Gideon's Band: A Tale of the Mississippi. George Washington Cable
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