, some long-lost bend of the Mississippi or cut-off of the
+Yazoo, rose into the flood of beams an innumerable immaculate swarm of
+giant cranes. Half were white as silver, half were black as jet, and
+from moment to moment each jet magically turned to silver, each silver
+to jet, as on slowly pulsing wings they wove a labyrinthian way through
+their own multitude with never a clash of pinion on pinion, up, down,
+athwart and around, up, down, and around again, now raven black across
+the sun and now silver and snow against the cloud.
+
+An awed voice broke the stillness and old Joy stood a modest step back
+from Hugh's side with rapt gaze on hill and sky.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+TWINS AND TEXAS TENDER
+
+
+"Sign f'om de Lawd!" droned the old woman. "It's de souls o' de saints
+in de tribilatioms o' de worl'!"
+
+But explanation was poor tribute to such beauty. Hugh glanced away to
+his father, then around to the commodore, up to Watson, and back again
+upon the spectacle. In a tone of remote allusion the grandfather spoke:
+"One wants a choice partnership for a sight like that."
+
+Hugh cast back a sudden frown but it softened promptly to a smile which
+old Joy thought wonderfully sweet.
+
+"Late sleepers," persisted the commodore, "know what they gain but not
+what they lose."
+
+"Naw yit," audibly soliloquized the nurse, "what dey makes de early
+riseh lose." She added a soft high-treble "humph!" and gave herself a
+smile at least as sweet as Hugh's, which he repeated to her as he said:
+
+"Good morning, auntie."
+
+She courtesied. "Mawnin', suh." They need not have been more cordial had
+they just signed a great treaty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _Votaress_, swinging westward, left the picture behind, and the
+neglected exhorter, caring far less for cranes and clouds than for
+pelicans and sinners, reopened, this time on Hugh: "But that's anotheh
+thing 'at rises my bristles, ev'm ef it don't the bishop's."
+
+"What rises them?" asked the solemn Hugh, the commodore's attention
+wandering.
+
+"Shell I spit it out? Wall, it's folks a-_proj_-eckin' togetheh--church
+membehs an' non-membehs a-_proj_-eckin' _togetheh_--fo' to drownd Gawd
+A'mighty's chas-tise_ments_ in the devil's delights. _You_ know they
+a-layin' fo' to do that on this boat this ve'y evenin'. You know they
+a-_proj_-eckin' fo' to raise filthy lucre by fiddlin' an' play-actin'
+an' a-singin' o' worl'ly songs an', to top all, a-dayncin'!--right oveh
+the heads o' the sick an' dyin', my Gawd! You know that, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, I'm mixed up in it."
+
+"An' they a-doin' it fo' what? Fo' no betteh reason 'an to he'p them-ah
+damn' ovehwhelmin' furrinehs to escape the righteous judg-_ments_ o' the
+Lawd! Young brotheh, my name is Jawn. Jawn the Babtiss, I am, an' as
+sich I p'otess! An' also an' mo'oveh I p'otess ag'in' any mo' leadin's
+f'om them-ah 'Piscopaliam play-actohs, an' still mo' f'om that-ah
+bodacious brick-top gal o' Gid Hayle's. Which she made opem spote o'
+_my_ leadin's in 'istiddy's meet'n'! An' o' co'se! havin' a popish
+motheh."
+
+"Oh!--my!--Lawd!" gasped Joy, and the commodore had begun to meet
+protest with protest, when Hugh touched him.
+
+"This is too small for you. May I----?"
+
+"Take it," said the grandfather and turned inquiringly to the nurse.
+
+"Yaas, suh," she hurried to say, "my mist'ess ax de honoh to see you at
+de stateroom o' Mahs' Basile."
+
+Meantime Hugh answered the complainant: "My friend, that young lady--you
+mustn't call her anything else again--made no sport of you whatever."
+
+"Oh, dat she didn't, boss!" put in old Joy, breaking off from her talk
+with the commodore.
+
+"Honestly, sir," continued Hugh, "I was afraid some one would, but I
+happened to see her from first to last, and----"
+
+"Happ'm'd! The hell you happ'm'd! Yo' eyes 'uz dead _sot_ on heh when
+they'd ought to been upraise' in prah!"
+
+Hugh laughed--a laugh so hearty it might have been the brick-top's own.
+The texas tender enjoyed it as he bore a tray of dishes from the room of
+the twins. Down beyond the bell it drew the father's smile and up at the
+wheel the stoical gaze of Watson. Half of it was for the exhorter and
+half for a newcomer at tardy sight of whom the exhorter paled, certain
+that he had been overheard.
+
+"Oh!" he cried, "I ain't meant no offence to nobody naw tuck none!" and
+eagerly followed the commodore's beckon to go below with him and the
+nurse. Hugh, still smiling, met the blazing stare of Julian Hayle.
+
+"Good morning," he said, while Hayle was inquiring:
+
+"May I again ask of you a word in private?"
+
+"Oh, this is private enough," said Hugh. "Every private word I've had
+with you so far, or with your--coterie, has been so unsatisfactory to
+you--and them, and so tiresome to everybody, I can't see why you should
+want another. My friend----"
+
+"We are not friends, sir."
+
+"Well, then, let's make friends. Here's my hand. I'm utterly ashamed of
+this miserable little spat."
+
+Hayle folded his arms. "You'll find it life-size before we're done."
+
+"Nonsense! it's too small for words, private or otherwise. Let's end it,
+for that reason if for no better."
+
+"That's not your reason, sir. You have another."
+
+"Yes, I simply can't quarrel with you."
+
+"You--crawling--poltroon!"
+
+Hugh's smile vanished at last. He gulped as though a wave had gone over
+him. But he remembered his father. Beyond doubt his father had heard. He
+glanced down to him, and what he saw was worth a year of commonplace
+experience. The father had heard, yet he sat at ease, his knees crossed
+and his gaze out forward on the boat's course. Watson--but what could
+Watson matter then? Hugh's eyes burned big on Hayle, his voice deepened,
+his words came slow. "We can't fight here and now. I can only put you
+ashore. Don't make me do that. There's trouble enough on this boat as it
+is. You're having your share. Mr. Hayle, I fear--though I don't
+know--that Basile has the cholera."
+
+"Damn him and it! You wouldn't fight me if you could."
+
+"True."
+
+"Why? On your father's account--and his father's?"
+
+"On everybody's. Your own father's. Your mother's."
+
+"My sister's?" The question was a threatening sneer.
+
+"Yes, sir." The breakfast bell rang merrily below and Hugh turned to
+leave. Julian blazed out in curses:
+
+"I forbid you 'that young lady's' company henceforth!"
+
+"And that's the private word you had for me?"
+
+"Yes, damn you! I know who sat up late last night. If you do it again
+I'll shoot you right on this boat!"
+
+"My private word for you, Mr. Hayle, isn't as public as that. Only I and
+the texas tender know it."
+
+"Most fitting partnership!"
+
+"No, it was entirely his own enterprise. While you and your brother were
+getting your information from him he got your weapons from both of you.
+I have them in the clerk's safe."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+THE PEACEMAKERS
+
+
+Some four of the _Votaress's_ "family," one seated, three standing at
+ease, were allowing their mild, slow conversation its haphazard way
+under barely enough constraint to hold it in the channel of discretion.
+It drifted as unpretentiously as a raft or flatboat, now and then merely
+floating without progress, like a floating alligator; that is, with one
+small eye imperceptibly open to every point of the compass.
+
+He who sat was the first clerk, a man of thirty-seven or so, and
+therefore, as age then counted, fairly started on the decline of life.
+He occupied the high stool in the clerk's office, his limp back against
+its standing desk. Nearest him the second clerk, standing, leaned on an
+elbow thrown out upon the desk and rested one foot on a rung of the
+stool. A second clerk might do that; a third or "mud" clerk would hardly
+have made so free. The youthful mud clerk, with his hat under his folded
+arms, leaned on the jamb of a door that let back into the clerks'
+stateroom. Opposite him the youngest of the four, latest come among
+them, stood out in the cabin and hung in over the broad window counter,
+across which the office did business with the world. Watson's "cub
+pilot" he was, on the sick list, thin and weak with swamp-fever.
+
+The forenoon watch was half gone. The boat was fluttering along at high
+speed under a bright but fickle sky, and the clerks and the "cub" hardly
+needed to glance out the nearest larboard window to know that she was
+already turning northward into a pleasant piece of river called Nine
+Mile Reach. A certain Point Lookout was some five miles behind in the
+east, and the town of Providence, negligibly small, with Lake
+Providence, an old cut-off, hid in the woods behind it, was close ahead.
+One of the number mentioned the boat's failure during the night to make
+the miles expected of her, but the four agreed that the cause was not
+any lack of speed power but an overplus of landings below Vicksburg--two
+being for burials--and a long delay at Vicksburg itself, providing for
+the sick.
+
+This explanation, the second clerk said, had been as gratifying to the
+planter of Milliken's Bend and his "lady" as their not having to be
+called up before day. They had taken breakfast in the general company,
+which, with the commodore at one end of the cabin and Hugh at the other,
+had sat down when Old River and the mouth of the Yazoo were on the
+starboard bow, and had risen while passing My Wife's Island. Finally
+they had gone ashore in great elation, thanking Hugh with high voices
+and fervent hand-shakings, and his father with wavings from the bank to
+the roof, for the "most delightful trip anybody ever made"; careless as
+infants of the hundreds of strangers gazing on them, both native and
+alien, both woe-stricken and self-content, and, even when the great
+wheels were backing the boat away, calling fond messages to Hugh for the
+still invisible "Miss Ramsey" as if she were in his exclusive keeping
+and all those strangers were trees.
+
+So recounted the second clerk, not to criticise such innocent disdain of
+the public eye and ear--to him an every-day sight--but with a feeling
+for the picturesque and in mild humor making the point that such
+messages, so given, were hardly calculated to make life easier for Hugh.
+The mud clerk and the cub pilot grunted their accord yet privately
+envied Hugh. To be message bearer to that young lady would have been
+rapture to either of them under whatever hardness or peril of life, the
+more the better. Oddly enough, with Milliken's Bend now forty miles
+astern the messages had not been delivered.
+
+"No fault of his," said the first clerk, the second said no, and the mud
+clerk and the cub loyally echoed them. For they knew, at least the three
+clerks knew, always knew, not by flat inquiry but by trained perceptions
+and the alligator's eye, whatever was going on in each and every part of
+the boat. Indeed, the boat's news naturally flowed to them; flowed to
+and ran forth again from them, aerated and cleansed, as normally as
+blood to and from the breast of a strong man. By the sound of the steam
+they knew the water was right in the boilers. By the rhythm of the
+machinery they knew all was right in the engine room. They could have
+said, nearly enough, how soon the boat would have to stop again for
+wood. To them the quiet of the populous boiler deck, where nearly every
+man sat reading some stale newspaper of Louisville, Saint Louis, or
+Cincinnati--brought aboard from the Vicksburg wharf-boat--was
+informational, witnessing a general resigned admission that there was
+already "trouble enough." Of three notables not there they knew that
+one, the bishop, was in his berth, very weary, and that the senator and
+the general had been for some time with Hayle's twins. They could have
+greeted every cabin passenger by name. They knew who were filling the
+places lately vacated at the ladies' table, whose was each ubiquitous
+child selling tickets for the appointed "show," and whose each private
+servant, however rarely seen: not such as old Joy merely, but the
+senator's black Cato, the general's yellow Tom, Mrs. Gilmore's
+theatrically handsome Harriet, or the nearly as white Dora of the young
+lady from Napoleon. And they knew well that the non-delivery of those
+messages was no fault of Hugh's.
+
+Miss Ramsey was up, yes; but she had breakfasted in seclusion and was
+then in a small under-cabin for ladies' maids, close beneath the main
+one, rehearsing with Mrs. Gilmore and others. Gilmore had been coaching
+them but was now momentarily out on the boiler deck. Through the
+extensive glass of the cabin's front they could see him standing before
+a knot of men: John the Baptist and the man with the eagle eye and the
+man with the eye of a stallion and the man who knew so slap-bang that
+the Hayles and Courteneys had all but locked horns when the _Quakeress_
+burned. They were the only exponents of unrest out there and only the
+actor wore an air both spirited and kind. No one in the office openly
+kept an eye on the outer group. In there the gossip lingered on Hugh.
+Hugh had plenty, it was agreed, of the Courteney stuff and something
+besides which these four hoped was the very thing with which to meet
+this new phase so plainly at hand in the Hayle-Courteney contest.
+
+Suddenly the first clerk looked straight out on Gilmore, so obviously at
+bay, and murmured to the cub pilot: "Go, bring him." While the cub went,
+the clerk spoke on. Hugh, he said, would one day be the best-liked of
+his name.
+
+In kindly dissent the second clerk shook his head, but the first would
+have it so. The liking might be slow coming, he allowed, because of
+Hugh's oddities, but in the end men would like even the oddities.
+
+The mud clerk named one as if he liked it: "When he's by himself he's
+got the iron-est phiz----"
+
+The second clerk laughed his appreciation. "And when he's poked up," he
+said, "it gets ironer and ironer."
+
+"It'll need to mighty soon," observed the first clerk.
+
+"When he runs into Gid Hayle," said the second.
+
+The actor came. His pleased manner was more thankful than inquiring and
+he insisted on remaining outside the window shelf with the cub.
+
+"Mr. Gilmore," said the first clerk gravely, "we thought you might
+condescend to inspect our ceiling decorations through fresh foliage."
+
+The player looked puzzled an instant but a smell of mint from the bar
+cleared his mental vision. Yet again he declined. Later in the day he
+shouldn't be so coy, he admitted, but one oughtn't to take too long a
+running start for his jump into bed.
+
+"No, he _might_ get there too soon," said the clerk. "My boys, sir, want
+to ask you a riddle. You know Gid Hayle. How can his daughter, here, be
+just like him for all the world and yet those twins be just like him for
+all the same identical world, too?"
+
+"Well put!" was the prompt rejoinder. "My wife and I have been toying
+with that riddle these twenty-four hours. Those brothers are Gideon
+Hayle's sons if ever a man had sons; that daughter is his from the
+ground up; yet the two and the one are as unlike as night and noon."
+
+The clerks and cub pilot agreed so approvingly that the actor, lover of
+lines, was inspired to go on at more length. He remarked, in effect,
+that he had never seen so striking an instance of a parent's natural
+traits growing into--blemishes--in one inheritor and into graces in
+another. Yet to know Gideon Hayle was to read the riddle. As quick to
+anger as his sons, as full of mirth as his daughter; open-hearted,
+wrong-headed, generous, tyrannous, valorous, contemptuous of all book
+wisdom yet an incessant, keen inquirer with a fantastical explanation of
+his own for everything in nature, science, politics, or religion.
+Implacable in his prejudices, he----
+
+"Yes," interrupted the first clerk, with amazing irrelevancy, "but a man
+of Henry Clay's experience ought to have known better. Kossuth is a
+gentleman who--well, general, how are you now? Mr. Gilmore, you know the
+general? Senator, you know Mr. Gilmore?"
+
+"Assuredly!" The condescending senator had known Mr. Gilmore, "a day by
+contact but long by fame."
+
+The general was civil but not suave. He remembered the player's hard
+names for the committee's dead scheme. "Taking care of Henry Clay, too,
+sir?" he asked him. "With so many pleasanter cares"--that meant
+Ramsey--"you might let Henry Clay take care of himself."
+
+"That's something," put in the second clerk, flushing defensively, while
+the senator, with cigar cocked one way and his silk hat another, drew
+Gilmore aside, "that's something Henry Clay never does."
+
+"Right, young man. He merely tries. Th-there's no one in the nation has
+t-tried harder or f-failed worse!"
+
+The youth turned to his work at the high desk. "Sir," said the general
+to the first clerk, who rose, "the senator and I have been up to your
+texas----"
+
+"Contrary to orders," mildly said the first clerk.
+
+"I admit it, sir, but our intentions were only th-the k-kindest. It
+seems to us, sir, or to me--us or me, sir, as you will--that th-those
+sons of our old friend Hayle are not getting justice."
+
+"They ought to be mighty glad of that, general."
+
+"S-s-sir, they'd rather have it! We admit, of course,--we or I--I, if
+you prefer, sir, or if the senator prefers--I admit they are not
+unbiassed."
+
+"No, I admit they're not."
+
+"Th-they are supe-perbly stiff-necked and illogical young barons from
+four centuries back, sir, without a f-f-fault that isn't a v-v-virtue
+overdrawn--or out of date."
+
+The speaker turned to the actor and senator and they to him: "If those
+boys have the pride of L-l-lucifer, Mr. Gilmore, they have also his
+intrep-idity. Th-they may be as high-headed as giraffes, sir, but
+they're as s-s-straightf-f-forward as a charging bull! Mr. clerk, the
+splendid surge of their imp-pulses should excuse their f-f-foibles even
+if their s-s-souls were _not_ wr-wri-writhing under the lash of a new
+whip on old sores, sir."
+
+"Will you just make that a little clearer, general?"
+
+"I will," softly put in the senator--"by your leave, general?"
+
+With limp majesty the general waved permission.
+
+"All for peace, however," said the senator smilingly to the clerk.
+"There's been enough strife."
+
+"Never saw so much aboard boat," said the clerk.
+
+"Well,"--statesman and clerk laid elbows on the shelf and dropped their
+voices while the actor and the general drew a step aside,--"this thing can
+be settled only by the right friends and it's now or never." The two
+exchanged a look but the clerk was mute and the senator spoke on: "You've
+heard of Dan Hayle--and the girl Phyllis, hmm?"
+
+"I was first clerk on the _Quakeress_ when she burned."
+
+"Why, so you _was_. These twins believe, bitterly, that in that
+mysterious disaster all due search for their uncle was neglected to save
+the captain's son and that the girl and Dan Hayle were never fully
+accounted for."
+
+"Shucks! Why--Dan--it was I found Dan's body."
+
+"Yes, but they call it an outrage for him to have been there at all; to
+give him the wheel and take her aboard on the same trip."
+
+"_Law'_! what did she count, with him about to marry?"
+
+"Why, they think that for that very reason John Courteney let his
+wife--from Philadelphia, you know--abolitionist--bring the girl and Dan
+together, hoping he'd either set her free or else skip the wedding and
+somehow disgrace the whole Hayle family. Just those boys' guess
+but--they believe it. What they _see_ is a Hayle killed and no one
+killed for him."
+
+"Oh, we settled that with their dad ten years ago."
+
+"They say not. And, really, you know, some of the liveliest feuds along
+this river are founded on less cause. Gid Hayle, they claim, couldn't
+bring the Courteneys to law at the time because the only men he had to
+back him were his two in-laws. Now these twins are men and they feel
+honor-bound to throw down--no, to take up--the gage, thrown down to them
+every hour they've been on this boat."
+
+"Shoo! They've been treated only too well."
+
+"Tactfully, do you think?"
+
+"Depends on what you call tact. Ordinary tact's the worst thing you
+could throw at 'em." The clerk spoke with both eyes on the general and
+the actor. His fellow clerk, second clerk, had nudged him. The general
+was raising his voice to the actor.
+
+"They f-forbid your lady to chaperon their sister, since you both, last
+evening, all-llowed young Courteney to give her his account of the
+b-urning of the _Quakeress_."
+
+"General!" the smiling senator cautioned him, "privately, if you please!
+more privately!"
+
+But the soldier persisted. "Th-they even suspect you, sir, of
+s-s-piriting off to Canada their s-s-lave p-roperty, missing after that
+event."
+
+"Why, gentlemen," began the player, looking very professional but also
+very handsome, and with a flash of annoyance only when he noticed that
+the exhorter had joined the group, "I never in my--nonsense! fantastical
+nonsense! Why, I'll be--I'll see you later! At present, as I've already
+said, I'm overdue at that rehearsal."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Gilmore," said the first clerk, "you are."
+
+"A moment," interposed the senator. "Purely in the interest of peace,
+Mr. Gilmore----"
+
+"Oh, senator," the actor amiably laughed, "I don't question your
+good-will, or the general's; but you don't know, either of you, the
+interest of peace when you run against it--pardon! I take that back. My
+annoyance, at quite another thing, flew off the handle. I take it back.
+Excuse me, I'll make it a point to see you later." The three bowed. As
+he started away the exhorter blocked his path.
+
+"Excuse _me_," said the zealot. "Fust tell us: Ef ye _mowt_ sperit a
+niggeh off to Canady would ye aw wouldn't ye?"
+
+For an instant the player stood mute and then he said only, in a
+preoccupied tone: "Please let me pass." But at the same time he laid his
+unexpected left hand lightly on the questioner and by some stage trick
+sent him stumbling aside along a line of chairs and toppling to the
+floor. The cub and the younger clerks had him up in a twinkling, while a
+dozen men appeared from the boiler deck as if by magic, and the player
+walked away down the cabin.
+
+"Now, no more noise here," said the second clerk to the lifted man,
+restraining both his arms. "No, you stay right here. He didn't do a
+thing to you, you just stepped a little too spry and sort o' tripped
+up."
+
+From his window shelf the first clerk, in the tail of his eye, saw the
+zealot and his group disperse while he, the clerk, talked laughingly to
+the soldier on one subject and gravely to the statesman on another.
+
+"You can't challenge a man, general," he said, "who apologizes for
+calling you a poor peacemaker."
+
+"By--! s-sir, I can and I sh-shall!" was the retort.
+
+The clerk ignored it. He and the senator bent heads together again.
+"No," he said, "Hugh only told him he _feared_ it was Basile. In fact,
+it wasn't. It isn't."
+
+"Who is it, then? It's a passenger and a bad case."
+
+"Will you keep it dark--by the patient's own request--till the show's
+over to-night?"
+
+The senator nodded. The two heads came closer. The general scorned to
+listen. The name did not reach him.
+
+"Jove!" gasped the senator. "Come, general." They went.
+
+The first clerk turned to the second clerk's elbow at the high desk,
+saying dryly: "They came to demand those shooting-irons and couldn't
+muster the brass."
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+UNSETTLED WEATHER
+
+
+Again the _Votaress_ was passing the Westwood and again was but a short
+mile behind the _Antelope_.
+
+Led by Ramsey, the amateur players, including Hugh, had stopped
+rehearsing and were on the skylight roof, gathered about the commodore,
+the Gilmores, and the bell. In their company, though below them on the
+forward hurricane deck, the first mate leaned bulkily against the roof
+on which they stood. It was his watch. Ned was up at the wheel.
+
+As early as the evening before, a good hundred and fifty miles back down
+the river, the _Antelope_, it will be remembered, had been close on the
+_Westwood's_ heels. So Gilmore reminded his wife. So Hugh needlessly
+reminded Ramsey. From the mate it was further learned that the pursuer
+had overhauled the pursued between Petit Goufre--which he and the whole
+company called Petty Gulf--and Grand Gulf; places named before the days
+of steam for their dangerous eddies. Yet, he went on to tell Ramsey, the
+swifter boat, with more freight to put ashore and with a larger appetite
+for cord-wood, had never got clean away. Even now, in full view ahead,
+she was down at half speed, wooding up from a barge in tow alongside.
+You could hear her crew singing as they trotted under their great
+shoulder loads of wood. The amateurs, except Hugh but including Ramsey,
+caught up their song and were promptly joined by a group around the bell
+of the _Westwood_ as that gallant loser foamed along between the
+_Votaress_ and the shore:
+
+     "Oh, if I had a scolding wife,
+        As sure as you are born
+      I'd take her down to Noo Orleans
+        And trade her off for corn."
+
+Presently the _Antelope_ cast off the emptied flat in midstream, and a
+redoubled whiteness behind her paddle-boxes showed full speed.
+
+"Now we can give her a square deal!" said a youth.
+
+"And pass her inside of an hour!" declared another.
+
+"In Bunch's Cut-off!" ventured one to the commodore, but the commodore
+said the _Votaress_ herself was hungry for wood, and the mate confirmed
+him by a nod.
+
+"How much wood," some one asked the mate, "will a boat like this use up
+in twenty-four hours?" It quickened the blood to be up here midway
+between these turbid waters and yonder passionate sky so joyous in one
+quarter, so angry in another; particularly to be here while steadily
+distancing one beautiful boat and overtaking another "amid green
+islands," as Mrs. Gilmore quoted--one of which, still in sight astern,
+was that old haunt of flatboat robbers, called Island Ninety-four,
+Stack's Island, or Crow's Nest. One half forgot the sad state of affairs
+below. Conversation glided as swiftly as a flock of swallows and in as
+many directions.
+
+"How much wood?" said the mate. "Well, that sort o' depends. I once part
+owned a boat that fo' one whole month didn't burn enough wood to dry the
+sheriff's shoes, but that 'uz 'cause he kep' her tied up to the bank."
+
+Ramsey did not hear this and cared nothing for the laugh it won. She had
+seen the doctor and the priest slip from the twins' room in the texas
+and go below aft. "How's mom-a?" she eagerly asked the commodore.
+
+"Very well."
+
+"How's Lucian?"
+
+Lucian was so much better, he told her, that both brothers had been
+returned to their cabin stateroom.
+
+"Then you've just put a new case into the texas!"
+
+The commodore smiled. "Yes, from the freight deck."
+
+"Freight--humph! That's the lower deck," she reminiscently said, turning
+to Hugh. "Who is it? Is it--Otto?"
+
+But Hugh's face wore its absurd iron look, which had its usual effect on
+her. The old man spoke: "Will Miss Ramsey do us all a favor; one that
+will help the play?"
+
+"Whew, yes! That'll help everything. What is it?"
+
+"It's to make no mention of the new case to any one."
+
+"Till the close of the evening," put in the Gilmores, and Ramsey saw
+that they knew. Yet----
+
+"All right," she said. "Oh, I know who it is." She tossed her curls.
+"It's Otto's mother." But both tone and glance lacked conviction. The
+commodore left them.
+
+Meantime the mate was amusing his half of the
+company.
+
+"How much wood," he was repeating. "I as't that myself once 'pon a time.
+D'dy'ever hear the answer? They tell the yarn on lots o' loons but I 'uz
+the real one 'n' I got the answer f'm Gid Hayle aboard the old
+_Admiral_."
+
+The names caught Ramsey's ear and drew her gaze. "That _Admiral_,"
+continued the mate, "could eat wood like a harrikin. Says Hayle to me:
+'Well, that depends on yo' boat 'n' yo' wood. With the right boat 'n'
+the right wood--oak, ash, hickory--y'ought to burn f'm sixty to sevemty
+cord' a day. But ef yo' feed'n' this boat cottonwood, why, yo' simply
+shovellin' shavin's into hell.'"
+
+Ramsey looked sad. Weary of contrasts unflattering to her men-folks, she
+glanced from the refined actor to the elegant old commodore, blushed to
+the player's wife and accepted her embracing arm. "Yass," pursued the
+mate, "s'e jest so: 'Yo' simply shovellin' shavin's----'"
+
+It was not Hugh's motion that cut him short but Ramsey's voice as with a
+flash she said: "Go on. I don't care! If pop-a said it it's so!"
+
+A raindrop wet her cheek. From the pilot-house Ned, as he pulled the
+wheel over to chase the hardpressed _Antelope_ westward into Bunch's
+Cut-off, warningly drawled that they were about to run into a shower. At
+his side Watson's cub was letting down the storm board. A blue-black
+cloud overhanging the green head of the cut-off had suddenly widened
+across all that quarter and turned leaden gray. A writhing wind struck
+the boat fairly in front. The waters ruffled, flattened, and seemed to
+run faster. On an island close abeam thousands of young cottonwoods, a
+mantle of unbroken verdure, bent low, paled, reeled, darkened, and
+whipped. Dead ahead, a flash of lightning dropped from zenith to
+sky-line, stood blindingly quivering, and scarcely had vanished when the
+thunder cracked to split the ear.
+
+"Scoot, ladies," said the mate, "or in three shakes you'll be as wet as
+the river!" A single glance up the stream--though Ramsey must needs take
+a double one--showed the rain coming, so near and so dense that not a
+sign of the _Antelope_ was visible. The company fled, some to a larboard
+stair, some to a starboard. Hugh and Ramsey suddenly missed the
+Gilmores, the Gilmores missed them, each pair turned to find the other,
+the lashing rain leaped down upon them as if they were all it had come
+for, and with words lost in a second thunder-clap the mate threw open
+the captain's room, pressed them in, and began to dry them with a
+whisk-broom. The captain, he said, was below. "Off watch didn't mean off
+watch to John Courteney."
+
+"Nor to Gideon Hayle," prompted Ramsey, and while he ha-haed a cordial
+assent she asked: "Whereabouts below is he--Captain Courteney?" But the
+mate had turned away and she asked Hugh: "Where's your father? What's he
+doing?" Her thought was still on the unmentionable new case.
+
+"I'll tell you," said Hugh in the low voice she liked so well. "Will you
+look at the river with me?"
+
+He felt her responsive nod and smile even after they had moved to the
+front window farthest from their three seniors and stood gazing out into
+the beautiful tempest. Both wind and downpour had somewhat slackened
+their fury. A bit nearer than before and more to starboard they could
+faintly make out the _Antelope_, so white that it seemed as if she had
+gone down and her ghost come up wrapped and whipped in sheets of rain.
+
+"You don't ask me about your mother," said Hugh.
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+CAPTAIN'S ROOM
+
+
+"Ah!--when you've been all this time with us!"
+
+"No, once I was away, a good while."
+
+"That's so! And while you was away--were away--" In lively undertone
+Ramsey ran on to tell of Mrs. Gilmore's having in Hugh's absence called
+in her maid Harriet to show the young lady from Napoleon how to do a bit
+of stage business without a hint of the stage. At the tale's end the
+pair glanced round from the nearing _Antelope_ to the Gilmores and back
+again. "Harriet's talented. You wouldn't think she could be talented.
+And isn't she handsome!"
+
+"I've yet to see her face," said Hugh abstractedly.
+
+"That's so, too! When she heard you coming back that time, she ran like
+a kildee." The narrator checked a laugh. "How's mom-a? Oh, she's well or
+you'd have told me. I just can't imagine mom-a any way but well." But
+again the tone betrayed incertitude.
+
+"Yes, she's well," said the youth. "So is my father."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+Hugh's queer solemnity deepened. "He's down in a stateroom with your
+brothers. The senator and the general have just joined them."
+
+What a freshet of grave information! Ramsey laughed straight at him.
+"You talk like a trance medium."
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"You do! I heard one once. You're in a trance now."
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"You are! Y'always are." When Hugh laughed, her laugh redoubled. The
+mate and the players, though busy talking, took time to smile; the mate
+winked an eye. Suddenly Ramsey sobered. "Is Basile in hot water again?
+Tell me quick."
+
+"Tell me first," said Hugh, "why his two brothers----"
+
+"Are so wild? Because pop-a won't allow mom-a to hold them in. Pop-a
+says: 'Oh, let 'em sow their wild oats early, like me; so deep they'll
+never come up.' Oh, my! they're up now."
+
+"I wasn't going to ask that."
+
+"Well, I can't tell if you don't ask."
+
+"Why do they keep themselves so apart from you?"
+
+"Me? Oh, they just can't stand me!--nor even mom-a."
+
+"That's bad, for all of us."
+
+"All of--who? Oh!... Humph!... Oh, but it's worse for Basile! He goes
+with them till he's sick of 'em, then tries mom-a and me till he's just
+as sick of--of me--and himself--and then strays off to whoever he can
+pick up with!"
+
+"This time," said Hugh, "he's been picked up."
+
+"Oh, _now_ what's happened?"
+
+"He sickened of those boys and girls he was selling tickets with and to
+drown yesterday's recollections he took a hand at cards with two
+strangers."
+
+Ramsey caught her breath but then laughed joyously. "He couldn't! He had
+no money!"
+
+"Except from his sale of tickets."
+
+"Oh!" Her tears started. "Oh, where was mammy Joy?"
+
+"Nursing the sick."
+
+"The new--?" She barely escaped breaking her word. "Oh," she moaned, "he
+didn't use _that_ money?"
+
+"He lost it. He was wild to play on and recover it, and his brothers
+were as eager to have him do it."
+
+"Why, _they_ couldn't help him. They tried, yesterday, to borrow from
+mom-a.... Wait." The last word came softly. The Gilmores and the mate
+drew near to see the _Antelope_ overtaken. There she loomed, out on the
+starboard bow, shrouded in the swirling rain. How unlike the earlier
+passing, down below Natchez! No touching of guards, no hail by sign or
+sound. "Like ladies under two umbrell's!" laughed Ramsey to the actor's
+wife.
+
+Now squarely abreast, stem and stem, wheel and wheel, the two crafts
+seemed to stand motionless with the tempest rushing aft between them.
+Then fathom after fathom the _Antelope_ fell behind, the mate and the
+Gilmores moved away, Ramsey softly bade Hugh "go on," and his first
+utterance drew her liveliest look.
+
+"There's another thing makes your brothers wild," he said, "which
+they're not to blame for."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Our starving plantation life," said Hugh, speaking low.
+
+"Why, they call it the only life for a gentleman!"
+
+"That's because they're so starved, so marooned."
+
+"It's so tasteless without high seasoning, Basile says," said Ramsey.
+She meditated. "Basile loves to eat."
+
+Said Hugh, "It's a life I don't want you to live," and for an age of
+seconds they looked into each other's eyes.
+
+Then Ramsey--not drooping a lash--"I love the river."
+
+"For keeps?"
+
+She nodded, and still they looked. At length said Hugh:
+
+"I tried hard to make friends with the twins, but----"
+
+"They wouldn't. I know. Mr. Watson told Mrs. Gilmore."
+
+"Yet a while ago, on the strength of it, they sent for me, to ask me to
+ask my father to indorse their note."
+
+Ramsey gasped: "You declined, of course?"
+
+"Yes, but I told those other two passengers if they cast another card
+with any of your brothers they'd go ashore, themselves, as quick as the
+boat could land."
+
+Ramsey turned and gazed out on the subsiding storm. "Why are the senator
+and the general down there?"
+
+"For quite another matter."
+
+"Weapons. I know. Mr. Watson told Mrs. Gilmore. I thought that was
+settled."
+
+"It is."
+
+"Then why is your father there?"
+
+"To get the twins away from the senator and the general, and their
+brother away from them and back to his----"
+
+"Sister!" softly laughed Ramsey. "Oh, not to mom-a! just to me! I'll
+go--" She started, but Hugh said:
+
+"To you, yes, when my father has put him in a way to cover his loss
+without telling your mother."
+
+Their eyes met again. Hers were bright and wet with accusal. "Is that
+_your_ proposition?"
+
+"Yes, and my father's too."
+
+She whipped round and gazed out again over the tawny waters. To gaze out
+beside her he came so near that they almost touched. The shores were
+once more a clear picture, greener than ever and unvexed by the wind.
+The rain was slight and fine. The boat was swinging northward toward a
+small blue rift in the gray. At the room's farther door the mate was
+leaving the Gilmores for the forecastle.
+
+Without a stir she asked: "Why don't _you_ bring Basile?"
+
+"I must stay with our friends here."
+
+The surprised girl glanced across at the players.
+
+Side by side they also were gazing out and speaking low. "I'd like to
+know why with them."
+
+"And I must tell you."
+
+She faintly tossed, gazing out again: "Why 'must'?"
+
+"Because to you I _can_--tell things."
+
+"Haven't you told your father yet--about--Phyllis? Humph!--had to
+practise on me first."
+
+"Yes. But there's a better reason--for everything I've ever told you."
+
+She slowly faced him, and he added: "I want your help."
+
+"For what? Not the Gilmores?"
+
+"Yes, for them too now. They're in real danger."
+
+"Fr'--from what? Not--not from--my brothers?"
+
+"The twins, yes, and the general, John the Baptist, and a dozen more.
+They've guessed it out that the Gilmores----"
+
+"Are--So have I! A, b, ab----"
+
+Hugh was mute. She glanced round at the players' backs and then again at
+him, asking with soft abruptness:
+
+"Where's the bishop? With mom-a yet?"
+
+Hugh kept silence. "No, you know he's not," she answered for him. In her
+steady eyes he could see, growing every moment, a new sense of the
+fearful plight of things and of her relation to them. Her young bosom
+rose and fell, and when her lips parted to speak again their corners
+twitched. "He--he's the new case! I will mention it! I've a good right.
+Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"Only that he didn't want you to know. He wanted you--us--all, without
+knowing, to go right on with the programme. We must. Even now you will,
+won't you?"
+
+She could only nod. Just then Mrs. Gilmore's maid, in a long burnoose,
+with umbrellas and wraps, rose into sight close below, on a stair from
+the passenger-guards, spread one of her umbrellas and looked eagerly
+about for her mistress. One glance went up to Ramsey, who beckoned
+through the glass, but the maid gave no sign of seeing her. The slight
+rain had momentarily freshened, and she was so muffled to the eyes in
+the light veil which was always on her head or shoulders in pretty
+Spanish fashion that when she started forward round the skylights for
+the other side of the roof Ramsey laughed to Hugh:
+
+"Why, I know it's Harriet by her veil, don't you?"
+
+"I know only the veil. I saw it come aboard."
+
+"The veil of mystery!" she playfully murmured, began to hum a tune and
+bit her lip on noticing that it was "Gideon's Band." "Don't you think I
+might omit that to-night?"
+
+"No, it's the best thing you do."
+
+"Humph!--mighty poor reason--Aha! I knew it was Harriet."
+
+The Gilmores were beckoning out their window. The actor opened the door
+on that side and the maid came warily in. Briefly and in hurried apology
+under her breath while dealing out her burdens she told of the
+impatience of those below to resume the rehearsal and of their having
+driven her to this errand the moment they could. Mrs. Gilmore handed
+Hugh a shawl for Ramsey and an umbrella for himself, her husband laid a
+mantle on her shoulders, and the maid reopened the door he had shut; but
+Hugh called from the one opposite that it was the better way and the
+players started for it. The younger pair gave them precedence, a breeze
+swept through, the maid reshut her door, Hugh, holding his, bade her
+follow her mistress, she sprang to obey and the "veil of mystery," which
+caught in the closed door, was stripped from her like a sail from a
+wreck.
+
+[Illustration: "Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now
+is right where you are standing--Phyllis"]
+
+Instantly she crouched and with the swiftness of a wild creature flashed
+round and snatched open the door by which she had entered; but a form
+pressed between her and the opening and when she threw up her face she
+was looking close into the astounded eyes of Hugh Courteney. Her frame
+recoiled but not her eyes; his own held them. Without turning he shut
+the door at his back as Ramsey closed the one opposite, and still
+holding the maid servant's gaze, he followed her slow retreat, and in
+that droll depth of voice which earlier had been Ramsey's keenest
+amusement said to the eyes so near his own:
+
+"Stop!... Stop! the safest place for you on this boat now is right where
+you are standing--Phyllis."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+BASILE USES A CANE
+
+
+There was a gorgeous sunset that day. Many were on the uppermost decks
+to see or show it, amid a lively social confusion dull to Hugh but
+delightful to Ramsey. In fact, Hugh had begun to want her and the
+hurricane-deck to himself.
+
+The actor and his wife were there. And there, indifferent to sunsets but
+as hungry as ever for company, was Basile. Dinner, at midday, had
+dissolved the group which the twins had for a time held together. The
+captain had squared Basile with the ticket treasurer and by some
+adroitness of Ramsey and Mrs. Gilmore the restless boy had been won from
+his brothers and given a hand at euchre with the actor, the senator, and
+a picturesque Kentuckian, late of California, "back East" by way of the
+Isthmus and about to return by the Plains.
+
+Another of this hurricane-roof assemblage was a young gentleman whom
+Ramsey told Basile it was not a bit nice to speak of as Watson's cub.
+And there were all the amateur players, eager for the evening's
+performance; and there, too, the senator, the general, John the Baptist,
+and others with whom Ramsey had not made better acquaintance only for
+lack of moments! One of these was the Californian. Think of it! A man
+whose shirt-pin was a gold nugget of his own digging, yet a man so
+modest as to play euchre with Basile, and who stood thus far utterly
+uncatechised save by John the Baptist. Oh, time, time! A history of this
+voyage must and should be written with large room given to these last
+ten hours: "Chronicles of a Busy Life," by "A Young Lady of Natchez."
+
+Captain Courteney stood near the bell. Watson was up at the wheel. His
+cub--whose attentions to Basile, like the Californian's, only Ramsey
+could not fathom--told her this was the second dog-watch. He was telling
+her everything he knew. She was asking him everything he knew not.
+Indeed, among all there was great giving and getting of information on
+matters alow and aloft. There was, too, frequent praise of the
+commodore, the doctor, the priest, the sisters of charity, Madame
+Hayle--all those heroic ones on the immigrant deck, where the pestilence
+was making awful headway. But there was so perfect a silence as to the
+bishop that it was manifest that every one knew about him but was too
+discreet to tell.
+
+Matters beyond the boat, too, far and near, were much discussed, though
+some actually saw the sunset they were all there to see. Nowhere within
+five hundred miles the compass round, the actor said, was there a town
+of ten thousand souls, if of five thousand. Nowhere within a hundred
+miles was there a town population of five hundred. Since the morning
+thundershower the _Votaress_ had come ninety miles, yet the great Yazoo
+Delta was still ahead, abeam, astern, on the river's Mississippi side.
