The Last of the Flatboats. Eggleston George Cary
said Jim, getting out of his bunk, “I think I’ll sample the pork and potatoes and throw in just a little o’ that hot corn bread and the new butter for ballast.”
“For a man who a few hours ago was violently ill with an intestinal disorder,” remarked Irv Strong a little later with a very pronounced note of sarcasm in his tone, “it seems to me, Jim, that you’re eating a tolerably robust supper. Now if I’d had the cramps you’ve been suffering from to-day, I really wouldn’t venture upon cabbage and potatoes boiled with salt pork. I’d try something ‘bland’ first, like a half pound of shot or a pig’s knuckle, or a bologna sausage or a few soft-boiled cobble-stones.”
But Jim was deaf to the sarcasm and went on eating voraciously.
“Wonder what that fellow is afraid of,” said Phil to Irv as they went out on deck to set the lights and make ready for the night.
“Don’t at all know,” responded Irv, “unless he owes money to somebody in Louisville. All I know is that he must have feigned that attack of cramps, else he couldn’t eat now in the way he does. He didn’t want to go ashore with you as you proposed, to hunt for a falls pilot.”
“Yes,” said Ed Lowry, “I’ve known all day that he was shamming, because he hasn’t had the slightest touch or trace of proper symptoms. Even when he professed to be in the most excruciating pain his pulse wasn’t in the least bit disturbed. I’m no doctor, but I know enough to say positively that a man with any such cramps as he pretended to have simply couldn’t have kept his pulse calmly beating seventy-two times a minute as his did. I timed it three times and then quit bothering with the fellow because I knew he was shamming.”
“Wonder what he meant by it,” said Will.
“Shoo!” said Constant; “he’s listening at the top of the gangway.”
“And I wonder what that means,” said Phil, whose alert observation of the professed pilot had never been relaxed since the episode at Craig’s Landing; “I wonder what he’s listening for.”
There was naturally no response, for the reason that nobody had anything to suggest. So the boys went toward the bow where the anchor-light hung, to hear Phil read in his newspapers all the latest details about the great bond robbery. They read on deck rather than in the cabin, because one boy must at any rate remain there on watch, and they all wished to hear.
The newspapers related that one of the gang of robbers was believed to have got away with the stolen bonds and money, and that the main purpose now was to find him. One man connected with the crime was already in custody, and from hints given by him it was hoped that he might turn state’s evidence in his own resentment against the “carrier of the swag,” who, it was believed, had deserted his fellow thieves, or some of them, and meant to keep the whole of the proceeds of the robbery for himself and one or two others. At any rate, the man in custody had given hints that were thought to be distinctly helpful toward the discovery of the “carrier” and his partners who had betrayed the rest of their fellows.
The case was very interesting, but the boys must be up early in the morning, so at last they broke up their little confab, and all but one of them went to bed. Constant Thiebaud, who first reached the ladder-head, found Jim Hughes seated there with his head just above the deck.
“I thought you were in bed long ago,” said Constant.
“So I was,” said Jim; “but I got restless and came out for some air.”
It wasn’t at all the kind of sentence that Jim Hughes was accustomed to frame, and the boys observed the fact. But they had got used to what Irv Strong called Jim’s “inadvertent lapses into grammar,” and so they went to their bunks without further thought of the matter.
CHAPTER X
JIM
It didn’t take long to “run the falls.” From where the flatboat lay above Louisville to the lower end of the rapids was a distance of about eight or ten miles. Not only was the river bank full, but a great wave of additional water – a rise of four or five inches to the hour – struck them just as they pushed their craft out into the stream. There was a current of six miles an hour even as they passed the city, which quickened to eight or ten miles an hour when they reached the falls proper.
The boat fully justified the old pilot’s simile of a girl waltzing. She turned and twisted about, first one way and then the other, and now and then shot off in a totally new direction, toward one shore or the other, or straight down stream.
It all seemed perilous in the extreme, and at one time Jim Hughes hurriedly went below and brought up his carpet-bag, which he deposited in one of the skiffs that lay on deck.
“What’s the matter, Jim?” asked Phil, who was more and more disposed to watch the fellow suspiciously. “What are you doing that for?”
“Well, you see we mout strike a rock, and it’s best to be ready.”
“Yes,” said Phil, “but what have you got in your carpet-bag that you’re so careful of?” and as he asked the question he looked intently into Jim’s eyes, hoping to surprise there a more truthful answer than he was likely to get from Jim’s lips.
“Oh, nothin’ but my clothes,” said Jim, hastily avoiding the scrutiny.
“Must be a dress-suit or two among them,” said Phil, “or you’d be thinking less about them and more about your skin. Let’s see them!” he added suddenly, and offering to open the bag.
Jim snatched it away quickly, muttering something which the boy didn’t catch. But by that time the falls were passed and the flatboat was floating through calm waters between Portland and New Albany. So Jim retreated to the cabin and bestowed his precious carpet-bag again under the straw of his bunk, where he had kept it from the first.
“Wonder what he’s got there, Phil,” said Irv Strong, who had been attentive to the colloquy.
“Don’t know,” replied Phil; “but if things go on this way, the time will come when I’ll decide to find out.”
“By the way,” broke in Will Moreraud, “did any of you see him bring that carpet-bag aboard?”
Nobody could remember.
“Guess he sneaked it aboard as he did that jug,” said Phil, “and as he did his cramps.”
“Don’t be too hard on the fellow, boys,” said Ed, whose generosity was always apt to get the better of his judgment. “Remember he’s ignorant, and ignorance is always inclined to be suspicious. Probably he hasn’t more than a dollar’s worth or so in that carpet-bag; but as it is all he has in the world, he’s naturally careful of it. He’s afraid some of us will steal his things. If he knew more, he would know better. But he doesn’t know more. So he guards his poor little possessions jealously.”
There was silence for a minute. Then Phil said: —
“See if he’s listening, Constant;” and when Constant had strolled to the gangway and reported “all clear,” Phil had this to say: —
“I’m not over-suspicious, I think. I don’t want to be unjust to anybody. But I’m responsible on this cruise, and it’s my duty to notice things carefully.”
“Of course,” said Irv Strong, the other “irreclaimable.” “I haven’t a doubt you noticed that I ate four eggs and two slices of ham for breakfast this morning. But before you ‘call me down’ for it, I want to say that I’m going to do the same thing to-morrow morning, because, since I came on the river, I’ve got the biggest hunger on me that I ever had in my life, and not at all because I have any diabolical plot in my mind to starve the crew of this flatboat into submission or admission or permission or any other sort of mission.”
But Phil did not smile at the pleasantry. He hesitated a moment before replying, as if afraid that he might say too much; for Phil, the captain, was a very different person from the happy-go-lucky Phil his comrades had hitherto known. After a little while he said: —
“You remember, don’t you, that