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"Let me see the casualties, quick." That night a fog rolled up from the swamps, and in the morning jack-staff was hid from pilot-house.
IT was always the custom for the boats to leave New Orleans between four and five o'clock in the afternoon. Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the jack-staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge staff astern.
IT was always the custom for the boats to leave New Orleans between four and five o'clock in the afternoon. Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the jack-staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge staff astern.
She is long and sharp and trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind swung between them; a fanciful pilot-house, a glass and 'gingerbread', perched on top of the 'texas' deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays above the boat's name; the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean white railings; there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff; the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely; the upper decks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the broad stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envied deckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coil of rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming through the gauge- cocks, the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, the wheels stop; then they turn back, churning the water to foam, and the steamer is at rest.
He said: "I was just turning in. Where's the glass" He took it and looked: "Don't appear to be any night-hawk on the jack-staff it's the Amaranth, dead sure!" The captain took a good long look, and only said: "Damnation!" George Davis, the pilot on watch, shouted to the night-watchman on deck: "How's she loaded?" "Two inches by the head, sir." "'T ain't enough!"
Then he caught sight of a yacht steaming swiftly into the harbor. She might be a despatch-boat, or a destroyer, or any one of half a dozen things; but whatever she was, she could help him if she only would. Close at hand was a jack-staff upholding an American ensign. Acting upon the impulse of his despair.
He stood thus, rigid and tense, while Sir Reginald did his part of the work; and presently he saw the jack-staff swinging slowly round toward the pirate cruiser. He waited thus until his two sights pointed something less than an eighth of a length ahead of the cruiser, and then he pressed the button hard.
He said: "I was just turning in. Where's the glass" He took it and looked: "Don't appear to be any night-hawk on the jack-staff it's the Amaranth, dead sure!" The captain took a good long look, and only said: "Damnation!" George Davis, the pilot on watch, shouted to the night-watchman on deck: "How's she loaded?" "Two inches by the head, sir." "'T ain't enough!"
The Amaranth drew steadily up till her jack-staff breasted the Boreas's wheel-house climbed along inch by inch till her chimneys breasted it crept along, further and further, till the boats were wheel to wheel and then they, closed up with a heavy jolt and locked together tight and fast in the middle of the big river under the flooding moonlight!
Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the jack-staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge-staff astern. Two or three miles of mates were commanding and swearing with more than usual emphasis. Countless processions of freight, barrels, and boxes, were spinning athwart the levee, and flying aboard the stage-planks.
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