+Some one told two or three, who told four or five, it was a hundred and
+seventy-five miles long by an average of sixty wide, and covered seven
+thousand square miles. From zenith to farthest east the clouds that
+overhung it were pink and ashes-of-roses in a sea of blue. The entire
+west was one splendor of crimson and saffron, scarlet and gold, with
+intervals of black and green. Even the turbid river between was an
+unbroken rosy glow. The vast wooded swamps over on that shore were in
+Arkansas. Louisiana had been left behind in that vivid moment when
+Ramsey and Hugh were making their discovery of "Harriet" and when Hugh,
+we may here add, was handing back her "veil of mystery."
+
+"When I saw you do that," Ramsey had later said to him, "I knew she was
+safe--and she knew she was!" The laughing girl's mind was brimful yet of
+the amazing incident, at every pause in her talk, which was now with
+this one, now with that, and often with the cub.
+
+It was interesting to note the masterful-careless air with which
+Watson's apprentice more than once endeavored to make it clear to Hugh,
+concerning this daughter of Gideon, that, whereas the mud clerk, at his
+desk below, was utterly love-bemired, his, the cub's, liking for her was
+solely for her countless questions, of which he said that "you never
+could tell where the next one would hit." No singed moth he! To prove it
+he offered Hugh a very blase query: "What do women ever do with all the
+answers we men give 'em, hey?"
+
+Hugh could not tell him. Yet to Hugh the riddle was at least as old as
+his acquaintance with Ramsey. He pondered it as he and Mrs. Gilmore
+conversed in undertone while gazing on the wonderful changes of the sky,
+and while Ramsey, near by, visibly studied the exhorter, whom she was
+cross-examining together with the actor on the lore of the river as they
+had known it in the days before steam. For she had actually got those
+two antipodes face to face again in a sort of truce-rampant like that of
+the lion and the unicorn on the _Votaress's_ very thick plates and
+massive coffee-cups. She was not like most girls, Hugh thought. While
+their interrogations were generally for the entertainment, not to say
+flattery, of their masculine informants, hers were the outreachings of
+an eager mind free from self-concern and athirst for knowledge to be
+stored, honey-like, for future use. Some women have butterfly minds,
+that merely drink the social garden's nectar. Others are more like bees.
+The busy bee Ramsey, Hugh felt assured, was by every instinct a honey
+gatherer.
+
+But who, at a single cast, ever netted the whole truth as to any one?
+Even while he so mused--at the same time doing his best to give Mrs.
+Gilmore his whole attention--Ramsey, with her back turned yet vividly
+aware of him, willing--preferring--that he should hear alone from that
+lady what she would later draw from him, and ardently mindful of his
+word that he "wanted her help," was not merely gathering facts regarding
+her beloved river but was also deep in diplomacy, endeavoring with all
+her youthful arts, such as they were, to help him.
+
+Her manoeuvres were fairly good. To her it seemed as though this
+spirit of strife so electrically pervading the _Votaress_ might yet be
+tranquilized through a war of wits exclusively and she was using her own
+with the tactical nimbleness of the feminine mind. She knew the twins
+were down on the boiler deck again, one faint, yet both pursuing, egged
+on by him of the stallion's eye and him of the eagle's, and all the more
+socially and dangerously active because, by strict orders to every one,
+cut off from the gaming-table and the bar. She could not do a hundred
+things at once--though she could do six or seven--and it was well to
+grapple this one task first. Thus she kept Hugh free to confer with the
+player's wife as to "Harriet."
+
+Her husband, the wife told Hugh, had drawn "Harriet" from the water just
+as Dan Hayle sank, and husband and wife had concealed her on their
+flatboat, unable to resist her wild appeal not to be given back into
+slavery.
+
+"We didn't dream she'd done anything wrong; she didn't tell us that for
+years. Players, Mr. Hugh, don't meddle much in politics and we'd never
+thought whether we were for slavery or against it until there was the
+whole awful question sprung on us in an instant."
+
+"So you took her----?"
+
+"For my maid, yes--on wages, of course--down to New Orleans--we were
+bound there--and kept her when we went North and ever since."
+
+"And she's always been----?"
+
+"Well-behaved, faithful, kind, and wise. That one terrible deed, which
+she says you know all about----"
+
+"I do."
+
+"It seemed to change the very foundations of her character, to convert
+her soul."
+
+"Yes," said Hugh, as if speaking from experience.
+
+"Yet she kept her high spirit. She would never put on a disguise. And
+really that was safest since she wasn't being looked for by any one.
+'I'm no advertised runaway,' she said. Still she's never been foolhardy.
+She'd never have come--we'd never have brought her--aboard this boat
+could we have foreseen the mishap to her captain which decided you and
+your father and grandfather to come on her."
+
+So ran the story hurriedly, but before it had got thus far Hugh's
+attention, in spite of him, was divided. It was wise, we have implied,
+for Ramsey to take the exhorter while he was in a manageable humor. He
+had come to the roof with an improved regard, got by his fall in the
+cabin, for the "'Piscopalian play-actoh," and with brute shrewdness was
+glad to make an outward show of good-will to Gilmore, and accepted with
+avidity every pretty advance of Gid Hayle's "bodacious brick-top gal."
+Hugh could hear him answering Ramsey's inquiries regarding various
+pieces of river seen or unseen during the day.
+
+"Spanish-moss Ben'? Why, they calls it that by reason 'at when we-all
+used to come down the riveh in flatboats, that's whah we al'ays fus' see
+the moss a-swingin' f'om the trees. Yass, sawt o' like scalps f'om
+wigwam poles. An' that ho'pe us to know whah'bouts we 'uz at. We knowed
+we 'uz at Spanish-moss Ben'. Didn' we, Mr. play-actoh?"
+
+The actor would have said yes, but the fountain of information flowed
+straight on: "Yass, same as at Islan' Ten--aw Twenty--aw any numbeh, we
+knowed by count we 'uz that many islan's f'om whah the Ohio comes in. Ef
+that wah the tenth islan' we'd seed then we knowed that 'uz Islan' Ten
+aw whaheveh it wah, whetheh it wah a' islan' yit aw b'en j'inded on to
+the main sho' sence it got its numbeh."
+
+They were rounding Cypress Bend and Ramsey had asked another question.
+"Was this where you first used to see cypress woods?"
+
+"Thundeh, no! This gits h-its name by reason 'at they steals mo'
+millions o' dollahs wuth o' cyp'ess timbeh f'om the gove'ment out'n this
+ben' than any otheh on the whole Fatheh o' Watehs, es the Injins say.
+You know that, Mr. play-actoh. Lawd! all the places ain't name' alike.
+'Way back down yondeh whah we met the _Troubado'_ this mawnin'----"
+
+"Oh!" moaned Ramsey, "another o' pop-a's boats!"
+
+"Yass, whilst you-all 'uz a-temptin' Provi-_dence_ a-practisin' of a
+play! Down yondeh by Islan' Ninety, Seary's Islan'--which it ain't be'n
+a raal islan' these fawty year'--you 'membeh, Mr. play-actoh, that ole
+san'-bah jess below it, full o' snags as my granny's mouth, which befo'
+the earthquake it used to be a reg-lah death-trap fo' flatboats? Well,
+_you_ know h-it didn' git its name by reason 'at anybody fo' the fust
+time see thah Gen'al Hull's Lef' Leg! No; an' likewise away up yondeh
+pas' the Tennessee line, at Islan' Thutty-eight, whah the current's so
+full o' biles an' swells an' snags an' sawyehs 'at they calls it the
+Devil's Elbow! Now, nobody ain't neveh sho' 'nough see' the devil's
+identical elbow--in this life. No, suh, you'd ought to know that ef
+anybody. Oh, no, Devil's Elbow, Presi-_dent's_ Islan', Paddy's Hen an'
+Chickens, Devil's Race-groun', Devil's Bake-ov'm, they jess sahcaystic
+names." He turned to Watson's cub, who with Basile had joined the trio,
+and was watching to get in a word. "You know that."
+
+The boy assented. "But did you see," he asked Ramsey, "the swarms of
+birds down around Island Eighty-eight?"
+
+"No!" interposed the exhorter, "she wah still atemptin' Provi-_dence_ in
+like manneh as afo'said!"
+
+Basile flashed resentment. "To put it politely," he retorted. But the
+actor and Ramsey laughed.
+
+"Oh, John the Babtis' wouldn't 'a' putt it no politer. I see' the birds.
+We 'uz a meetin' the _Southe'n Cross_----"
+
+"Anoth'--!" Ramsey began to wail.
+
+"Anotheh o' Gid Hayle's boats, yass, an' mighty nigh his bes'. Round'n'
+the foot o' the islan' our whistle bellered howdy to her an' we riz one
+solid squah mile o' wings; an' when she bellered back, a-round'n' its
+head, she riz anotheh. Yit them birds wa'n't a pinch naw a patchin' to
+what I hev see' thah; millions an' millions an' millions _uv_ millions
+o' swan, pelikin, san'-hill crane, geese----"
+
+"Birds of paradise?" asked Brick-top.
+
+"They 'uz all birds o' paradise! the whole kit an' bilin'! by reason 'at
+this _wah_ a paradise them days, this-yeh whole 'Azoo Delta, which you,
+suh"--the speaker turned to Gilmore with reviving spleen. By opposite
+stairs, larboard and starboard, the twins, each carrying a sword-cane,
+as Hugh saw by the double gold band around it a finger-length from the
+top, had just reached the roof, and the emboldened orator began to make
+it plain that despite his "bodacious" criticism of their sister,
+overheard by Julian, he had at least half righted himself with both
+brothers and was on their side in whatever was now afoot.
+
+"Which you, suh," he repeated, "hev tuck on yoseff to drap hints 'at it
+ain't a civilize' country!--by reason 'at it ain't cityfied! Like Paris,
+I s'pose, my Gawd!--with thah high-heel' shoes an' low-neck' dresses!"
+
+His voice rose as the twins, Mrs. Gilmore, and Hugh came close. "Aw
+Babylon with thah jeweldry!--rings on thah fingehs an' bells on thah
+toes! Aw Sodom an' Gomorrah!--with thah staht-neckid statutes! Well,
+thaynk the Lawd, yo're plumb right, we ain't! Thaynk Gawd we _air_ a
+'new-bawn civilization'--as says you when you didn' suspicion I wah
+a-listenin'"--he fell into a mincing mimicry--"'a new-bawn civilization
+with all the chahm an' all the pity o' new-bawn things,' says you to yo'
+wife--ef she air yo' wife."
+
+The shock of the insult ran through the group and out to a dozen hearers
+beyond; to the captain and a knot of young people courting his
+conversation; to Watson, high above; to the stallion-eyed man and the
+eagle-eyed, who both had come up with the twins and were adhering to the
+senator, the general, and the Kentuckian from California.
+
+Gilmore paled with anger. Ramsey's merriment, which had begun at the
+beginning, ceased for a breath and then, to the loathing of the twins,
+came on worse as she found herself very erect in one of Mrs. Gilmore's
+gentle arms. The eyes of both the wife and the girl were on the actor
+and their every nerve was unstrung. Beseechingly he waved them away.
+
+"Come," the wife said, though without moving, "come on."
+
+"Oh, not a step!" laughed Ramsey. "They--they need us! We must help!"
+She had turned her frank gaze to Hugh in mingled wonder, exultancy, and
+distress. It seemed a dream that he should be the dull boy of yesterday.
+He was speaking to the exhorter and appeared not to have her in sight or
+mind, although, in fact, her untimely levity ran him through like a
+dart. His absurdly deep voice was rich with a note not of mere
+forbearance but of veritable comradery, yet his eyes, as they held the
+offender's, were as big and dangerous as she had ever seen her mighty
+father's and she laughed on for what laughter might be worth, the only
+help she could furnish.
+
+"Not that you mean the slightest offence," he prompted.
+
+The exhorter stiffened up. The nearer few packed close. Slender Basile
+was just at Hugh's left between him and the twins. The exhorter opened
+his mouth to reply but the words hung in his throat. To help them out he
+gave his head a disputative tilt, but Basile's hysterical treble broke
+in:
+
+"Say no! You slang-whanging lick-skillet, say no!"
+
+The man gasped. The boy whirled to his convalescent brother. "Give me
+that cane!" He snatched it, whipped out its keen stiletto, and with all
+his light force smote the empty staff, left-handed, across the
+exhorter's cheek and ear, yelping: "Say no! Say it!"
+
+"No!" said the victim, but the word was equivocal and the boy beside
+himself. For Hugh had wrenched the staff from him and was holding the
+hand that gripped the stiletto, while the lad, with streaming tears,
+plunged, whined and gnashed at the backwoodsman.
+
+"Let me go!" he begged. "I see their game! Let me kill their insulter of
+ladies!"
+
+The game was not hard to see. At a better moment than this blunderer had
+chosen, some one was to provoke the actor to an assault which the twins
+would make their pretext for a combined attack on that political
+"suspect" and common pest, using the canes as canes until Hugh should be
+drawn into the fray, when the canes would become swords, dirks, the
+actor a secondary consideration, and the game--interesting. Hugh saw it
+but saw it with even less sense of peril than Ramsey, who stood her
+ground nervously cling-ing to her chaperon, yet flashing and tinkling
+with a mirth as of some reckless sport; a mirth mildly reflected by her
+companion and which, for Hugh, suddenly shed a ludicrous light on every
+one: on himself and Basile; on the pallid Lucian as he peevishly,
+vainly, ordered Ramsey off the scene; on Julian as he posed in a
+tragical disdain more theatrical than the actor's--who also saw the
+game; on the captain's dumfounded young folk; on the senator, the
+general, and the Californian, standing agaze, and on the two men with
+them, whose extra--eagle-eyed, stallion-eyed--solicitude told him they
+were the lenders of the canes. All at once, still holding the anguished
+Basile, he saw, and observed that the actor saw, the heaped-up nonsense
+of the affair. Ramsey's mood leaped to both of them like a flame, and
+they laughed together while Hugh exhorted the exhorter: "Go below! For
+your life, go!"
+
+The man cast a pleading look on the twins, but when Lucian granted him
+only a withering smile, and Julian with his cane in his folded arms said
+majestically, "Go, you hopeless ass," he went--with haste.
+
+Out of the group by the bell John Courteney, apparently as unmoved as if
+all this were but common routine, answered Watson's silent look with his
+own while the pilot, taking his ear from a speaking-tube, grasped the
+bell-rope.
+
+"Wood?" asked the captain.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+THE CANE AGAIN
+
+
+"Partly, sir."
+
+All marked the qualifying word though at the same time all witnessed the
+cross-fire of challenge and retort that flashed between the three
+brothers. Basile had dropped his weapon and ceased to struggle, yet
+still showed a mental torture, the same he had betrayed at the previous
+afternoon's worship, and in all hearts, even those of the senator's
+group, it brought back for him the same tender indulgence as before.
+Meanwhile Ramsey and the cub pilot had caught up the cane's two parts
+and laid them in the hands of the actor, who quietly resheathed them
+while Basile mocked the twins. "So that's the way Hayles," jeered the
+lad, "stand by a cat's-paw friend, is it?"
+
+"Hayles," said Julian, "never settle difficulties before ladies."
+
+The boy resisted again as his laughing sister half knelt to lay her arms
+about him soothingly. "Oh, these ladies won't mind," he tearfully
+sneered. "Come on! Here's your man, with the steel, and three behind
+each of you to see fair play!" A wave of the hand indicated Lucian and
+the canes' owners on one side, and himself, the cub pilot, and Hugh on
+the other. The latter and the players, momentarily together, gave sudden
+attention, but again the humor of the situation saved it. The laugh was
+general; the young people about the captain, whom his equanimity and
+Ramsey's and Mrs. Gilmore's stay had emboldened to linger, drew near;
+and the three groups became one.
+
+The twins themselves might have made fair actors, though no one ever had
+dared suggest it. Julian scowled on Gilmore and Hugh and half drew the
+other cane from his folded arms, but then looked distantly away, while
+Lucian with an indolent air said to the younger brother:
+
+"Babe! Hayles never line up on two sides."
+
+To retort, the lad had to snatch Ramsey's fingers from his lips and so
+lost his chance, while under her breath she futilely implored him to
+desist.
+
+"I'm not!" he wailed back at her. "I'm not ridiculous! You! you'll find
+judgment-day ridiculous, I don't doubt--oh, good Lordy! stop your
+eternal titter."
+
+The great bell thundered and he recoiled. "There! wood! 'wood, partly.'
+And partly what else? d'you know? Another funeral." In spite of her fond
+restraints he cried out to the company: "With more to follow! The
+bishop----"
+
+But the sister's fingers were on his lips once more and while she half
+whispered, half laughed her tender chidings old Joy appeared, coming
+from the bishop's bedside. Ramsey turned a beseeching look to Hugh but
+the general had halted the nurse with a private question and now
+proclaimed:
+
+"Th-the bishop's doing as well's could be exxxpected."
+
+"Expected!" cried Basile, "yes, when he's expected to die. And then
+it'll be my turn."
+
+"It won't!" exclaimed Ramsey. "It sha'n't!" The boat was rounding to at
+a wood-yard and most of the company were glad to turn away to the
+shoreward scene. The boy dropped his head on the black woman's shoulder.
+
+"Oh, mammy, if I was the bishop, or you, or even Ramsey, I wouldn't
+mind, for I could be ready to go. Oh, God! why can't I get religion?"
+
+"Why, 'caze you done got it, sugah boy. You done got religion 'istiddy."
+Only the twins smiled. The captain stepped down to the roof's forward
+edge as the boat neared shore.
+
+"And you're not going to get anything else," said Ramsey, snatching the
+lad's hands and finding them cold.
+
+He moaned in unbelief: "What do you know about it? Oh, sis', if I could
+only die doing some fine thing!--in a fight!--or an explosion!--anything
+but a deathbed!"
+
+"Law'! honey," interposed old Joy, "what you want to do fine things faw?
+You's done got religion. You on'y ain't got peace. Come to de bishop.
+Gawd won't let a religious enquireh kitch noth'n'. I 'uz tellin' de
+bishop 'bout missy an' you, bofe gitt'n' religion 'istiddy, an' he say,
+s'e: 'Go, fetch yo' young missy; fetch bofe.'"
+
+"We'll go!" said Ramsey before the willing boy could reply, though from
+every side came protests.
+
+For once Hugh and the twins were in accord. "You must not!" called Hugh.
+"You shall not!" said Julian.
+
+She glanced from one to the other, tinkling her prettiest, and suddenly
+flushed. "We will!"
+
+The twins sent Hugh a hot look which he paid back with a cold one, while
+Mrs. Gilmore said:
+
+"I'll have to go with you, Ramsey."
+
+For one breath the girl was taken aback, but then:
+
+"Yes," she said, "to the door, that's all."
+
+As they turned after Basile and Joy she added: "'Twas I, you know, that
+got the bishop sick in the first place."
+
+At the corner of the texas they glanced back but were reassured to see
+the cub-pilot disappearing on the nearest boiler-deck stair at the
+outer, depopulated side of the boat, the actor and Hugh moving toward
+it, and the twins holding the field and scowling after their opponents.
+Nevertheless, the moment the sister and wife passed from view Julian
+sturdily, Lucian feebly, pressed after Hugh and the player. The last
+witness was gone; now was their time.
+
+"Mr. Courteney," said Julian. The other two looked back and paused.
+
+Lucian spoke: "Mr. Gilmore, you have my cane, sir."
+
+The player smiled. "Is this really your cane?"
+
+With a ripping oath Julian put in: "What's that to you, you damned
+Gypsy? Give him the stick!"
+
+The player let go a stage laugh. Hugh took a step forward with a grave
+show of self-command hardly justified. "Mr. Hayle," he said, "you don't
+want to be another 'hopeless ass,' do you?"
+
+"Gawd!" Julian rose to his toes and lifted and brought down his cane.
+But it never reached its mark. One stride of the actor, one outflash of
+arm and staff, foiled the blow, and when a second was turned on him the
+cane flew from Julian's hand he knew not how and dropped ten feet away.
+
+He dared not leap after it but faced the skilled fencer, blazing
+defiance though fully expectant of the unsheathed dirk. But no dirk was
+unsheathed. Lucian, forgetting his feebleness, sprang for the cane and
+had dropped to one knee to snatch it up when Hugh set foot on it.
+
+"No!" said Hugh. The convalescent straightened up, his brow dark with an
+anguish of chagrin, and before he could find speech Hugh was adding:
+"Wait. I'll give it to you."
+
+"Don't!" cried Gilmore. "Keep it!"
+
+"No," wearily said Hugh, glaring on the glaring twins, "we're all
+belittled enough now." He caught up the cane, drew its dagger, snapped
+it in half on the deck, and resheathed the stump. Then tossing the point
+into the river he said: "Here, Mr. Gilmore, swap."
+
+With an actor's relish for a scene the actor swapped, and the
+convalescent wept with rage as Hugh, having treated the second cane like
+the first, tendered it to him.
+
+"Don't take it!" cried his brother; "don't touch it!" And then to
+Gilmore: "Don't you hand me that one, either! Don't you dare!"
+
+Yet thereupon the actor dared, saying: "But for--others--I'd trounce you
+with it like a schoolmaster."
+
+The words were half drowned by Lucian, who snatched from Hugh the cane
+he tendered, answering the less crafty Julian, "Take it, you fool! take
+any odds they'll give!" and, while Julian complied, adding to Hugh: "Oh,
+you'll pay for this--along with the rest of it!"
+
+"You'll pay for this first!" put in Julian, "and with your lives--the
+pair of you!"
+
+Hugh and Gilmore merely turned again toward the stair, but a voice
+stopped them though addressed only to the twins.
+
+"Did you say pair?" it inquired.
+
+The boat was at the bank; her great wheels were still. The sun's last
+ray tipped the oak-leaf caps of her soaring chimneys. Once more from the
+cook-house rose the incense of coffee, hot rolls, and beefsteak, and
+from her myriad lamps soft yellow gleams fell upon the wind-rippled
+water and, out of view on the other side, into the tops of the dense
+willows. Over there the senator, the general, and the company that had
+gone with them looked down upon two movements at once. The funeral they
+could not help but see; the other was the wooding-up. The mud clerk had
+measured the corded pile, and the entire crew, falling upon it like
+ants, were scurrying back and forth, outward empty-handed, inward
+shoulder-laden, while those who stood heaping the loads on them sang as
+they heaped:
+
+     "Do you belong to de Vot'ess' ban'?"
+
+"You don't mean just the pair, do you?" repeated Watson. He looked down
+loungingly from a side window of the pilot-house. "There's anyhow five
+on our side," he added. "I'm in that tea party."
+
+Julian had caught breath to retort, when from a new direction a beckon
+checked him and at the nearest corner of the texas he beheld again
+Ramsey. Mrs. Gilmore was not with her, but at her back were the nurse
+and Basile. The boy wore such an air of terror that the player instantly
+pressed toward him.
+
+Ramsey's beckon, however, was to Hugh. Her bright smile did not hide her
+mental pain, which drew him to her swiftly despite the twins' deepening
+frown. The two brothers heard the question she asked him when he was but
+half-way; perhaps she meant they should. "Can you call through Mr.
+Watson's speaking-tube to mom-a--and the commodore?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Tell them"--tears suddenly belied her brightness--"to come up to the
+bishop, quick. I'm 'fraid--afraid----"
+
+A word or two more Hugh failed to hear, but even the twins, at their
+distance, read them on her lips:
+
+"The bishop's going to die."
+
+She sprang to Gilmore. His arm was about Basile; he was trying his
+pulse. The twins would have followed but in between came
+senator--general--all that company, moved by physical foreknowledge of
+an invitation whose drawing power outweighed whatever else land, water,
+sky, or man could offer. Suddenly it pealed in their midst:
+
+     "Ringading tingalingaty, ringadang ding----"
+
+The captain stayed by his chair. "Cast off," he said to the mate
+beneath, and to Watson above: "Back your starboard."
+
+A jingle sounded below. The steam roared from one scape and widened
+aloft like a magic white tree--twice--thrice. "Stop her." It ceased. She
+swung. "Go ahead on both." Two white trees shot up together and
+trembling she went. Down in the quivering cabin, round the shining
+board, every one's spirit rose with the rising speed.
+
+"Senator, 'twas I sent you them hot rolls, suh."
+
+"Why, thank you! But--don't disfurnish yourself."
+
+"General, them fried bananas----"
+
+"Th-th-thank you, sir, I have a suff-fficient plenty."
+
+Only the seats of the Courteneys, the Gilmores, Ramsey, and Basile stood
+vacant.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+FORTITUDE
+
+
+"Courage," the slender play was called. It is to be regretted that we
+cannot fully set it forth, for Gilmore was himself its author.
+
+Also because, whatever it lacked, there was in it a lucky fitness for
+this occasion, since, conditions being what they were on the decks above
+and below, the one strong apology for giving it was the need of
+upholding the courage of its audience.
+
+It was even a sort of kind rejoinder to the various ferments kept up by
+the truculent twins, the pusillanimous exhorter, and the terrified
+Basile. Its preachment might well have been less obvious, though lines,
+its author bade Hugh notice, never overbalanced action, never came till
+situation called them. It was to the effect, first, that courage is
+human character's prime essential, without which no rightness or
+goodness is stable or real; and, second, that as no virtue of character
+can be relied on where courage is poor, so neither can courage be
+trusted for right conduct when unmated to other virtues of character,
+the chiefest being fidelity--fidelity to truth and right, of course,
+since fidelity to evil is but a contradiction of terms. "From courage
+and fidelity," it was the part of one player at a telling moment to say,
+"springs the whole arch of character," and again, "These are the Adam
+and Eve of all the virtues." (Adam and Eve were decided to be quite
+mentionable. Mention was not impersonation.)
+
+Naturally the Gilmores knew every line of the play.
+
+"As perfectly," ventured the two young Napoleonites, "as John the
+Baptist knows the moral law, don't you?"
+
+"Better, I infer," said Gilmore abstractedly. They were in the ladies'
+cabin, awaiting its preparation as a stage, behind the curtains that
+screened it from the gentlemen's cabin, the auditorium. His wife smiled
+for him.
+
+"Even my Harriet," she said, "knows one or two parts. She's played Miss
+Ramsey's in emergencies."
+
+Her half-dozen feminine hearers flinched. Yet one said, excusingly:
+"That's a servant's part, anyhow."
+
+"And Harriet's her very size and shape," said another.
+
+And another, drolly: "They're enough alike to be kin!"
+
+"Harriet's free, isn't she?" asked the first.
+
+"Yes," replied Mrs. Gilmore, without a blush, looking squarely at Hugh,
+who stood among them silent.
+
+"You'd never notice she was a nigrah if you wa'n't told," said another,
+"or didn't see her with nigrahs."
+
+But then said a youth, cousin to one of the girls: "Yet after all a
+nigrah she is."
+
+"No such thing!" said his cousin. "After all that's what she isn't. Our
+own laws say she isn't."
+
+"Well, I say she is. One drop of nigrah blood makes a nigrah--for me,
+law or no law."
+
+"Well, that's monstrous--for me."
+
+"Yes, your politics being what they are."
+
+"My pol'--I'm as good a Southerner as you, any day!"
+
+"All right, but I shan't play if that born servant is allowed to take
+any but a servant's part."
+
+To Hugh a crisis seemed to impend, but he held off for the Gilmores, who
+seemed to be used to crises.
+
+They had not thought of Harriet, they said, for any part but Miss
+Ramsey's. Miss Ramsey might find herself too distracted by--other
+things. Or, even if not, the doctor, or the captain, might think
+Harriet's contact less contaminating than Miss Ramsey's.
+
+Their smile was not returned. Hugh gravely nodded but the rest shook
+their heads. Impossible! And suppose it were possible! they were not
+going to shun Miss Ramsey for refusing to shun "a sacred duty." By duty
+they meant the bishop, aware of his illness but not of his extremity,
+and none but Hugh and the Gilmores knowing that only two doors from the
+bishop lay Basile, also stricken, and that Ramsey and the old nurse were
+with the boy. The young people fell into pairs confessing their contempt
+for the besetting peril. Vigil is wearisome and they were almost as
+weary of blind precautions as, secretly, were Hugh and others. The two
+Napoleonites "didn't believe doctors knew a bit more than other
+folks--if as much!" The two cousins so unimpeachably Southern were
+"convinced that contagion never comes by contact," and two or three said
+"the cholera was in the air, that's where it was, and whoever was going
+to get it was going to get it!" They all agreed that "if Miss Ramsey,
+because of the extra strain she was under, had lost her nerve----"
+
+"She has not," put in Hugh with a very solemn voice and solid look. The
+girls nudged elbows. "But," he added, to Mrs. Gilmore, "for the better
+comfort and safety of both sick and well we must let her off."
+
+Must! Ahem! The amateurs lifted their brows. Of which was he sole owner,
+Miss Hayle or the boat? "Orders!" softly commented one tall youth.
+
+"Yes," said Hugh, facing him with a gaze so formidable, yet to the rest
+so comical, that the nudgings multiplied.
+
+"Miss Hayle's songs, however," Hugh began to add.
+
+"Yes, how about the songs?" asked some one. "They're no servant's part
+and they're out before the curtain."
+
+"She must sing them," replied Hugh. "They won't keep her long and they
+involve no contact."
+
+"Right!" exclaimed one. "Good!" said another, and yet another. "Without
+them we might as well give up the whole business." From the curtains
+through which he had been peering the actor glanced back. "Those
+footlights are capital," he said to his wife, and then, for the joy of
+all: "We've got a full house!"
+
+The wife looked, turned quickly, and murmured to him: "Hayle's twins in
+the front row."
+
+"Yes," he said, absently again, "with war in their eyes.... Now, Mr.
+Hugh, if you'll send for Miss Hayle----"
+
+"Harriet's gone for her," replied his wife.
+
+"Here I am," spoke Ramsey at the door of a stateroom appropriated as a
+passageway. And assuredly there she was; but by the magic of dress,
+through the trained cunning of Mrs. Gilmore's mind and "Harriet's" hand,
+and even more by the imprint of her new weight of experience, she was
+Ramsey transformed, grown beautiful. An added year was in her face. A
+chastened tenderness both lighted and shaded it, half veiling yet half
+reasserting its innocent hardihood. The astonished amateurs hailed her
+with a clapping of hands, in which, it pleased her deeply to notice,
+Hugh Courteney, staring, took no share. Beyond the curtain the unseen
+audience answered with a pounding of heels and canes in good-natured
+impatience. Gilmore hurriedly waved away all the lads but Hugh, and Mrs.
+Gilmore all the girls but Ramsey. To her she glided while Hugh and her
+husband conferred on some last point.
+
+"Well, dear," she said, pressing her backward into the stateroom, "are
+you ready?"
+
+"No, dear Mrs. Gilmore, please, no, I'm not."
+
+"Ah, yes, you are. You'll go on from"--they passed out and entered the
+next room forward--"from here. And mark! when you find nothing between
+you and the people but the footlights, and their glare blinds you, don't
+stand close over them trying to see, or they'll make you look scared and
+pale, and you're not scared the least bit, are you?"
+
+"I don't know," laughed Ramsey, softly, through tears. "I never was,
+before; never had sense enough, mom-a says. But, oh, I know I'm ashamed.
+I'm that 'shamed that I wouldn't wonder if I'm scared too. Oh, dear Mrs.
+Gilmore, Basile's so sick! The doctors are doing all they can for him,
+and mom-a and mammy Joy are with him; but he's so tortured with pain,
+and with fright! And the bishop--he's pow'ful weak, as mammy Joy says.
+One of those sweet sisters--of charity--I got her up through the
+speaking-tube--oh, you know what I mean--and she's there now talking to
+him _so_ beautifully! And down on the lower deck, freight deck, Madame
+Marburg's sick too, and her son and the priest and the other sister are
+with her and with the other sick ones--there's a dozen of them!" The
+last words were to Gilmore as he and Hugh appeared at the outer door.
+
+The actor stepped inquiringly into the narrow room and began a warning
+whisper but Ramsey spoke on to wife and husband by turns: "And in the
+face of all that here we are--or here I am--about to do the silliest,
+most heartless thing in all my silly, heartless life. No, I'm not
+ready."
+
+"Tsh-sh!" whispered the husband, with both hands up. "My dear young
+lady, this isn't you; you've caught this mood of a moment from your
+brother."
+
+It was not his words, however, that startled Ramsey to silence; the
+audience was again stamping and pounding. Now she resumed: "Oh, I hear!
+Mrs. Gilmore, the trouble's not that home song nor the spring song nor
+the love-song; it's that silly thing you-all say I _must_ sing if I get
+an encore--which I can't believe I'll get!"
+
+"My dear, you'll get several. We've arranged that."
+
+"Arr'--! Why, I've only that one silly thing!"
+
+"The fate of the whole show is in that one silly thing."
+
+"Oh, it's not! It's in you two talented, professional, famous people!"
+
+"Ah, maybe it ought to be, but it's not. That's the way of the stage, my
+dear. Your silly thing has plenty of verses. Sing only two at a time."
+
+"A sort o' Hayle's twins," laughed the girl. Then despairingly she
+dropped to the edge of the berth. But Hugh had been pushing in past the
+players and as he reached her she sprang erect again.
+
+"This is entirely my doing," he said to her. "These two good friends
+mustn't urge you to sing. They're in danger, you know; greater danger
+than they'll believe."
+
+Gilmore broke in: "Now, Mr. Hugh, listen to me."
+
+But Ramsey put out a hand. "No, _you_ listen--to him," and Hugh went on:
+
+"Should it come to be known by--certain ones----"
+
+"Certain twos," said Ramsey, "go on."
+
+"It would double, or treble, that danger."
+
+"My dear boy--" began the actor again, but his wife restrained him, and
+Ramsey whispered at him in turn:
+
+"Tsh-sh!" Then she prompted Hugh: "And so----?"
+
+"So you must sing without any urging but mine."
+
+Her lips parted in droll repudiation, but he went on.
+
+"And you'll give the encore."
+
+"Oh, when did you learn to talk? I--w-i-l-l--n-o-t!"
+
+Once more the actor tried to break in, but his wife eagerly whispered:
+"Let them alone! Let--them--alone!"
+
+"Success hangs on it," persisted Hugh, "and success here means success
+all over the boat. It will mean their" (the Gilmores') "safety; while
+failure-- Think of it, Miss Ramsey.... Don't you see?"
+
+She stared an instant and then with a sign of distress and aversion
+gasped: "Go away! Go away!" and dropping to the berth cast her face into
+its pillow. With gentle speed Mrs. Gilmore pressed Hugh aside and took
+his place. The stamping and pounding, for a moment suspended, broke
+forth afresh. "Send him away!" cried Ramsey, her voice muffled by the
+pillow, one eye fitfully glancing from it, and one arm waving backward.
+"All advice rejected! Send him away! Send them both."
+
+With such dignity as they could save, the two outcasts fled, meeting and
+turning back half the stage company while the actor's wife shut the
+door.
+
+"Is she ill?" asked the gaping girls. "Is she ill?"
+
+"Not at all," "No," said the actor and Hugh, right and left, the one
+complacent, the other "ironer" than ever. "She is, eh--she, eh----"
+
+Every head was lifted to hearken. The cabin's applause ceased abruptly
+for a second or two, or three. Then again there was a stillness broken
+only by the speeding of the boat; and then, like a perfume from some
+wilderness garden, came the untrained notes of a song, a maiden's song
+of her lost German home, and leaning elatedly from the reopened door
+Mrs. Gilmore loudly whispered:
+
+"She's on!"
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+RAMSEY AT THE FOOTLIGHTS
+
+
+The actor stepped to his wife. "Will she do it all?" he inquired, and
+Hugh, who had started to join the audience by a short cross passage,
+lingered to hear.
+
+"Heaven knows," laughed the lady, shutting herself out, yet keeping the
+door; "I too am banished." Her glance drew Hugh nearer. "Miss Ramsey
+begs us, all three----"
+
+"For her to beg is to command," said Gilmore playfully.
+
+"Yes, and so I've promised for all three----"
+
+"Promised! What?"
+
+Mrs. Gilmore whispered: "To pray for her."
+
+The smiling actor and the unsmiling youth looked at each other. "Why,
+that's," said Gilmore, "entirely----"
+
+"Practicable," said Hugh. He moved on, and into the passage. Gilmore,
+following, stopped at its outer end. At the inner stood Hugh, waiting,
+in shadow and with downcast eyes, for the song to be done. What unvoiced
+supplication, if any, may have been behind the lips of either was not
+for the other to know. Yet it was an hour of formidable besetments and
+we may pardon the actor if an actor's self-consciousness moved him to
+reflect that there were thousands of healthy men, some as raw as Hugh,
+some as ripe as himself, who, for the sake of a promise, a wife or a
+maiden, or even without them, standing thus, had prayed.
+
+He tiptoed to the youth's side and together they leaned in enough to
+look down the dimmed cabin, over ranks of silhouetted heads, to the
+bright stage front and the singer. She was in the centre of its light
+and the last notes of her simple song called for so little effort that
+they only helped the eye to give itself wholly and instantly to the mere
+picture of her, slender, golden, magnified by this sudden outburst into
+blossom, and radiant with the tenderness of her words as a flower with
+morning dew. The next moment she was bowing and withdrawing, aglow with
+gratitude for an applause that came in volume as though for the finish
+of a chariot-race, and Hugh saw as plainly as the experienced actor, if
+not with as clear a recognition of Mrs. Gilmore's attiring skill, that
+the tribute was at least as much to the singer as to the song.
+
+The same perception came to Ramsey in the stateroom to which she had
+returned and in which she stood alone, hearkening and trembling. She
+noiselessly laughed for joy to be, however unworthily, the daughter of
+Gideon Hayle, never doubting it was for his name, his blood, his
+likeness, she stood thus approved. The conviction gave her better heart
+for the task yet before her. She glided to the rear door, locked it, and
+dropped to her knees.
+
+"Oh, Lord 'a' mercy!" she murmured. "Oh, Basile, my brother! And oh,
+mom-a, dear, brave mom-a!" She did not name her father, though his
+figure was central in her imagination, broad, overtowering, intrepid,
+imperious.
+
+The applause persisted. Now it sank but at once it rose again, easy
+overflow of a popular mind glad of all unrestraint and always ready--as
+even she discerned--for the joy of exaggeration. She sprang up and moved
+toward it, her eyes sparkling responsively. Yet her tremor was piteous
+and in mute thought she said again, at high speed:
+
+"My brother, oh, my brother! I'll be back in a minute. This ain't for my
+own silly self, you know, honey. It's for them that need it; for all the
+people, up stairs and down, and for--for the boat!--as any of
+her--owners--would do for any of our boats. You said you wished _you_
+could do some fine thing for somebody--in a fire--or explosion, and this
+is just as awful only not so sudden, and I'm doing this in your place,
+honey boy; yes, I am, this is just as if you did it yourself!"
+
+The applause was still summoning her as she ended. A hand, probably Mrs.
+Gilmore's, had tried the locked door. From the lower deck leaked up the
+sad "peck, peck" of the carpenter driving his nails, and close outside
+the door sounded sharp footsteps and the mingled voices of the pilot's
+cub and the actor calling with suppressed vehemence to one of the
+pantrymen: "Here, boy! Here! Go below like a shot and tell 'Chips' to
+stop that pounding this instant! He can saw if he must but he mustn't
+hammer!"
+
+Then as if carried there by some force not her own she found herself
+again in the bewildering sheen of the footlights, smiling merrily to the
+hushed, half-seen assemblage, and suddenly aware of every throb of the
+_Votaress's_ bosom, every fall of her winged feet, every tinkle of her
+cabin's candelabra, and, most vivid of all, horribly out of time with
+all, the still insistent "rap, tap, tap" of the carpenter's hammer.
+
+At the same time, unconfessedly, the eager audience took note of quite
+another group of facts, emphasized by the appearance of Hugh in a back
+row of seats, by the presence of Hayle's twins in the dusk of the front
+row, with war even in the back of their heads, and by the illuminated
+form of the singer just drawing a last breath of preparation to exhale
+it in melody. Hardly in the gathering was there one who had not by this
+time learned the whole state of affairs between all Hayles, all
+Courteneys, and all those others whom its schemings, aggressions,
+discomfitures, tirades, and prophetic threats had entangled with them.
+Every one thought he knew precisely both Hugh's and Ramsey's varied
+relations to each and all those persons, his and her effects upon them,
+and his and her ludicrously dissimilar ways of getting those effects.
+They knew this warfare was still on and was here before them now. In
+every phase of it in which Ramsey had taken part she had come off victor
+and in every instance had done so by the sheer power of what she, with
+fair accuracy, called nonsense. So now they were ready to see her, at
+any juncture the twins or accident might spring, show the same method
+and win an even more lustrous triumph in keeping with her own
+metamorphosis. Nay, they were more than ready to lend a hand toward such
+an outcome. Like Watson, they had sentimentally matched Hugh and Ramsey,
+prospectively, in their desire, and saw that such a union must sooner or
+later be, if it was not already, a paramount issue in the strife. In
+such expectancy sat the throng, keenly aware of the twins at their front
+and Hugh at their back, as Ramsey's indrawn breath began to return in
+song, its first notes as low as her voice could sink, its time slow, its
+verbal inflections those of the freight-deck negro:
+
+     "Do you belong toe Gideon's ban'?"
