The Price. Lynde Francis
and when the thunder of the wheel roared overhead, Griswold felt the jar of a blow and the mate's struggles ceased abruptly. A gasping moment later the worst was over and the rescuer had his head out; was swimming gallantly in the wake of the steamer, supporting the unconscious M'Grath and shouting lustily for help.
The help came quickly. The alarm had been promptly given, and the night pilot was a man for an emergency. Before the little-used yawl could be lowered, the steamer had swept a wide circle in mid-stream and the search-light picked up the castaways. From that to placing the Belle Julie so that the two bits of human flotsam could be hauled in over the bows was but a skilful hand's-turn of rudder-work, accomplished as cleverly as if the great steamboat had been a power-driven launch to be steered by a touch of the tiller.
All this Charlotte saw. She was looking on when the two men were dragged aboard, the big Irishman still unconscious, and the rescuer in the final ditch of exhaustion—breathless, sodden, reeling with weariness.
And afterward, when the Belle Julie's prow was once more turned to the north, Miss Farnham had no thought of stopping at the clerk's office when she flew back to her state-room with the letter to Mr. Galbraith hidden in her bosom and clutched tightly as if she were afraid it might cry out its accusing secret of its own accord.
X
QUICKSANDS
On the morning following the rescue of the mate, Charlotte Farnham awoke with the conviction that she had been miraculously saved from incurring the penalties dealt out to those who rush blindly into the thick of things without due thought and careful consideration.
In the light of a new day it seemed almost incredible that, only a few hours earlier, she could have been so rash as to assume that there was no possibility of a mistake; that she had been on the verge of sending a possibly innocent man to answer as he could for the sins of the guilty.
Who could be sure? Could she go into court and swear that this man and the man she had seen in the bank were one and the same? Yesterday she had thought that she could; but to-day she was equally sure that she could not.
But the Puritan conscience was not to be entirely silenced. Reason sits in a higher seat than that occupied by the senses, and reason argued that a man who would forgive his enemy, and instantly risk his life in proof of the forgiveness, could not be a desperate criminal. Conscience pointed out the alternative. A little careful investigation would remove the doubt—or confirm it. Somebody on the boat must know the deck-hand, or know enough about him to establish his real identity.
Naturally, Charlotte thought first of Captain Mayfield; and when breakfast was over, and she had settled her aunt in the invalid's chair under the shade of the after-awning, she went on her quest.
The captain was on the port promenade, forward, and he was about to light his after-breakfast cigar. But he threw the match away when Miss Farnham came out and took the chair he placed for her.
"Please smoke if you want to," she said, noting the clipped cigar; "I don't mind it in the least."
"Thank you," said the master of the Belle Julie, shifting his chair to leeward and finding another match. He had grown daughters of his own, and Miss Farnham reminded him of the one who lived in St. Louis and took her dead mother's place in a home which would otherwise have held no welcome for a grizzled old river-sailor.
For a time Miss Farnham seemed to have forgotten what she came to say, and the ash grew longer on the captain's cigar. It was another delectable day, and the Belle Julie was still churning the brown flood in the majestic reaches of the lower river. Down on the fore-deck the roustabouts were singing. It was some old-time plantation melody, and Charlotte could not catch the words; but the blending harmony, rich in the altogether inimitable timbre of the African song-voice, rose above the throbbing of the engines and the splash of the paddles.
"They are happy, those men?" said Charlotte, turning suddenly upon the silent old riverman at her side.
"The nigger 'rousties,' you mean?—oh, yes. I guess so."
"But it is such a hard life," she protested. "I don't see how they can sing."
The captain smiled good-naturedly.
"It is a pretty hard life," he admitted. "But they're in a class by themselves. You couldn't hire a river nigger to do anything else. Then, again, a man doesn't miss what he's never had. They get a plenty to eat, and the soft side of a cargo pile makes a pretty good bed, if you've never slept in a better one."
Miss Farnham shook her head thoughtfully. "Isn't that putting them terribly low in the scale of humanity? Surely there must be some among them who are capable of better things." She was trying desperately hard to lead up to the stubble-bearded man, and it was the most difficult task she had ever set herself.
"Not among the black boys, I'm afraid. Now and then a white man drifts into a crew, but that's a different matter."
"Better or worse?" she queried.
"Worse, usually. It's a pretty poor stick of a white man that can't find something better than 'rousting' on a steamboat."
Here was her chance, and she took it courageously.
"Haven't you one man in the Belle Julie's crew who has earned a better recommendation than that, Captain Mayfield?"
"You mean that sick hobo who went into the river after M'Grath last night? I didn't know that story had got back to the ladies' cabin."
"It hasn't. But I know it because I was looking on. I couldn't sleep, and I had gone out to see them make a night landing. Why do you call him 'the sick hobo'?"
The captain was paying strict attention now, looking at her curiously from beneath the grizzled eyebrows. But he saw only the classic profile.
"That's what he is—or at least, what he let on to be when he shipped with us," he replied. Then: "You say you saw it: tell me what happened."
"I am not sure that I quite understood the beginning of it," she said doubtfully. "Two men, the white man and a negro, went ashore to untie the boat. They both jumped from the stage while it was going up, and it was the white man who untied the rope alone. After the boat began to swing away from the bank, he saw that the other man was hurt and went to help him. Mr. M'Grath was angry and he shouted at them to come aboard. With the boat going away from the shore, they couldn't; so the white man ran and tied the rope again. Am I getting it awfully mixed up?"
"Not at all," said the captain. "What happened then?"
"The white man lifted the negro to the deck, untied the rope again, and climbed on just as the boat was swinging away the second time. Mr. M'Grath was furious. He fought his way to where the white man was standing over the hurt negro and struck at him. The next thing I knew, Mr. M'Grath was overboard and right down here in front of the paddle-wheel, and the man he had tried to strike was jumping in after him. I thought they would both be ground to death under the wheel."
"Is that all?"
"All but the rescue. The pilot turned the Belle Julie around and they were picked up. Mr. M'Grath was unconscious, and the other man was too weak to stand up."
Captain Mayfield nodded. "He was sick when he came to us: consumption, Mac said."
Miss Farnham was a doctor's daughter, and she had seen many victims of the white death.
"I think that must have been a mistake," she ventured. "He doesn't look at all like a tuberculosis patient."
Again the captain was curious.
"How could you tell, at that distance