+
+So far it got before it was drowned in a deluge of laughter and
+applause. She had made, as Gilmore said to his wife behind the curtain,
+a "ten-strike." Her hearers did not pause an instant to determine
+whether the utterance was wit or humor or pure inanity. It fitted their
+mood; fitted it better than the actor or Hugh had believed it could. To
+the company's notion it was good nonsense offsetting and overpowering an
+otherwise invincible bad nonsense and snatching from it all right of
+argument, sympathy, or judicial appeal; laughing it out of court, to
+remain out at least until the completion of this voyage should give this
+jury, these hearers, an honorable discharge. The shrewd good sense of
+it, in their judgment, was the most fun of all, and while in her heart
+Ramsey was gratefully giving the credit of that to the actor and Hugh,
+the people naturally gave it to her and laughed and clapped and pounded
+again on second thought.
+
+Now abruptly they hushed and let her resume:
+
+     "Do you belong toe Gideon's ban'?
+      Here's my heart an' here's my han'.
+      Do you belong toe Gideon's ban'?
+        Fight'n faw yo' home!"
+
+Again the audience broke in.
+
+"Fighting for your home!" they laughed to one another as they clapped.
+Home was the catchword of the times. Jenny Lind was singing nightly:
+
+     "Midt bleasures undt balacess----"
+
+and three fourths of all the songs not of the opera were of home and its
+ties. What the word might exactly signify in this case made little
+matter; on her lips, from her breast, it meant human kindness, maiden
+innocence, young love; meant courage, fidelity, the right, the true, the
+beautiful, the good; meant anything, everything, which she herself,
+shining there above the footlights like a star in the sunset, their
+darling of the hour, could be fancied to stand for; meant, anyhow, the
+twins' war-song turned into a peace-and-joy song.
+
+"Tsh-sh-sh! let her go on!" And she went on: she, Noah's ark, and the
+_Votaress_, all three, together:
+
+     "Den come de buck-ram and de ewe----"
+
+"What? what's that?" They leaned and whispered right and left. "New
+words! new words!"
+
+     "Den come de buck-ram and de ewe----"
+
+"Why--she must 'a' made those words, herself!"
+
+Not she. She knew no better than to believe them the improvisations of
+the Gilmores.
+
+     "Den come de buck-ram and de ewe
+      De ole niroscenos and de gnu----"
+
+Pun! a pun! a real pun!
+
+     "Do you belong toe Gideon's ban'?"
+
+Yes, verily! They clapped, ha-haed, leaned around one another to see the
+dark upturned heads of the twins, and stole backward glances on the
+immovable features of the captain's son. At his side sat the Californian
+just then gravely murmuring to him, but he remaining as motionless as a
+Buddha. The refrain pressed on to its close, and the applause redoubled,
+but stopped as she prepared for another verse.
+
+     "Nex' come de mule and den de quail----"
+
+Laughter! Mule and quail! royal pair of the cotton field, rightly thrice
+heralded!
+
+     "Nex' come de mule and den de quail,
+      Nex' come de mule and den de quail,
+      Nex' come de mule and den de quail,
+      De monkey-wrench and de wiggletail."
+
+The senator clapped yea, the general thumped his cane. Half-a-dozen
+voices began to chime with her, "Here's my heart and----" till Julian
+looked round, when they stopped so short that the laugh swelled again
+and Julian resumed his seat. Only two or three saw Hugh and the
+Californian softly pass out together.
+
+"No, no, no!" cried several, but that was to Ramsey for trying to get
+away. "No, you don't! Another verse! sing anoth'-- Tsh-sh-sh!".... She
+sang:
+
+     "Den come de man-drake and de moose,
+      Den come de man-drake and de moose,
+      Den come de man-drake and de moose,
+      De hickory-pottamus and de goose.
+          Do you belong----?"
+
+Belong? How could they help but belong? Was ever anything such fun? Not
+itself, maybe, but she! And no more could Ramsey help belonging to them,
+though thoughts of the texas and of the immigrant deck--where the
+carpenter's saw played an interlude to her every verse--pierced her
+heart at each throb of her pulse and of the boat's pulse and at every
+glimpse of the scowling twins, dimly visible to her just beyond the
+footlights. Silence fell once more as she moved a step forward with a
+light in her eyes, a life in her poise, that made her a pure joy, albeit
+an instinct warned her that her tide was at the flood and she must make
+her exit on this wave. So with a light toss as if to say, "Positively
+last appearance," she sang:
+
+     "Den d'rattlesnake and de antidote,
+      De rattlesnake and de antidote,
+      De rattlesnake and de antidote,
+      De rangitang and de billy-goat.
+          Do you belong----?"
+
+The applause was as lively as ever and increased with each step of her
+bowing retreat. Near the stateroom door, chancing to look across the
+cabin to the one opposite, she saw within two or three of the amateurs
+clapping and the actor approvingly waving her off. Then finding herself
+alone she threw open the rear door and was in Mrs. Gilmore's embrace.
+"How's Basile?" she demanded--"and the bishop--and Marburg's mother? All
+this time----"
+
+"My dear, you've sung only six minutes."
+
+"It seems a week," she laughed. Hugh appeared in the outer door. She
+listened to the insistent applause. "I can't go back, Mrs. Gilmore. I
+don't need to, do I?"
+
+"No.... Let go of me, dear!" The applause ceased. The curtain was about
+to "rise." The servant who was to draw the near half of it reached in
+from the cabin and closed their door. "No, dear, you won't sing again
+till after this act, anyhow."
+
+"Oh, not even then! I just must stay with Basile. I've sung all the
+verses but one, you know."
+
+"We've got some more new ones," replied the lady, smiling to Hugh, who
+was moving to let her pass out.
+
+"Got them!" cried the girl. She turned to Hugh. "They've made them!
+Didn't you know Mr. and Mrs. Gilmore made every line I've sung? Oh, Mr.
+Hugh, what can't genius do?"
+
+Hugh solemnly dissented. "Those lines," he said, "could never have been
+made by mere genius!"
+
+She stared at him a moment and then at Mrs. Gilmore, who was escaping by
+the outer door and who replied: "My dear, every line made for you has
+been made by Mr. Hugh." She vanished while the two stood dumbly face to
+face, but on second thought was back again just in time to see and hear
+Ramsey say, still gazing:
+
+"Well, of--all--things! You! That frightful rubbish! You've got to sing
+the rest, yourself! Oh, Mrs. Gilmore, make him do it! It'll tickle 'em
+all to death--to hear _him_ sing Gideon's Band!--and I can stay with
+Basile."
+
+"Preposterous!" rumbled Hugh, and again, "preposterous!"
+
+"Why--happy thought!" said Mrs. Gilmore. "Why, the very thing, Mr. Hugh,
+the very thing! Come. First we'll take this young lady up-stairs----" As
+they started the Californian appeared, laying a caressing hand on Hugh.
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+QUITS
+
+
+"Wait here," slowly said Hugh in response to the gold-hunter's touch.
+"I'll--see you presently."
+
+The modest adventurer waved assent, yet looked so disappointed that Mrs.
+Gilmore, moving to take his arm, asked:
+
+"Can't Mr. So-and-so go with us?"
+
+Oh, kind, quick wit! Three is a crowd, four is only twice two!
+
+"Certainly," said Hugh, and to Ramsey added: "We'd better lead the way."
+
+As they led she softly inquired: "Does he want to know something about
+the twins?"
+
+What arrows were her questions, and how straight they struck home! Yet
+with that low voice for their bowstring they gave him comfort. Her
+forays into his confidence not only relieved the loneliness of his too
+secretive mind but often, as now, involved a sweet yielding of her
+confidence to him. Yet now a straight answer was quite impossible.
+
+"He wants to know something about you," was the reply.
+
+She let the palpable evasion pass. On the hurricane roof there was a new
+sight. The breeze was astern and moved so evenly with the boat as to
+enfold her in a calm. Looking up for the stars, one saw only the giant
+chimneys towering straight into the darkness and sending their smoke as
+straight and as far again beyond, spangled with two firefly swarms of
+sparks that fell at last in a perpetual, noiseless shower.
+
+"Why do we go this way?" she asked, meaning forward around the skylight
+roof instead of across it.
+
+"Because this way's longer."
+
+"Humph!" was the soft response. Presently she added, "We get more fresh
+air this way," and called back to their two followers: "This is to avoid
+the sparks."
+
+"Um-hmm!" thought kind Mrs. Gilmore, and, "Oh, ho!" mused the
+Californian, not quite so unselfishly.
+
+Around in front of the bell both youth and maiden observed how palely
+the derrick posts loomed against the spectral chimneys and their smoke,
+and silently recalled their first meeting, just here, in the long ago of
+two days earlier. The captain's chair was occupied.
+
+"Well, father," said Hugh.
+
+"Good evening," twittered Ramsey.
+
+"Good evening, Miss Ramsey. Be back this way, Hugh?"
+
+"In a moment, sir." They passed on. Ramsey looked behind at the
+Californian.
+
+"What does he want to know about me?" she asked.
+
+"He says," said Hugh, "he's nursed this sickness at sea and at Panama
+and hasn't the slightest fear of it."
+
+"Humph!... That's not about me."
+
+"Yes, it--was. He's taken a great fancy----"
+
+"To Basile."
+
+"To several of us, including Basile."
+
+"Yes, because he and Basile played cards together."
+
+"Not entirely for that," said Hugh, looking at her so squarely that she
+had to smooth back her curls. "But he'd like to help take care of him if
+you--and your mother, of course--are willing."
+
+"Oh, how good--and brave! And he wants to ask me?"
+
+"No, he's too bashful. I'm asking for him."
+
+"Too--!" Ramsey pondered. They stepped more slowly. The other pair
+turned back; the play demanded Mrs. Gilmore. The sick-room door was so
+near that Ramsey knew her mother was inside it, by her shadow on its
+glass. Suddenly, just as Hugh was about to say she need not hurry
+in--whereupon she would have vanished like a light blown out--she faced
+him. "D'you ever suffer from bashfulness--diffidence?"
+
+He answered on a droll, deep note: "All its horrors."
+
+She looked him over. He barely smiled.
+
+"You never show it," she said.
+
+"No." To the fanciful girl the monosyllable came like one toll from a
+low tower. She laughed.
+
+"Basile says there's another thing you suffer from."
+
+"'Suffer'? From what do I 'suffer'?"
+
+"From everybody else on the boat having a better chance to do
+things--big things--than you have."
+
+He smiled again. "If I did, no one should know it; least of all you."
+
+She ignored the last clause. "Aha! I said so. I told him--and mammy Joy
+told him--there's nothing bigger than to wait your turn and _then take
+it_. And there ain't--there isn't, is there?"
+
+"Well--even that can be small. Nothing a man is big enough for looks big
+to him."
+
+"Hoh!--after he's done it," laughed Ramsey.
+
+"True--" said Hugh reflectively, "or suffered it," and both of them
+began to see that we can rarely lift more than our one corner of the
+whole truth at a time. "In your way," he added, still musing, "you're
+larger than I."
+
+"Oh, I'm no--such--thing!" Her speech was soft, yet she looked up warily
+to Watson's pilot-house window, but Watson too thoroughly approved to be
+looking down. "I'm not half or third or quarter as large." She eagerly
+turned his attention up the river. Visible only by the lights of her
+cabin and the sparks from her unseen chimneys, a boat was coming round
+the next bend. As she entered the reach and breasted the breeze which so
+calmly accompanied the _Votaress_, her two spangled plumes of smoke
+swept straight astern as if two comets raced with her, or----
+
+"The Golden Locks of Berenice," whispered Ramsey.
+
+"Come," Hugh softly responded. The _Votaress_ had signalled the usual
+passage to starboard and unless they went forward the shining spectacle
+would at once be lost. As they gained the front of the texas the distant
+craft, happening to open a fire-door, cast a long fan of red light ahead
+of her, suddenly showing every detail of her white forecastle,
+illumining her pathway on the yellow waters and revealing in their
+daylight green the willows of an island close beyond. Then the furnace
+was shut and again her fair outlines were left to the imagination,
+except for the prismatic twinkle and glow of her cabin lights.
+
+"That was like you when you laugh," murmured Hugh, and before she could
+parry she was smitten again by an innocent random shot from the darkness
+round the bell.
+
+"Do you make her out, Mr. Watson?" asked Hugh's father, and she flinched
+as if Watson were peering down on her.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the pilot, "she's Hayle's _Wild Girl_."
+
+Not waiting to hear that she was known by her "front skylights standin'
+so fur aft of her chimbleys," Ramsey wheeled to fly. But instantly she
+recovered and went with severe decorum, saying quiet nothings to Hugh as
+he followed, until at the sick-room door again she turned.
+
+"I'm willing he should help us, Mr. Hugh, if mom-a and Basile are. I'll
+send him word by mammy Joy. Mr. Hugh--what is it he wants to know about
+the twins?"
+
+Hugh was taken aback. "Why, it's nothing--now. It was as pure nonsense
+as those verses. Ask him. He can tell if he chooses; I can't." There was
+a pause. Her eyes gave him lively attention, but one ear was bent to the
+door.
+
+"I hope Basile is better," he added.
+
+"I'm sure he is; he's so much quieter." She felt a stir of conscience,
+loitering thus, yet--"Mr. Hugh, do you think diffidence is the same as
+modesty?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"I'm--" She meditated.... "I'm glad of that.... I never was diffident a
+moment in my life."
+
+"You never had need to be," said Hugh very quietly.
+
+"They go together, don't they, diffidence and modesty?"
+
+"Not as often as diffidence and conceitedness."
+
+"Why, Mr. Hugh!"
+
+"One thing that makes me so silent is my conceit."
+
+"Oh, you! you're not conceited at all! You're modest! You little know
+how great you are! You're a wonder!" Her tone was candor itself till
+maiden craft added, while she tinkled her softest and keenest: "You're a
+poet!"
+
+With a gay wave, which dismissed him so easily that she resented his
+going, she turned, stepped warily into the cramped room, and stood
+transfixed with remorse for her tardiness and appalled and heart-wrung.
+The foot of the berth was by the door. There old Joy stood silently
+weeping. At its head knelt her mother in prayer and on it lay her
+playmate brother peacefully gasping out his life. A flash of
+retrospection told her he must have had the malady long before he had
+confessed it and that something--something earlier than her
+singing--yes, and later--not twins nor Gilmores nor river--oh,
+something, what was it?--had kept her--these two long, long days--blind.
+
+"Ah, you! _you_!" she dumbly cried, all at once aflame with the Hayle
+gift for invective. "You stone image! 'To help you,' indeed! _You_! As
+if you--as if I--I won't, you born tyrant! 'Help you'--against my own
+kin! I will not--ever again. We're _quits_ for good and all."
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+AGAINST KIN
+
+
+"Ramsey," said the boy, his voice gone to a shred, "you're good--to come
+back in--in time. Ain't you going--to laugh? It'd be all right. Oh,
+sis'"--the sunken eyes lighted up--"it's come to me, sissy, it's come.
+I've got religion, Ramsey. I'm going straight to the arms of Jesus.
+Sissy dear, I wish"--he waited for strength--"I could see
+the--twins--just a minute or two----"
+
+"Why, you shall, honey. I'll go bring 'em."
+
+"Wish you would--and Hugh Courteney. It's the last----"
+
+"Honey boy, th'ain't room for so many at once. And it ain't your last
+anything; you' going to get well."
+
+His eyes closed, his brows knit. The tearful mother rose and looked at
+her. The glance was kind, yet remorse tore the girl's heart again. "Go,"
+said her mother. "Joy, she'll go with you. Bring the three."
+
+"My last"--the boy whispered on--"last chance--to do some'--something
+worthy of"--he faintly smiled to his mother--"of Gideon's Band."
+
+The door opened and closed and the two were alone. At his sign she
+knelt, took his clammy hand, and bent close that he might flutter out
+his hurried words with least effort.
+
+"She sang it finely!" he whispered. "She'd 'a' known we heard it if
+she'd 'a' thought. Wish you'd sing a verse of it. It's a hymn, you
+know--or was. The chorus is--yet. Anyhow, it's our song. Oh, I'd like to
+live on and be a real true Hayle--a Gideon! I hope--hope Hugh
+Courteney'll--live. Just think! he was on the _Quakeress_ when Uncle
+Dan--.... He's going to do big things some day. Mother--want to tell you
+something." She bent closer. He whispered on:
+
+"I wish Hugh Courteney'd live and--marry sis'."
+
+His eyes reclosed and the mother drew back, but he whispered on with
+lids unlifted: "Sing--a verse or two--or just the chorus, won't you?"
+
+As softly as to an infant fallen asleep she sang, in her Creole accent,
+with eyes streaming:
+
+     "Do you billong to Gideon' ban'?
+      Yere's my 'eart an' yere's my 'an'."
+
+Outside, meantime, before old Joy had quite left the closed door,
+another, the second aft of it, opened and the texas tender stepped out.
+A fellow servant within shut it, and he started for a near-by stair, but
+checked up, amazed, to let Ramsey hasten on for the same point.
+
+But Ramsey halted. "How's the bishop?" she asked him.
+
+"Good Lawd!" he gasped, and then tittered at himself. "I ax yo' pahdon,
+miss, I _neveh_ know de Hayles twins 'uz _double_ twins, male 'n'
+female. You ax me----?"
+
+"The bishop; how is he now?"
+
+"Well, Miss Hayles--you is Miss Hayles, ain't you? Yit, my Lawd! miss,
+ain't I dess now see you down in de cabin a-playin' in de play, an' a
+hund'ed people sayin': '_'tis_ her, 'cose it is'?"
+
+"Humph! no, I left as the curtain rose. How's the----?"
+
+"Bishop? Oh, de bishop, he, eh--'bout five-six minute' ago--aw it mowt
+be ten--whilse I 'uz down dah--de bishop--I'm bleeds to say--breave his
+las'."
+
+"While I--!" She tossed both arms.
+
+"Ummmm, hmmmm!" droned old Joy; "gone to glory!"
+
+"Yass, de good bishop gone to his good bishop!"
+
+"Oh, who was with him?" cried the girl.
+
+"Why, eh"--the three moved on their way--"de doctoh, he 'uz dah, and de
+bofe sis' o' charity; yass'm."
+
+"The commodore--wasn't?--Nor the senator--nor----?"
+
+"Oh, yass'm, de commodo', he 'uz dah--faw a spell. He didn' stay till
+de--finish. He couldn'. He git slightly indispose', hisseff, an' have to
+go to his own room."
+
+The nurse made a meek show of despair and Ramsey turned upon her. "Now,
+mammy, this is no time--_now--don't--cry_."
+
+The old woman braced up superbly. "Yass'm," persisted the waiter, "he
+dah now, in bed; slightly indispose'."
+
+A rumble close below broke in upon the rhythm of the boat. "What's
+that?" demanded Ramsey.
+
+"Oh, dat's on'y de aujience a-stompin' de actohs."
+
+The next moment, a step or two down the stair, with the skylight roof
+still in sight as much as hidden tears would let her see it, she stopped
+again, to stare anxiously at another trio, coming from the bell to the
+captain's room.
+
+"Da'--dat's all right," the white-jacket reassured her. "Dat's dess de
+cap'm, wid Mr. Hugh an' a passengeh."
+
+"Kentucky passenger?"
+
+"Yass'm, 'zac'ly; f'om Ca'fawnia; dat's him."
+
+She sprang back to the deck, and the servant went his way down the
+stair. Hugh had left his father to proceed on the arm of the Californian
+and was approaching. He murmured only a preoccupied greeting and would
+have taken the stair, but old Joy motioned eagerly to the girl. She
+spoke. He stopped. "Yes, Miss Ramsey?"
+
+"Go on," she said, "we're going that way."
+
+Down on the cabin guards the two paused at the bottom step, the old
+woman lingering at the top. "Mr. Hugh," said Ramsey, "mom-a's sending me
+for the twins." She drew a breath. "You know about the commodore?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Ramsey."
+
+"And the--the bishop?"
+
+"I know, Miss Ramsey."
+
+"Mr. Hugh, is your father--taken?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Ramsey."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"To bring the first clerk."
+
+"The boat's command doesn't fall to him, does it?"
+
+"It falls to the first mate."
+
+"I don't see why. Who'll it fall to next? You?"
+
+"No, the first clerk."
+
+Double disappointment. "But you; you'll still look after us passengers
+and help him, too, won't you?"
+
+"I may."
+
+She knew it! Somehow he was to share with the mate and the clerk the
+command of the boat!
+
+"Mr. Hugh"--they moved on, with Joy at a discreet distance--"you're in a
+hurry--so am I; but I ought to tell you, though of course it's just
+ridiculous for us--for me--to think I've ever helped you or can help you
+in any of these things or in anything--I--oh--I can't help you, or play
+help you, any more."
+
+Cruel word in a cruel moment. She felt it so and expected him to show
+the same feeling. But instead he halted in the lamplight of a passageway
+to the cabin and confronted her with the widest, most formidable gaze,
+not her father's, she had ever met. He seemed absolutely majestic. It
+was very absurd for one so young and--stumpy--to seem majestic, yet
+there he stood, truly so. Partly for that reason she could not so much
+as smile; but partly, too, it was because she felt herself so guiltily
+frivolous, having anything to say to him, or even standing in his gaze,
+gazing into it, while his father, her brother, and the bishop lay as
+they were lying in their several rooms so close overhead.
+
+"You _can_ help me," he said in his magisterial voice, so deep yet so
+soft. "You will. You must. I cannot spare you."
+
+Did any one ever! She tossed a faint defiance: "I can't. No. I
+won't--can't--ever again, against my own kin."
+
+"There are things stronger than kin."
+
+"I'd like to know what!"
+
+"Truth. Justice. Honor. Right. Public welfare."
+
+She waved them all away as wholly immaterial. "Hoh!"
+
+With a kindness far too much like magnanimity to suit her, Hugh, drawing
+backward, smiled, and replied, not as pressing the argument but as
+dropping it:
+
+"One can be against one's kin, yet not against them. Basile knows that.
+He proved it to-day."
+
+"Basile--oh, Mr. Hugh, Basile wants to see you. Mom-a's sent me as much
+for you as for the twins. Basile's asked for you. But of course if your
+father----"
+
+"I'll come, the moment I can be spared. Is your brother really better?"
+
+Ramsey flinched as from pain. She leaned on the shoulder of the
+nurse--who had come close--and sadly shook her head. But then she
+straightened smilingly and said: "If you're coming at all----"
+
+She might have finished but for a faint sound that reached her from
+directly underfoot, a sound of sawing. She faced sharply about, passed
+into the cabin, and found the Gilmores and the amateurs in the midst of
+their play.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+WHICH FROM WHICH
+
+
+This world of tragic contrasts and cross-purposes, realities and
+fictions, this world where the many so largely find their inspiration in
+the performances of the few, was startlingly typified to Ramsey as, out
+of the upper night and the darkness of her troubles, she came in upon
+the show; the audience sitting in their self-imposed twilight of a few
+dimmed lamps, designedly forgetful of the voyage for which all were
+there, and the players playing their parts as though the play were the
+only thing real.
+
+If the prefigurement was at any point vague it was none the less
+arresting. As the _Votaress_--or Gideon Hayle's _Wild Girl_--might, in
+full career, strike on hidden sands, so Ramsey struck on the thought--or
+call it the unformulated perception--that whoever would really live
+must, by clear choice and force of will, keep himself--herself--adjusted
+to this world as a whole; as one great multitudinous entity with a
+stronger, higher claim on each mere part's sympathy, service, sacrifice,
+than any mere part can ever hold on it.
+
+In a word, Hugh Courteney, baby elephant, born tyrant, egotist--or
+egoist, whichever it was--self-confessed egotist, stone-faced
+egoist--with his big-wig airs and big-fiddle voice--was nearer right
+than she would _ever_ submit to confess to him: there _were_ things
+stronger than kin, bigger every way; and other things bigger than those
+bigger things, and yet others still bigger than those, and so on and on
+to the world's circumference. Staggering discovery. Yet how infinitely
+old it looked the moment she clearly saw it: old, obvious, beautiful,
+and ugly as the man in the moon. It chanced that right there and then
+she was forced to accept its practical application. A white-jacket said
+to her in a muffled voice:
+
+"Ef you please--to not to move up to'a'ds de stage whilse de play
+a-goin' on."
+
+"Oh, but I must," she explained. "I'm on business; business that can't
+wait any longer. I've already been delayed--" Her last word faltered.
+Something occurring on the stage held her eyes, while two or three
+auditors who had turned on her a glance of annoyance changed it to a
+gaze of astonishment. The cub pilot came to her on tiptoe.
+
+"Oh, Mr. So-and-so," she smilingly whispered as she edged on, "I want my
+twin brothers. Mom-a wants them, right away, up-stairs."
+
+He nodded at each word and began softly to say that this act would be
+finished in a minute; but she broke in, still inching along: "I can't
+wait a minute. I've no right to be this late. Basile wants the twins and
+he's so sick that--that he can't, he mustn't wait."
+
+"Missy," pleadingly whispered old Joy at their backs, "missy!" But
+neither she nor the cub pilot could stop the messenger. Nor did she heed
+the growing number of those seated all about her whose attention she
+attracted, though now they were a dozen, a score, glancing, in a
+suppressed flutter, from her to the stage and from the stage to her and
+one another.
+
+Yet she stopped. For on the stage, in the play, in the part that was to
+have been hers, she beheld "Harriet" doing that part so well, and
+winning such lively approval, that doing it better would have distorted
+the play. Rouged and coifed to reduce her apparent age as much as
+Ramsey's was to have been increased, she was at all points so like what
+Ramsey would have been that the bulk of the audience had mistaken her
+for Ramsey and had made her more and more a favorite at each brief
+reappearance.
+
+Fearful moment. Beyond sight only to the outer eye, the bishop, whom she
+herself had pushed into the grapple of the pestilence, lay dead. Basile
+was dying. Two of the Courteneys were plague stricken, and the third,
+for whom she felt a special, inexplicable accountability, was, with
+Gilmore and Watson, in constant mortal peril from her twin brothers, and
+the twins therefore from them. Before her eyes, so near she could have
+tossed a flower to her, was Phyllis, a spectre from an awful past, the
+destroyer of the _Quakeress_, liable herself, within any hour, should
+the truth be discovered, to be burned like a witch. There she was, "the
+slave girl Phyllis," as the runaway advertisement would have had it, a
+culprit, and a property no way superior, in popular regard, to the
+blackest African, yet by Hayle blood so near of kin--kin! kin to
+her!--that with no other aid than a few touches of paint and pencil she
+was being enthusiastically acclaimed as Ramsey Hayle by an assemblage
+which has just applauded her, Ramsey, in the blaze of those same
+footlights. Fearful moment! that aged her as no earlier moment ever had;
+yes, and for the instant, at least, threw into her face a maturity that
+heightened the unhappy resemblance.
+
+She stopped because her presence seemed about to precipitate a terrible
+mischief, and she stood because flight would but leave that mischief to
+do its worst. Through this glaring show of likeness she seemed to be in
+the keenest danger of betraying back into slavery on the spot this poor,
+intrepid "Harriet," identified as the Phyllis supposed these ten years
+to be under the floods of the Mississippi. At that moment, on the stage,
+in Ramsey's role of a housemaid, the role from which Ramsey bitterly
+remembered she had been excused through Hugh Courteney's urging,
+"Harriet" chanced to be acting a ludicrous dismay before a transient
+dilemma in which, as in Ramsey's, staying threatened disaster yet good
+faith said stay--Ramsey's own present actual case except that Harriet's
+was comic. A hundred beholders laughed, and then turning and peering at
+the dim, central figure of Ramsey suddenly redoubled the laugh and
+presently redoubled it again.
+
+Yet it yielded a certain relief. While there is mirth there is hope.
+Even now the player of the part was recognized only as Mrs. Gilmore's
+maid. Her resemblance to Ramsey was passing for pure accident. That the
+whole thing was visibly offensive to Hayle's twins made it all the more
+amusing, and Ramsey's pause in the aisle seemed the most natural thing
+she could do on finding herself in two places at the same time. So for a
+moment, in which she rejoiced that at any rate the twins had never seen
+Phyllis as Phyllis. But then the demonstration broke short off. At
+different points three men stood up at once. In the front row appeared
+Julian. A few seats behind him loomed the exhorter. The third rose just
+at Ramsey's elbow, offering her his seat, yet counting it but courtesy
+still to keep his attention mainly on the play. It was the first clerk,
+he who had once been clerk on the _Quakeress_, where he had known
+Phyllis as Hugh's nurse, and whose scrutiny "Harriet" had until now
+somehow escaped. Whether in thanking him Ramsey accepted or declined she
+hardly knew, for just then the gaze he still bent on "Harriet" showed a
+gleam of recognition. Ramsey's heart rose into her throat. She murmured
+a hurried word, which she had to go over a second time before it took
+effect on him:
+
+"Mr. Hugh's looking for you, out forward. The commodore and the captain
+are both sick."
+
+As the announcement drew his quick glance she almost waved him to go.
+Yet what was done was done; with Phyllis recognized, it might be far
+better for him to remain, and she turned her dismissing gesture into one
+of detention.
+
+"I'm Miss Hayle," she whispered, while both looked again toward Julian
+and "Harriet." "That's my old mammy back yonder. I want my twin
+brothers. Mom-a wants them, up in the texas, as quick as--never mind,
+here they come."
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+FORBEARANCE
+
+
+Ramsey was mistaken--her brothers were staying. The play's first act was
+done, there was great clapping and thumping and the curtain was
+falling--or closing, in two parts from opposite sides, eased over
+sticking-points by nimble efforts behind it; but though Julian--who
+evidently had been getting through the general's courtesy the indulgence
+denied him at the bar--had moved a step or so from his chair, Lucian
+remained seated. Next them sat the general and the senator, and the four
+were debating together. Oddly enough, the twins were in disaccord, and
+while Lucian had the senator's approval the general's went to his
+brother. The applause died out prematurely and the whole company gave
+its attention to the debate, Ramsey sinking into the clerk's seat and
+laughing merrily--since it was laugh or perish.
+
+"No, gentlemen," she heard Julian say, "this is the last-st st-straw. A
+nigger wench made up to counterfeit a member of our family, and the part
+given her which that member of our family was to have played! ...
+Overlook--oh, good God, sir, we've done nothing but overlook, every hour
+of day and night since we started."
+
+From the other three came responses too quiet to be understood. Ramsey
+half rose toward the clerk and sank again, begging him to carry her
+errand on to the brothers, and he had softly moved forward as far as to
+the exhorter when that person, still on his feet, called to Julian:
+
+"Yass! an' thah ah cause to believe said niggeh----"
+
+Two small interruptions came at once, provoking a general laugh: Julian,
+staring at him in heavy abstraction, said dreamily, "Ho--ho--hold your
+tongue," while the clerk, at "John the Baptist's" side, gently grasped
+between the shoulders a fold of his coat, mildly suggested, "Have a
+seat," and put him so suddenly off his balance that he plumped heavily
+into his chair--quite enough to rouse the mirth of a company already a
+trifle nervous. And now Julian was heard again:
+
+"No, Luce, you can stay, I'll go alone--or with--thank you, general! Oh,
+senator, we are not blind, sir, though every time we overlook some
+insult they think we are. Good Lord! do you reckon we don't see that all
+this laugh is at us, got up at our expense, and has been at us since the
+first turn of this boat's wheels at Canal Street? We saw--_and_
+overlooked--that vile attempt to take our two ladies up the river
+without us, starting the instant they got aboard and leaving us at the
+water's edge a laughing-stock for passengers, crew, and pantry boys!"
+
+Both senator and general coaxed him to sit down, but the most he would
+concede was to drop his voice as he continued: "You know, gentlemen, and
+they know, that any true man would as soon be slapped in the face and
+spit upon as to be laughed at.... No, I--" His words became
+indistinguishable.
+
+Ramsey was in anguish. She would have glided forward with her tidings
+and summons but for the clerk blocking the path half-way. A stir of
+annoyance ran through the gathering, here grave, there facetious, but it
+stopped short as a new figure moved quietly past Ramsey and stood beside
+the clerk. It was Hugh, and the general interest revived. He exchanged a
+word or two with the clerk, who turned and left the cabin while Hugh
+stayed with the exhorter.
+
+Julian, without seeing the newcomer, once more broke forth, this time
+plainly intending to make every one his listener: "No, we don't
+interrupt and we shall not."
+
+"Oh, no," daringly put in an ironical hearer, "Hayle's twins, they never
+interrupt an innocent pleasure!"
+
+"How air it innercent?" called John the Baptist, at Hugh's side, rising
+again and gesticulating. "No theayter play kin be innercent an' much
+less this-yeh one, by reason 'at they ah cause to believe that-ah
+servant-gal----"
+
+He was pulled down again with even less ceremony than before, though by
+friendlier hands, hands of the two lenders of the sword-canes, who fell
+to counselling him in crafty undertones. But Julian was talking dead
+ahead, ignoring all distractions and not even yet discovering Hugh:
+
+"We didn't more than whisper, general, till the curtain fell. Now, did
+we? When it rises again--what, sir?... My dear senator! it's our fellow
+passengers who don't see--that their kind intentions are being made part
+of a put-up game to torment us to leave the boat.... Oh, no, they--why,
+sir, the dastards set it a-going the moment they'd persuaded our ladies
+to stay and risk their priceless lives nursing those damned Dutch on the
+lower deck."
+
+The senator ached to be the steamer's length removed but saw no way of
+dignified escape. Several listeners, remembering Ramsey's tactics and
+their success, gayly laughed, but two or three gasped an audible dismay;
+two or three men said, "Sh-sh-sh!" two or three said, "Ladies present,"
+"Remember the ladies," and some one droned out in a mock voice: "The
+stage waits."
+
+And plainly it did so; waited on the audience, with Mrs. Gilmore peeping
+through the curtain, whose rise would reveal "Harriet" alone; a terrible
+risk if the exhorter should get in the bolt he was trying to launch.
+
+"Oh, where is Mr. Gilmore?" thought Ramsey, and, "Why don't they call
+again for 'Gideon's Band'? Yet who would sing it?" Her distressed lips
+were silently asking many such questions when she sprang up and halted
+the Californian, who had come in at her back on his way to Hugh.
+
+"How's the captain?" she whispered in smiling agitation.
+
+With low affirmative bows, so enraptured to be speaking with her as to
+be all but speechless, he murmured: "Get'--getting on--so far." He waved
+an oddly delicate hand--backward from the wrist, girlishly--"He's
+all--hunkadory."
+
+"And Basile?" Anxious as she was, she yet saw while she spoke--and he
+saw--that Julian had at length sighted Hugh and that at least
+three-fourths of the audience, the whole male portion, was eying that
+pair with the alertness of man's primitive interest in man-to-man
+encounter. At her mention of the sick boy the gold hunter ceased to nod.
+His countenance fell.
+
+"Oh," she whispered, "won't _you_ go and tell them, all three, Mr.
+Courteney and both twins, how bad off he is, and that he sent me, and
+mom-a says come quick?"
+
+He went. Forgetting to sit down, she watched him go and let Gilmore pass
+her as Hugh had done. Now, what was his errand? The actor and the
+Californian reached Hugh together. The three drew a step back from the
+exhorter and his advisers and conferred in the aisle while Julian's
+tirade went straight on as completely ignored by them as though it were
+the most normal sound of the boat's machinery. The sight so amused the
+audience that laughter came again and then clapping and pounding, in a
+succession of outbreaks, each coming so close after one of Julian's
+utterances that his dizzy head took it for approval, though to every one
+else, and especially to Ramsey, the meaning was weariness of him and
+impatience of Gilmore's delay.
+
+He spoke with his face to his associates but with his voice addressed to
+those other three in the aisle: "We were invited on this boat in pure
+cowardly malice." (Applause.) "To have our weapons stolen from us by
+servants and locked up by underlings and to have the boat's ordinary
+refreshments forbidden us." (Laughter and applause.) "To be thrust into
+contact with a deadly pestilence and to be insulted or assaulted by
+hired blackguards on one or another of every deck from forecastle
+gangway to pilot-house." (Long and loud applause.) "And all this, sirs,
+we have overlooked; but to be made a public laughing-stock we will not
+endure if I have to pull every Courteney's nose to stop it!" (Loud
+laughter and prolonged applause.) Amid the din Ramsey recognized the
+voice of old Joy moaning with grief and consternation in the gloom
+behind her, and caught the words of the cub pilot, said for his soul's
+relief, not dreaming she would hear: "If you two ornery cusses wa'n't
+Gid Hayle's boys we'd clap you in irons quicker'n you could lick out
+your tongue."
+
+But amid the same din what, she laughingly, painfully wondered, were the
+three standers in the aisle so privately, calmly saying together--with
+the actor as chief speaker, Hugh grim, and the Californian mostly a
+nodding listener? Was Hugh--whose big eyes and stone visage so drolly
+fitted each other yet seemed so sadly unfitted to this big
+emergency--was he insisting that it would be idle for him to go to
+Basile without the twins, as was only too true? Or that John the Baptist
+and his two disciples must first be disposed of? Or was it his word that
+the most pressing need was for the actor, long trained to perceive just
+what would capture an audience in such a stress, to step between
+footlights and curtain, tell the people that honest facts had never been
+more crazily twisted into falsehood and slander, and explain the true
+situation in a brief, apt speech, dignified and amusing? Certainly
+something had to be done and done this instant. But not that, ah, no!
+Or if that, not done by him, the actor. She could never imagine such
+a manoeuvre attempted on a boat of her father's, whose sole way of
+mastery was by pure lordship and main force. Yet here, with these
+Courteneys, who, he had always said, outmastered him by their clever
+graciousness, and dealing here not with subordinates but with
+passengers--a living nerve of the river's whole public--talk treatment
+might be the cleverest, wisest kind to give, if only Hugh--oh, if only
+Hugh!--could give it. But of course he could not, with that face, that
+visage, so much _too_ lordly and forceful--and hard--and glum--for a
+clever task.
+
+Julian ceased. His high head went a shade higher; the Californian was
+advancing straight upon him. With a pang Ramsey remembered that she had
+failed to charge the gold hunter not to let the twins know that their
+brother's summons included Hugh, lest that should keep them away. But
+surely he would see that necessity; and in fact he did. Hugh stood
+still, looking in the opposite, her, Ramsey's, direction, where the
+actor was coming toward her. The old nurse had stolen to her side. The
+player went by without a glance at her. It was so much like asking why
+she stood there doing nothing that she granted the old woman's whispered
+prayer and sat down. Behind her he spoke busily for a second to the cub
+pilot and passed out by a side exit. The pilot's cub came by, had a word
+or two with the exhorter, and stayed there as if on guard.
+
+Now, for all these small things to happen in the one moment and to
+happen in the midst of a waiting audience made its show of suspense more
+vivid than ever; excitement was in all eyes; every chin was lifted. The
+Californian seemed to tell Julian a startling thing or two. The general
+rose, the senator helped Lucian to his feet. The four came close about
+the news bearer and he told more. Ramsey could almost feel his mention
+of the bishop and then of Basile. Lucian asked a question or two and the
+five came down the aisle, one pair leading, the other following, and
+Julian between, alone, overpeering all sitters, with a splendid air of
+being commander and in the saddle.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+APPLAUSE
+
+
+Diffidence! Hugh had spoken of diffidence--in himself--in the twins.
+Could Julian really be hiding such a thing behind such a mask? Ramsey
+wondered.
+
+Every eye was on him and again the floor thundered, shaming her,
+flattering him. As he came on, the exhorter began to put out an arm, to
+speak and to rise, but the cub pilot blandly intervened and Julian
+ignored him. For there both brothers came face to face with the first
+mate. He had entered where Gilmore went out, and now passed them with a
+stare like their own, fire for fire, and at close quarters began to
+accost the exhorter and his two adherents.
+
+They rose, and with evident change of meaning thunder came again, though
+not for them. The departing twins and their triple escort; the exhorter
+and the four about him; Ramsey, Joy, and the returned Gilmore, who just
+then touched her shoulder and whispered something to which she replied
+with quick nods of consent--all these groups lifted their gaze, with the
+whole company's, to the curtained stage.
+
+Diffidence! oh, where _was_ diffidence? Hugh had stepped in behind the
+footlights and was standing and looking out across them as foursquare
+and unsmiling as a gravestone.
+
+Their light was on his brow, whose frown smote her with foreboding. Half
+folded he held a slip of paper as if about to give official notice of
+some grave matter, and his aggressive eyes, that seemed to her to look a
+greater distance away from a greater distance within than ever before,
+were fixed on one man. Absolute silence fell. And thereupon, to the
+open-mouthed amazement of the audience, with his stare yet on that one
+face, and in a voice that seemed octaves below hers, he began to sing
+straight at the exhorter:
+
+     "Do you belong to Gideon's ban'?"
+
+A shout of laughter, a rain of clappings, a thunder of canes and feet.
+Sitters bumped up and down. They were safe home again in nonsense and
+were glad. Ramsey's laugh was like a dancer's bells though under cover
+of the dusk she let the tears roll down. Old Joy moaned and shook her
+head. John the Baptist had begun to retort but withered before a
+ferocious muffled threat from the mate while following him into the
+aisle. "Bucked and gagged," was the mate's odd phrase, at which a dozen
+or so nearest him laughed again, a bit nervously. They looked back to
+see if the twins had heard it, and were just in time to catch from
+Julian and the general a last glare of scorn as the group of five left
+the cabin. Then again came silence, except behind the footlights, where
+the sphinx-like singer bore straight on through the refrain and came to
+the new lines. Sing them out, sphinx; the more senseless the better.
+
+     "Nex' come de 'coon and de cockatroo,
+      Nex' come de 'coon and de cockatroo,
+      Nex' come de 'coon and de cockatroo,
+      De hawg and de whoopdedoodendoo.
+          Do you belong----?"
+
+The inquiry was drowned in applause, which swelled as the mate and the
+exhorter went out with the latter's two backers--more eagle-eyed and
+stallion-eyed than ever--and with Watson's cub at the rear. A number
+stretched up for a glimpse of Ramsey but she too--and the actor--and
+Joy--were gone. There was another waiting hush, and the droll singer, so
+droll because so granite solemn, resumed:
+
+     "Den turkle-dove an' blue-bird blue,
+      Den turkle-dove an' blue-bird blue,
+      Den turkle-dove an' blue-bird blue,
+      De merry-go-roun' and de hullabaloo.
+          Do you belong----?"
+
+Applause! Was that the end? Not if the applauders could help it! The day
+was coming when a boiler-deck and pilot-house tradition, heard by many
+with hearty enjoyment, by many with silent disdain, would be this: that
+aboard the old _Votaress_ on her first up trip--late spring of
+'52--cholera on every deck--mutiny hotly smouldering--the unreason of
+fear and of wrath were beaten in fair fight by the unreason of mirth,
+and men's, women's, children's lives--no telling how many--were saved,
+through the cleverness of some play-actors and first the youngest of all
+the Hayles and then the youngest of all the Courteneys singing a
+nonsense song! Sing it! sing on!
+
+He sang on:
+
+     "Den de grizzly-b'ah and den de mole,
+      De grizzly-b'ah and den de mole,
+      De grizzly-b'ah and den de mole,
+      De terrapintime and de wrigglemarole.
+          Do you belong----?"
+
+The plaudits were at their height and Hugh still on the interrogative
+line when there came from behind the curtain a voice skilfully thrown to
+reach only him:
+
+"Give them one verse more and we'll be ready!"
+
+He gave it:
+
+     "Las' de cattlemaran and de curlicue,
+      De cattlemaran and de curlicue,
+      De cattlemaran and de curlicue,
+      De daddy-long-legs and de buggaboo.
+          Do you belong----?"
+
+He stepped quickly from the "stage." The curtains drew apart. The scene
+revealed was a drawing-room. In it stood alone, as if playfully
+listening for something, the housemaid; not "Harriet" but Ramsey.
+(Laughter and applause.)
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+AFTER THE PLAY
+
+
+Neither Hugh nor Ramsey slept a moment that night. And no more did the
+Gilmores or "Harriet" or John the Baptist or even the senator or the
+Californian. The play, second act, was cut without mercy and rushed to a
+close to let its hero and heroine off at Napoleon, which Ned called a
+"future city" but which, some years later, became a former city, by
+melting into thin air, or thick water, and leaving not so much behind as
+a candle-end or a broken bottle.
+
+It was not far above there that these unsleeping passengers began to
+remark a fresh rise in the river's flood, which her "family" and crew
+had noticed much earlier by a difference in the nature and quantity of
+its driftwood. Near the mouth of White River, about an hour's run above
+Napoleon, a great floating tree stump, with all its roots, was caught on
+the buckets of the "labboard" wheel--"like a cur on a cow's horn," said
+Gilmore--and carried clear over it with a sudden hubbub in the
+paddle-box, tenfold what ten curs could have made, bringing to his feet
+every passenger not abed, and scaring awake every sleeping one. Neither
+Ramsey nor Hugh ever forgot it, for it evoked the last stir in the
+supine form of Basile, and a faint spasm in his cold grasp on Hugh's
+fingers. Under his freer hand, on his all but motionless breast, lay his
+mother's crucifix. Shortly before, while waiting for Hugh's tardy
+coming, he had held a hand of his sister, whose other held her mother's.
+On the edge of the berth, at his feet, sat Lucian, very pale, with
+Julian standing by him. Both betrayed deep feeling yet kept a brave look
+that was good to see even with eyes as prejudiced as Hugh's. Only Basile
+himself was without tears.
+
+How fashions change! There are styles even in death-bed scenes. This one
+was of the old fashion, bearing a strong tinge of fatalism; no hopeful
+make-believe to the dying that death was other than death; no covert,
+diligent, desperate economies of the vital spark; but a frank, helpless
+reception of the dread angel as a royal guest, and a pious, inert
+consent to let the dying die. Before either Hugh or Ramsey could come
+from the cabin the twins had reached the bedside and had been received
+with a final lighting up of the boy's spent powers, which his mother
+made no effort to restrain. In a feeble, altered voice, without heat,
+scorn, or petulance, with a mind stripped of all its puerilities and
+full of fraternal care and faithfulness, and with a magisterial dignity
+far beyond his years, he slowly poured out a measured stream of
+arraignment and appeal which their hardened hearts were still too young
+to withstand unmoved.
+
+His conversion, he told them, had come to him with a great light, "on
+the road to Damascus," and by that light he saw, as he implored them to
+see, the hideous deformity of the life he and they and the young fellows
+of their usual companionship had been living. Even Ramsey knew, he
+continued as she and their old nurse silently reappeared, that by the
+plainest laws of the land, they were not too good for the penitentiary.
+An overweening pride in their lawlessness did not justify or excuse it;
+the devils had that, in hell. They, the twins, were not Christian
+gentlemen. They were _not gentlemen at all_. They'd shoot a man down in
+his tracks for saying so, or for calling them liars, yet they'd turn the
+truth wrong side out every day in the year. These last two days they'd
+done it right along. At this moment they had a fixed design to kill Hugh
+Courteney on the first good chance and didn't care a continental whether
+they did it in face-to-face murder or from behind a bush. Lying at
+death's door, he said, and in jealousy for the same Hayle name they
+professed to be so jealous for, he demanded their oath to abandon that
+design; to stop it, drop it, "right here and now," and never to seek the
+life of any Courteney but in clear defence of some other life. His own
+seemed almost to fade out at that point, yet presently:
+
+"Hold up your right hands," he gasped, trying to raise his. The mother
+lifted it for him while giving the twins a tearful flash of command.
+Unconsciously Ramsey put up hers as Lucian's left suddenly caught
+Julian's right and he held up both it and his own.
+
+But neither the boy nor Ramsey nor the old nurse felt assured, and all
+three were glad when the mother asked:
+
+"You swear?"
+
+Julian stood mute but, "With that provision," said Lucian, "we swear."
+
+"So help you God?" insisted the mother, and while she spoke and the
+twins bowed, the narrow door let some one in.
+
+"Is that Hugh Courteney?" asked the boy. "You're just in time, Hugh. The
+feud's off."
+
+"Oh, there's no feud, Basile," tenderly murmured Hugh.
+
+"No, it's off, thank God. I got it off. The twins have just sworn it
+off. Shake hands, boys. Come, you first, Jule."
+
+But Lucian led, with a certain alacrity, Julian following with less.
+
+"Now take my hand, Hugh." The voice was failing but once more it
+rallied. "Give it to him, sis'.... Thank you.... Keep it, Hugh
+Courteney. I love a brave man's hand. We heard you singing, Hugh. My!
+but you've got grit. I wish you belonged to Gideon's band yourself.
+You're braver than most men, though most men'll always think they're
+braver than you."
+
+Hugh could only dry the damp from the cold brow. He grew fiercely
+ashamed not so much of his tears, which those around him were too
+tearful to observe, as of the boy's praises, before which he could only
+stand dumb.
+
+"He's brave, sis'," Basile went on, "and he's clean, and he's square,
+mother, boys. You were on the _Quakeress_ when she burned, wa'n't you?
+Ah, me!--wish I'd known you then. I'd be a different man now. I don't
+believe I'd be dying. My heavenly Father wouldn't 'a' had to call me in
+out of the storm."
+
+[Illustration: "My heavenly Father wouldn't 'a' had to call me in out of
+the storm"]
+
+His mother sank to her knees against the berth's side, covered her face,
+and shook with grief. The daughter sank too, weepingly caressing her,
+yet was still able so to divide her thought as yearningly to wish Hugh,
+for his own sake, well away, as she saw his hand softly endeavor to draw
+free from Basile's. But it was on that instant that the great tree root
+came thundering up through the wheel-house and the dying clasp
+tightened. The shock of surprise revived him. "Hugh--do something for
+me?... Thank you. Bishop's gone, you know. Read my burial service. I
+don't want the--play-actor--though he's fine; nor the priest, though
+he's fine, too. Mom-a'd be a saint in any--persuasion, and pop and us
+boys are Methodists, if anything, and I--I didn't get religion in Latin
+and I don't want to be buried in it." He waited. Hugh was silent.
+
+The Creole mother, still kneeling, drew closer. "Yass," she said, "he
+shall read that."
+
+But plainly there was one thing more though the tired eyelids sank. "Let
+down your ear," murmured the lips.
+
+Hugh knelt, bent, waited. The distressed twins watched them. The hold on
+his hand relaxed. He lifted and looked.
+
+"What do he say?" tearfully asked old Joy, pressing in.
+
+"Nothing," said Hugh; and then to the twins: "He's gone."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out in the benign starlight and caressing breeze Hugh hastened to his
+father's door.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+INSOMNIA
+
+
+Down in the cabin, in one of its best staterooms, where all were choice,
+the senator wooed slumber.
+
+In vain. Sounds were no obstacle. They abounded but they were normal.
+Except--"Peck-peck-peck" and so on, which the steady pulse of normal
+sounds practically obliterated. The peck-pecking was not for him.
+
+An unwelcome odor may keep one awake, but the senator's berth was
+fragrant of fresh mattresses and new linen, the wash-stand of jasmine
+soap, and the room at large of its immaculate zinc-white walls and doors
+and their gilt trimmings. Nor could the cause be his supper of beefsteak
+and onions, black coffee, hot rolls, and bananas, for every one about
+him had had those, and every one about him was sound asleep. It could
+not be for lack of the bath; he had already slept well without it too
+many nights hand-running. Nor could it be a want of special
+nightclothes; he had won his election over a nightshirt aristocrat, as
+being not too pampered to sleep, like the sons of toil, in the shirt he
+had worn all day and would wear again to-morrow. Nor yet was it nicotine
+or alcohol, the putting of which into him was like feeding cottonwood to
+Hayle's old _Huntress_. Such, at least, was his private conviction. Oh,
+he knew the cause! He believed he could drop into sleep as this boat's
+sounding-lead could drop to the river's bottom, if for one minute he
+could get his mind off that singularly old, contemptibly young
+poker-face.
+
+Recalling that face and the grandfather's as he had confronted them
+together earlier in the journey, they were a double reminder of the
+Franklinian maxim--he kept a store of such things for stump use--that an
+old young man makes a young old man. But maxims didn't bring sleep; he
+turned the pillow and damned the maxim and the men, with Benjamin
+Franklin to boot.
+
+It tossed him from his right side to his left, to think of his own part
+in this two days' episode, and of the flocks of passengers stepping
+ashore at various landings who, as sure as--hmm!--would at every step
+drop that story into the public ear as corn is dropped into the furrow.
+It tossed him back again, to think how his adversaries in the political
+game, where cunning was always trumps, would light down on that story
+like crows behind the plough. He mixed his metaphors by habit; the
+people loved them mixed. Another maxim, his own invention, was, Take
+care of your character and your reputation will take care of itself. The
+---- it will! You've got to take _at least_ as much care of reputation.
+But here both were concerned. He could not, for the sake either of his
+character _or_ his reputation, let himself be made a fool of by any one,
+however small, anywhere. He had got to recover a personal importance
+solemnly pilfered from him by a half-grown Shanghai still in his
+pin-feathers. Against Hayle's girl he was excusably helpless, but him he
+had got to get the upper hand of and get it quick. Memphis in the
+morning! More passengers to be dropped there and the whole town's
+attention to be attracted by the burial of the bishop. Good Lord! That
+"verbatim report for the newspapers"! And of all papers the Memphis
+papers! _Avalanche_--_Appeal_--it was all one, he happening to be at the
+moment equally at odds with both. It, the "report," would not take a
+defensive attitude. Poker-face was too sharp for that. It would take the
+offensive from the start and it would take the start. Gentlemen of the
+jury, in a war of words there's just one word better than the last, and
+that's the first! And moreover! the brief "report's" main theme would
+not be he, the senator, nor his vanished committee of seven. No, sir-ee,
+it would be the cholera, and he would be dished up in a purely casual
+way; as the French say "on, pass on."
+
+He rubbed his head and sat up. There was a chance that he might find
+Hugh awake and on duty. If so his cast-iron lordship might yet be
+browbeaten, or wheedled, into inaction. Or if sleeping he might yet be
+circumvented. Was he worth circumventing? How absurdly troubles magnify
+on a waking pillow. Despise your enemy and sleep! Well--hardly. Let
+_him_ do that, especially when _you can't_.
+
+He threw off the light cover, rose, and dressed. He began to see a way
+to win. He would countermine. He would raise a counter-issue--"Harriet."
+Loitering by the twins' door he listened and rightly judged they were
+asleep, Lucian being so feeble and Julian so full. The office was open
+but empty. Its clock read two. The card-tables were vacant. The bar was
+closed. Out on the dim boiler deck he found only the two who had fleeced
+Basile. They sat at the very front, elbow to elbow, with their feet up
+on the rail. Their quiet talk ceased as he came near and stood looking
+out over the gliding bow and the waters beyond, which were out of their
+banks and stretched everywhere off into the night, a veritable deluge.
+
+"A good forty miles wide, no doubt," he remarked to the pair, and they
+assured him he was right.
+
+"What piece of river is this?" he inquired, and was told that they were
+in the long, winding, desolate sixty-mile stretch between White River
+and Horseshoe Bend; that they had just put Islands Sixty-two and
+Sixty-three astern and would be more than two hours yet in reaching
+Helena.
+
+"Arkansas your State?" he asked. "Helena your town?"
+
+"No," they said, they were of the "hoop-pole State," meaning Indiana. He
+knew better but changed the subject. "The Ohio," he remarked, "must be
+up on her hind legs."
+
+"Yes, everything was up: the Saint Francis, the Tennessee, Cumberland,
+Illinois, Wabash, Kentucky, Miami, Scioto--" The pair did not talk like
+men narrowly of the hoop-pole commonwealth. Modestly speaking on, they
+seemed to know the whole great valley quite by heart.
+
+So the senator, to show how quite by heart he knew this whole little
+world, said affably: "The pan-fish ain't biting so very lively this
+trip."
+
+The reply was as flawless for candor as though they had the same hope to
+use him which he had to use them. Said one:
+
+"No, we ain't paying expenses."
+
+And his mate: "We've caught a few little flappers."
+
+"Captain's son make it hard to do business?"
+
+"Oh, he--we've all got our prejudices, you know."
+
+"Yes, you ought to have some against him by now."
+
+"Maybe so. You've got yourn, senator, we've noticed."
+
+"I? No! I admire him. The way he runs this cabin----"
+
+"Makes her keep up with the boat," they admitted.
+
+"I never saw his like," laughed the statesman.
+
+"Wouldn't want to, would you?"
+
+"N-no, he makes big mistakes. But--he's got a future!"
+
+"So mind his heels," said one of the pair. They were enjoying their
+politician. He saw that by their gravity. In their world men looked
+gravest when amused, and saved their smiles for emergencies. While he
+offered, and they accepted, cigars he spoke absently:
+
+"The young gentleman's making a mistake right now that he ought to be
+saved from."
+
+"Another?" they dryly asked as they used his cigar for a light. So far
+had he fallen in the general esteem.
+
+He chose not to hear. "I wish," he insisted, "we could save him from
+it."
+
+"Why, yes!--wish you could. But 'we' ain't us. We sporting men, we're
+mighty bashful, you know."
+
+"Naturally," admitted the senator.
+
+"Yes, glass, with care. But there's another mistake maker we wish you
+wished you could save. We ev'm might help."
+
+"Aha!" thought the senator. He was right, after all. He had felt
+confident that these men, treated by Hugh as they had been, would
+privately "have it in for him"; that they would be glad of any safe
+chance to "get away with him"--not so utterly as to imperil their necks,
+yet not too lightly for their spiritual comfort the rest of their
+days--and that they saw their chance just where he saw his.
+
+"Ye-es?" He mused. They let him muse. The exhorter, he reflected, having
+picked up the trail and opened the cry--trail which the headlong twins
+had so witlessly overrun--these older dogs were on it hot; trail of the
+Gilmores and "Harriet." Somewhere on that trail the captain's son would
+show up, and when the game should be treed they would be able, in the
+general mix-up, to "go and see Hugh" and "cook his goose."
+
+The musing ceased. "You mean the actor?"
+
+The pair warmed up. "Yes, sir-ee, him. _That_ fellow's making a mistake
+we might help you to handle. God! sir, he's a nigger-stealer. His wife
+has got a stolen nigger wench with her now. Had her these ten years.
+Save _him_. Save _them_."
+
+"Our friend John the Baptist suggests that," began the senator.
+
+"Adzac'ly!" was the facetious affirmation. "Smelt 'em out at the show.
+That's how come the mate has locked him up."
+
+The senator stiffened. "Oh, you must be mistaken!"
+
+"Want to bet? Pull out. Go you a thousand they've jugged him and them
+two Arkansas killers. Yes, sir, to stay jugged till they leave us, at
+Helena."
+
+"Who!--have done that?"
+
+"Same as you're thinking; they; them; him; that believes he's bossing
+the boat--which maybe he is."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Up on the roof, with a select few, both sexes."
+
+"Gentlemen, he must let them go at once!"
+
+"Senator, not with money, but just on your word, you sort o' bail 'em
+out. If they cut up, nobody'll blame you."
+
+"I'll do it! We don't want an owner of the finest boat on Southern
+waters to have any part in _that sort_ of mistake, whatever his youth."
+
+"Youth!" (Profanity.) "That boy's forty year' old. Oh, he's all right;
+if he thinks he'd ought to protect every galoot on his boat, why, maybe
+he'd ought. What you know is that that white nigger's _got_ to be took
+away from them two barnstormers instanter and restored back to her own
+Hayle folks. That's a mistake you ain't never got to ask nobody's leaves
+to save nobody from."
+
+"You don't mean to-night?" Capital disguise for eagerness--the cigar.
+The senator puffed. The pair puffed.
+
+"We mean now; when the right men can be woke up and the others--and the
+ladies--sleep on. Now, straightaway, while the shouter's still
+aboard--and the two shooters. If we wa'n't sporting men we'd like to sit
+into that game ourselves. Maybe we can if it's kept--dignified."
+
+"Even if there's resistance?"
+
+"Who'll resist? The boat's people? Only thing they dassen't resist.
+Couldn't never run another trip on this river. Resist! Couldn't ever
+resist, any time; but now? Look at their fix. Sweet time to set
+everybody a-kicking like steers. Bishop dead, chief Dutch woman ditto,
+that nice young Hayle boy that they took away from us when he wanted to
+stay like a man, ditto----"
+
+"Oh, not dead? My God! I hadn't heard that."
+
+"No, it ain't been properly advertised. But Hamlet knows it--I mean your
+actor. The way him and his wife--or lady--are buzzing around, you'd
+think they was the undertakers. Maybe they are. _He_ won't resist. He
+knows how well resistance would suit you--oh, not yourself, no more'n
+us, but--the crowd; men like them three that's locked up and must be
+turned loose first thing. He knows if he lifts a finger, or so much as
+gives anybody any of his lip--and maybe anyhow--he'll be took ashore and
+lost in the woods, first time we stop to bury some more Dutch; say
+daybreak."
+
+"Ah, but we mustn't let that happen, either."
+
+"Oh, no! we mustn't let that happen, either."
+
+"Well"--the senator put on a bustling frown--"I'll see Hugh. I wish--I
+wonder if that Californian has----"
+
+"Put up his shutters? No, he's on the roof. Why?"
+
+"He might help wake up the right men, as you say."
+
+One of the pair, without rising, tapped the senator caressingly.
+"You--let--California--sweat. Trust in Providence. The right men'll get
+woke up somehow, beginning with the general. That right?... All gay, but
+don't you take no California in yourn to-night."
+
+"No? Very well. But--I wonder if you gentlemen really recognize the
+seriousness of this affair."
+
+"Look a-here, senator, you go up-stairs and save Mr. Innocence from
+running his boat into this mistake." The sleek pair rose, evidently to
+begin their part.
+
+The senator rummaged his mind for a word that would give him creditable
+exit but had to hurry off without it. Turning, the two exchanged a calm
+gaze and one luxurious puff, which meant that the "old sucker's" use of
+them would suit them exactly. They rummaged for no words; had no more
+need for words than two leopards.
+
+Before falling to work they glanced out over the flood. This was
+Horseshoe Cut-off. Kangaroo Point was just astern in the west. Yonder
+ahead, under the old moon, came Friar's Point. In these hundred miles
+between Napoleon and Helena they were meeting one by one the Saturday
+evening boats out of Saint Louis. Now one came round the upper bend,
+four days from Cincinnati. They knew her; the Courteneys' fine old
+_Marchioness_. The young _Votaress_ swept by her saluting and saluted
+like the belle of a ball, a flying vision of luxury, innocence, and joy.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+"CALIFORNIA"
+
+
+Under the benign stars, as we have said, Hugh hastened from Basile to
+his father.
+
+Those were the same heavenly lights with which only two nights earlier
+he and that father had so tranquilly--and the dead boy's sister so
+airily--communed. With a hand yet on the door that he was leaving, and
+while his distress for what had befallen in this room brought a
+foreboding of what might impend in the other, he felt the chiding of
+that celestial benignity and was dimly made to see its illimitable span
+and the smallness of magnifying the things we call trouble.
+
+All the more, then, a melting heart for the tearful mother and sister,
+to whom no word of this could be said; but a stout heart, stouter than
+he knew where to find, for whatever was yet in store. Also a preoccupied
+good-by to sweet companionship. Nay, a mind too preoccupied for any
+good-by to any companionship for the remainder of this voyage, if not
+forever. It was humiliating to have even so much thought of such a kind
+at such a time; yet suppress it as he might, he could not wholly stifle
+it, even at his father's door.
+
+Three hours later the senator, coming up in search of him, gradually
+discovered the presence of more people than he was looking for or cared
+even to find awake--being who they were. At the top of the steps he told
+the watchman sleeplessness had driven him up here for fresh air. It is
+but human to explain to a watchman.
+
+But how was the captain? And how was the commodore?
+
+The commodore was doing well enough, but the captain--the watchman shook
+his head with the wisdom of a doctor.
+
+The seeker after fresh air, eager to move on, yet loath to imply that
+the air about a watchman was stale, said, with a glance at the stars,
+that here was quiet.
+
+But the watchman begged to differ. Never by starlight had he seen so
+busy a hurricane-deck. Just now there was a lull but it was the first in
+three hours. Preparations here, preparations there, for the dead, for
+the living, the sick, the well; such a going and coming of cabin-boys,
+of chambermaids, of the immigrant they called Marburg, the Hayles' old
+black woman, the texas tender, the mud clerk, the actor and his wife,
+her servant girl----
+
+"And others," prompted the senator. "What doing?"
+
+A hundred things. The actor's wife had got Miss Hayle into funeral black
+from her own stage "warrobe," and the young man Marburg had brought up,
+for Madame Hayle, one of his deceased mother's mourning gowns, "a
+prodigious fine one." It did not fit but the actor's wife and her maid
+were altering it while they kept watch where Basile lay and while Madame
+Hayle resumed her cares on the lower deck.
+
+And who was caring for the commodore?
+
+Second clerk and mud clerk answered his few needs.
+
+But the captain----?
+
+Ah, that was another matter. The actor was with him.
+
+Mr. Gilmore; um-hmm. A step or so forward of the captain's room, as the
+senator moved toward the bell, two male figures seated on the edge of
+the skylight roof spoke his name in a mild greeting, and, looking
+closely, he found them to be Watson's cub and the Kentuckian whom the
+pair down on the boiler deck had just called "California."
+
+The senator expressed surprise that these two were not abed, where he
+himself ought to be but--sleeplessness had driven him up here for fresh
+air.
+
+"Well, here the fresh air is," said California. "Senator, we've just
+been wishing we could see you."
+
+"Ah!" said the senator, grateful yet wary. "I'll just take a turn or two
+up forward and be right back."
+
+"But--hold on, senator; just one question."
+
+The three stood. "Now, this first question ain't it; this is just the
+cut and deal. Hayle's twins have offered to fight Hugh Courteney--any
+way open to gentlemen, as they say--haven't they?"
+
+"Oh--night before last, I--believe so."
+
+"Ancient history, yes; but it's a standing invitation and they've called
+him names: poltroon, coward----"
+
+"Well, really, Mr. So-and-so, while we can't justify the names, nor the
+invitation, we can't wonder at the givers."
+
+"Why--I can. I think they're pretty tol'able wonderful. But so's he--to
+let 'em do it. Now, this ain't the question, either, but--why does he
+allow it? It ain't for lack of pluck, senator. I know a coward's
+earmarks and he ain't got 'em. It ain't for religion; less'n two hours
+out of Orleans he'd offered them twins, I'm told, to take 'em down to
+the freight deck and dish up the brace of 'em at one fell scoop. And no
+more is it because his people won't let him alone to do his own way.
+He's about the let-alone-dest fellow I ever see, for his age, if he is
+any particular age. No, sir, I've studied out what it's for."
+
+"Hmm. But what's your question? What's _it_ about?"
+
+"Why, it's about this--and your friend the general. For I'll tell you,
+senator, why Mr. Hugh don't fight. It's for--can I tell you in
+confidence, strict, air-tight?"
+
+"Certainly, strict, air-tight."
+
+"Well, then, it's for love. He's in love with their sister. Now,
+_that's_ something I _don't_ wonder at. I am, too. So are a lot of us."
+He smiled at the cub, who frowned away. "Now, by natural fitness, he's
+got ground for hope. I ain't got a square inch. She ain't on my claim.
+Next week my face'll be to the setting sun. So what do I do but go to
+him--this was before her young brother died--which I almost loved the
+brother too--and s'I, 'Mr. Courteney, I've saw the sun go down and moon
+come up on this thing three times running, and every time and all
+between I've stood it, seeing you stand it. And I've studied it. And I
+see your fix. But most of us don't; so somebody's got to indorse you.
+Now, being a Kentuckian, not blue-grass but next door, I feel like doing
+it. You've _got_ to play two hands and you _can't_ play but one. Well,
+I'll play the one you can't. I'll fight them twins.'"
+
+"Well, of all--and he accepted?"
+
+"Now, you know he didn't. He said it would be absolutely impossible. But
+he said it the funniest way--! It made me see the size of him for the
+first time. And, senator, he's life-size. But I reckon you knowed that
+before I did. He took me by the button-hole, just as I'm holding you
+now, and talked to me as majestic as a father sending his boy off to
+school, and at the very same time and in the very same words as sweet as
+a girl sending her soldier to war."
+
+"And he convinced you?"
+
+"No, we was interrupted and couldn't talk it out. Well, I can't go back
+to him and resume, no more'n a wildcat bank. For one thing, I wouldn't
+take him from her."
+
+"You don't mean they're together now?"
+
+"Now, no, but by spells, yes. Bound to happen--so many of us so willing.
+I'd try to talk the thing out with this young man and Mr. Watson, but
+they all feel alike. Reckon it does 'em credit, but--well--I'd like to
+talk it out with you and the general. I think we can dispense with the
+boat's consent. Don't you?"
+
+"Oh, Lord, man, what have I got to do with that?"
+
+"Hold your horses, senator. I look at it this way: If the twins hadn't
+been too busy pecking at Mr. Hugh I'm just the sort o' man they'd 'a'
+pecked at, and hence I have a good moral right to waive their not doing
+it and take the will for the deed."
+
+"Nonsense, my good friend; good joke, nothing
+more."
+
+"Hold on; there's this anyhow: If Mr. Hugh _could_ accept their
+invitation maybe he'd take me for his second; and what does second mean
+if it don't mean that if, after all, something should force him to drop
+out I could drop in?"
+
+"Oh," laughed the senator, freeing his buttonhole by gentle force and
+edging away, "very well; but the twins! They're out! Look at _their_
+fix; _they_ can't fight now."
+
+"Senator, just so. But the general, all along he's sort o' been their
+second; indorsed for 'em same's I'd like to for Mr. Hugh. He'd be their
+second now if they could fight--as we know they'd be glad to. So, why
+ain't he honor bound to take their place if I take Mr. Hugh's? This
+young gentleman'll act for me--won't you?--yes, and the senator can act
+for the general. Then, senator, the first time we can get ashore we can
+settle the whole thing without involving Mr. Hugh and without ever
+letting the ladies know--or the crowd either--that it ain't just our own
+affair. I can easily give the general cause, you know."
+
+"My friend," said the cunning senator, who knew his ruling sin was
+tardiness and that he was tardy now, "I don't say anything could be
+fairer--in its right time. If you'll go to bed and to sleep----"
+
+"Senator, delays are dangerous. I might get the cholera. The general
+might get it. Or some other trouble might crop up and sort o' separate
+us."
+
+Ah! It flashed into the senator's mind that California, though meaning
+all he said, had in full view the Gilmore-Harriet affair and that this
+was a move in that, a move to checkmate. His countermove had to be
+prompt; some one was coming up the nearest steps. "My dear sir, there
+_is_ another trouble; serious, imminent, and almost sure to involve our
+friend Hugh in a vital mistake--Why, general, I thought you, at least,
+was asleep."
+
+"Sss-enator, I was. I mmm-erely had not und-ressed. Have you fff-ound
+that young man?"
+
+"Not yet, general. Let's go see him together. I want to see you, too,
+for just a moment, if these gentlemen will excuse me that long."
+
+"Mr. Hugh's with the first clerk, yonder by the bell," said the gold
+hunter. "We'll wait here, eh?"
+
+The general wanted to reply, but "I wish you would," responded the
+senator and hurried him away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+KANGAROO POINT
+
+
+Aboard the _Votaress_ was a gentle, retiring lady, large and fair, whom
+both Hugh and Ramsey had liked from the first, yet whose acquaintance
+they had made very slowly and quite separately. She was a parson's wife,
+who had never seen a play, a game of cards, or a ball, danced a dance,
+read a novel, tasted wine, or worn a jewel. She had four handsome,
+decorous, well-freckled children, two boys, two girls.
+
+At table, until the married pairs of Vicksburg, Yazoo, and Milliken's
+Bend had gone ashore, she had not sat with the foremost dozen, although
+she and the bishop spoke often together and were always "sister" and
+"brother." Her near neighbors at the board had been the Carthaginians
+and Napoleonites, and it was through them that she had met the Gilmores.
+To Ramsey and Hugh she had been made known by her children, one boy and
+girl having fallen wildly in love with the young lady's red curls, and
+the other two with Hugh and his frown.
+
+The Gilmores' hearts she had won largely by the way in which her talks
+with them revealed the sweet charities of a soul unwarped by the
+tyrannous prohibitions under which she had been "born and raised" and to
+which she was still loyal; and she had crowned the conquest by a gentle,
+inflexible refusal to "brother" John the Baptist. In their lively minds
+she reawakened the age-old issue between artist and pietist. Said the
+amused Gilmore:
+
+"Humiliate me? Not in the least. She only humbles me; she's such a
+beautiful example of----"
+
+"Yes, but, goodness, don't say it here!" said his wife. "Harriet" and
+the exhorter were already trouble enough.
+
+Nevertheless, "What lovely types of character," insisted Gilmore, "come
+often, _so_ often, from ugly types of faith!"
+
+The wife flinched and looked about but he persisted: "So much better, my
+love--this is only my humble tribute to her--so _much_ better is
+religion, even her religion, without the liberal arts than the liberal
+arts without religion. Faith is the foundation, they are the upper
+works."
+
+"Dear, you should have been a preacher!"
+
+"No, I'd always be preaching that one sermon. If I didn't tell it to
+you, I'd have to tell it to her, or make you tell her."
+
+Mrs. Gilmore had not told her, but between the two women, across the
+gulf between them, there had grown such a commerce of silent esteem that
+neither Hugh nor Ramsey knew which one's modest liberalism to admire
+most. To Ramsey it was nothing against the matron that she was not
+nursing the immigrant sick. Only Madame Hayle was allowed to do that,
+and the parson's wife, being quite without madame's art of doing as she
+pleased, had had to submit conscience and compassions to the captain's
+forbiddal, repeated by the commodore and Hugh. But after the play she
+had insisted, "strict orders or none, and whether her children were four
+or forty-four," on entering the service of the busy Gilmores, "no matter
+how," and was now, with old Joy, in the pilot-house, a most timely
+successor to the actor's wife in the social care of Ramsey.
+
+For to Ramsey, in this first bereavement of her life, sleep was as
+abhorrent as if her brother's burial were already at hand. Grief was
+good, for grief was love. Sleep was heartlessness. Moreover, in sleep,
+only in sleep, there was no growth. Of course, that was not true; only
+yesterday and the day before she had grown consciously between evening
+and morning, grown wonderfully. But she had forgotten that and in every
+fibre of her being felt a frenzy for growth, for getting on, like the
+frenzy of a bird left behind by the flock. All the boat's human life,
+all its majestic going--led on by the stars--and especially all those by
+whose command or guidance it went, made for growth. So, too, did this
+dear Mrs. So-and-so, who could so kindly understand how one in deep
+sorrow may go on seeing the drollery of things. Grief, love, solace,
+growth, she was all of them in one. If she, Ramsey, might neither nurse
+the sick with her mother nor watch with Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet," here
+was this dear, fair lady with the tenderest, most enlightening words of
+faith and comfort that ever had fallen on her ears; words never too
+eager or too many, but always just in time and volume to satisfy grief's
+fitful questionings.
+
+For refuge they had tried every quarter of these upper decks; now paced
+them, now stood, now sat, and had found each best in its turn; but such
+open-air seclusion itself drew notice, made notice more felt, and so the
+dusk of the pilot-house had soon been found best of all. It remained so
+now--while the great chimneys out forward breathed soothingly, and a
+mile astern glimmered the _Westwood_, and a mile ahead glimmered the
+_Antelope_, and here among the few occupants of the visitors' bench
+there drifted a soft, alluring gossip about each newly turned bend of
+the most marvellous of rivers. To nestle back in its larboard corner
+while now some one came up and in and now some one slipped down and out,
+and while ever the pilot's head and shoulders and the upper spokes of
+his vigilant wheel stood outlined against the twinkling sky and rippling
+air, was like resting one's head on the _Votaress's_ bosom.
+
+And yet another reason made sleep unthinkable. He who had said, "I need
+you," was awake, was on watch. Now that the feud, blessed thought, was
+all off, sworn off, and a lingering mistrust of the twins seemed quite
+unsisterly, probably that need of her, or illusion of need, had passed.
+Well, if so he ought to say so! For here were great cares and dangers
+yet. The river was out of all its bounds. Most of those bounds
+themselves and the great plantations behind them were under the swirling
+deluge. The waters of Scrubgrass Bend, for instance, were crosscutting
+over Scrubgrass Towhead in one league-wide sheet, and Islands
+Seventy-this-and-that and Islands Sixty-that-and-this were under them to
+their tree-tops. These things might be less fearful in fact than in
+show, or might be a matter wherein it was only a trifle more imbecile to
+think of her helping than in some others. Yet here were officers and
+servants of the boat busy out of turn and omitting routine duties
+unfortunate to omit and which she might perform if they would but let
+her. She noticed the presence of both pilots at once--Watson at the
+wheel, Ned on the bench. No wonder, with so awesome a charge; guiding a
+boat like this, teeming with human souls and driven pell-mell through
+such a war of elemental forces in desert darkness, with never a beacon
+light from point to point, from hour to hour; running every chute, with
+a chute behind nearly every point or island, and the vast bends looping
+on each other like the folds of a python and but little more to be
+trusted.
+
+And here was this "Harriet" affair, a care and danger that as yet
+smouldered, but at any moment, with or without aid of the twins, might
+blaze. No one mentioned it, but you could smell it like smoke. And here
+was that supreme care and danger, the plague, with all the earlier
+precautions against it dropped, and with its constant triple question:
+Who next of the sick? Who next of the well? Who next on either of the
+decks below?
+
+Two or three times Hugh came, sat awhile, spoke rarely, and went out.
+What a spontaneous new deference every one accorded him and with what a
+simple air of habitude he received it, though it seemed to mark him for
+bereavement as well as for command! Why did he come? Why did he go?
+wondered Ramsey. Not that she would hinder him, coming or going. She
+could not guess that one chief object was care of her. She could only
+recall how lately they two had stood behind the footlights and sung
+their nonsense rhymes, partners in, and justified by, one brave,
+merciful purpose. Ought he to let care, danger, and grief, as soon as
+they had become acutely hers and his, drive him and her apart and strike
+him dumb to her, as dumb as a big ship dropping her on a desert shore
+and sailing away? Various subtleties of manner in others on the bench
+convinced her that they were thinking of him and her and thinking these
+same questions. What right had he to bring that upon her? Once, as he
+went out, somebody unwittingly stung her keenly by remarking, to no one
+in particular, that it was hard to see what should keep him so busy.
+
+"D'you know," retorted Ned, "what running a boat is?"
+
+"Why, yes, it's making things spin so smooth you can't see 'em spin,
+ain't it?"
+
+"Right. Ever fly a kite? Not with yo' eyes shet, hey? Well, a boat's a
+hundred kites. Ain't she, Watsy?"
+
+"Two hundred," said Watson, at the wheel.
+
+"But Mr. Hugh ain't actually running this boat, is he?"
+
+"I ain't said he wuz," replied Ned, and----
+
+"He ain't a-runnin' no other," said Watson.
+
+For an instant Ramsey was all pride for him they exalted; but in the
+next instant a wave of resentment went through her as if their vaunting
+were his; as if her pride were his own confessed, colossal vanity; as if
+the price of his uplift were her belittlement. Never mind, he should
+pay! Absurd, absurd; but she was harrowingly tired, lonely, idle,
+grief-burdened, and desolate, and absurdity itself was relief. He should
+pay, let his paying cost her double. Somehow, in some feminine, minute,
+pinhole way, she would deflate him, wing him, bring him down, before he
+should soar another round. With old Joy at her feet, in the dusk of her
+corner beyond Mrs. So-and-so, the parson's wife; she allowed herself a
+poor, bitter-sweet smile.
+
+Each time when Hugh had come back to the bench, room had been hurriedly
+made for him next the parson's wife--"stabboard side"--who, speaking for
+all, promptly began to interrogate him, her first question always being
+as to his father's condition, which did not improve. Making room on the
+bench made room in the conversation--decoying pauses hopefully designed
+to lure him into saying something, anything, to Ramsey, or her to him;
+but always the kind trap had gone unsprung. Two or three times,
+obviously, Mrs. So-and-so's inquiries had first been Ramsey's to her; as
+when one of them elicited the fact that the next turn would be Horseshoe
+Cut-off and Kangaroo Point; and once, at length, after twice failing to
+believe the ear she bent to Ramsey's murmur, she said audibly:
+
+"Ask him, dear; ask him yourself."
+
+Every one waited and presently Hugh remarked:
+
+"I'll answer if I can."
+
+"I'd rather," faltered Ramsey, "ask John the Baptist."
+
+The unlucky mention took no evident effect on any one. If that was the
+snub she would have to try again.
+
+"I can ask him for you," said Hugh. "He's up, expecting to leave us at
+Helena."
+
+"No, thank you," she sighed, "you're too awfully busy. It won't make any
+real difference if I never find out."
+
+"Won't sink the boat to ask," drawled Watson; but she remained silent
+till Hugh inquired:
+
+"Are you sure I can't tell you?"
+
+"Oh, you can!" came from Ramsey's dark corner. "But--with the whole boat
+in your care--we oughtn't to ask you things we don't have to know."
+
+"Lard! belch it out," urged the innocent Ned, taking her in earnest; but
+again she was silent.
+
+"Well?" said Hugh.
+
+"Oh, well, are there many--? Oh, it ain't important."
+
+"Why, missy," muttered old Joy, "you's dess natchiully bleeds to ax it
+now."
+
+"Yes, dear," said the parson's wife, "let's have it."
+
+"Well--are there many--? Oh, it's not--are there--are there many
+kangaroos on Kangaroo Point?"
+
+At any outer edge of civilization a joke may be as hard and practical as
+ship's bread, yet pass. Amid the general mirth and while Hugh pulled a
+bell cord which made no jingle down in the engine-room and had never
+before been observed by Ramsey, his reply was prompt and brief but too
+gently solemn for her ear; and when she got Mrs. So-and-so to repeat it
+to her it was merely to the effect that, though kangaroos were few on
+Kangaroo Point, she ought to see the wealth of horseshoes in Horseshoe
+Cut-off.
+
+Oh, kind answer! that excused her frivolity by sharing it. Kind beyond
+her utmost merit. She did not say so, but she thought it, sitting dumb,
+in sudden tears, and burning with shame for her blindness to the hour's
+fearful realities. While Ned stepped to Watson's side to speak
+critically of the _Antelope_, now shining on their starboard bow, Hugh,
+near the door, dropped a quiet request to the two or three other
+occupants of the bench and they followed him out.
+
+"Why do they go?" she asked, fancying them as much appalled at her as
+she herself was, and when the sweet lady could not enlighten her the
+pilots offered a guess that two had gone to relieve Mrs. Gilmore and her
+maid and that Hugh would presently join the first clerk by the bell.
+
+"There he is now," said Ned, actually expecting her to rise and look
+down. But she sat still and watched the _Antelope_, wishing her far
+better speed in view of the letters she carried. So came thoughts of the
+long telegraphic despatch to her father which Hugh must by this time
+have written for her mother, as agreed between them, and which was to be
+sent, in the morning, from Memphis.
+
+The door opened and Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet" came in.
+
+"Well," softly inquired the actor's wife, "how do we come on?" and
+Ramsey answered as softly, yet taking pains that Ned and Watson should
+overhear:
+
+"I've disgraced myself."
+
+"Mmm!" mumbled old Joy in corroboration.
+
+"What have you done now?"
+
+"Nothing. I don't _do_ anything. Only said something, something so silly
+I can't even apologize."
+
+"To whom?"
+
+"The baby elephant," said Ramsey and laughed a note or two. The door
+opened again and Hugh's bell call was explained by the entrance of the
+texas tender and another white-jacket, each bearing a large tray of cups
+and plates, hot coffee, and hot toasted rolls and butter. She hadn't
+dreamed she was so hungry.
+
+Watson stared back from the wheel with grim pretence of surprise. "Who
+sent that here?"
+
+"Mr. Hugh Co'teney sawnt it, suh," said the tender, arranging the cups
+on the bench. "Yass'm," he repeated to the grateful ladies, "Mr. Hugh,
+yass'm."
+
+"Oh! Mr. Hugh," replied Watson. "He must 'a' gave you the order before
+he come up here this last time."
+
+"Yass, suh, but say don't fetch it tell he ring."
+
+"Six cups," counted the pilot, "six--You go down with Miss Hayle's
+compliments to Mr. Courteney, and----"
+
+"No-o-o-o!" sang Ramsey, running up the scale.
+
+But Watson was firm. "Boy, you heard me, didn't you?"
+
+Ned, with his eyes down on the bell, interposed: "Hold on, Wats', three
+into one you can't. Hugh's in a confab with the senator and the
+general."
+
+Ramsey, eating like a hunter come home, suddenly stood. "Now look,
+everybody, at the _Antelope_. She's right abeam. Ain't she abeam, Mr.
+Watson?"
+
+Watson drawled that she wasn't anything else, and Ramsey failed to see
+that he saw her cast an anxious glance down to the bell and the
+captain's chair beyond it.
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+"DELTA WILL DO"
+
+
+In Horseshoe Cut-off the course was east. When Ned directed Ramsey's
+sight to its upper end, where the flood came into view from the north,
+she feared he would name the point it turned; but he forbore and she
+gazed on the thin old moon off in the southeast.
+
+"Make out yan bunch o' sycamores?" was his nearest venture. The
+sycamores were on the point. Across the river where it ran concealed
+beyond those sycamores--he went on to tell--at the up-stream end of a
+low pencil stroke of forest between the head of the cut-off and the
+eastern stars, was another turn, Friar's Point. But her interest in
+points had faded, and whether friars abounded on that one or not she
+took pains not to inquire.
+
+Instead, she was about to ask the cause of a strange silvering in the
+sky close over the black pencil stroke, when, as on Sunday, the morning
+star sprang into view and cast its tremulous beam on the waters. She
+gazed on the white splendor as genuinely enthralled as ever, though at
+the same time her eye easily, eagerly took in the first clerk, the
+senator, the general, and Hugh, standing about the captain's empty
+chair. They loomed as dimly as the sycamores, yet when a fifth figure
+drew near them she knew by his fine gait that it was the actor, relieved
+from the captain's sick-room by "California" and the cub pilot. A
+gesture from Hugh stopped him some yards off and he stood leaning on the
+bell.
+
+For the actor was their theme. This was plain to every one in the
+pilot-house, the two waiters being gone. A remnant of the food was being
+consumed by "Harriet" and Joy. All the others were observing, like
+Ramsey, the morning star and the five men under it. Among her own and
+Mrs. Gilmore's draperies Ramsey found that lady's hand. Except a few low
+words between the pilots, conversation failed. Without leave-taking Ned
+left. Presently here he was beneath, on the skylight roof, and now he
+joined the actor. Ramsey let go the caressed hand and moved nearer to
+Watson. While he and she gazed far up the stream, yet watched the six
+men below, he repeated Ned's question.
+
+"See that clump o' big sycamores a mite to lab-board o' where we're
+p'inted?"
+
+She didn't believe she did.
+
+"Well," he persisted, "that's it."
+
+"That's what?"
+
+"Why," said Watson, whose only aim was to set her once more at ease,
+"that's the p'int you----"
+
+"Humph." She turned to the two ladies, who, with their eyes frankly
+below, were counselling together. "Let's go down there ourselves," she
+said, but they whispered on.
+
+"Better not," put in Watson; "you can't help."
+
+His kind intent did not keep the words from hurting. With a faint toss
+she said:
+
+"I hoped we might be some hindrance."
+
+She laughed in her old manner, dropped her glance again on the two men
+and the four, and hearkened. So did the two ladies beside her. They
+could all see who spoke below and could hear each voice in turn, though
+they could not catch what was said. The only sustained speeches were the
+senator's. The general's interpellations were little regarded. The
+silent pair at the bell heard everything of essential bearing.
+
+The consciously belated senator had begun with rhetorical regrets for
+the captain's and the commodore's illness and with paternal enthusiasm
+for those on whom it had brought such grave new cares. His own
+sympathetic share in their anxieties, he had hurried on to say, had
+robbed him of sleep and driven him up here solely for this interview. On
+the way he had chanced upon the general in the----
+
+"Sssame ffframe of mind," the general had said, while the senator
+pressed as straight on as the _Votaress_.
+
+As far as the interests involved were private to this boat, he said, her
+officers and owners were entitled to keep them so and to be let alone in
+the management of them. But when that management became by its nature a
+vital part of an acute public problem--a national political issue--he
+felt bound, both as the Courteneys' private well-wisher and as a public
+servant, to urge such treatment of the matter as its national importance
+demanded. A spark, he said, might burn a city! A question of private
+ownership not worth a garnishee might set a whole nation afire! The
+arrival of Gilmore at the bell threw him into a sudden heat:
+
+"My God! Mr. Courteney--Mr. clerk--_I_ shan't offer to lay hands on
+_any_ man; not I. All _I_ ask is that you take yours off--of three. My
+dear sirs, equally as your true friend and as a lover of our troubled
+country I _beg_ you to liberate those citizens of the sovereign State of
+Arkansas whom you hold in unlawful duress, and to hear before witnesses
+the plea they regard as righteous and of national concern."
+
+The sight of Ned joining Gilmore heated him again: "Gentlemen, if you
+will do that, now, at once, you will save the fortunes of this superb
+boat, her honored owners, and their fleet. If you don't you wreck them
+forever before this day dawns. And you may--great heavens, gentlemen,
+you _may_ see the first bloodshed of sectional strife."
+
+"K-'tional ssstrife!" growled the general.
+
+The clerk smiled. "Why, senator, those men don't go beyond Helena. They
+leave us there, before sun-up."
+
+"Precisely, sir! And if they're not set free before you enter Helena
+Reach, or even pass Friar's Point, you may as well not free them at
+all."
+
+Hugh glanced at the clerk as if to speak. The clerk nodded and in the
+pilot-house they saw Hugh begin:
+
+"Mr. Senator, suppose we do that?"
+
+"You would do me honor, sir, and yourselves more."
+
+"Of course the watchmen of this boat watch."
+
+As Hugh said this the cub pilot came from the captain's room with some
+word to Gilmore, who, though yearning to stay, left him and Ned and
+hastened back to the texas.
+
+Meantime the senator: "I should hope so, sir. I hope every one on watch
+watches, sir."
+
+"They do. And so we know that you and the general know, perfectly, that
+the same men who want those three released want Mr. Gilmore put ashore.
+Is that your wish, too?"
+
+"It is, sssir," put in the general while the senator did some rapid
+thinking. Now he too replied:
+
+"Mm--no, sir, it is not. And yet--yes, sir, it is."
+
+"Then you would advise us to do that also?"
+
+"I would advise you to do that also."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Good Lord! my young friend, to save you! you, your father, grandfather,
+boats, all, and Mr. Gilmore himself!"
+
+"How about his wife?"
+
+"And his wife. For her to be with him may help him if he goes. It can't
+if he stays." The speaker had let his voice rise. The pilot-house group
+caught his words. Also they saw the cub pilot detain Ned when he started
+forward.
+
+"Let's go down there ourselves," repeated Ramsey; but the parson's wife
+had whisperingly laid both hands on the wife of the actor, and Ramsey
+chafed to no avail.
+
+The senator's voice dropped again. "Good God, sir, you know the longer
+they're aboard the worse it will be for them, and they've got to go some
+time or at Louisville a mob will burn the _Votaress_ to the water's edge
+with them on her."
+
+The two stared at each other, the senator's mind bewailing the loss of
+each golden moment. The night was not too dark to show him the poker
+face fitting its nickname insufferably. But not until its owner spoke
+again did he frown--to hide an exultant surprise.
+
+"They could leave their maid, you think, with Madame Hayle?" was Hugh's
+astonishing inquiry. The senator had expected of him nothing short of a
+grim defiance.
+
+"They could--they can," replied both he and the soldier. "That'll
+satisfy everybody." The general saw only the surface of the proposition
+but the senator perceived in it all the opportunity their two modest
+accomplices of the boiler deck asked. That pair and their adherents--not
+followers--you wouldn't catch them leading--they and their gathering
+adherents would construe the landing of the players as an attempt to
+deliver them out of their hands and would undertake to seize and
+maltreat the actor, at least, the moment he should be off the boat. That
+they were likely to fail was little to the senator; there would be a
+tumult, so managed as to bring Hugh to the actor's rescue, and in the
+fracas Hugh was sure of a hammering he would not only never forget but
+would discern that he owed, first and last, to him, the senator.
+
+Hugh glanced at the clerk. "You had just recommended Delta Landing." The
+clerk nodded and he turned back to the senator. "We'll be there inside
+of half an hour."
+
+"Delta will do," said the senator, his frown growing.
+
+Hugh nodded to the clerk. The clerk looked over to Ned.
+
+"Think Delta's above water?"
+
+"Oh--eyes and nose out, Watson allows."
+
+"Delta'll be all right," persisted the senator.
+
+The clerk glanced up to the pilot-house. "Mr. Watson, we'll stop at
+Delta, to put off a couple o' passengers."
+
+"Yes, sir." The group at the pilot's back gasped at each other. Then
+Ramsey gasped at him.
+
+"Oh, what does that mean?" she demanded. But his gaze remained up the
+river as he kindly replied:
+
+"What it says, I reckon. Don't fret, ladies--when you don't know what to
+do, don't do it."
+
+"Ho-o-oh!" cried Ramsey, whisking away, "I will!"
+
+"Lawd 'a' massy!" Old Joy sprang for the door, but Ramsey was already
+out on the steps and scurrying down them. On the texas roof, however,
+she took a wrong direction and lost time; slipped forward round the
+pilot-house counting on steps which were not, and never had been, out
+there. Returning she lost more by meeting old Joy in the narrow way
+between the house and the edge of the texas roof, and when at length she
+sprang away for the after end of the texas and the only stair she was
+now sure of, whom should she espy bound thither ahead of her but Mrs.
+Gilmore. In that order the three hurried down to the guards of the texas
+and forward along them by its stateroom doors.
+
+Meantime, out at the bell the clerk had left Hugh and privately sent Ned
+and the cub pilot different ways. Hugh moved a pace or two aside to
+observe the _Antelope_ out on their larboard quarter. The senator and
+the general moved with him.
+
+"She'll pass you again at Delta," remarked the senator. "You see,
+general--you see, Mr. Courteney,--at Delta they" (the players) "can very
+plausibly explain--there won't be more than two or three, if any, to
+explain to--that they're running from the cholera and want to hail the
+_Westwood_, which they won't more than just have time to do.
+
+"She won't mind taking them," he babbled on, "already having the cholera
+herself. Not many up-river boats would answer a hail from Delta, but she
+will, for she'll see they're from this boat and that it's your wish.
+There she comes round the bend now. Yes, Delta's a lot safer for 'em
+than Helena with its wharf-boat and daylight crowd and those three
+red-hots going ashore with 'em. On the _Westwood_ they can put up with
+any yarn that'll carry 'em through. They're actors and used to that sort
+o' thing."
+
+Musingly Hugh broke in: "Counting all the chances, isn't there a touch
+of cruelty in this, to the lady at least?"
+
+"Oh, now, my young friend--" the senator began to rejoin, but two men
+lounging by stopped to ask after the father and grandfather. They were
+the second engineer and his striker, presently to go on watch.
+
+Mrs. Gilmore, coming along the texas guards, met the cub pilot. He
+perched on the railing to let her pass and a few strides farther on
+began to do the same for Ramsey.
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+LOVING-KINDNESS
+
+
+Ramsey stopped and the boy's heart rose into his throat.
+
+"Whe're you going?" she asked.
+
+He pointed to a lighted door she had just come by.
+
+"First mate's room," he said.
+
+"To tell him what to do?"
+
+"Yes'm." He slid along the rail to get by her, though hungry to linger.
+
+"To do what?" she asked. "I know; to bring out John the Baptist and
+those other two men?"
+
+"Yes'm." He backed off, but the compelling power of interrogatory,
+especially of hers, retarded him.
+
+"To turn 'em loose?" she asked.
+
+He smiled ruefully. "It looks like it."
+
+"Not with their pistols on them?"
+
+"Oh, no, he's got their pistols."
+
+"How'd he get 'em?"
+
+"Oh--friendly persuasion. He's fine at that. They'll get 'em
+back--unloaded--when they land."
+
+She glanced forward after Mrs. Gilmore, and he sprang away. As the
+actor's wife neared the captain's door it opened and Gilmore himself
+came out, closing it after him warily. Either the captain was worse,
+Ramsey guessed, or the actor had received some startling message, so
+grave and hurried were the players. They moved several paces away and
+stepped down to the hurricane-deck. She let them converse a moment
+alone. At the same time the second engineer, his striker, and Ned passed
+close and went below. Now Ramsey advanced, addressing the pair in a
+smothered voice:
+
+"It's monstrous! It shan't be! It shan't be done! You shan't go!" The
+signal for landing tolled. She stopped short.
+
+But the cause of her silence was Hugh Courteney, close before her. Mrs.
+Gilmore tried to draw her back but she stood fast, repeating to him
+savagely: "It shan't be! It shan't be done! You shan't do it!"
+
+Again she ceased, as the senator and the general appeared, not with Hugh
+though from his direction, but, like Ned and his fellows, bound below.
+With a side step she brought them to a stand, saying once more to them:
+
+"It shan't be! It shan't be done! You shan't----"
+
+Both Hugh and Gilmore lifted a hand. There was a reply on the lips of
+each, but Hugh's remained unuttered. He glanced to the actor, saying:
+"Tell it."
+
+The actor told. "It is not going to be done," he said. "No owner of this
+boat, no officer, has ever promised, ordered, or intended it."
+
+Ludicrously, from the well of the neighboring stair, the heads of
+Hayle's twins rose and remained gazing. Fortunately for the dignity of
+the moment they escaped the eye of Ramsey, who, on highest tiptoe, while
+the actor still spoke, was piping incredulously:
+
+"The clerk said it!--two passengers!--to go ashore!"
+
+"He might have said five," Hugh gravely answered, while the senator and
+the general blazed with astonishment.
+
+"Five," he repeated directly to the senator; "the three whose release
+you demanded and those two scamps you made league with a bit ago on the
+boiler deck."
+
+The senator was a conflagration. "Sir, I cannot find----!"
+
+"Words?" Hugh softly interrupted. "That's fortunate. If you do you'll be
+landed on the next island."
+
+He turned away and moved to the edge of the roof. Ramsey stared at the
+three and fell back to the Gilmores, whose manner, as they returned
+half-way to the sick-room, was more grave and hurried than before. The
+engine bells were jingling, the wheels stopped. At the roof's edge, well
+forward of Hugh, appeared the first clerk, giving commands. The shore
+trees glided spectrally into the firelight of the steamer's torch
+baskets. A solitary man stood on the bank. The morning star was fading
+into the daybreak. In the pilot-house Watson pulled his bell-ropes to
+back and to stop again, while veiled in its lingering dusk between him
+and the parson's wife "Harriet" stood at a closed window, a vigilant
+watcher of every movement below.
+
+With the usual deck-hand on its outer end the stage hung half its length
+over the narrowing water. On its inboard half, attended at one side by
+the first mate and at their backs by a knot of white-jackets with hands
+and arms full of baggage, waited the exhorter, his two champions, and
+the sporting pair, outwardly well content, however large or dark the
+retributions they were inwardly promising themselves. The twins had come
+up from the stair, meeting the senator and the general and holding them
+in a close counsel that kept the four scowling. These things the maid at
+Watson's side noted so intently as almost to forget him and the lady
+next her. She marked the actor go once more into the captain's room, the
+Californian come out to Mrs. Gilmore and Ramsey, and the three move
+toward Hugh with old Joy in their wake. Before they had quite reached
+him he turned and addressed the actor's wife. She drew back
+apologetically, the Californian doing the same, but by word and sign
+seemed to bid Ramsey stay and speak for her.
+
+As if to himself, but really to the two beside him, Watson murmured:
+"Right you air, Mr. Hugh Courteney."
+
+"How is he right?" asked the lady, though she most likely, and the maid
+certainly, understood.
+
+"He's telling her," said the pilot, "that it'll simplify matters for her
+and her husband and this girl here to sort o' keep out o' the limelight
+a spell."
+
+The surmise seemed good, for Mrs. Gilmore and "California" took stand
+where the great chimney on that side hid them from forecastle and shore,
+while they still could see Hugh and Ramsey conversing, she pleadingly,
+he with few words, mostly negatives. Ned came back into the pilot-house.
+The parson's wife moved from Watson toward him to ask in undertone why
+the landing was being made so slowly. The boat seemed to hover and
+hesitate. Watson, at the wheel, talked on, pretending not to notice that
+the maid was his only listener.
+
+"A man," he drawled, "gets to hear a right smart chance with his eyes,
+in a pilot-house. Puts two an' two together a lot more'n he does when
+he's a-usin' his y-ears. Now she's a-beggin' him"--meaning Ramsey and
+Hugh--"not to drop them fellows ashore. Partly that's for the fellows'
+own sakes, but likewise it's also for the play-actors, because they're
+generous, like her, and because, no less, it's a-putt'n' the play-actors
+themselves in a right funny fix with the rest o' this vain world, to
+make five Jonahs on their account. But she's a-barkin' up the wrong
+stump an' she knows it. She knows there's somebody else's account
+they're bein' put off for; somebody she's as friendly to as what he is,
+and which for their sakes--his and hern--if for no other--I'm as
+friendly to as what they air. Provid'n', however, that that somebody is
+as friendly to them, every way, as what I am." He turned sharply. "Is
+she?"
+
+And "Harriet" looked straight into his eyes and said inaudibly: "Yes."
+
+As the glance of both returned to the scene below she was mindful that
+Ned had not yet quite satisfied the query of the lady at his elbow, why
+the wheels of the _Votaress_ were turning barely enough to keep her from
+drifting.
+
+"You see the _Antelope_?" he asked.
+
+She saw the _Antelope_, once more ahead, swan-white in the new daylight
+on a great breadth of water which she had earlier heard him tell Ramsey
+was Montezuma Bend.
+
+"And you see the _Westwood_ down yonder. Well, when she gets up there
+we'll stop killin' time. But why we're killin' it--ask the clerk--or
+guess. It's dead easy."
+
+Not given to guessing, she dropped her eyes again on the various groups
+beneath with Hugh and Ramsey central among them and did not even see
+that Hugh was answering the same riddle from Ramsey.
+
+"Because if we keep these men aboard a few minutes longer," he was
+saying, "there'll be no way for them to reach Helena before noon
+to-morrow, when we'll be----"
+
+"'Way beyond Memphis," said the river-wise Ramsey.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And they can't send any troublesome word up the river that can overtake
+us," she ventured on, and he assented.
+
+"And may I tell the Gilmores that's as much for Phyllis as for them?"
+
+"I wish you would--and then would go to your rest."
+
+"Humph," she faintly soliloquized and with no other rejoinder remained
+looking down on the stage, as he did. It was so near the bank at last
+that the men waiting on its inner end moved a step or two forward.
+
+"Why are all those five put off together?" she asked.
+
+"Because," he replied in his absent manner, "the gamblers will try to
+keep the other three quiet."
+
+"Mr. Hugh, you'll be off watch now soon, won't you?"
+
+"Yes." (Still no lifting of eyes by either.)
+
+"And then you'll nurse your father, won't you?"
+
+"I cannot! I'm too ignorant."
+
+"Then what will you--shall you--do?"
+
+"Just stay--on watch."
+
+She stood a moment more, comforted to be on watch with him and thinking
+sadly of all there was to be on watch for. Then she heard Julian softly
+call her name. Without looking his way she started back for Mrs. Gilmore
+and the gold hunter, but the brother overtook her.
+
+"Ramsey." She faced him. "Ramsey"--his tone was thin--"when you were
+talking just now with that pusillanimous whelp, and neither of you
+looking at the other, did he say anything of a confidential nature?"
+
+His scrutiny read confirmation in her fearless eyes. When she would have
+spoken her utterance failed and, unable to do anything else half so
+well, she laughed.
+
+"You can still do that!" His hint was of Basile.
+
+"A little," she tinkled again, though her eyes ran full.
+
+"Ramsey, did he--over there--just now--that reptile--say
+anything--tender?"
+
+She flared rose-red, gazed down ashore, dropped her voice to a key he
+had never heard, and said, wondering why she said it: "Mr. Courteney is
+a gentleman."
+
+She tried to lift her eyes to the inquisitor, but her irrepressible
+twitter came again and she had to turn away to the big chimney. He
+clinched his teeth.
+
+"Sis," he half whispered as she began to go, "listen." She glanced back.
+"Sis, you may snigger at us all day or ten days; you may listen to him
+for a year or for ten; but, no matter what we swore to last night, the
+day you accept Hugh Courteney's hand we'll kill him if we're alive."
+
+Old Joy flinched and moaned but Ramsey stared at him benumbed. She
+caught no rational grasp of his meaning; only stood and with
+immeasurable speed and a kind of earthquake sickness, in the space of
+one long breath, dreamed his words over and over. She felt neither
+fright nor horror, as she would as soon as thought could clear. Yet one
+word shed light, quickened her inner vision and gave it a reach, a
+forward range, it had never known. "Ten years," he had said, and for the
+first time in her life, as one might come suddenly into some vast
+possession, she took the future into her present by years instead of
+days.
+
+"Jule," called Lucian, from between the senator and the general. Julian
+glanced back and Ramsey started off. But she stopped again with a fresh
+shock as a high-pitched yell rose from the shore below. There the
+exhorter, stepping from the stage to the ground, had poured his voice
+into the woods and now turned to the boat and let loose his tongue:
+
+"I'm the hewolf an' wilecat o' th' 'Azoo Delta! I'm the alligatoh an'
+snappin' turkle o' the Arkansass! I'm the horn-ed an' yalleh-belly
+catfish o' the Mississip'! Glory, hallelu'! the sunburnt,
+chill-an'-feveh, rip-saw, camp-meetin', buckshot, kickin'-mule
+civilization whah-in I got my religion is good enough fo' me, all
+high-steppin', niggeh-stealin' play-actohs an' flounced and friskin',
+beau-ketchered Natchez brick-tops to the contrary notwithstayndin'! For
+I'm a meek an' humble follower o' the Lawd Gawd A'mighty, which may the
+same eternally an' _ee_-sentially damn yo' cowa'dly soul, you
+stump-tail' little Hugh Co'teney up yandeh with yo' Gawd-fo'sakened,
+punkin face an' yo' sawed-off statu'e!"
+
+The gamblers sprang to hush him but the two "Arkansas killers" stepped
+between and while the _Votaress_, backing out into the wake of the
+_Westwood_, left the one pair insisting and the other protesting, the
+exhorter settled the issue by breaking into song:
+
+     "'Though num'r-ous hosts uv migh-tye foes,
+      Though airth an' hell, my way op-pose,
+      He safe-lye leadns my soudl aa-logn:
+      His lov-ign-kide-ness, oh, how strogn!
+        His lov-ign-kide-ness! lov-ign-kide-ness!
+        His lov-ign-ki-i-i-ide-ness, oh, how strogn!'"
+
+
+
+
+LII
+
+LOVE RUNS ROUGH BUT RUNS ON
+
+
+Turning east in the upper arm of Saint Francis Bend, with the mouth of
+Saint Francis River just swinging out of sight astern and Helena an
+hour's run behind, the _Votaress_ faced the rising sun.
+
+Before the eyes of Hugh and Ramsey it soared gloriously into a sky
+reddened not by presage of rain but by the smoke of the _Antelope_ and
+_Westwood_. The intervening shore and waters glowed and quivered in
+exquisite tints that renewed the world's youth and quite ignored all
+human, especially all young human, troubles. Suddenly it lighted up the
+black chimneys and scapes and white pilot-houses of the two boats ahead,
+as, a league or so apart, they came doubling back northwest, up Walnut
+Bend, to save in Bordeaux Chute the wide circuit of Bordeaux and Whiskey
+Islands, to hurry on round the long north-and-south loop of Council Bend
+and so have done with one of the most tortuous forty miles of the
+Mississippi.
+
+We mention these things because Hugh and Ramsey were students of them,
+now and then together but never quite comfortable so, and now and then
+apart but never quite comfortable so. Everywhere the boat's people were
+awake. On the freight deck the crew squatted in circles, eating from
+tubs. Away aft on the roof, from their quarters in the far end of the
+texas, the whole flock of white-jackets had risen like gulls and were
+down in the cook-house, pantry, and cabin rattling the crockery till it
+echoed in every waking stomach. Already the _Votaress's_ divine breath
+smelt of coffee, real coffee--_chaud comme l'enfer et noir comme le
+diable--smelt_ of it, as, we fear, we shall never smell it again in this
+trust-ridden world. It was Ned's watch at the wheel. Watson and his cub
+had turned in. So had the first clerk. So had the twins, the senator,
+the general. Few of us, at that hour, not having slept, are skylarks.
+
+Yet the actor and the Californian still held vigil by the captain's bed.
+Joy still hovered after her "young missy," and "Harriet" after Mrs.
+Gilmore and the parson's wife. Ramsey and "Harriet" betrayed a vivid
+interest in each other, a wonderfully generous thing on the maid's part,
+Ramsey thought, the two being who they were. The commodore was better,
+but the captain was not, and together or apart Hugh and Ramsey were more
+consciously the prisoners, albeit the undaunted prisoners, of care and
+sorrow than of anything else. When their feeling for the river's lore
+drew them, by a spiritual gravitation, to a common centre--to learn, for
+instance, that Council Bend and Council Island were named for one of
+those historic "confabs" between the white man and the red which
+shouldered the red brother once and forever away from the sunrise and
+across the great river--that centre of gravity was the captain's chair,
+their tutor the first mate.
+
+Under the circumstances we hardly need begrudge a line or two more to
+tell how, as far back as Delta, the _Votaress_ had begun to meet the
+Louisville Saturday evening packets and to receive and return their
+special salutes. One was a Hayle boat and one a Courteney. Such moments
+were refreshing. Inquiry and information flowed through them as
+naturally and beguilingly as a brook through a meadow and gave Hugh
+opportunity to contemplate incidentally the play of air and light in
+Ramsey's curls without her having the slightest suspicion of him!--gave
+her chances to ply him with questions in autobiography and social
+casuistry and to enjoy keenly the ridiculous majesty of his eyes and
+voice, while the two dear chaperons talked apart as obliviously as if
+she were merely asking him how deep the whiskey was in Whiskey Chute.
+
+In the long run from Commerce to Norfolk came breakfast. Commerce was
+another case of infant-city still-birth, Norfolk was less. Breakfast,
+double-ranked, stoop-shouldered, mute: beefsteak and fried onions its
+solar centre, with hot rolls for planets; Hugh at the ladies' table, the
+first clerk at the gentlemen's. Then the boiler deck, toothpicks,
+cigars, breezes, armchairs, spittoons, the sad news of the two deaths
+up-stairs, the ugly news of the five passengers set ashore and the
+reason thereof. Men spat straight and hard as they heard or told the
+latter item, yet with tacit unanimity awaited the re-emergence of the
+still secluded senator, general, and twins.
+
+By Hugh's unsmiling forethought Madame Hayle, Ramsey, and the Gilmores
+breakfasted in the pilot-house. With "Harriet" close to her elbow,
+Ramsey ate at a window, standing, to watch the gliding shores and floods
+and privily cross-examine, again in autobiography and at printing-press
+speed, the willing maid-servant. At Island Fifty-Two another boat, the
+_Shooting Star_, streamed by. At a plantation and wood-yard the
+_Votaress_ paused to restock with dairy and kitchen-garden supplies and
+to lash to her either side a thirty-cord wood flat, and now swept on
+with the foam twenty feet broad at the square front of each while the
+deck-hands trotted aboard under their great shoulder loads by one narrow
+hook plank and came leaping back for more, and the loaders and pilers
+chanted and chorussed:
+
+       "Oh, Shan-a-do'e, I loves yo' daught-eh--
+            Ah! ha! roll-in' riveh!--
+        Oh, ef she don't love me she'd ought teh--
+  Ah! ha!... bound away!... faw de wile ... Mis-'ou-ree!"
+
+The foam and the swift wooding-up gave an illusion of speed to the boat
+herself, and in what seemed no time at all the empty scows were dropping
+away astern; but it was farewell for good and all to the _Westwood_, the
+_Antelope_. And now Cat Island, its bend, its chute; Cow Island, its
+bend, its chute; Horn Lake, a prehistoric loop of twelve miles, reduced
+to three by Horn Lake Bend----
+
+"Come, Ramsey." The call smote like a buffet. Memphis was almost in
+sight. In the southwestern corner of Tennessee, just above Tennessee
+Chute and the northwestern corner of Mississippi, was the fourth of the
+Chickasaw Bluffs. On it sat Memphis, a city with churches, banks, and
+the "electromagnetic telegraph." Its twelve thousand people of that day
+are a hundred and thirty-five thousand now and have taken in almost out
+of remembrance the small settlement of Pickering, or Fort Pickering, on
+the down-stream end of the bluff, where the _Votaress_ that beautiful
+morning landed and laid to rest Madame Marburg, the bishop, and Basile.
+
+Aboard the _Votaress_, as in Tennessee Chute she faced again the morning
+sun, two scenes were enacted at the same time. One took place below, on
+the fore-castle; the other above and just aft of it, on the boiler deck.
+In the lower there was but a single pine box, in the upper there were
+two. In the lower stood the black-gowned priest, the two white-bonneted,
+gray-robed sisters, Otto Marburg alone, and here a mass of immigrants
+and there a majority of the crew. The upper scene included all the cabin
+passengers--ladies seated--and half the boat's family. In fulfilment of
+Basile's wish Hugh read: "I am the resurrection and the life." By Hugh's
+invitation, given beforehand, the senator delivered a eulogy on the
+bishop and added such tender praises of the boy, whom every one had
+liked so early and so well, and gilded them with such delicate allusions
+to the heroism of his mother, that few eyes were dry. The very twins
+wept, though there was a touch of rage in their tears. By choice of the
+parson's wife and sweetly led by her, they sang: "I would not live
+alway." With streaming eyes Ramsey remembered how yearningly the poor
+lad had clung to this dear earth, and she could only sit silent and
+modestly wonder how anybody, under any fate that left them power to sing
+at all, could sit there--stand there--on that boat, that river, in the
+splendor of that sun, the beauty of that landscape, and call life a "few
+lurid mornings."
+
+A third scene occurred as the boat, facing westward, reached the head of
+President's Island, fairest island in all the river, and coming into
+full view of Memphis, a short league beyond, tolled her solemn bell and
+landed at Pickering. Others on the lower deck besides Madame Marburg had
+passed away in the night but had either been laid under the wet sands of
+the water's edge in some wild grove down-stream or were not quite in
+time, so to speak, for this landing. Contemplated from each deck by a
+numerous gathering and from the pilot-house by Watson, Mrs. Gilmore, and
+"Harriet," a small procession followed the priest and the three
+boxes--borne by white-jackets--ashore and out of sight where a small
+wooden church spire, inland behind the bluff, peered over its crest.
+Madame Hayle leaned on Julian's arm, Ramsey on Lucian's, Hugh walked
+with Marburg, the senator with the general, the first clerk with Ned,
+the Californian with the cub pilot. By and by they returned, outwardly
+unburdened, and the moment the last tread, the Californian's, was on the
+stage, Watson's bells jingled and the _Votaress_ swung out and moved up
+to the Memphis wharf-boat. But there Hugh, the first clerk, the steward,
+and the doctor went up into town, and it was a long hour before they
+reappeared and the black smoke billowed again from her chimneys and she
+backed out and started up and away around "Paddy's Hen and Chickens."
+
+The "family of that name"--to quote Watson--were a group of four islands
+so entitled from earliest flatboat days, clustered in the river, just
+above the town. Since that day two of the chicks have flown, or grown,
+to the mainland, and the mother bird is now merely the "Old Hen" with
+one "Chicken Island," while "Poor Paddy," we are told, "works on the
+railway."
+
+In its first forty leagues above Memphis the river went--has gone--still
+goes--through more violent writhings than in any like part of its whole
+course, running almost twenty crazy miles to make two sane ones--made
+finally, in the republic's hundredth year, by Centennial Cut-off. On an
+average there was an island for every four miles of river, or, say,
+three for every hour of the _Votaress's_ progress, and in this high
+water she was running all their chutes. A great resource such incidents
+were, on that particular day, to Ramsey. At any moment when conversation
+needed to be started, stopped, or turned, here was her chance. Some of
+the islands covered many square miles, contained large plantations, and
+had names as well as numbers. Island Forty, reached about ten o'clock,
+was also Beef Island. Number Thirty-eight, which they began to pass half
+an hour later, was Brandywine Island. To pass Island Thirty-five on its
+short side at full speed took half an hour, and Forked-Deer Island,
+which kept the boat flying up a narrow chute from half-past two till
+three o'clock, was old Twenty-seven and Twenty-six grown together.
+
+Now, these things are geography rather than history. But for at least
+two souls aboard the _Votaress_ they were more history than geography.
+History--they were life! the outer frame of life so really lived that
+for those two souls it would be history thenceforth to life's end. And
+here comes in some pure philosophy from the two pilots: to wit, that if
+you turn any old maxim over you will always find another truth on its
+other side. They reached this conclusion, through Ned's remarking that
+the course of true love never runs smooth.
+
+"That," said Watson, "depends. It depends a lot on who they air that's
+a-takin' the course. Ef they're the right ones, a real for-true pair,
+sech as the wayfarin' man though a pilot kin see _air_ a pair, like----"
+
+"Two gloves," said Ned.
+
+"Yass, or galluses--I misdoubt ef there's anything in the world that'll
+run so smooth through and over and around and under so much cussed
+roughness as what true love will."
+
+The remark was justified before their eyes. The two whom they
+contemplated, outwardly so unlike, were in their essence so of a kind
+that they belonged each to each as simply and patently as the first
+human pair. They saw it so themselves. Society about them was strangely
+primitive--a "clapboard civilization," the actor named it to his wife at
+their pilot-house point of view--and the "for-true" pair in sight below
+them took frank advantage of its conditions to appropriate and accept
+each other as simply and completely as if these weird conditions--with
+their Devil's Elbow, Race-ground, Island, Tea-table, and Back-oven--were
+a veritable Eden as Eden was before the devil got in. Without a note of
+courtship or coquetry love ran ever more and more smoothly, growing
+hourly and receiving each accession as we have seen the Mississippi
+receive Red River--merely by deepening its own flow--but, unlike the
+Mississippi, gaining in transparency as it gained in depth and power.
+
+Since leaving Memphis this love without courtship or coquetry had grown
+under the effulgence of Madame Hayle's immediate presence like a
+grain-field in sunshine. On her return from the triple burial, through
+sheer exhaustion, she had fainted away. Borne upstairs by the
+physician's command and allowed the roof but forbidden the lower deck
+for twenty-four hours, she had let Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet" assume her
+pious task turn about, going and coming by after stairs. And so love
+grew on. But so did hate, so did craft, all three, to borrow the figure,
+going and coming by the after stairs of general intercourse.
+
+
+
+
+LIII
+
+TRADING FOR PHYLLIS
+
+
+This afternoon was cooler than any of the three before it.
+
+Change of latitude, assuredly; but also a sky half blue, half gray, and
+a brisker air. Yet for that small minority of the ladies, who rather
+craved than feared the sunlight, the boat's roofs--since custom debarred
+them from the boiler deck--were still its most inviting part. After a
+few modifications of dress a very pleasant refuge those roofs were,
+although when the boat's course led her into the wind it was good to
+shut a sash or two if you were in the pilot-house, or to draw your
+chairs into the lee of something if on the open deck. Madame Hayle,
+urged by all to seek repose in her stateroom, said to Hugh and the
+Californian, behind one of the chimneys:
+
+"Me, I fine it mo' betteh to breathe on that deck than to bleach in that
+cabin."
+
+Her presence was to the Californian's advantage also, in his desire to
+be near Ramsey, and indeed the same was true of the two younger clerks
+and the cub pilot. And this advantage was heightened by the fact that
+there were such definite things to be considered wherever two or three
+came together. The need to keep up the passengers' spirits was as real
+as ever and a number of resources for doing it required to be discussed.
+Ramsey mentioned the unidentified man with the cornet but found no
+seconder. His "Life on the Ocean Wave" was thought hardly convincing and
+his "Bounding Billow, Cease thy Motion" seemed to clash with the
+sentiment for an ocean life and to suggest uncomfortable symptoms.
+Undaunted, she tried again. Through Basile she had early discovered
+three striplings of the circus ring, the "Brothers Ambrosia." Their true
+name, her cross-examination had revealed, was Vinegar. In star-spangled
+tights they would give some real "acrobatics," then some "aerial globe
+dancing," equally star-spangled and even more up-side-down, and finally
+a bit of "miraculous walking" on champagne bottles set upright on the
+dining-table. This proposition was accepted without audible dissent,
+only the parson's wife not voting. Then the Californian spoke for a
+self-styled "young gent" and "amateur professor" who had eagerly
+volunteered to "take everybody's breath away" by the magic of his tricks
+with hats, handkerchiefs, and cards, and to "throw them into
+convulsions" with his "evening cat fight among the chimney-pots." But
+"Beware the laugh that sours overnight," Mrs. Gilmore said, and the
+decision was prompt, Madame Hayle voicing it, that as convulsions could
+be brought on and breath taken away by the cholera itself the young
+gent, through "California," be gratefully requested to await a situation
+either less desperate or more so.
+
+The gold hunter admitted the wisdom of this action, though his humble
+spirit felt acutely its discrediting reflection on himself, especially
+when--with only the kindest meaning--Ramsey laughed. He bravely kept his
+pain to himself and said nothing to disown the "amateur professor." With
+a brief aside to Hugh, to which Hugh nodded, he slipped away to the
+lower deck and for nearly two hours made his nursing skill so valuable
+to "Harriet" among the immigrants that her fearless mind overlooked the
+main object of his stay; which was to defend her from any stratagem of
+the twins and others, that Marburg might not detect in time or might be
+unable to cope with. At length, puzzled to know why Mrs. Gilmore did not
+appear, he was leaving, when at the foot of the narrow stair under the
+kitchen he met Lucian coming down. They stopped. He smiled. "Howdy!" he
+said.
+
+Lucian stood silent.
+
+"Can't come down here, you know," said the gold hunter, and instantly
+Lucian was white hot.
+
+"Who tells you," he drawled, "what I may or may not do?"
+
+"Who? oh--just a little black dog."
+
+"Black--_what?_"
+
+"You heard. He's a funny little cuss; like you, a trifle puny. Has
+coughin' fits. Coughs six times each fit. Spits up a chunk o' lead ev'y
+time he coughs. Want to see him?"
+
+Lucian's unaffrighted eyes blazed down, though his reply was as if to
+himself. "Great God! if my brother----"
+
+"Oh," kindly said the Californian, "he ain't fur off. Go, get him. I'll
+follow you, lock-step."
+
+Lucian turned and went, the speaker adding as he followed close:
+
+"Ladder's no place for scienced fighting, you know."
+
+They found Julian, evidently waiting, on the passenger guards just
+forward of the pantry gangway. But before words could be exchanged the
+cub pilot came along by way of the main staircase, escorting the
+physician from the lower deck. The latter passed on up the wheel-house
+steps to the roof, but the "cub" hung back. "California" faced him.
+
+"What's the fraction? The captain?"
+
+The youth nodded. His inquirer waved him away.
+
+"All right. I'll come. You go on." The boy complied.
+
+Julian had swelled for encounter, but a warning look from Lucian checked
+him and he let the Californian speak first.
+
+"Here," said the gold-digger, "I'm fixed. You're not. True, I could loan
+you the twin to mine, but----"
+
+Julian's lip curled. "'But'--you're not hungry to fight."
+
+"Oh, other things being equal, I have an appetite! Yes, sir-ee, Bob
+Hoss-Fly, and a red dog under the wheelbarrow! But"--smiling
+again--"let's do things in scientific order. You two claim that you
+Hayle folks own that forty-year-old white gal down-stairs which you call
+a runaway niggeh, and which we'll allow she is one. Well, I'll buy you
+two's share in her--providing I can buy the rest of her from your two
+ladies up-stairs--and fight you afterward or not as the case may
+require. Now, what'll you take for your said two shares, right here,
+cash down, gold; not dust but coin, New Orleans Branch Mint? Going
+at--what do I hear?"
+
+The spendthrift pair stared on each other, thinking with all their
+might. But they failed to think that on the deck above them, in group
+with Mrs. Gilmore, Hugh, the parson's wife, Ramsey, and old Joy, the
+ownership of Phyllis was being fully set forth by their mother to their
+own whilom champions the senator and the general, or that Ramsey was
+about to be sent down to the stateroom of the mother and daughter for
+documentary evidence.
+
+"What do I hear?" repeated the Californian, watching his own hands as
+the right drew double-eagles from his belt and stacked them in the left.
+
+Eagerly asking themselves what might be their tempter's motive, the pair
+thought primarily of the white slave's well-preserved beauty and the
+rarity of women in the far West. With that came a stinging remembrance
+of her glaring Hayle likeness and then of their father's old
+scheme--averted by their mother--to sell the girl forever out of sight
+and reach. And then came the pleasanter thought that at any rate here
+was a chance to put this daredevil at odds with the hated Gilmores as
+well as with their own mother and sister, the Courteneys, and all the
+Courteney clan. Till now they had felt that, if only for self-respect
+and good standing, they must recover their property, seize Phyllis on
+the spot, if they could possibly command the backing to do it. But this
+was now very doubtful. Something had happened to the senator's mind,
+while the general was but his echo and the element called "others" was
+strangely sluggish. And, finally, or rather, first and last, the
+brothers were thrilled with the prodigal's lust for ready money. So far
+they saw and no farther, but so far so good; here seemed to be an
+unguarded opening in the enemy's line--to use a phrase the great valley
+was one day to know by heart--and the warier of the pair ventured in.
+Said Lucian:
+
+"We're Uncle Dan's sole legatees."
+
+"Then name your price for her, lock, stock, and barrel."
+
+"Want to take her only to Kentucky, or to California?"
+
+"Californy--maybe Oregon."
+
+"To keep house for you--single gentleman?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"When do you expect to come back?"
+
+"Never."
+
+The questioner glanced back to his brother. Both were gratified to note
+that the bargain would work no relief to Hugh or the Gilmores, but
+Julian wanted better assurance that it would not free a runaway slave or
+make her a lawful wife. He turned abruptly, and so it happened that all
+three failed to see Ramsey, in dark attire and with Joy close behind,
+emerge an instant from the pantry gangway and shrink again into it. On
+the return from her stateroom to the roof, for mere variety, she had
+taken this direction. Said Julian as he turned:
+
+"You're a Kentuckian, sir. Henry Clay man?"
+
+"No. Only don't allow anything said again' him."
+
+"Abolitionist?"
+
+"No, sir-ee." The emphasis was sprightly.
+
+The twins looked at each other once more. Julian nodded.
+
+"One thousand dollars," said Lucian....
+
+Let us go back a step or so and up to the hurricane-deck. We have named
+Hugh as in the group about Madame Hayle; but he went and came. In his
+absences the matrons debated the Phyllis matter as it involved the
+Gilmores, trying to find some way not to leave it an undivided burden on
+Hugh and the _Votaress_. It was on one of his quiet reappearances,
+reporting his father "easier," that Ramsey put in:
+
+"Mom-a, the senator's a lawyer. Send for him--and the general--and talk
+them over to our side. You can do it. You can talk anybody into
+anything! You always could!"
+
+Madame Hayle and Hugh looked at each other very much as the twins were
+doing about that time on the guards next below, and Hugh said:
+
+"I will go bring them."
+
+"Ah, if you please, yass, go."
+
+He brought them and they were among madame's auditors when later she
+said, addressing her words wherever they fitted best, so that even old
+Joy got her share:
+
+"Had it not have been for Phylliz, Dan Hayle, he wouldn' neveh took that
+troub' to wride that will. But I insiz' he shall wride it,
+biccause--Phylliz. Tha'z all. An' biccause Phylliz he wrode it. But he
+say to me----"
+
+"When was this?" inquired the senator.
+
+"Tha'z when those twin' make him thad visit, Walnut Hill'. He say: 'W'ad
+uze to you if I make my laz' will? I give any'ow everything to those
+twin'.' An' tha'z biccause" (to old Joy) "thad chile w'ad die----"
+
+"Drownded," murmured the nurse. "Ayfteh dat transpiah he take a shine to
+ev'y man-chile he git his ahm aroun'."
+
+Madame resumed: "An' I say to him: 'Give all the rez' to who' you want,
+but Phylliz--to me.' 'No!' he say, 'you, you'll put her free!'"
+
+"Why didn't he want her set free?" asked Ramsey.
+
+"An' you are there--an' silend! I forgod you!"
+
+"Why didn't he want her set free?" insisted the forgotten.
+
+"Ah!" said the mother to the senator as though the inquiry were his,
+"Dan, he seem' to thing tha'z a caztigation on him. An' he say: 'Neveh
+mine, I figs thad so she can'd be free pretty soon.' An' me, I thoughd
+he leave her to those twin' till I'm reading the will."
+
+Ramsey stood up elatedly. "I know what he did! I see it!"
+
+But as her mother chidingly murmured her name she reflected the maternal
+dignity and accepted a bunch of keys.
+
+"Go, if you please, ad my room," said madame, "open----"
+
+"Your little trunk, and pop-a's tin box inside," the girl interrupted,
+but deferentially caught herself again and with the corner of an eye
+felt about for Hugh. But Hugh had gone back to his father and thence to
+the deck next below.
+
+"Yass. You fine there manny pape'. One is mark'--you'll see. Fedge me
+thad. 'Tis the h-only tha'z blue."
+
+Ramsey sped away over skylights and down a back stair.
+
+The senator spoke: "Who were that will's executors?"
+
+"Ah, of co'se, my 'usban', Capitan Hayle, al-lone."
+
+"The heirs, I dare say, have seen it?"
+
+The lady smiled. "Not at all. Biccause h-anybody can see it if he want,
+nobody eveh want, an' leaz' of all those twin' when they are getting
+everything. Nobody speak abbout Phylliz, biccause Phylliz is su'pose
+drown', an' drown' peop' they don' count."
+
+In the stateroom Ramsey knelt, opened the trunk, then the tin box, and
+then, despite old Joy's reprehending moan, the document itself.
+
+"I knew it!" she whispered elatedly, relocking the box and trunk. "I
+guessed right!"
+
+When at the forward end of the pantry gangway she came upon the twins
+and "California" and shrank back into hiding, the will was in her hand.
+In a tremble between staying and fleeing she heard the gold hunter, as
+he stood with his hands full of yellow coin, declare himself a
+Kentuckian and no abolitionist, and therefore understood instantly the
+significance of Lucian's response:
+
+"One thousand dollars."
+
+Too eager for speech, she glided forth and at the Californian's back
+halted before her brothers. But he had already smitten a fist into the
+hungry palm of either twin and was saying as he unburdened it there:
+
+"A hundred on account to you--same to you--balance when you show
+title--she's mine!"
+
+"She's mine!" cried the laughing girl.
+
+The three men stared, but the twins hurried the gold into their pockets
+while she laughed on to them: "Hand that back. You've got no title. This
+is Uncle Dan's will and she's been mine for eleven years." On the stair
+close by them she began to step up backward but stopped to add to the
+Californian: "Take back your money and come trade with mom-a."
+
+The twins showed instant conviction, but to them all dispossession was
+robbery and Lucian broke out, first on Ramsey, "We don't give back one
+dime!" then to the Californian, "You pushed it on us and we'll keep it!"
+then to Julian, "He hasn't the faintest right to it now in law, morals,
+or custom!" and then back to the Californian: "You sha'n't ever see a
+copper of it!"
+
+Ramsey was quick-witted again. She threw the gold hunter a glance which
+conveyed to him the realization that to leave the money with the twins
+was to put them at a hopeless disadvantage. Almost as quickly Lucian saw
+the same thing and flashed it to Julian; but in that brief interval
+their sister disappeared on the deck above, old Joy following, and while
+the brothers lost another moment in a motionless contest of impulses the
+Californian vanished after her. Lucian, with his breath drawn to call up
+the empty stair, started forward but struck his knee-cap on a light,
+gilded chair left there by some child. Burning with rage and trembling
+with nervous exhaustion, he barely saved himself from lunging into two
+men of slight stature who had just come from a neighboring state-room: a
+slender old man leaning feebly on a thick-set youth, whom one flash of
+his eye identified as the commodore and Hugh, though as they passed
+toward the stair they betrayed no sign that they had observed him.
+
+He gave his speechless brother a single look, caught the chair by its
+back, lifted it over his head, and with a long, smothered cry, half
+moan, half whine, crashed it down upon the balustrade--once--twice--and
+again, again, hurled the last fragment underfoot, and with eyes
+streaming stamped, stamped, and stamped, while the commodore and his
+supporter went on up to the roof and beyond view without a glance
+behind.
+
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+"CAN'T!"
+
+
+On handing the will to her mother, Ramsey found her no longer leading
+the conversation. The senator had the floor, the deck, and, as Ned or
+Watson might have said, was "drawing all the water in the river." His
+discourse was to madame and the general alternately, though now and then
+he included the parson's wife and Mrs. Gilmore.
+
+Ramsey's talent for taking in everything at once was taxed to its limit
+when at the same time that she attended to him she watched an elegant
+steamer, one of the Saturday-evening boats out of Cincinnati, pass
+remotely on the Arkansas side behind Island Thirty-six; marked the
+return of the Californian as he followed her from his conference with
+the twins; noted the slow, preoccupied passing of Hugh and his
+grandfather to the captain's room; measured every winged stride of the
+_Votaress's_ approach toward the Third Chickasaw Bluff; observed--as
+earlier bidden by the actor--the strange pink and yellow stripes of the
+bluff's clay face, and recognized in the great bell's landing signal the
+sad business which had become so half-conscious a habit in the boat's
+routine. Yet she caught the senator's every word.
+
+Whether a person born in slavery, although seven eighths white, he was
+saying, was free by law was hardly a practical question, the matter
+being so nearly independent of any mere statute. For if such a slave
+sought liberty of an owner inclined to grant it there certainly was no
+law to prevent its bestowal, whereas if the owner was unwilling the
+burden of proof would naturally fall upon the slave, who, of course----
+
+"No," said Ramsey, drawing his and every eye and interesting everybody
+by a sweet maturity of tone to which her mourning dress lent emphasis.
+"No, it would not. The judge told me about that on Sunday."
+
+Madame started and smiled. "You h-asked? An' fo' w'at?"
+
+The transient air of maturity failed, and Ramsey's shoulders went up in
+her more usual manner.
+
+The senator had his question: "What did the judge say?"
+
+"The judge says, where the slave seems to be white the owner must prove
+she ain't--prove she isn't; but the burden, he says, of getting the case
+into court----"
+
+"Ah!" The senator was relieved. "Practically the same thing. For no
+slave can get a case into court without white help, and no decent white
+man will step between an owner and a slave who confesses to any African
+blood."
+
+"No-c'ommunity would ssstand it," said the general.
+
+"Now," pursued the senator, "a claim based on pure white blood and
+charging some palpable mistake or fraud would be different. That would
+invite a community's sympathy and support. I've heard of such cases." He
+faced Ramsey again, whose smile implied a query in waiting.
+
+Madame had handed the document to the senator. It was short. He read it
+in a glance or two and, refolding it, addressed Ramsey again: "This
+slave girl can neither be set free nor sold, for she's yours, and you're
+a minor. She seems to have been left to you just for that."
+
+Until her mother spoke, Ramsey was mystified by her gracious bows of
+satisfaction to the senator and the general, but then she understood and
+was glad. "Verrie well," said madame, "iv Phylliz be satizfi' to billong
+to Ramzee----"
+
+"She is," said Mrs. Gilmore. "She's told me so."
+
+"Verrie well, she'll juz' billong. An'"--to the senator--"you'll tell
+h-all those passenger' you h-are the fran' of my 'usban' an' fran' of
+the pewblic an' you 'ave seen thad will, an' Phylliz she's h-all those
+year' billong to Ramzee, an' tha'z h-all arrange' and h-every-boddie
+satizfi', ondly those twin' they 'ave not hear' abboud that yet, but
+you'll see them an' make them satizfi'----"
+
+"They know," called Ramsey and "California," and the latter added to the
+senator: "They've sold all claim to her, sight unseen, and have got the
+money; took it from me, before witnesses." Then to the astonished matron
+he added: "We can fix that in a jiffy, as slick as glass."
+
+But there the immediate scene diverted every one; the whole group moved
+to the roof's edge to see the boat land. Then, while her bells still
+jingled and her wheels yeasted, the company, heart-sick of burials, fell
+apart. The senator and the general, promising zealous action and the
+best results, returned to the boiler deck, the parson's wife sought her
+children, Mrs. Gilmore went down to "Harriet." To shield madame from the
+full force of the breeze "California" moved her chair, Joy following
+with Ramsey's, to the shelter of the great chimney nearest the captain's
+door, where sympathy itself tended to draw them, and by the time this
+was done the commodore, again on Hugh's arm, reissued from the captain's
+room and, at sight of this quartet, paused, turned, and accepted a seat
+among them.
+
+The first word was Ramsey's: How was the captain?
+
+The best that could be said was that he was "holding out"--or "up"--or
+"on"--the commodore's voice was weak. He had come away from the
+captain's bed-side because a convalescent was "only in the way," he
+said, and because Hugh felt that he belonged on deck if anywhere, though
+that, the old man fondly added, was less important than Hugh chose to
+regard it. This unimportance Ramsey recognized by diverting the
+conversation so far as to announce that "mom-a" had just settled the
+whole Phyllis business.
+
+"Mighty nigh," the Californian admitted, answering Hugh's quiet glance,
+while his heart praised the daughter's failure to credit him with his
+share in the achievement, that being a thing still in progress, whose
+design he had not fully revealed. The omission seemed to him most
+maidenly and daughterly. He spoke on, to the two ladies:
+
+"There's a thing or two more----"
+
+"Oh, I'll pay that two hundred dollars!" cried Ramsey.
+
+In animated approval her mother nodded to both.
+
+"Not if the court knows itself," said the modest man, with so winsome a
+smile that every one noticed how blue were his eyes. "I can trump that,"
+he added, musingly.
+
+"What's the other thing? You said a thing or two," asked Ramsey.
+
+"Her wages, ain't it, for eleven years?"
+
+"Ho, ho!" laughed madame in amiable scorn, while----
+
+"Paid!" cried Ramsey. "Mrs. Gilmore's always paid her!"
+
+"Knowin' she was a runaway? and who' from?"
+
+Madame bowed sweetly, yet with an aroused sparkle.
+
+"Humph!" said Ramsey, watching the boat back out and lay her course for
+Island Thirty-five, "I'd have done as they did, either of them." She
+stepped into the freshening breeze.
+
+The inquirer's eyes rested on her, bluer than ever.
+
+"Don't you propose to collect?" he asked.
+
+"Most certainly not!" sang Ramsey at full height.
+
+"Not a sou," said madame, looking about in grand amusement. "Not a
+pic-ah-yune--hoh!"
+
+"But she's going back into yo' hands?"
+
+"My 'an's," said madame.
+
+"And you'll never sell her?"
+
+"Can't!" laughed Ramsey, with eyes ahead.
+
+"You can hire her."
+
+"Yes," said Ramsey, turning. "Oh, yes."
+
+"Well, what'll you take, from the right bidder, for that girl's free
+papers dated ahead to when you come of age, bidder takin' all the
+resks?"
+
+"You said down-stairs you wasn't an abolitionist!"
+
+He twinkled. "Well, down-stairs I wa'n't, and in general I ain't.
+I'm a Kentuckian. But I've got an offer to make." He turned to the
+Courteneys: "I allowed to make it to this young gentleman first, alone,
+an' get his advice--an' the commodo's if he'd give it; but the' ain't
+anybody in this small crowd but what's welcome to hear it, even this
+young lady, considerin' that she's jest heard so much worse again'
+me--insinuated--down-stairs."
+
+There was a pause. Old Joy murmured and Madame spoke the daughter's
+name, adding something in French.
+
+"_Moi_," replied Ramsey, planting herself and gazing up the river, "_je
+prefere_ to stay right here."
+
+The mother's smile to the Kentuckian bade him proceed, but he still
+addressed Hugh and the grandfather:
+
+"You see, that girl down-stairs, 'Harriet,' 'Phyllis,' has been
+free--Lawdy, free's nothin', she's been white!--fo' ten years. Now, if
+she goes back home, there may be no place like it, but she's got to be
+black again. Well, think what that is. I've been weighin' that fact
+while I looked into her eyes and listened to her voice, an' thinks I to
+myself: 'If I was this girl, this goin' back to be black would mean one
+of two things: I'd either die myself, aw I'd kill some one, maybe
+sev'l.' True, I'm pyo' white an' she ain't, quite, but I don't believe
+her po' little drop o' low blood makes her any mo' bridlewise 'n what
+I'd be."
+
+While the speaker's smile drew smiles from madame and the commodore,
+Ramsey turned to him a severe face and in the same glance managed to see
+Hugh's, but Hugh's might as well have been, to her mind, the face of a
+Chickasaw bluff.
+
+"Well, what then?" she asked the gold hunter.
+
+"Same time," said "California," still to the Courteneys, while madame
+promptly discerned his covert argument and Ramsey suddenly busied
+herself talking up to the pilot-house, "I noticed, more'n eveh, how much
+she, Phyllis, favoh'd somebody I was once 'pon a time pow'ful soft on,
+but whose image"--his smile won smiles again--"I to'e out o' my
+heart--aw buried in thah--aw both--it bein' too ridiculous fo' me to
+aspiah that high. An' so here looked to me like a substitute, gentlemen,
+that ought to satisfy all concerned." His eye turned to madame but lost
+courage and escaped back to Hugh.
+
+"Now, Mr. Hugh, I've got money a-plenty. It's all I have got excep'
+maybe a good tempeh, an' I'm goin' back to the diggin's anyhow; one man
+to the squa' mile is too crowded fo' me. Meantime, madam"--he turned
+again and this time he was invincible, although madame straightened and
+sparkled and Ramsey gave a staring attention, having throughout all her
+pilot-house talk heard everything----"Meantime, madam, with a priest
+right here on boa'd, if I can buy, at any price, Phyllis's free
+papehs----"
+
+"You can't!" chanted Ramsey. "She can have 'em for nothing but nobody
+can buy 'em."
+
+"Pries'?" asked madame, "an' free pape'! W'at you pro-ose do with those
+pries' an' free pape'?"
+
+"I'll marry her; marry her an' take her to whah a woman's a woman fo' a'
+that an' can clean house aw cook dinneh whilst I gatheh the honeycomb
+bright as gold and drive the wolf to his secret hold." He cast around
+the group a glance of bright inquiry, but except old Joy every one
+silently looked at every one else. The old woman softly closed her eyes
+and shook her head.
+
+"Vote!" cried Ramsey, remembering Sunday's victory. "Let's vote on it!"
+
+
+
+
+LV
+
+LOVE MAKES A CUT-OFF
+
+
+But the grandfather addressed the adventurer. "You'd rather not, I
+fancy."
+
+"Rather not; looks too unanimous the wrong way."
+
+"Would you still like to have Hugh's advice?"
+
+"I would! I'd like to hear yo'-all's argument."
+
+Ramsey dropped into her chair with a tired sigh and up-stream gaze
+though with an inner ear of keenest attention.
+
+Hugh glanced toward his father's door, whence at any moment, as every
+one realized, the actor might beckon.
+
+"I have no argument," he began.
+
+"You have," breathed a voice, unmistakably Ramsey's; "you always have."
+
+"You know," he continued to the Kentuckian, "there's something in all of
+us, I don't say what, or whether wise or foolish, that says: 'Don't do
+it.' You feel it, don't you?"
+
+Madame interrupted: "_Mais_ don't do w'at?"
+
+Ramsey faced the group as if to answer just that question. "Now we pass
+between Cedar Point and Pecan Point and head for the Second Chickasaw
+Bluffs!"
+
+"Ah bah, _les_ bloff'," murmured madame and repeated to Hugh: "Something
+say, 'Don' do it'? _Mais_ w'at it say don' do?"
+
+"Don't mix the great races we know apart by their color."
+
+"Umph! An' w'at is thad something w'at tell uz that?"
+
+"Grandfather calls it race conscience."
+
+"Grandfather!" whimpered Ramsey, while madame asked:
+
+"Of w'at race has Phylliz the conscien'? An' you would know Phylliz'
+race--ad sight--by the color?"
+
+"I'd know it!" put in the Kentuckian. "She's white, to all intents and
+purposes."
+
+"No," said Hugh, "not quite to all. Not to all as organized society, in
+its----"
+
+Ramsey, with eyes up the river, sighed: "Mrs. Grundy?"
+
+"Yes, but Mrs. Grundy in her best intents and purposes."
+
+"In her race conscience," wailed Ramsey to the breeze.
+
+"In her race conscience," assented Hugh.
+
+Ramsey whipped around. "Thought you had no argument."
+
+"I'm giving grandfather's," said the grandson.
+
+"Humph! it's yours. I'd know it at sight--by the color."
+
+"Miss Ramsey," said the old man, toying with his cane, "Hugh and I have
+been finding that, right or wrong, Mrs. Grundy or Mr. Grundy, race
+conscience is a wonderful, unaccountable thing for which men will give
+their life-blood by thousands." His voice failed. He waved smilingly to
+Hugh.
+
+"And when," broke in Hugh to Ramsey, "when Mrs. Grundy, in her race
+conscience, says Phyllis is not white no one ought to snap his fingers
+in even Mrs. Grundy's face merely to please himself or to relieve some
+private situation."
+
+Ramsey stood up, flashing first on him and then to her mother, dropped
+again, and with her face in her elbow on the chair's back recited
+drearily--from her third reader:
+
+     "You can hear him swing his heavy sledge
+        With measured beat and slow,
+      Like the sexton ringing the village bell
+        When the evening sun----"
+
+"Ramzee!" exclaimed madame, while the old nurse groaned: "Oh, Lawd 'a'
+massy!"
+
+The girl rose, laughed, and flashed again: "Well, if Phyllis ain't white
+what is she? She's got to be something!"
+
+"Yes," said the youth, "but not everything. I know her wrongs. But none
+of us, with whatever rights and wrongs, can have, or do, or be----"
+
+"Oh, don't we know all that?" Ramsey turned to the grandfather and with
+sudden deference sprang to help him rise. He faced her and the
+Californian together.
+
+"Miss Ramsey, Hugh has all your feelings in this matter."
+
+Madame, "California," and old Joy eagerly assented.
+
+"But poor, blundering old Mrs. Grundy, always wronging some one," the
+old man smilingly continued, "is really fighting hard for a better human
+race. That's the greatest battle she can fight, my dear young lady, and
+when----"
+
+"Well," rejoined Ramsey with eyes frankly tearful, "she fights it mighty
+badly."
+
+"Ah, a hundred times worse than you think. Yet we who presume to fight
+the blunders of that battle must fight them unselfishly and to help her
+win."
+
+Old Joy groaned so approvingly that he turned to her.
+
+"What do you think, old mammy?"
+
+"Who, me? Lawd, I thinks mighty little an' I knows less. Yit one thing I
+does know: Phyllis ain' gwine. She know' you cayn't make her white by
+takin' her to whah it make' no odds ef she ain't white. Phyllis love'
+folks. She love' de quality, she love' de crowd. White aw black aw
+octoroom free niggeh, Phyllis gwine to choose de old Hayle home and de
+great riveh--full o' steamboat'--sooneh'n any lan' whah de ain't mo'n
+one 'oman to de mile. Phyllis ain't gwine."
+
+The closing words faded to soliloquy. For every one stood up, and even
+the old woman's attention was diverted to Watson's apprentice
+approaching from the captain's room. On his way below for the doctor he
+came, in the actor's behalf, to ask if he might bring up also Mrs.
+Gilmore.
+
+Assuredly he might. How was the patient?
+
+"Very quiet," the boy hopefully replied. Whereupon madame begged leave
+to repair at once to the sick-room, but neither of the Courteneys would
+consent nor either of them allow the other to go. The steersman passed
+on down.
+
+From enviously watching him do so, "California" turned to the company
+and in open abandonment of his amazing proposition said drolly that
+never before had he failed, in so many ways "hand-running," to make
+himself useful. He reseated Madame Hayle and would have set the daughter
+beside her, but the mother bade Ramsey give Joy the chair and leaned
+wearily on the old woman's shoulder. Both Courteneys urged their seats
+on the girl, and when she would not accept while either of them stood
+for her servant to sit, the grandfather left Hugh debating with her,
+took "California's" arm, found other chairs a few paces away, and
+engaged him in a gentle parley which any one might see was an appeal to
+his sober second thought. It was Ned's shift up at the wheel, but the
+change of watch was near; his partner stood at his elbow. Their gaze was
+up a reach between the two most northern of those four groups of bluffs
+whose mention even Ramsey was for the moment tired of, yet they studied
+the three couples on the roof below.
+
+"Runs smooth at the present writing," said Watson.
+
+"Clair chann'l ef noth'n' else," responded Ned. The allusion was neither
+to boat nor stream but to a certain opportuneness of things, whose
+obviousness to them, looking down, was mainly what kept Ramsey standing.
+While she stood beside the two empty chairs cross-questioning Hugh with
+a fresh show of her maturer mildness and he stood inwardly taking back
+his late farewell to sweet companionship and softly answering in his
+incongruous pomp of voice with a new tenderness, and while the worn-out
+mother gradually let her full weight sink on the tired slave, this
+obvious propitiousness was embarrassingly increased by the two weary
+ones falling asleep.
+
+True, the clearness of channel--this channel in the upper air--was not
+absolute, but its obstacles nettled mostly the pilots. To Ramsey, even
+to Hugh, obstacles were almost welcome, as enabling them to show to a
+prying world that nothing beyond the grayest commonplace was occurring
+between them. One such interruption was the upcoming and passing of Mrs.
+Gilmore and the physician to the sick-room and the cub pilot's parting
+with them to join the younger pair. The boy found Hugh confessing that
+he should not know exactly how to word Phyllis's "free papers" but
+adding that the first clerk would be pleased to make them out at once if
+Ramsey's eagerness so dictated. It did, and presently the modest
+intruder was hurrying away on a double errand: to bear this confidential
+request to the clerk and then to seek the Brothers Ambrosia and with
+them and the two under-clerks arrange for the evening performance, the
+giving of which, however, Ramsey insisted, must depend on the captain's
+condition when evening should come.
+
+"Wish it were here now," she said as they watched the messenger go.
+"Don't you?"
+
+"I could," he replied, "but it will be here soon enough."
+
+The conversation which followed remained in their memory through years
+of separation.
+
+She spoke again in her new tone: "You think your father will get well,
+don't you?"
+
+"No, Ramsey."
+
+At those words her heart did two things at once: stopped on the first,
+rebounded on the second. But it fell again as he added: "I fear I must
+lose my father to-night."
+
+She stood mute, looking into his eyes and pondering every light and
+shadow of the severe young face that to her seemed so imperially unlike
+all others. "He's great," she said in her heart. "And he loves with his
+greatness. Loves even his father that way; not as I love mine or love
+anybody, or ever shall or can, or could wish to, unless I were a man and
+as great as him--he. I never could have dreamt of any one loving me that
+way, but if any ever should I'd worship him." Suddenly her sympathy rose
+high.
+
+"Oh, why not just think to yourself: 'He _will_ live'?"
+
+"Why should I? Should I be fit to live myself if I were not true to
+myself?"
+
+"You are! You always are!"
+
+"No one can be who isn't truthful to himself."
+
+Ramsey gazed again. A sense of his suffering benumbed her, and for
+relief she asked: "Is that why you don't wish it were evening, when
+really you do?"
+
+He smiled. "I can't wish the sun to get out of my way. That's what it
+would mean, isn't it?"
+
+She fell to thinking what it meant. All at once she pointed: "That's the
+First Chickasaw Bluff.... Yes, I s'pose it does mean that.... It's
+terrible how thoughtless I am."
+
+"It doesn't terrify me. I promise you it never shall."
+
+Was he making game of her? She narrowed her lids and looked at him
+sidewise. No, plainly he was not; so plainly that she took refuge in
+another question. "Don't you like night better than day sometimes?"
+
+"I do, often."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For one thing, we can see so much farther."
+
+"Oh, ridiculous! we can't see nearly so far!"
+
+"We can see so much farther and wider, deeper, clearer. The day blinds
+us. Spoils our sense of proportion. At night we see more of what
+creation really is. Our sun becomes one little star among thousands of
+greater ones, and we are humbled into a reasonableness which is very
+hard not to lose in the bewilderments of daylight."
+
+Ramsey sank to the arm of a chair, but when he remained standing she
+stood again. "Wasn't you saying something like that the evening we left
+New Orleans?" she asked.
+
+"To my father, yes. I couldn't have said it in daylight then. I couldn't
+say it in daylight now to any one but you, Ramsey."
+
+Her heart leaped again. Her eyes looked straight into his; could not
+look away. He spoke on:
+
+"You're a kind of evening to me, yourself; evening star."
+
+Her bosom pounded. She glanced up behind to the pilots. Watson had the
+wheel. As she strenuously pushed back her curls she felt her temples
+burn. She could have cried aloud for Hugh to cease, yet was mad for him
+to go on.
+
+And so he did. "You are my evening star in this nightfall of affliction.
+I tell you so not in weakness but in strength and in defiance: in the
+strength I summon for the hour before me; in the defiance I fling to
+your brothers. I may never have another chance. If ours were the
+ordinary chances of ordinary life I should say nothing now. I should
+wait; wait and give love time; time to prove itself in me--in both of
+us. I _ask_ nothing. I am too new to you, life is too new--to you--for
+pledges."
+
+She flashed him a glance and then, looking up the river, said, with the
+ghost of a toss: "I'm older than you think."
+
+He ignored the revelation. "But I will say," he went on, "--for these
+three days and nights have been three years to me and I feel a three
+years' right to say--I love you; love you for life; am yours for life
+though we never meet again. For I believe that we belong to each other
+from the centre of our souls, by a fitness plain even to the eyes of
+your brothers."
+
+[Illustration: "For I believe that we belong to each other from the
+centre of our souls, by a fitness plain even to the eyes of your
+brothers"]
+
+Still looking up the flood and red from brow to throat, Ramsey murmured
+two or three words which she saw he did not hear. Yet he stood without
+sound or look to ask what she had said, and presently repeated:
+
+"I believe in God's sight we belong to each other."
+
+"So do I," said Ramsey again, with clearer voice and with her brimming
+eyes looking straight into his. A footfall turned her and she faced the
+relieved pilot.
+
+"Isn't this Island Thirty-three," she asked, "right here on our
+starboard bow?"
+
+"Thirty-three," assented Ned. "Alias Flour Island; but _not_ Flow-er
+Island. Flour-ladened flatboats wrecked there in the days o' yo'
+grandfather, Eliphalet Hayle, whose own boats they might 'a' been, only
+Hayles ain't never been good at losin' boats. But his'n or not, _can_
+you suspicion they wuz flow-er-ladened? Shucks! them that spell it
+that-a-way air jest as bad an' no wuss than them that stick _b_ onto
+Plum in Plum P'int an' pull the _y_ out o' Hayle fo' Hayle's P'int! They
+jest a-airin' they ignorance. Some fellers love to air they ignorance. I
+do, myself."
+
+He gave these facts of topography in reward of the grave interest that
+Hugh--elated interest that Ramsey--still seemed to take in all such
+items, as well as to allow them to infer that he had not noticed them
+betraying interest in anything more personal.
+
+"Hayle's P'int--" he resumed, and when Madame Hayle and old Joy roused
+and glanced around on him, while the senator and the general reappeared
+close by, looking back down the steamer's wake with military comments on
+the First Chickasaw Bluff, just left behind, he addressed them all as
+one. Hayle's Point, he persisted, was miles away yet and comparatively
+unimportant "considerin' its name," but the small cluster of houses on
+the Arkansas side up in the next bend was Osceola, where Plum Point Bars
+made the "wickedest" bit of river between Saint Louis and the Gulf; a
+bit that "killed" at least one steamboat every year. He said they were
+then passing a sand-bar, under water at this stage, which had been
+Island Thirty-two until "swallered whole" by the "big earthquake" of
+1811.
+
+"Better'n forty year' ago, that was. Only quake ever felt in these
+parts, but so big that, right in the middle of all the b'ilin' an'
+staggerin' an' sinkin' down to Chiny, the Mis'sippi River give birth to
+her fust steamboat--an' saved it!" So he continued, egged on by the
+conviction that, over and above the intrinsic value of the facts, these
+conversational eddies outside the current of incident "a-happ'min' to
+'em yit" helped forward his two most deeply interested hearers on that
+course erroneously supposed never to run smooth.
+
+Be that as it may, the two pilots' joint theory of maxims working as
+well backward as forward worked here; deep waters ran still. Love, that
+is, having broken intolerable bounds in one short fierce "chute" of
+declaration, was content to run deep and still and to give broad
+precedence to duties, sorrows, and courtesies. The pair noticeably
+drifted apart and conversed with others when others were quite willing
+they should drift together. Madame Hayle needed but a glance or so to
+perceive that something beautiful had happened in the spiritual
+experience of her daughter. By and by when the commodore and the
+Californian rejoined the group, Hugh and his grandfather spent a still
+moment looking into each other's eyes and when both gazes relaxed at
+once the story had been told and understood.
+
+They turned to hear what was passing between the general, senator, and
+Californian. Said the soldier:
+
+"Sssirs, I only insssist that _if_ this region ever sees war Port
+Hudson, Grand Gulf, Vvvicksburg, these fffour Chickasaw Bluffs, and
+Island Ten up here above us will be imp-regnably fffortified."
+
+Ramsey turned to the actor's wife as she came from the texas.
+
+"How's the captain?" asked both she and her mother. But Mrs. Gilmore was
+too overcome to reply.
+
+Ramsey saw the actor at the stateroom door. He had beckoned. Hugh and
+the grandfather were on their way. At a quieter pace the four women
+followed and more slowly still the other four men. Reaching Gilmore, the
+Courteneys paused and spoke, then looked back to Ramsey and madame, and
+beckoned--Hugh to the mother, the commodore to Ramsey. Gilmore repeated
+the gesture and they glided forward. At the same time the player
+advanced to meet his wife, and, as if some intuition had rung the call,
+the scene-loving twins appeared in the senator's halted group and stood
+with them gazing, while Madame Hayle, the commodore, Ramsey, and Hugh
+entered the captain's room.
+
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+EIGHT YEARS AFTER
+
+
+"A hundred months," says the love-song that beguiled so many thousands
+of hearts throughout the Mississippi Valley in those old "Lily Dale,"
+"Nellie Gray," "What is Home Without a Mother?" days, when the
+lugubrious was so blithely enjoyed at the piano. Its first wails date
+nearly or quite back to October, 1860.
+
+"A hundred months had passed" since that first up-stream voyage of the
+_Votaress_, or, to be punctilious, something under a hundred and two. It
+was the opening week of that mid-autumn month in which it became evident
+that Abraham Lincoln would be the next president. Another new boat, new
+pride of the great river, the fairest yet, still in the hands of her
+contractors, and on her trial trip from Louisville to New Orleans, was
+rounding, one after another, now far in the east, now as far in the
+west, the bends nearest below Memphis: Cow Island, Cat Island, St.
+Francis, Delta--so on.
+
+The river was low. You would hardly have known a reach, a cut-off, a
+point of it by any aspect remembered from that journey of April, '52.
+Scantness of waters appeared to contract distances. "Paddy's Hen and
+Chickens," just above Memphis, were all out on dry sands and seemed
+closer under the "Devil's Elbow" than eight years before. Every towhead
+and bar and hundreds of snags were above water and as ugly as mud, age,
+sun bleach, and turkey-buzzards could make them. Many a chute
+comfortably run by the _Votaress_ was now "closed for repairs," said one
+of the pilots of the _Enchantress_. He was the whilom steersman we knew
+as Watson's cub; a very capable-looking man now. At the moment, he was
+off watch and had come out from the bar to the boiler deck with a trim,
+supple man of forty, whose shirt of fine white flannel was open at the
+throat, where a soft neckerchief of red silk matched the sash at his
+waist: "California," eight years older and out of the West again despite
+his "never" to Hayle's twins.
+
+"I like to change my mind sometimes," he explained. "It shows me I've
+got one."
+
+A towering, massive, grizzly man several years older than the
+Californian, with a short, stiff, throat-latch beard and a great bush of
+dense, short curls, stood by the forward guards, a picture of rude force
+and high efficiency. At every moment, from some direction among the
+deck's loungers a light scrutiny ventured to rest on him, to which he
+seemed habituated, and the lightest was enough to reveal in him a
+striking union of traits coarse and fine. He wore a big cluster diamond
+pin, a sort of hen-and-chickens of his own, secured by a minute
+guard-chain on a ruffled shirt-front of snowiest linen, where clung dry
+crumbs of the "fine-cut" which puffed the lower side pockets of his gray
+alpaca sack coat. His gold-headed cane was almost a bludgeon. He had
+come aboard at Memphis, having reached that city but a few hours earlier
+by rail-way train from White Sulphur Springs, Va., where he had had the
+good fortune to find great relief from rheumatism. The young lady in his
+company, now back in the ladies' cabin, was his daughter, they said,
+beautiful and all of twenty-two, yet unmarried! This man the pilot and
+the Californian approached and waited for his attention. When he gave it
+the pilot spoke.
+
+"Commodore," he said, "welcome back to the river."
+
+The big man grew bigger and his shaggy brows more severe.
+
+"I feel welcome," he said. "Only place under God's canopy where I can
+breathe down into my boots."
+
+"And you want the roof for it here, don't you? I do. Roof or wheel.
+Commodore Hayle, my friend Mr. So-and-so, from California. He's your
+brand; Kentuck' born and raised."
+
+The two shook hands, scanning each other's countenances. The eyes of
+both were equally blue, equally intrepid.
+
+"Are you the man--?" Hayle began to ask with grim humor.
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Well, my boy, I've been wanting to see you for better than eight
+years." The speaker glanced around for privacy.
+
+"Come up," said the pilot; "I'm just going on watch." They followed him.
+On the roof he continued:
+
+"Seen Captain Hugh yet, commodore? He's sure enough captain now, you
+know; youngest on the river. He was looking for you a bit ago. This is a
+beautiful boat he's going to have, eh?"
+
+"Humph, yes. _Votaress_ over again." The critic gave her a fresh
+scrutiny from cutwater to stern rail, from freight guards to the
+oak-leaf crown on either chimney-top.
+
+"Why, commodore, she knocks the hindsights off the old _Votaress_ every
+way. You'll see that mighty quick."
+
+"Humph, yes; best yet, of the Courteney type. Ridiculous, how they hang
+to that. I'll build a boat to beat her inside a year if old Abe ain't
+elected. If he is, we'll just build gunboats and raise particular hell."
+On the skylight the speaker amiably declined to climb any higher.
+
+"No, us two Kentuck's will try it here." The pair found seats together,
+and soon the Californian was making the best of an opportunity he, no
+less than Gideon Hayle, had coveted for eight years. It interested him
+keenly, as affording a glimpse into the famous boatman's character, that
+the latter showed a grasp of the dreadful voyage's story as vivid and
+clear in each of its two versions--the mother and daughter's and the
+twins'--as though the intervening months had been one instead of a
+hundred--and two.
+
+They rehearsed together the arrival of the _Votaress_ at Louisville in
+the dead of night; confessed the folly of any "outsider" seeking the
+grief-burdened Gideon's ear in that first hour of reunion with his
+family, and the equal unwisdom of his pressing, in such an hour, an
+acute personal question upon Hugh and his grandfather who, at Paducah,
+had just buried John Courteney.
+
+"And you've never pressed it sence?" asked "California."
+
+"Mm-no."
+
+"Nor let either o' them press it?"
+
+"No!"--a sturdy oath--"nor you nor anybody alive. Go on with your
+story."
+
+The gold hunter went on unruffled; told it as he had seen it occur;
+recounted, among other things, how, on the final landing of the
+immigrants, at Cairo, Marburg and not a few besides had covered Madame
+Hayle's hands with kisses and tears and would have done Hugh Courteney's
+so could they have got at him. His hearer frowned and set his big jaw,
+but the narrative flowed on, describing how, like Marburg, many had
+waved affectionate farewells to Hugh and to Ramsey which she could guess
+no reason for in her case except her own wet eyes, but which
+"California" saw was because, through himself and Phyllis, the
+immigrants had found her out as another who believed in letting the
+oppressed go free and come free. He told even those irrelevant things
+about himself which had made him ludicrous. They imparted a needed
+lightness and kindled the big commodore's smile.
+
+"They never found out," said "California," "that the fellow who played
+'Bounding Billow' and 'A Life on the Ocean Wave' was me--I--myself."
+
+He told all as honestly, fearlessly as we might know he would. When his
+huge listener tried to say off-handedly that every man who knew anything
+knew that women and men never see things alike and that different
+witnesses could, quite honestly, give irreconcilable accounts of the
+same thing, the Californian serenely waved away all such gloss and with
+the seated giant hanging over him like a thunder-cloud said that the
+twins could never see anything straight enough to tell the truth about
+it if they wanted to and that just as certainly they often didn't want
+to. Pausing there and getting no retort, he ventured another step. Said
+he:
+
+"And there you've hung the case up for eight years."
+
+"That's my business!" Gideon smote the arm of his chair.
+
+"California" laughed a moment like a girl, with drooping head. Then--oh,
+the twins had their good points, yes. One was the way they stuck to each
+other. And their biggest virtue, their "best holt," the one their worst
+enemy couldn't help liking them for, was their invincible sand.
+
+"The devil couldn't scare 'em with his tail red-hot."
+
+At that the father laughed gratefully.
+
+"They'd ought to be in some trade where pluck," the Californian went on,
+"is the whole show. They'd ought to be soldiers. As plain up-and-down
+fighters for fight'n's sake, commodore, they'd hit it off as sweet as
+blackstrap!"
+
+The truth smote hard but the parent feigned a jovial inappreciation. If
+that was so they had made a "most damnable misdeal," he laughed, having
+settled down in Natchez together, "too soft on each other to marry and
+as tame as parrakeets"; Julian as county sheriff, his brother a
+physician.
+
+The Californian silently doubted the tameness. Abruptly, though in tones
+of worship, he inquired after Madame Hayle.
+
+Madame just then was at home, on the plantation at Natchez. Yes, she and
+Ramsey often made trips with Gideon on that _Paragon_ which they had
+gone up the river to come down on, in '52. The _Paragon_, wonderfully
+preserved, was still in the "Vicksburg and Bends" trade and happened
+then to be some forty-eight hours ahead of the _Enchantress_ and nearing
+New Orleans. Madame and her daughter now and then spent part of the
+social season in the great river's great seaport, which was--"bound to
+be the greatest in the world, my boy," said Gideon. But Ramsey----
+
+When Ramsey became the topic, even "California," while the father
+boasted, had to hold on, as he would have said, with his teeth to keep
+from being blown away. Her "one and only love" was the river! She "knew
+it like a pilot" and loved it and the whole life on it not merely for
+its excitements, variety, and outlook on the big world.
+
+"That is to say----for its poetry," prompted "California."
+
+"Yes, not for that only but just as much for its prose, by Mike! Why, my
+boy, that's all that's kept her single!"
+
+"Except!" said the Californian softly, but Gideon pressed on. "And
+single, now, I reckon, she'll always be. Why, sir, not a day breaks but
+she knows, within an hour's run, the whereabouts of every Hayle boat
+alive."
+
+"Some Courteney boats too, hmm?"
+
+"Why, eh"--a stare--"I shouldn't wonder. Yes. Humph! 'youngest captain
+on the river'--fact is, that's _her_. Lady as she is, and lovely as she
+is, she's a better steamboatman to-day than--than many a first-class
+one. She's nearer being my business partner than any man I ever hired."
+
+"Partner's share of the swag?"
+
+"No," laughed the giant, "but I'm leaving her the boats."
+
+"Well," said "California," "all that's good preparation."
+
+The huge man shot him a glance and the two pairs of blue eyes held each
+other. Then "California" smiled his winsomest and said: "Did you ever
+notice how much easier you can see through the ends of an iron pipe than
+through its sides?"
+
+Gideon stared. "Humph! Any fool that wants to see through me may see and
+be--joyful. What do you think you see?"
+
+"Oh, things you'd ought to thought of and never have."
+
+"Why, you in'--Well, I'll be damned."
+
+"Shouldn't wonder a bit," said "California" so amiably that the big man
+laughed.
+
+"Maybe you'll tell me my oversights!"
+
+"No, but you'll be told, shortly, if the man I think I know is the man
+I--think I know. Let's pass that now, commodore. Oh, I wish you'd been
+with us on the _Votaress_. How different things might 'a' turned out.
+You know? I don't believe any other trip on all this big river, barring
+the first steamboat's first, ever made so big a turning-point in so many
+lives. Why, jest two or three things in it, things and people, made me
+another man."
+
+"One not so need'n' to be hanged?"
+
+"Yes, and not so hungry to hang other fellers. I hadn't ever met up with
+such aristocratic stock as I did then but I tchuned right up to 'em and
+I've mighty nigh held their pitch ever sence. Fo'most of all was this
+Hugh Courteney. Fo'most because, he being a man, I wa'n't afraid of him.
+But a close second was yo' daughter; second because, she being a woman,
+I was afraid of her. Why, even Phyllis, that's now chambermaid on this
+boat----"
+
+"By Jupiter!" Gideon Hayle half started from his seat. "On this boat?
+our Phyllis? that Ramsey set free?"
+
+"Yes. Captain Hugh's nurse that was."
+
+"Look here, my boy, is that why you're aboard?"
+
+"No, sir-ee! Don't you fret. That trip, I tell you, made another man of
+me. It lifted; why, commodore, it made me a poet."
+
+"Made you a--Oh, go 'long off!"
+
+"Yes, sir. Writ poetry ever sence. Dropped prose; too easy. It's real
+poetry, commodore; rhymes as slick as grease. Show you some of it
+later."
+
+"George! if you do I'll jump into the river."
+
+"Agreed! I've got some that'll make you do that."
+
+"You haven't got any that wouldn't."
+
+Neither smiled, neither frowned. Obviously each knew how to like an
+adversary and when "California" rose and the two, glancing aft, saw
+another two approaching from the pilot-house, one of whom was Watson,
+Hayle touched the poet detainingly and said:
+
+"Don't go 'way, I want some more of your prose."
+
+"Want to know why I'm here? Not countin' the fun o' seein' Captain Hugh,
+half the reason's that gentleman yonder comin' with Mr. Watson, and the
+other half's his lady, down below a-powwowin' with yo' daughter. Fact is
+I'd struck it rich again out West and got restless and come East, and at
+Saint Louis I see by a newspaper that them two was allowin' to go down
+to Orleans on this boat this trip, and ree-collect-in' the pinch they
+got into of old on the _Votaress_, s'I to myself,'me too!'"
+
+Here the other men drew near and, while "California" ran on, silently
+pressed the big hand offered sidewise by Hayle.
+
+"And with that I set down and writ a poem--took me a whole night--to the
+best half dozen o' them that was on the other trip, invitin' 'em, at my
+expense, to jump on when we come by--at New Carthage--Milliken's
+Bend--Vicksburg--and trustin' to luck and fresh post stamps to find 'em.
+But little did we dream o' seein' you walk aboard, at Memphis, and still
+less yo' daughter and her old Joy; did we, Mr. Gilmore?"
+
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+FAREWELL, "VOTARESS"
+
+
+Montezuma Bend ... Delta ... Delta Bend ... Friar's Point ... Kangaroo
+Point ... Horseshoe Bend and Cut-off. Some, at least, of these we
+remember. At mention of them the Gilmores and "California"
+smiled--behind Ramsey: such a different, surpassingly different Ramsey!
+
+Near the _Enchantress's_ bell these four and old Joy were gathered about
+Gideon Hayle, Watson, and Hugh Courteney--such an inspiringly different
+Hugh! Two or three showed a divided attention, letting an occasional
+glance stray down the waters ahead, where Old Town Bend swung from west
+to south.
+
+At the same moment, in Horseshoe Cut-off, some twelve or fifteen miles
+below, another swift, handsome steamer, upward bound--the great river
+could hardly yet show more than one handsomer--swept into the north from
+an easterly course under Island Sixty-four and pointed up the middle of
+the stream to pass between Sixty-three and Sixty-two where, at the head
+of the reach, they parted the river into three channels and widened it
+to more than a league. She would have been an animating sight if only
+for the fact that every soul aboard who was not just then engaged in
+running her was at the guards of one or another of her graceful decks.
+The forecastle was darkened by her crew standing in a half circle about
+the capstan, her larboard pantry guards were crowded with white-jackets,
+her roofs were gay with ladies and children. In elated oblivion of the
+charming picture presented by their own boat and themselves, all were
+awaiting a spectacle which their pilots and captain had said would
+surely be met within the next hour's run.
+
+Although behind them was a tortuous fifty miles in which hardly more
+signs of human life had been seen or heard than if their way had been on
+the open Atlantic, the beauty of the wilderness alone, transfigured in
+the lights of the declining day, might well have satisfied the eye. A
+red sun was just touching the horizon. Its beams and the blue shadows
+that divided them lay level, miles long, athwart the glassy stream and
+its green and gray forests and tapered and vanished in a low eastern
+haze. The tints of autumn already prevailed along the shores, and the
+indolent waters mirrored the reversed images of the two islands in
+outlines clearer than their own and from bank to bank took on in
+enriched hues the many colors of the sky. At the far end of the reach,
+between and somewhat beyond the islands, stood well out of the shrunken
+flood a sand-bar, its middle crested green and gold with young poplars
+and willows, all its ill favor made picturesque and the whole mass
+glorified by the sunset. By this bar the waters of the central channel
+were again divided, north and south, and the steamer, with another
+eastward turn, straightened up for the southern passage between the bar
+and Sixty-three.
+
+"We'll pass her close," said one of the boat's family to those who hung
+on his words. "In this low water she's got to come round the bar and
+well over to the left bank, same as us."
+
+On the boiler deck and on the roof passengers of the kind that see for
+themselves pointed out to the kind that see only what they are shown the
+smoke of another boat, across the forests on the Arkansas side, in Old
+Town Bend. There were ways for some to know even at that distance that
+she was a craft they had never yet seen, but every two minutes the
+distance grew less by a mile. Presently, as the nearer boat, giving the
+bar's eastern head a wide berth, swung once more into the north, the
+_Enchantress_ glided into view on the larboard bow hardly two miles
+away. But before the _Enchantress_ as well, looking south across the
+same interval, gleamed a picture worthy of her delight. For there came
+the _Votaress_, curling white ribbons from her cutwater, her people
+waving and cheering, a swivel barking from her prow, and the whistles
+high up between her chimneys roaring in long salute.
+
+By no premeditation could the unpremeditated scene have been finer. The
+_Votaress_, as she took the wider circuit against the Mississippi shore,
+caught the whole power of the setting sun on all her nearer side while
+she swept close along an undivided curtain of autumn forest drenched in
+the same sunlight and quaking to her sudden breeze. North and west of
+her, where the sand-bar lay bare of trees, the _Enchantress_, larger,
+stronger, swifter, moved in her own shade but was set against the far
+splendor of a saffron, green, and crimson sky in which the fiery sun
+showed only its upper half sinking beneath the landscape. The lights of
+all her decks, just lit, gave no vivid ray but glinted like gems on a
+court lady. Her bridal whiteness was as pure hid from the sunbeams as
+her sister's bathed in them. From both the high black smoke streamed
+away through the evening calm and from their twinkling wheels the foam
+swept after them like trains of lace. We speak for our poet, who,
+lacking fit imagery of his own, recalled one of Jenny Lind's songs:
+
+     "I see afar thy robe of snow,
+      I see thy dark hair wildly flow,
+      I hear thy airy step so light,
+      Thou com'st to wish thy love good night.
+        Good night, my love, good night."
+
+Good night, _Votaress_! He could not know, nor Ramsey, nor any of those
+among whom they stood, that these bends were never again to see you in
+your beauty--though in tragedy, yes! yes! They knew that in the
+shipyards of the Ohio you were to receive a beautiful rejuvenation; but
+knew not that then, as a dove may be caught by a lynx, you were to be
+caught by a great war, a war greater than the great river, and should
+return to these scenes a transport; a poor, scarred, bedraggled consort
+to gunboats; slow reptilian monsters of iron ugliness and bellowing
+ferocity. They knew not of days when you must swarm with blue
+soldiers--including Marburg--sometimes hot and merry for battle,
+sometimes shot-torn, fever-wasted, yellow-eyed, a human rubbish of camp
+and siege, lighter part of the deadly price of conquered strongholds and
+fallen cities--Forts Henry and Donelson, Columbus, Island Ten, Fort
+Pillow, Port Hudson, Vicksburg, Memphis; or that, after all, in
+recovered decency, honored poverty, you should wear out a gentle old age
+as a wharf-boat to your unspeakable inferiors. And neither could they,
+those voyagers on the new steamer, foresee the happier vision of their
+_Enchantress_ living through the war charmedly unscathed, sharing the
+palmiest days of the Mississippi's navigation without ever being
+surpassed in speed or beauty, even by younger Courteney boats, and at
+last falling asleep peaceably at her moorings hard by the vast riverside
+railway warehouses on the outskirts of a greater New Orleans.
+
+All this forces its way through the mind while we see the meeting boats
+cover half the run between them. On the _Enchantress_ a deck-hand
+mounted the capstan.
+
+"They're going to sing," hurriedly said Ramsey to Hugh. "I wish they'd
+sing ''Lindy Lowe' that I've heard about!"
+
+And whether by happy chance or on some signal dropped down from him or
+because the chantey was a new one and the crew were glad to show it off,
+it was chosen. The two steamers passed close with a happy commotion
+throughout both and the song swelled. Then the wooded crest of the bar
+hid each from each, and Hugh turned to Gideon: "Now, commodore, if Miss
+Hayle is willing I'd like to take you both below and show you over the
+boat--before supper."
+
+When their descent brought them to the boiler deck the song was yet in
+full swing. When, passing on down, they reached the engine room the fact
+was amusingly clear to many on all decks, among them the Gilmores, the
+Californian, and Watson, that the singers had lit on a new bearing for
+their lines and were singing them now in compliment to a certain two
+whose story was by this time known to all on board. Whether, back
+between the sweeping cranks and shafts of the two great engines and
+wheels, behind the "doctor" and the "donkey" and with Hugh and Ramsey at
+his elbows, the alert Gideon heard the song at all was doubtful; so deep
+in debate were the two men, the quiet and the loud, on dimensions and
+powers: length, beam, hold, stroke, diameters of cylinders and of
+wheels, in such noted cases as the _Chevalier_, the _Eclipse_, the _J.
+M. White_, the _Natchez_, _Antelope_, _Paragon_, _Quakeress_, and
+_Autocrat_. The three were there yet when the song's last echo died,
+with Island Sixty-four eastward astern, Sixty-five southward ahead, the
+brief twilight failing and the supper bell ringadang-dinging.
+
+At table a far-away whistle softly roared and the _Enchantress_
+sonorously responded.
+
+"A Hayle boat," said Ramsey to Hugh; "the _Regent_."
+
+"And we're singing 'Lindy' again!" said Mrs. Gilmore.
+
+Gideon, busy talking a few seats away, talked straight on, but a cloud
+on his brow showed now that he had heard the song the earlier time.
+Every one tried hard to listen to him and the melody with the same ears.
+Under the table somebody's toe had no better manners than gently to beat
+time.
+
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+'LINDY LOWE
+
+
+[Music: Come, smil-in' 'Lind-y Lowe,... de pooti-ess gal I know,...
+On de fin-ess boat dat ev-eh float, In de O-hi-o, De Mas-sis-sip-pi aw
+de O-hi-o.]
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, teef whiteh dan de snow,
+       On de finess boat dat eveh float,
+         In de O--hi--o,
+       De Mas--sis--sip--pi aw de O--hi--o.
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to de Lou'siana sho',
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, by de Gu'f o' Mexico,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to de bayous deep an' slow,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de moss wave, to an' fro,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de bell done ring to go,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de muscadimons grow,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, befo' de whistle blow',
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de pride o' Lake St. Jo',
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, I love' you long ago,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, I'll love you mo' an' mo',
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, how kin you treat me so?
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sweet pussimmon grow
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de steam-kyahs runs too slow,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de blue pon'-lily grow,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, O don't you tell me no!
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, I's bound to be yo' beau,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de wile white roses grow,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de fust of all de row,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, eyes sweeteh dan de doe,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de white magnonia blow',
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, an' awake up, fiddle an' bow,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, we'll a-dance de heel an' toe,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to de tchune o' Jump, Jim Crow,
+                          (Chorus)
+
+     Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, come, de pootiess gal I know,
+       On de finess boat dat eveh float'
+         In de O--hi--o,
+       De Mas--sis--sip--pi aw de O--hi--o.
+
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+"CONCLUSIVELY"
+
+
+Alone in the wide light of a harvest-moon that wrapped all shores in
+deep shadow and turned the mid-channel to silver, Hugh and Ramsey stood
+at the low front rail of the texas roof.
+
+There were but few to see them, but every eye in range was aware of her
+and of a refined simplicity of dress adorning a figure whose pliant
+grace was the finishing touch to her joyous erectness. Hugh's gaze was
+frankly on her, and his mind on the first night he had ever seen her,
+when, with her hair wind-tossed in loose curls, she had stood at this
+spot on the _Votaress_ and in carelessness of a whole world had sung
+"The Lone Starry Hours."
+
+Equally distant from them were the pilot-house behind and above and the
+bell down forward on the skylight. To right and left on a thwartship
+line just back of them towered the chimneys softly giving out their
+titanic respirations. Watson, though off watch, was up at the wheel
+beside his partner, pretending not to see the two beneath. In other
+words, he was still, after eight and a half years, "in the game." The
+Gilmores were with him, both in body and spirit.
+
+Out forward of the bell, below it on the main roof, one of the boat's
+builders, responsible for her till she should reach New Orleans, sat in
+the captain's chair.
+
+"After eight years and a half," Hugh himself had gravely begun to say to
+Ramsey, when two men, "California" and a fellow smoker, sauntered across
+the skylight roof close below. Gilmore, up in the pilot-house, was
+annoyed.
+
+"Our poet," he murmured to his wife, "will spill the fat into the fire
+yet, if we don't stop him."
+
+But the Californian had purposely encumbered himself with this stranger
+to make it plain that, hover as he might, he waived all claim to her
+attention. What better could a man do? And now he forbore even to look
+her way. The abstention was as marked as any look could have been. As
+they passed, Hugh was silent, but Ramsey spoke, her speech a light blend
+of response and evasion.
+
+"On the _Votaress_," she said, "the front of the texas didn't stand out
+forward of the chimneys, like this."
+
+"Doesn't this make a handsomer boat," the lover asked, "seen either
+aboard or from the shore?"
+
+Ramsey said yes, she had noticed the improvement from the Memphis
+wharf-boat. "She was a splendid sight; yes, out in the stream, just
+before her wheels first stopped. At least she was to any one loving
+boats and the river."
+
+"Then you haven't changed?" asked Hugh, not for information but in the
+tone that always meant so much beneath the speech.
+
+Her answer was merely to meet his gaze with a gentle steadfastness, each
+knowing that the other's mind was overcircling all the years that had
+divided them. Through those years they had exchanged no spoken or
+written word. Yet according to Watson true love finds ways, large love
+large ways, pure love pure ways. Sometimes love's friends really help;
+help find ways, or keep ways found; even make chutes and cut-offs.
+Gilmore, Watson, and the Vicksburg merchant happened to be Odd Fellows,
+and the Gilmores, to whom letter-writing was, next to their profession,
+their main pleasure, had been a sort of clearing-house for Friendship,
+Love, and Truth--and especially for social news--to all the _Votaress's_
+old coterie; Hugh, the pairs of Milliken's Bend, Vicksburg, and
+Carthage, the boat's family, Phyllis, Madame Hayle, even old Joy--with
+madame for amanuensis--and Ramsey herself. She and Hugh, had followed
+every step in each other's course, upheld by a simplicity of faith in
+friendship, love, and truth, which hardly needed to ask the one question
+abundantly answered by this steadfastness of eye.
+
+Now she looked away to the moon's path on the river, and the question of
+change came back from her: "Have you?"
+
+"Only to grow."
+
+"You have grown," she said, "every way."
+
+"And you," he replied, "every beautiful way. I have just said so to your
+father."
+
+Her response came instantly: "How did that happen?"
+
+"We made it happen."
+
+She looked at him again. "We," of course, meant "I." Truly she had grown
+every beautiful way, but it was yet as wonderful as ever to stand,
+saying what she had said, hearing what she was hearing, eye to eye, open
+soul to open soul, with one who could make words--words at any
+rate--happen between himself and Gideon Hayle. She looked this time not
+alone into his eyes but on all his unhandsome countenance, and in a
+surviving upflare of her younger days' extravagance thought whether,
+among all time's heroes of the world's waters, there had ever been one
+too great for Hugh Courteney's face. So looking she thrilled with the
+belief that there was nothing such men had ever done which this one
+might not some day, the right day, equal or surpass.
+
+Again she looked away and as she looked the hovering Californian
+murmured to his new-found confidant:
+
+"You can't see the glory of her in this light nohow, unless you'd seen
+her already in the full blaze of the cabin, or of broad day, with the
+light in that red hair. If you had you wouldn't need even the moonlight
+now. You'd only need to know she was there and you'd see her without
+looking. I seen her in her first long dress, jest a-learning to fly and
+some folks showing no more poetic vision than to call her 'almost
+plain.' I saw the loveliness a-coming, like daybreak in the mountains.
+And _he_ saw it. I saw he saw it. And now? I tell you, sir, her brow is
+like the snowdrift, her throat is like the swan, and her face it is the
+fairest--I never seen Annie Laurie, but if she's better looking or
+sweeter behaving--I'd rather not. Anyhow they're enough alike to be
+sisters. I've writ a poem on this one. Like to show--hmm? Hold on. It
+don't quite suit me yet but--what's your hurry? When it does, I Joe!
+it'll be a ripsnorter. I've worked eight year and a half on it and they
+say genius is jest a trick o' takin' infinitessimal pains.... No, I'm
+not sleepy. Reckon I'll go up to the pilot-house. So long. Pleasant
+dreams."
+
+While he so spoke Ramsey had said: "Here comes another boat, down in the
+next bend. Or is she in the chute?"
+
+"The chute," replied Hugh. "That's the old _Antelope_."
+
+"Ah, up and running again! I know all about you and the _Votaress_
+saving her people that awful night she sank."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"Oh, a dozen, at a dozen times; but the best was Phyllis, writing to
+us."
+
+"Phyllis behaved heroically that night; made up for all the past--though
+really she'd done that before."
+
+"I'm glad you feel that way," murmured Ramsey and suddenly asked: "Why
+did you take my father to your room just now?"
+
+"To show him the plans for another boat."
+
+"Humph!" What crystalline honesty was in his answers, she pondered. They
+were as prompt as a mirror's.
+
+"Rivals," she remarked, "don't ordinarily show plans."
+
+"Your father and I are not ordinary rivals."
+
+What did that mean? Her, and not mere boats' plans? She did not look at
+him this time. Like "California" she could see without looking. "Think
+I'll rejoin the Gilmores," she sighed, as certain couples came up to see
+the _Antelope_ go by. She feared a recurrence of "'Lindy Lowe." On the
+way to the pilot-house she leisurely inquired:
+
+"Do you think you'll ever build a finer boat than this?"
+
+"Yes, and larger, and faster."
+
+"Not this season?"
+
+"No, I should hope not for many. Yet----"
+
+"Boats' lives," she prompted, "are so uncertain."
+
+"Yes, grandfather thinks----"
+
+"Oh, if only he were here!" She paused to let Hugh notice that she had
+"were" and "was" in hand at last. Then:
+
+"How long will that boat be?"
+
+"Three hundred and thirty feet. She'll have ten boilers. Her cylinders
+will be forty-three inches, her stroke eleven feet. She'll carry
+eighty-five hundred bales of cotton."
+
+"Goodness! How wide will she be?"
+
+"In the beam fifty. Over all, at the wheelhouses, ninety. Her wheels
+will be forty-five feet in diameter and their buckets nineteen feet
+span. You still like figures, boats' figures, I hope?"
+
+She still liked, for second choice, to make him, to herself, ridiculous;
+liked it even now while inwardly laughing and weeping at him for not
+coming to personal matters infinitely more important. "Go on," she said,
+"I like cabin figures. How long, wide, and high will the cabin be?"
+
+"Two hundred and sixty-three by nineteen by sixteen."
+
+"What'll her name be? Another e-double-s, of course?"
+
+"No, I've just been telling your father--here comes the _Antelope_. I
+was telling him that grandfather----"
+
+An overhead roar of reply to the signal of the approaching boat drowned
+all words, but Ramsey had learned on coming aboard that the grandfather
+was still sound though beyond four score, and her one vivid wish now was
+to know more not of him but of Hugh and her father. Yet she had to let
+Hugh hand her up the pilot-house stair, and without him rejoined the
+Gilmores while Watson spoke down to the man in the captain's chair as to
+the light-draught _Antelope_ having come up through the chute of Island
+So-and-so. She was just in time to accept her share in the splendor and
+gayety of the two boats' meeting and passing. As the picture dissolved,
+Mrs. Gilmore slyly pinched Ramsey's finger while asking Watson:
+
+"Why don't our men sing? _I_ want some more 'Lindy!"
+
+Had she not heard the signal for the lead? No, in the excitement she had
+not, though both Ramsey and "California" had, there being to them an
+unfailing poetry in the casting of the lead, whether by day or, as now,
+by the glare of a torch basket let down close to the water under the
+starboard freight guards. At one end of the breast-board the two ladies,
+at the other the actor and the Californian, looked out and down. The
+boat's builder had left his seat and stood with Hugh at the forward
+rail. From the freight guards, far below, the leadsman, unseen up here
+except to experienced "poetic vision," sent up a long-drawn chant
+telling the fathoms of depth shown on the sounding-line that flew
+forward from his skilled hand into the boat's moonlight shadow, plunged
+to the river's bed, vibrated past his feet in the glare of the pine
+torch, stretched aft while he chanted, and was recovered in dripping
+coils and hove again.
+
+"Mark under wa-ater, twai-ai-ain."
+
+As the notes resounded Hugh looked up to the pilots and in his quietest
+speaking voice repeated:
+
+"Mark under water, twain."
+
+But our concern here is mainly with those for whom the scene, the calls,
+veiled two private conversations. Three or four times the one melodious
+cry, following as many casts, rose from below, and each time, with all
+its swing and melody left out, Hugh passed it on up to the pilots.
+Between the strains Gilmore said softly to "California":
+
+"My dear fellow, no. Every time we show ourselves their partisans we
+make heavier hauling for them. They'd tell us so, only that--don't you
+see?--they can't even do that. It would be _infra dig._" But in fact
+Ramsey was just then telling something much like that to his wife.
+
+"Yes," admitted the Californian, full of a new scheme, yet always
+generous, "and that was a ten-strike, your wife, after supper, taking
+Miss Hayle away from Hugh and Gideon in such gay style. Did you see
+how't sort o' eased the old man's mind?"
+
+The leadsman's cry changed and so came twice or thrice, Hugh as often
+repeating it to the pilots, while Ramsey and Mrs. Gilmore, though
+hearkening, whispered busily.
+
+"Shoaling," commented Mrs. Gilmore to Ramsey.
+
+"Not seriously," said the river-wise Ramsey. "Go on. What did you get
+out of him at last?" She had a merry sparkle.
+
+Once more the far-below cry rose to them and was restated by Hugh
+without color or thrill. Ramsey well knew that so it was always sung and
+spoken, yet she remarked:
+
+"Hear that absurd difference--in those two voices."
+
+"That's the difference between him and other men, Ramsey; even between
+him and your father."
+
+She liked that, though now she felt bitter toward him for not being more
+like ordinary mortals.
+
+"Go on," she lightly repeated. "If he won't make words happen with me I
+must take him second-hand."
+
+"You naughty girl! He'll tell you all you'll let him."
+
+"Oh, I'll let him, all he'll tell me. What did he say?"
+
+"He said the very best was, that under all your mantle of new
+charms----"
+
+Ramsey's soft laugh interrupted. "He didn't. He never said that, my
+lady. He wouldn't know how. You said it."
+
+"Well, he did say that under it all there's nothing lost of the Ramsey
+we began with."
+
+"The slanderer!" They laughed together. The calls of the lead were
+passing unnoticed. "Mark above water, twain; mark, twain; quarter less,
+twain; half, twain; nine and a half; by the mark, nine; nine feet."
+
+"The slanderer! Why, that's actionable! I'll have the law on him!" The
+speaker's mirth was overdone. As the leadsman sang another cry and Hugh
+sedately spoke it she tinkled as of old and said: "Don't get excited,
+captain. Keep cool."
+
+Mrs. Gilmore sobered. "You may laugh, but I believe he's talked with
+your father conclusively and will to you to-night, if you'll allow it."
+
+"Humph! you don't know that he'll come near me. Aboard his own boat, on
+her trial trip, he's got other fish to fry. But even if he should, don't
+you see how absolute the deadlock is? Oh, you must have seen it these
+eight years and more!--in spite of everybody's silence."
+
+"We didn't. We don't see it even now, Gilmore and I. We don't believe
+Captain Hugh sees any deadlock whatever. He merely knows you think you
+do. You think to accept him would condemn him to death?"
+
+"Mrs. Gilmore, I know it would. My brothers--may have broken promises
+but they--keep--their--threats. You know that's the fashion of all this
+country, from Cairo down."
+
+"Ma-a-ark, twai-ai-ain," chanted the leadsman for his final call, and
+not only Hugh but an echo from the land repeated it. To many an ear,
+poetic ear, that echo is there yet, in all that country, from Cairo
+down. But that is aside. Watson and his partner threw the wheel over and
+the _Enchantress_ swept round for the chute.
+
+In the bright moonlight Hugh and the boat's builder turned back toward
+the solitary chair, placidly conversing. Gilmore talked on with
+"California." His wife and Ramsey drew back into the corner behind them.
+
+"Your brothers," murmured Mrs. Gilmore, "threatened Hugh's life just the
+same before you came into the issue at all."
+
+"Yes," said Ramsey, "and they're watching their chance yet. Julian told
+me so this summer and Lucian berated him for 'showing his hand.' Oh,
+that isn't the deadlock, by itself. The deadlock is that as long as Hugh
+Courteney holds off the feud will keep, but when he doesn't I come in
+and it won't; everything's precipitated. And so, you see?...
+
+"Hmm! Hugh Courteney won't put himself, or me, or mom-a, where, in a
+fight for his life, no matter who's killed the killing would be in the
+family, and the killed would be ours, mom-a's--and--and mine. The twins
+see that. Jule says it, and, what's worse, Luce says nothing. That's why
+_they_ are entirely satisfied with the deadlock.... Look."
+
+The boat's contractor was leaving the deck. Hugh had started toward the
+pilot-house. But when Mrs. Gilmore looked she looked beyond him in
+meditation.
+
+"I know what you're thinking," said Ramsey. "But it'll never happen.
+They've settled down to the ordinary term of a decent life, thank
+God!... Here he comes. Think he'll talk to me? Yes, he will. He'll begin
+where he left off." She laughed. "He's going to tell me the name of his
+next boat, if he ever builds another. Anything 'conclusive' in that?"
+
+Mrs. Gilmore was grave a moment longer and then brightly said: "There
+might be! There may be! I can see--I can see how he--" She could not
+finish. Hugh had entered.
+
+His coming broke in upon another conversation, that of Gilmore and
+"California."
+
+"Old boy, no. Suppose it should work out as you plan. You leave us at
+Natchez; that's easy. You live there a week, a month, free with your
+gold and making friends--of the sort gold makes. You get into a
+political quarrel with the twins--nothing easier--and in a clear case of
+your own self-defence the two are:--
+
+          "'--Laid in one grave.
+      Sing tooralye,' etc."
+
+"Wouldn't that be poetic justice? and ain't I a poet?"
+
+"Undoubtedly. Then by miracle you come off scot-free."
+
+"Not essential. I take my chances."
+
+"Still, you have that hope; freedom is sweet. More-over, miracle of
+miracles, what you did it for is never guessed. But, my dear fellow,
+there are two who'd never need to guess. Like us they'd know and that
+knowledge would sunder them forever. They'd never willingly look into
+each other's faces again."
+
+"Nnn-o. No, course they wouldn't. I seen that from the jump but I sort
+o' hoped you'd maybe know some way to get round that; it being the only
+real difficulty."
+
+"Sorry, but I don't. Odd how narrow-minded one's friends can be, but
+when they are--what can we do?"
+
+"Yes, that's so.... Mr. Gilmore, you're not narrow-minded; I've got a
+poem----"
+
+It was there Hugh entered. But it was there, too, that Watson made a
+move in his modest part of the game.
+
+With his eyes out ahead down the chute they were entering--"If any one,"
+he drawled, "wants to see a scandalous fine moonlight picture of this
+river, one they'll never forget, the best place from whence to behold it
+is the texas roof, down here, out for'ard o' the chimneys."
+
+"If Captain Hugh would go with us," pensively said Mrs. Gilmore, "we'd
+all go." And soon the pilots were alone.
+
+"Now," growled the younger, with his gaze down there on Ramsey, "don't
+that beat you? Her making California stay so's Cap'n Hugh can't pair off
+with her!"
+
+"Be easy," said Watson; "that's according to Hoyle. Don't shoot till
+they settle.... There. Now I'll go down and take care of California. By
+cracky! run smooth or run rough, I believe it's going to go this time."
+
+
+
+
+LX
+
+ONCE MORE HUGH SINGS
+
+
+Between that great eastward bend nearly opposite the mouth of the
+Arkansas, which in later years was cut off and is now, or was yesterday,
+Beulah Lake--between it and Ozark Island below--a white-jacket came up
+from the passenger deck far enough to show his head to the watchman
+above and warily asked a question.
+
+"Six," was the reply. "Including me--seven."
+
+The inquirer ran wildly down again, but the _Enchantress_ sped on
+through the glorious moonlight as though he scarcely mattered. On the
+texas roof Mrs. Gilmore sat with "California," her husband with Watson,
+Hugh with Ramsey. But only the last two were out on its forward verge.
+Mrs. Gilmore had found it cool there and with the others had drawn back
+a few steps, into the pleasant warmth of the chimneys. For average
+passengers the evening was far gone, but not for players, pilots,
+Californians, or lovers--of the river.
+
+A mile or so farther on, the white-jacket reappeared and, gliding by all
+others to reach his captain, said, with mincing feet and a semicircular
+bow, while presenting a tray of six, not seven, sherry cobblers:
+
+"Sev'l gen'lemen's comp'ments, an' ax, will Mis' Gil'----"
+
+"What gentlemen? Who?"
+
+"Sev'l gen'lemen, yassuh. Dey tell me dess say, sev'l gen'lemen. Sev'l
+gen'lemen ax will Mis' Gilmo' have de kin'ness fo' to sing some o' dem
+same songs she sing night afo' las' in de ladies' cabin an' las' night
+up hyuh.... Yass'm, whiles dey listens f'om de b'ileh deck."
+
+"Has my father gone to bed?" asked Ramsey.
+
+"No'm, he up yit. He done met up wid dese sev'l gen'lemen an' find dey
+old frien's--callin' deyse'v's in joke Gideon' Ban'--an' he talkin'
+steamboats wid 'em----"
+
+The speaker tittered as Ramsey inquiringly extended her arms out forward
+and crossed her wrists. "Yass'm," he said, "hin' feet on de front rail,
+yass'm."
+
+It seemed but fair that Mrs. Gilmore, to meet the compliment generously,
+should sing at the very front of the hurricane roof, just over the
+forward guards of the boiler deck. But Ramsey and Hugh kept their place.
+Ramsey wanted to be near the sky, she explained, when songs were sung on
+the water by moonlight, and eagerly spoke for two or three which her
+friend had sung of old on the _Votaress_ to spiritualize the
+"acrobatics" of the Brothers Ambrosia.
+
+The singer's voice was rich, trained, and mature, and her repertory a
+survival of young days--nights--before curtains and between acts: Burns,
+Moore, Byron, and Mrs. Norton, alternating with "The Lavender Girl,"
+"Rose of Lucerne," "Dandy Jim o' Caroline," and "O Poor Lucy Neal." And
+now she sang her best, in the belief that while she sang the pair up
+between her and the pilot-house were speaking conclusively. Let us see.
+
+"Ramsey," said Hugh, and waited--ten seconds--twenty.
+
+Well, why should he not? In eight years and a half there were ten
+million times twenty seconds and she had waited all of them. At length
+she responded and the moment she did so she thought she had spoken too
+promptly although all she said was, "Yes?"
+
+"The hour's come at last," said Hugh.
+
+"What hour?--hour to name that boat?"
+
+"Yes, to name that boat. Only not that first. Ramsey, I've told your
+father all I ever wanted to tell you."
+
+"Humph!" The response was so nearly in the manner of the earlier Ramsey,
+"the Ramsey he had begun with" and whom she remembered with horror, that
+she recognized the likeness. The further reply had been on her tongue's
+end, that to tell her father only that could not have taken long, or
+some such parrying nonsense; but now it would not come. She felt her
+whole nature tempted to make love's final approach steep and slippery,
+but again without looking she saw his face; his face of stone; his iron
+face with its large, quiet, formidable eyes that could burn with
+enterprise in great moments; a face set to all the world's realities,
+and eyes that offered them odds, asking none. So seeing she knew that if
+she answered with one least note of banter she would make herself an
+object of his magnanimity, than which she would almost rather fall under
+his scorn--if he ever stooped to scorn. Suddenly she remembered the
+deadlock and was smitten with the conviction that these exchanges were
+love's last farewell. Now it was hard to speak at all.
+
+"What was it you told him?"
+
+"I told him how long I'd loved you, and why."
+
+"We both love the river so," murmured Ramsey in a voice broken by the
+pounding of her heart.
+
+"Yes. I told him that, for one thing. And I told him how gladly I would
+have asked for you long ago had I not seen myself, as you so often saw
+me on the _Votaress_----"
+
+"Condemned to inaction," she softly prompted; for if this was farewell a
+true maiden must speed the parting.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"By an absolute deadlock," she murmured on. "My father sees it. He knows
+it's one yet and must always be one."
+
+"No, a lock but not a deadlock. It's a lock to which your brothers do
+not hold the key."
+
+The pounding in her breast, which had grown better, grew worse again.
+"Who holds it?"
+
+"Your father. I have just told him so. At no time would I have hesitated
+to ask for you if the key had been with your brothers. I would have got
+a settlement from them, sink or swim, alive or dead. I believe in
+lover's rights, Ramsey, and I'll have a lover's rights at any risk or
+cost that falls only on me. Those old threats--yes, I know how fiercely
+they are still meant--and they have always had their weight; but they've
+never of themselves weighed enough to stop me. I've held off and
+endured, waiting not for a change of heart in your brothers, but for an
+hour counselled, Ramsey, by my father on his dying bed."
+
+"What hour? Hour of strongest right? strongest reason?"
+
+"Not at all. The hour I've waited for was the one which would best
+enable me to meet your father on equal terms as measured by his own
+standards."
+
+"Oh, I see. I believe I see."
+
+"Yes, the hour when I should be not owner merely, but captain too, of
+the finest boat----"
+
+"Dat eveh float'--" she tenderly put in.
+
+"Yes, on this great river."
+
+"Oh, Captain Courteney----"
+
+"Don't Courteney or captain me now, Ramsey, whether this is beginning or
+end." There was a silence, and then--
+
+"Hugh," she said, as softly as a female bird trying her mate's song,
+"you mustn't ask my father. You mustn't ask any one. I can't let you."
+
+"Your father's already asked. If he consents I go ashore at Natchez,
+having telegraphed ahead from Vicksburg----"
+
+"You shan't. You shan't go to my brothers. You shan't go armed and you
+shan't go unarmed."
+
+"Yes, I shall. I'll go and settle with them in an hour without the least
+fear of violence on either side."
+
+"Armed with nothing but words? You shan't. And armed with anything else
+you shan't."
+
+"Ramsey, words are the mightiest weapon on earth. The world's one
+perfect man--we needn't be pious to say it--set about to conquer the
+human race by the sheer power of words and died rather than use any
+other weapon. Died victorious, as he counted victory. And the result--a
+poor, lame beginning of the result--is what we call Christendom."
+
+"You shan't die victorious for me."
+
+"No, I shall not. I talk much too vast."
+
+"Humph! you always did." She smiled, but a moonbeam betrayed a tear on
+her folded hands.
+
+"True," he admitted. "I talk too vast. I'm only claiming the power of
+words in small as well as large. I've no hope of martyrdom; I'm only
+confident of victory."
+
+"No matter. You _won't_ go ashore at Natchez."
+
+"You mean your father won't consent?"
+
+"I do. There's one thing, at the very bottom of his heart, that you've
+never thought of."
+
+"I think I have."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"That as the Hayle boats are all one day to be yours, and our union
+would unite the two fleets under the one name of Courteney, he will
+never allow it."
+
+"He never will."
+
+"Ramsey, he says he may. If we and the boats are so united the fleet
+will be, while grandfather lives, the Courteney fleet; but each new boat
+from now on will be named for a Hayle, beginning with you, or your
+father, or your mother, as you and they may choose. At Vicksburg, if he
+consents in time, we can telegraph her--we must have her--to come aboard
+at Natchez for the rest of the trip. Grandfather, I suppose you've been
+told, is now waiting for us at Vicksburg. He came up on the _Antelope_."
+
+"The _Antelope_! How do you know?"
+
+"By a despatch received at Memphis."
+
+"Mmm! what a blessing is the telegraph! But, ah, Hugh"--the name was
+almost naturalized--"this is a mere castle in the air! My--my
+brothers----"
+
+"I'll take care of them."
+
+"You can't! You can't! Oh, Hugh, they--keep--their--threats." She caught
+a breath and looked at him. If he went seeking them she would go at his
+side! He must have read her mind, for in his majestical way he smilingly
+shook his head.
+
+Mrs. Gilmore had ceased to sing and with the others had risen and turned
+Ramsey's way, confident that up there the conclusive word had been
+spoken. Ramsey called down:
+
+"Don't stop. Sing 'My Old Kentucky Home' or that thing in which 'the
+river keeps rolling along' and 'the future's but a dream.' We're song
+hungry up here."
+
+"Then sing to each other," was the reply. "You can do it."
+
+"Let Captain Hugh sing," said Watson. "He's off watch."
+
+"He says," said Ramsey, "captains don't sing on the texas roof." She
+moved to join the group on its way to an after stair. Watson bent his
+steps for the pilot-house. At the stair the actor's wife let her husband
+and "California" go down before her and as Ramsey and Hugh came close
+said covertly:
+
+"Sing, captain. Sing as softly as you please, just for us two while the
+world is in dreams and sleep, won't you?"
+
+The lover's heart was big with happiness, his solicitor had just been
+singing pointedly in his interest, the seclusion here was all but
+absolute, the quoted line was from Ramsey's song of that first night on
+the _Votaress_, and to the bright surprise of both his hearers he laid a
+touch on Mrs. Gilmore's arm and in a restrained voice so confidential as
+to reach only to the pilot-house above and to the two men at the stair's
+foot below began to sing.
+
+Before half a line was out the Californian had seized both of Gilmore's
+shoulders. "My poem!" he gasped. "I gave it to him last night to
+grammatize! He's fit it to a tchune. Partner, he's the only man that's
+listened----"
+
+"Sh-sh-sh! listen yourself," whispered the actor, and this is what they
+heard:
+
+[Music: O come and grace my gar-den, From all the world a-part. Thou
+on-ly may'st the won-der see Of birds and flow'rs that in it be, For all
+of them are dreams of thee. My gar-den is my heart,... My gar-den is my
+heart.]
+
+     "If heaven might make my garden
+        An empire wide and great,
+      Fidelity should close it in,
+      The joy of life bloom evergreen,
+      And love be law and thou be queen,
+        Might I but keep the gate.
+
+     "For where would be my garden,
+        Dear love, from thee apart?
+      Whose every bush and bower and tree,
+      Its founts, perfumes, and minstrelsy
+      And all its flowers spring all from thee,
+        Thou sunlight of my heart."
+
+"You say that's your poem?" murmured the actor.
+
+"Oh, he's doctored it," stealthily admitted the Californian. "He's
+doctored it a lot."
+
+
+
+
+LXI
+
+WANTED, HAYLE'S TWINS
+
+
+Early in the next forenoon another of the Californian's benevolent
+schemes threatened to miscarry.
+
+At the settlement of Milliken's Bend there were people already at the
+landing, and people running to it from three directions. Yet not a hat,
+hand, or handkerchief did they wave until the _Enchantress_, in full
+view up toward the head of the bend, was too near to mistake their
+salutes for a sign to stop. Then there were wavings aplenty and cries of
+acclaim. By the "River News" daily telegraphed down to the New Orleans,
+Vicksburg, and other papers, from Louisville, Paducah, Cairo, and like
+points, and brought up in those papers by such boats as the _Antelope_,
+it had been known here and at every important landing below that this
+latest bride of the river was coming and the time of her appearance had
+been definitely calculated. And now behold her, a vision of delight, a
+winged victory, the finest apparition yet. Up in front of her bell could
+be seen Captain Hugh, and who was that beside him, twice his bulk, but
+Gideon Hayle!
+
+"Well, well, what's going to happen next?"
+
+No one offered an answer, though the question echoed round.
+
+So early in the season the new wonder carried no cotton, but her lower
+deck showed "right smart o' freight," and wherever passengers were wont
+to stand stood a crowd looking so content that on the shore one lean and
+hungry native with his hands in his trousers to the elbows drawled
+sourly as his eye singled out the boiler-deck throng:
+
+"Kin see thah breakfast inside 'em f'om hyuh."
+
+Now they read her name in gold on the front of her pilot-house, now on
+its side and splendidly magnified on her wheel-house, and lastly again
+on the pilot-house, at its back, as she dwindled away eastward for
+Island One-hundred-and-three, called by Ramsey and Watson "My Wife's,"
+and now known as Pawpaw Island.
+
+"California" was a general disappointed of his reinforcements. The pair
+at Milliken's Bend having failed him, what better hope was there of the
+Carthaginians or even of the Vicksburg couple? Yet at Vicksburg, two
+hours later, he had joy. For down at the wharf-boat's very edge,
+liveliest of all wavers and applauders, with a "Howdy, Cap'm Hugh?"
+before the lines were out, and a "How you do, Miss Ramsey?" were the
+three pairs at once, foregathered here, they said, "to make the spree
+mo' spree-cious," and wild to be the first on the "sta-age plank." Close
+after them came Commodore Courteney, and Vicksburg faded into the north.
+
+"Why, Mis' Gilmo'!" said the three pretty wives, sinking with a deft
+sweep of their flounced crinoline upon the blue-damask sofas and faintly
+teetering on their perfect springs, "why, my deah la-ady, yo' eight an'
+a hafe yeahs youngeh!-- Ain't she?-- She certain'y is! An' that deah
+Commodo' Co'teney! He's as sweet as eveh!
+
+"But you, Miss Ramsey, oh,--well,--why,--you know,--time an' again we
+heard what a mahvel you'd grown to be, but--why,--lemme look at you
+again! Why, yo' just divi-i-ine! Law'! I'd give a thousand dollahs just
+fo' yo' red-gole hair. Why, it's the golden locks o' Veronese, that
+Cap'm Hugh's fatheh showed you,--don't you remembeh?--on the _Vot'ress_,
+an' you showed us,--in the sky. They there yet!
+
+"An'"--the five heads drew close together--"Cap'm Hugh, oh, he ain't
+such a su'pri-ise; we've seen him f'om time to time. But ain't he--mmm,
+hmm, hmmm! An'so a-a-able! Why, Miss Ramsey,--oh, you must 'a' heard
+it,--they say excep' fo' yo' pa he hasn't got his equal on the riveh an'
+could 'a' been a captain long ago had he 'a' thought best himself. He
+certain'y could. But ain't this boat the splendidest thing in the
+wi-i-ide, wi-i-ide world? It certain'y is! It's a miracle! an' he her
+captain and deservin' to be!
+
+"Mis' Gilmo',--Miss Ramsey,"--the lovely heads came together,--"the's a
+hund'ed pretty girls--an' rich as pretty--that ah just cra-a-azy about
+him. But they might as well be crazy about a stah. They certain'y might,
+an' they--know--why!" (Laughter.) "They certain'y do-- Law'! ain't Miss
+Ramsey got the sa-a-ame o-o-ole la-a-afe, on'y sweeteh'n eveh? Sweeteh
+an' mo' ketchin'! You certain'y have. No wondeh yo' call' the Belle o'
+the Bends. But, all the same, yo' cruel. Yo' fame' fo' yo' cruelty!"
+(Laughter.) "They say he's just telegrayphed yo' ma to come aboa'd at
+Natchez. That's just ow Southe'n hospitality. But won't that be
+fi-i-ine? It certain'y will!"
+
+The three husbands came bringing the actor, the junior pilot, the
+Californian, and his confidant of the evening before. Incited by Ramsey
+the wives fell into queries on the coming election, rejoicing that even
+should Lincoln be made President, and that incredible thing, a war, come
+on, the great river and its cities--New Orleans, Natchez, Memphis, and
+especially Vicksburg--would be far from the storm. While they made merry
+Mrs. Gilmore got Ramsey aside.
+
+"If Captain Hugh's telegraphed, why, then, your father----"
+
+"Oh! my father, he's roaming over the boat somewhere with Commodore
+Courteney! I'm going to change this hot dress for a cooler one. I'll be
+back before a great while."
+
+"Let me go with you. Are you not well?"
+
+Not well! The girl laughed gayly. But as she drew her friend out upon
+the guards and to her stateroom's rear door she talked with a soft
+earnestness all the way.
+
+"I don't see how I could have been so blind! If _he_ saw those things
+why couldn't I see them? I thought of them, over and over; but always
+the other things crowded them back into the dark--and there was plenty
+of dark. He's right, my father does hold the key, and if I'd seen things
+as I see them now I'd have made the twins give in, somehow, long ago. If
+you should see mammy Joy, or Phyllis, or both, please send them to me."
+
+She shut herself in, dropped to the berth's side, and let the tears run
+wild. The nurse and the still handsome Phyllis appeared promptly,
+together. But they found her full of sparkle; so full that Phyllis saw
+under the mask; a mask she herself had worn so often in her youth under
+a like desperation.
+
+"Mammy," said her mistress, "want to go somewhere with your baby, about
+sundown this evening?"
+
+For explanation the old woman glanced at Phyllis, but Phyllis's eyes
+were on Ramsey with a light whose burning carried old Joy's memory back
+twenty years. "Sundown?" echoed the nurse to gain time, "yass'm, o'
+co'se, ef--but, missie--sundown--dat mean' Natchez. You cayn't be goin'
+asho' whah Cap'm Hugh dess tell Phyllis yo' ma comin' aboa'd?"
+
+"Not ashore to stay," was the blithe reply as Phyllis aided the change
+of dress. "There'll be two or three of us."
+
+"Well, o' co'se, ef you needs me. Wha' fo' you gwine?"
+
+"To see the twins," sang Ramsey, "if we go at all."
+
+Then Phyllis knew she was trusted, and while with a puzzled frown the
+nurse watched her manipulate hooks and eyes she blandly asked: "Miss
+Ramsey, if Cap'm Hugh give' me leave kin I go too?"
+
+"Yes, you might ask him. Nobody's going unless he goes."
+
+The light came to old Joy. "Law'! missie, now you a-talkin'! Now you
+a-talkin' wisdom! Dah's whah I's wid you, my baby. I's wid you right
+dah, pra-a-aise Gawd!"
+
+All three, parting company, were happier for several hours. But the
+Californian's were not the only fond schemes, aboard the _Enchantress_,
+that could go to wreck.
+
+Nor had "California" met his last disappointment even on this journey.
+As he and his reinforcements came out on the boiler deck with a hundred
+others from the midday feast the deck-hands below, for quicker unloading
+at Canal Street on the morrow, were shifting a lot of sacked corn from
+the hold to the forecastle-deck and were timing their work to a chantey.
+The song was innocently chosen in reference solely to the piece of river
+in which they chanced then to be, but all the more for its innocence it
+touched in that gentle knight a chord of sympathy.
+
+     "My own true love wuz lost an' found--
+        O hahd times!--
+      An' lost ag'in a-comin' round
+        Hahd Times Ben'.
+      Found an' lost, lost an' found,
+      An' lost ag'in a-comin' round
+        Hahd Times Ben'."[2]
+
+So it ran, while the _Enchantress_ turned southeast with that Lake Saint
+Joe of which "'Lindy" was "the pride" lying forest-hidden a few miles
+away on the starboard beam. The melody opened with a prolonged wail on
+its highest note and bore the tragic quality which so often marked the
+songs of slavery. Helped on by names of near-by landmarks--the Big Black
+River and the once perilous Grand Gulf--at the bottom of Hard Times
+Bend--it played on "California's" mind like summer lightning and seemed
+to call to his romantic spirit supernaturally. He could delay no longer
+to take his companions into his confidence.
+
+By guess, he said, by inferences, and by modest inquiries he had
+discerned that Hugh was going ashore at Natchez to--they understood. All
+right, he would go, too, and ordinarily he would be enough. But the
+present need was not a fair fight but peace. Hence the propriety of
+overwhelming numbers. Wouldn't they like to take a hand?
+
+"But he'll see the twins privately," said the invited.
+
+"Of course, but 'though lost to sight' they'll know we're too close for
+them to get away from, and that's a very convincing situation to 'most
+any man, even twins."
+
+"Yes, but we can't turn a feud into a fox-hunt. You don't know these
+things as we do."
+
+"Don't? Why, my friends, I'm a Kentucky highlander. Might as well say I
+don't know the smell of whiskey because I keep sober, when, in my day,
+I've been so drunk I've laid on my back and felt up'ards for the
+ground."
+
+However, he yielded sweetly. But it was plain to see that he would
+certainly, contentedly, go with Hugh alone. Indeed, only this would he
+have preferred--that Gideon Hayle might go instead. But one square look
+at the big, grim, baffled commander had told him earlier that Hugh's
+perilous isolation was wholly acceptable as a final test of his fitness
+to belong to Gideon's Band. He parted with his companions and stood at
+the front rail taking comfort in the thought that whoever might
+disappoint him the twins would not and looking down on the toiling
+singers in placid defiance of their lines:
+
+     "My true love's heart to mine 'uz boun'--
+        O hahd times!--
+      Dey broke dem bindin's comin' roun'
+        Hahd Times Ben'.
+      Boun' an' broke, broke an' boun',
+      An' broke ag'in a-comin' roun'
+        Hahd Times Ben'."
+
+Watson's partner touched the listener's arm, who smiled and said:
+
+"Only four hours more."
+
+"That's all," replied the pilot. "But I've just thought of something.
+Suppose the twins shouldn't be in Natchez."
+
+[Footnote 2: [Music notation]]
+
+
+
+
+LXII
+
+EUTHANASIA
+
+
+A few steps aside from Hugh and his grandfather at the forward rail of
+the hurricane roof, in a glow of autumn twilight, the Gilmores and the
+three couples taken on at Vicksburg observed the _Enchantress_, under
+Watson's skill, lay her lower guards against the guards of the Natchez
+wharf-boat with a touch as light as a human hand.
+
+Down on the wharf-boat, in its double door, as beautiful in her fuller
+years as in _Votaress_ days, and more radiant, stood Madame Hayle. A
+man-servant at one elbow, a maid at the other, saw the group on the roof
+fondly bidding for her smiles, but except one sent earlier to the two
+Courteneys they were all for her husband and daughter, who, unseen from
+above, awaited her half-way down the main forward stairs. When the maid,
+however, leaned to her and spoke, her glance went aloft and her gestures
+were a joy even to the strangers who crowded the boat's side. Now while
+the stage was run out and her husband met her and gave her his arm, and
+white-jackets seized her effects, the man-servant answered a question
+softly called over to him by Ramsey, and the group overhead caught his
+words:
+
+"De twins couldn' come. No, miss, 'caze dey ain't in town. No, miss, dey
+bofe went oveh to de Lou'siana place 'istiddy.... Yass, miss, on a bah
+hunt in Bayou Crocodile swamp."
+
+Mrs. Gilmore stole a glance at Hugh, but the only sign that he had heard
+was a light nod to the mate below, and a like one up to Watson.
+
+"Take in that stage," called the mate to his men. The engine bells
+jingled, the _Enchantress_ backed a moment on one wheel, then went
+forward on both, fluttered her skirts of leaping foam, made a wide,
+upstream turn, headed down the river, and swept away for Natchez Island
+just below and for New Orleans distant a full night's run. She had
+hardly put the island on her larboard bow when merrily up and down the
+cabin and out on the boiler deck and thence down the passenger guards
+rang the supper bell.
+
+"Bayou Crocodile," said a Carthaginian descending the wheel-house stair,
+"that's where one of the sons-in-law has his plantation, isn't it?"
+
+"On the Black River, yes," said he of Milliken's Bend.
+
+"Near where it comes into Red River," added Vicksburg.
+
+Once more Hugh and Ramsey sat alone side by side under a glorious night
+sky, at that view-point so rarely chosen by others but so favored by
+her--the front of the texas roof. Down forward at the captain's station
+sat the two commodores and up in the pilot-house were the two pilots,
+the Gilmores, "California," Madame Hayle, and they of Vicksburg and the
+Bends.
+
+In the moral atmosphere of this uppermost group there was a new and
+happy clearness easily attributable to a single potent cause--Madame
+Hayle. Her advent and the moon's rising had come in the same hour and
+with very similar effect. Every one was aware for himself, though nobody
+could say when any one else had been told, that while Gideon's decision
+was still withheld, madame, in her own sweet, absolute way, had said it
+would be forthcoming before the boat touched the Canal Street wharf, and
+that in the interval, whether Hugh and Ramsey were never to sit side by
+side again, or were to go side by side the rest of their days, they
+should have this hour this way and were free to lengthen it out till
+night was gone, if they wished.
+
+It was not late in any modern sense, yet on the passenger deck no one
+was up but the barkeeper, two or three quartets at cards, the second
+clerk at work on his freight list, a white-jacket or two on watch, and
+Joy and Phyllis. Thus assured of seclusion the lovers communed without
+haste. There had been hurried questions but Hugh had answered them and
+Ramsey was now passive, partly in the bliss of being at his side as she
+had never been before and partly in a despair growing out of his
+confessed purpose to leave the _Enchantress_ at Red River Landing. The
+grandfather had already assumed Hugh's place and cares aboard, and it
+was Hugh's design to make his way, by boat or horse, up to and along
+Black River in search of the twins.
+
+To allay this distress Hugh's soft deep voice said:
+
+"Suppose you were a soldier's wife. This is little to that. This is but
+once for all."
+
+"Yes," murmured Ramsey, "but I'd have one advantage."
+
+"That you'd be his wife?"
+
+"Yes," whispered Ramsey, who could not venture the name itself, for the
+pure rapture of it.
+
+"Why, you're going to be mine. As the song says: 'I will come again, my
+love, though a' the seas gang dry.'"
+
+"Hugh, didn't you once say I didn't know what fear was?"
+
+"I certainly thought it."
+
+"Well, now I do know."
+
+He made no reply and she sat thinking of his errand. If he should find
+her brothers he would meet them in the deepest wilderness. Only slaves,
+who could not testify against masters, would be with them, their loaded
+guns would be in their hands, and their blood would be heated with--She
+resorted again to questions in her odd cross-examining way.
+
+"You say you think there's going to be a war?"
+
+"I fear so."
+
+"Humph! fear. If there should be will you fight?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Humph! certainly. I should think--you'd hate to fight."
+
+"I'd fight all the more furiously on that account."
+
+"Humph!... On which side?"
+
+"Ramsey, I don't know. I _don't know_ till the time comes."
+
+"Then how do you know you won't fight my brothers--now?"
+
+"I shan't be armed."
+
+"But if in an outburst you should snatch up some weapon?"
+
+"I don't burst out. I don't snatch up."
+
+"Humph! Wish I didn't."
+
+They were rounding Point Breeze. The long reach from Fort Adams down to
+Red River Landing lay before them. "Hugh, did you ever have a
+presentiment? Of course not. I never did before. I got it a-comin' round
+Hard Times Bend."
+
+"Then I can cure it--with a new verse, one our poet has made and given
+me. It shall be our parting word. Shall I?"
+
+"Oh, yes, but not for parting! I don't want any parting!"
+
+He spoke it softly:
+
+     "I dreamp I heard a joyful soun'--
+        O hahd times!--
+      Love once mo' foun' de last turn roun'
+        Hahd Times Ben'.
+      Los' an' foun', broke an' boun',
+      Love foun' an' boun' de last turn roun'
+        Hahd Times Ben'."
+
+Ramsey barely waited for its end. "What's that light waving far away
+down yonder? It began as you did."
+
+"It didn't know it. It's only some one on the Red River wharf-boat,
+wanting us to land," said Hugh, and before his last word came the
+_Enchantress_ roared her assent to the signal. But Ramsey had spoken
+again:
+
+"What's this, right here?" She sprang up and gazed out on the water a
+scant mile ahead. There, directly in the steamer's course and just out
+of the moon's track, another faint light waved, so close to the water as
+to be reflected in it. The moment the whistle broke out it ceased to
+swing and when the whistle ceased the engines had stopped.
+
+"What is it?" she asked again as Hugh stood by her looking out ahead
+with eyes better trained to night use than hers.
+
+"A skiff," he replied, "with some message."
+
+She could see only that Watson had put the light on their starboard bow.
+It seemed to drift toward them but she knew that the movement was the
+steamer's, and now the light was so close as to show the negro who held
+it. He stood poised to throw aboard a billet of wood with a note
+attached. And now he cast it. The lower guards were out of Ramsey's line
+of sight but a cry of disappointment told her the stick had fallen short
+and would be lost under the great wheel, which at that moment, with its
+fellow, "went ahead." But as the _Enchantress_ passed the skiff its
+occupant called out a hurried statement to the mate, on the forecastle,
+and as the skiff and its light swept astern the mate repeated the word
+to the commodores.
+
+"Man at Red River Landing accidentally shot. Must be got to the city
+quick or he can't live."
+
+The commodores, and then the lovers, resumed their seats.
+
+"Poor man," murmured Ramsey, "poor man! he's got _his_ trouble without
+going in chase of it."
+
+"If he'd gone in chase of it," rejoined Hugh, "he might never have met
+it."
+
+The _Enchantress_ swung more directly toward the dim lights of the
+wharf-boat and at top speed ruffled through a freshening air with the
+goal but a few miles away. Yet the lovers sat silent. Once parted they
+would think of many a word they should have spoken while they could, but
+now none seemed large enough to break such silence with. To be silent
+and best content with silence was one of the most special and blissful
+of lovers' rights.
+
+Presently a glow rose from the forecastle, reddening the white
+jack-staff up to its black night-hawk. The torch baskets were being
+lighted. Hugh stirred to go but Ramsey laid her touch on his wrist and
+he stayed.
+
+She spoke. "Mustn't you wait near your grandfather till you see who it
+is that's coming aboard?"
+
+"I can. I may as well."
+
+The _Enchantress_, in mid-river, began to "round to" in order to land
+bow up-stream. When she came round, the half dozen men on the wharf-boat
+were close at hand in the glare of her torches, eye to eye with those on
+the forecastle, but prevented by the light itself from seeing those on
+the upper decks.
+
+Ramsey sprang to her feet with lips apart to cry out to her mother up
+behind her, to Gideon down before, to Hugh at her side, but all these
+saw and knew. A face in the centre of the torchlight and of the
+wharf-boat group was Julian's bearing the mute intelligence that the
+writhing man on a rude stretcher borne by two negroes was his brother.
+The lovers parted without a word, but in a moment were near each other
+again as Hugh joined the commodores while Ramsey and her mother crouched
+at the roof's forward rail to see the wounded man brought across the
+stage.
+
+"In my room!" pleaded madame to both Courteneys at once, and the elder
+assented as Hugh hurried below with the three Hayles following.
+
+It was heart-rending work getting the sufferer into the berth while he
+poured out moanings of agony mingled with frantic accusations of his
+bearers, railings against God and all his laws, and unspoken
+recognitions of mother and sister. Ramsey, seeing his eye fall on
+Phyllis and remain there staring, and knowing from old Joy that he had
+grown enough like his uncle Dan to have been his twin, suffered for her
+as well as him.
+
+"Who are _you_?" he cried, still staring. "Where am I?"
+
+The maid did not reply, but her unfaltering gaze met his as if it
+neither could nor would do otherwise. Ramsey intuitively followed the
+play of her mind. To look again on Gideon Hayle had already recalled
+emotions she had striven for half a lifetime to put away, and now they
+kept her eyes set on this tortured yet unrelenting advocate of all the
+wrongs from which those emotions sprang.
+
+He looked to his mother. "Great God! mother, is this the new Courteney
+boat? Well, if this isn't hell's finishing touch! Jule! Where's Jule?
+Go, get me Jule!"
+
+Phyllis turned to go but--"No," he cried with a light of sudden purpose
+in his face, "you stay. Everybody else go! And send me Jule. Don't send
+a doctor, I'm the doctor myself. Get out, all of you, go! This isn't my
+death-bed. God! I wish it was, for I'm a cripple for life and will never
+walk again--leave! go! and send me Jule!"
+
+Guided by a cabin-boy to Hugh's room, Ramsey found Julian confronting
+his father, "California," and the Gilmores. Hugh had led them there for
+privacy and stood close at one side. Julian seemed to be suffering a
+shock scarcely less than his brother's though it made a wholly different
+outward show. His face wore an appalled look, his voice was below its
+accustomed pitch, and his words, words which could not have been
+premeditated, seemed studiously fit and precise.
+
+"Fortunately," he had been saying before Ramsey appeared, "he
+never"--meaning his brother--"goes into the country without his drugs
+and instruments--we have them with us yet--and he could tell me what to
+do and I did it, or he would have died right there in the swamp."
+
+"But you don't say how the accursed thing happened," said Gideon as
+Ramsey entered hardly aware that she was pausing at Hugh's side. The
+brother turned and stared on the two.
+
+"Come," said Gideon, "never mind that. How did it happen?"
+
+"It happened, sir, through my own incredible carelessness and by my own
+hand. _Don't say a word!_ I would to God I had been the victim and had
+fallen dead in my tracks. If I had killed him I would have put the other
+load into my brain."
+
+"Oh, if!" solemnly sneered the incredulous father. While he did so
+Julian, the profoundness of whose mental torture his father poorly saw,
+received from Ramsey his brother's summons and with her was turning
+away. He stopped and flashed back a look of agonized resentment, but
+Gideon met it with a beetling frown and neither gaze fell until Ramsey
+stepped between, facing the giant, and she and the brother backed away
+and were gone.
+
+They sought the passenger deck. Between anguish for Lucian's calamity
+and anguish for his father's contumely there poured from Julian's lips
+in hectoring questions to Ramsey a further anguish of chagrin for the
+seeming triumph of Hugh's love. Two or three challenges she parried and
+while in a single utterance he launched out as many more they
+encountered at a wheel-house stair their mother and old Joy. He cut
+short all inquiries with a proffer to return to them and Ramsey
+post-haste and give a full account of the disaster.
+
+Meantime down in the sick-room Lucian said to Phyllis, when they had
+been a few minutes alone:
+
+"And now give me my medicine."
+
+"Yes, sir; where is it?"
+
+"Oh, damnation! in my saddle-bags on the washstand. What are you trying
+to talk white folks' English for?" He hardly spoke three words without a
+moan or an oath. "Do you find a measuring-glass?"
+
+She found it.
+
+"See a small bottle--dark liquid--about twice the size--of the glass?"
+
+"Yass, suh, but it's full, suh."
+
+"Hell! what of that? Fill the glass and give it to me!"
+
+She filled it but paused. "It--it looks like la'danum."
+
+"Oh, damn you, so did your great-grandmother. It's not laudanum. Did you
+ever smell vinegar in laudanum, or nutmeg? Give it here! God A'mighty,
+if I could reach you with my fist--Give me that glass!"
+
+"Misteh Lucian, if this is la'danum----"
+
+"You hell-fired idiot, it isn't! And if it was, such an overdose would
+only vomit me. Don't you know that?"
+
+"Yass, suh, I know it would." But still she held back.
+
+"Then give it here!"
+
+Julian came in with alarm added to his other distresses.
+
+"Oh, Luce! do you want to start that bleeding again?"
+
+"I'd just as lief as not! Make that wench give me that glass or mash her
+head! She knows if it was laudanum it would merely puke me. Damn it,
+it's a simple euthanasia." The crafty sufferer felt assured his brother
+would neither know nor ask the smooth word's meaning.
+
+Julian turned, savagely upon the maid. Heated with drink, enraged at
+himself, his father, Hugh Courteney, his sister, and his mother, he was
+in no mood to humor the contumacy of any freed slave and least of all
+this one. "Give it to him this instant," he cried. "Do you want to kill
+him?"
+
+"No, Misteh Julian, that's exactly----"
+
+He drew and levelled his revolver and then motioned with it a repetition
+of his command.
+
+With a woe of protest in her eyes, Phyllis obeyed. Lucian swallowed the
+draught and sank to his pillow. Julian watched Phyllis slowly set down
+the glass and bottle.
+
+"What did you say that stuff is?" he asked his brother, with an assumed
+lightness.
+
+"Oh, a palliative for these infernal pains. Have you told the family
+what happened? Go do it." The speaker's tone grew lofty. "I want them to
+know it was all my fault! This girl can stay with me till you come back,
+and you can take your time. I shan't need you for an hour. Go, Jule, my
+brother. Oh don't harry me with idle questions."
+
+As Julian presently shut himself out Phyllis, her fears for the patient
+disarmed by his transient excitement where she had looked for heaviness,
+laid her hand on a chair; but he stopped her. "You white nigger! would
+you presume to sit down in my presence? If you can't stand go
+outside--and shut the door. Oh, go anyhow! Life's more tolerable with
+you out of sight. If I want you I'll call."
+
+The room was close abaft the wheel, where a widening of the guards made
+an inviting space, and out there Phyllis drew a chair up beside the
+door. A whitejacket came from the cabin in behalf of passengers in
+neighboring staterooms to ask what the commotion meant, and as she began
+to explain it away Ramsey and old Joy came down a near-by stair to watch
+with her or in her stead and to them she amplified her explanation.
+Ramsey listened at the door. The patient seemed to be asleep, so audible
+was his breathing.
+
+She had a sudden thought: a doctor's saddle-bags always contain
+laudanum. Had Phyllis seen any--in another bottle, untouched? That would
+confirm the patient's denial. She beckoned and asked. Yes, Phyllis had
+seen it, labelled.
+
+"And besides," Ramsey thought on, "neither twin has ever spoken falsely
+to the other." Why, then, sleep was good!
+
+Even in outer sights and sounds there was solace and reassurance: in
+river and shore forever passing majestically up-stream through floods of
+moonlight; in the rhythmic flutter and rush of wheels and foam, and in
+the keen quiver of the _Enchantress_ flying to New Orleans on the
+swiftest wings steam could give. Ramsey sent Phyllis up to bid Julian be
+at ease, and the maid, returning, announced that both the commodores had
+gone to rest but that madame was anxious to come back to the invalid the
+moment he would permit. She added, unasked, that Captain Hugh was in the
+captain's chair.
+
+The hour passed and Julian reappeared. The partial relief of mind which
+had come to all the others had in degree reached him. It enabled him, as
+he came down the wheel-house stair, to reflect, though with a shudder,
+upon that furious treatment which alone, he had somewhere heard, would
+counteract an opium poisoning, and upon Lucian's utter inability to
+endure any part of such a treatment. He found Ramsey hearkening at the
+door again, newly disquieted. The two servants were out at the rail of
+the wide guards.
+
+"Ought his breathing," she said, "to sound like that?"
+
+Julian thought not, but even a sister's solicitude offended his lifelong
+sentiment of paramount ownership in his brother. "Stand away, I'll let
+you know," he replied, passed in, and closed the door.
+
+Then all at once, as so often has happened to so many of us, he saw his
+heedlessness where he had fancied himself vigilant. The light was dim.
+He knelt close to the sleeper. One long stare into the pale yet livid
+face was enough. Lucian was dying. Julian leaped to his feet to seek aid
+but saw its futility and fell again to his knees. Lucian was dying of
+the "black-drop" which his brother, in haughty ignorance, by the hand of
+Phyllis, had given him.
+
+Presently Julian found voice, yet, mindful still of the listening
+Ramsey, let himself only softly murmur: "Oh, Lucian, my brother! Oh,
+Lucian, my twin brother! I've killed you, killed you twice over, my twin
+brother! God! but you're right not to live a cripple. And it was I who
+crippled you! Oh, Lucian, I'm the cripple now!"
+
+Ramsey tapped. He sprang to the door and without opening it answered:
+"Yes, in a minute. He--he's all right."
+
+At the wash-stand he lifted the phial of black-drop still half full. As
+quietly as if the dose were a dram at the bar he filled the
+measuring--glass and drank its last drop. Then he turned to the door and
+barely opened it.
+
+"He's all right, Ramsey.... Yes.... Yes. He's done just the right thing.
+So have I. Now, go away, please, wherever you like, only
+don't--stay--here just to bother us. I'll merely lie down beside him
+without--What?... No, go away! You'll find us all right in the morning."
+
+
+
+
+LXIII
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S CHAIR
+
+
+On the next afternoon but one, while hundreds went down to the steamboat
+landing to view the new _Enchantress_, there was a double funeral in the
+old French cemetery, Saint Louis Street, New Orleans.
+
+Returning from it together, Watson and his former "cub" spoke of Gideon
+Hayle.
+
+"He takes the loss of them boys harder'n what I'd 'a' thought he would,"
+said the younger pilot.
+
+And Watson replied: "Yes, but he don't take it as hard as what, years
+ago, he tuck their fust refus'n' to go with him on the river."
+
+They said no more all the way up Rampart Street to Canal, out Canal to
+the steamboat landing, and across the levee to the _Enchantress_. An
+hour later they stood in her wheel-house, looking down on the same
+Saturday afternoon five o'clock scene that Watson and Ned had thus
+contemplated from the _Votaress_ a hundred months before.
+
+Here were the same vast piles of harvest wealth, the same crowds and
+little flags, the same shouting and tumult only grown greater, the same
+open sky--though of October--the same many-pillared cloud of black
+smoke, the same smartly painted bumboats selling oranges, bananas,
+pineapples, corals, and seashells--many of the latter treated with
+puritanic art, having, that is, the Lord's Prayer bitten into them with
+muriatic acid. Here lay the same yellow harbor with many more fussy
+little tugs in it, its water low yet still mast-deep, its yard-long
+catfish and fathom-long gars leaping and wallowing after their prey, its
+white gulls flashing about the steamers' pantry windows. Here was the
+same black forest of ships in the up-stream and down-stream distance and
+here, finally, the same public hope and pride grown wider and loftier in
+their last affluence before entering that purgatory of civil war which
+now seems but a bad dream outlived.
+
+Steam was up on the _Enchantress_, and every now and then her mighty
+wheels tugged on her hawsers. In the crowd gathered on the wharf to see
+her go were the Gilmores and the half dozen from Vicksburg and the
+Bends. Up on the hurricane-deck were two or three small knots of
+passengers, chiefly ladies, unknown to the Gilmore group; but beside a
+derrick post, where we first saw Hugh on the _Votaress_, stood the three
+Hayles, old Joy, and "California"--bound once more for the
+gold-diggings. Near the Hayles, yet nearer the bell, was Hugh, in
+command.
+
+"You don't reckon," said a voice in the throng, "that that's her
+captain, do you?"
+
+"No," said another, "I should think not."
+
+"Yes," said the very human Gilmore, "that's the captain."
+
+Vicksburg and the Bends sent up smiles and faint wavings to Ramsey and
+her mother and only did not call to them because they were in a great
+city. It made them very proud and happy to see Hugh the master of this,
+to them, matchless wonder of utility and beauty, and they could not help
+saying things to each other with voice enough to let strangers around
+them know he was their personal friend. While they did so who should
+alight from a cab and glance up to Hugh but his grandfather. Hugh
+answered with a gesture toward the Gilmores, to whom the old gentleman
+promptly turned. There had arisen among the boats a good-natured custom
+of giving friends a free trip eight miles up the river, to the suburb of
+Carrollton. So a word from the commodore was enough; the players and
+their group hurried aboard with him and as they touched the lower deck
+the last bell sounded and the lines were cast off.
+
+When they reached the hurricane-deck they were in the middle of the
+stream. They did not join the senior Hayles at once; Ramsey met them and
+with her they stood on the skylight roof watching the shores to see when
+they should stop drifting and gain headway. Over on the "Algiers" side
+of the harbor lay the _Paragon_, repairing a smashing she had got at the
+wharf through the bad handling of another boat, else the Hayles would
+hardly have been going home on the _Enchantress_.
+
+The crew of the _Enchantress_ stood about her capstan and their
+chantey-man, ready to sing when the swivel should peal and her burgee
+run down; but the Gilmore group were too far aft to see them. The
+player's wife, speaking gravely with Ramsey in low tones, remarked with
+sudden gayety:
+
+"I see why we're here behind the bell. You're afraid they'll sing----"
+
+Ramsey made a pleading gesture.
+
+"Why, what can you expect," asked her friend; "not 'Bounding Billow'?"
+
+Ramsey, laughing, could only repeat the gesture. The swivel pealed, down
+sank the burgee, a wind began to ruffle their brows, and up rolled the
+song:
+
+     "Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sea ships come an' go,
+        On de finess boat dat eveh float," etc.
+
+It was still coming up when a young man not of the Gilmore group
+surprised the actor a moment aside.
+
+"Mr. Gilmore, is that Commodore Hayle over there?... I thought it must
+be. I suppose he's going up home to settle his two sons' affairs. Mr.
+Gilmore, they wan't bad, they were only wild. Sad, their having to be
+buried in the city. But in this climate, you know--hmm!--yes."
+
+The song and his observations crossed back and forth.
+
+     "Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, you'd ought to come befo'"--
+                          (Chorus.)
+
+"You don't remember me, Mr. Gilmore, but I was on the _Votaress_ with
+you and your lady and Madame Hayle and those twins and all. I married
+the young lady I was keeping company with then. There she is. Don't you
+re-collect my lending you my field-glass at the Devil's Elbow?"
+
+"Dear me! was that you at the devil's elbow! I--I hope I returned them."
+
+"Oh, you did! You remember the first clerk of the _Votaress_! He's her
+captain now. And Ned--you remember Ned, the pilot, don't you? Well, he's
+on her yet. I see you're lost in admiration of this most unusual sunset.
+We almost always have these unusual sunsets. This is a wonderful
+country."
+
+      "Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sweet cane honey flow'.
+                          (Chorus.)
+
+      "Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, love a-knockin' at de do'."
+                          (Chorus.)
+
+Now the boat was in the pilot's hands. Hugh joined Madame Hayle and the
+two commodores at the derrick post. The same shrewd texas tender who had
+once abstracted the weapons of the twins from their stateroom set a
+second chair beside the captain's. Hugh offered the two seats to the
+commodores, but both declined. They of Vicksburg and the Bends watched
+the gorgeous October sunset beyond the low, flat orangeries on their
+right. "California" was with them and told them of the sunsets on the
+great plains. Gilmore generously kept the one-time lender of the
+field-glass and the lender's mouse of a wife beguiled with anecdotes
+while Mrs. Gilmore talked on with Ramsey, making fond and welcome
+incursions into her confidence.
+
+"Isn't it ridiculous," murmured Ramsey, "that he seems condemned to do
+everything in the tamest possible way? Not that he cares; he seems
+almost to like it so. It's so right now. He can't proclaim anything.
+And--you see why, don't you?--neither can I."
+
+"Ramsey, you needn't. Only do one thing for us, Gilmore and me, and
+we'll know. When we've landed and the boat starts away again and he--"
+She finished in a voice too small for type.
+
+At Six Mile Point the actor escaped his bonds and for a moment got Hugh
+into his sole possession.
+
+"Certainly, under these conditions," he assented, "you can't _assert_
+anything--of that particular sort. But see here: You can tell me, just
+for us two Gilmores exclusively, what your next boat will be named.
+Can't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Hugh, "she'll be the--" He let Gilmore speak the name
+interrogatively and merely nodded, smiling.
+
+The _Enchantress_ was within five minutes' run of Carrollton when Watson
+dropped a quiet word to the roof, where both the Courteneys and Gideon
+were looking up-stream at a downward-bound steamer which had rounded to
+and landed under Nine-Mile Point.
+
+"What is she?" asked Gilmore of Watson for his group.
+
+"A Hayle boat, the _Troubadour_," said the pilot; "probably putting off
+some sugar-house machinery."
+
+The _Enchantress_ neared the huge Carrollton levee. "Good-by."
+"Good-by." "Good-by." "Good-by." Down they hurried, the old commodore,
+the players, the extraneous pair, and the six from Vicksburg and the
+Bends, followed to the stage plank by "California," and waved to from
+the after guards by Joy and Phyllis.
+
+"Good-by." "Good-by!" The beautiful craft backed away and turned for
+Nine-Mile Point. And here came the _Troubadour_, with whistles
+trumpeting a troubadour's salute to the new queen of the river. The
+Hayle boat's people had espied their own commodore and the black mass on
+their forecastle were singing "Gideon's Band."
+
+With whistles above and song below the _Enchantress_ replied. The
+whistles ceased; the song was "'Lindy":
+
+     "Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to meet to paht no mo',
+        On de finess boat dat eveh float'
+          In de O--hi--o,
+        De Mas-sis-sip-pi aw de O--hi--o."
+
+Back at Carrollton on the crown of the levee, standing apart from their
+companions, the players gazed after the _Enchantress_. The three Hayles
+had returned to their stand by the derrick post. Hugh was near the two
+chairs. The actor softly spoke:
+
+"Shall I tell you what Hugh told me?"
+
+"Yes," said the wife.
+
+"Then tell me what Ramsey told you."
+
+"Nothing. She's going to tell it now. Watch!"
+
+They watched together. Ramsey crossed to Hugh, and seemed to speak a
+word or two, not more. He sat down in the captain's chair and she took
+the one beside him.
+
+Even Vicksburg and the Bends understood that.
+
+"He told me," murmured the actor, "that the next Courteney boat will be
+the _Ramsey Hayle_."
+
+
+
+[Transcribers Note: # is used to indicate bolded text.]
+
+
+
+
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