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So fast was the hurricane now driving the gas-bag ahead that the sub-structure lagged behind, straining at its confining stays and braces. All at once Harry gave a cry and sank to the floor of the pilot-house. Malvoise, the next instant, hastened to the deck and cried: "Air, air!" Frank felt a warm liquid streaming from his nose and ears. He put up his hand. It came away stained red.
The "Fred" desired thrust a strapping pair of shoulders through the forefront of the crowd on the bank and tried to catch Louis Bondell's message. The latter grew red in the face with vain vociferation. Still the water widened between steamboat and shore. "Hey, you, Captain Scott!" he yelled at the pilot-house. "Stop the boat!" The gongs clanged, and the big stern wheel reversed, then stopped.
Indeed during those fierce hours no sea was visible, for the whole surface was caught up and carried furiously into the air, like snow-drift on the prairies, sibilant, relentless. There was profound quiet on deck, the little life which existed being concentrated near the bow, where the captain was either lashed to the foremast, or in shelter in the pilot-house.
'Here! why didn't you tell me we'd got to land at that plantation? 'I did tell you, Mr. Brown. 'It's a lie! I said 'You lie, yourself. He did tell you. Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and for as much as a moment he was entirely speechless; then he shouted to me 'I'll attend to your case in half a minute! then to Henry, 'And you leave the pilot-house; out with you!
"Well, it's taking a big chance, it seems to me," went on Ned, as he peered through the rain-spotted bull's-eyes of the pilot-house. "There's no danger," declared Tom. "I wanted to give the ship the hardest test possible before I formally offered her to the government. If she can't stand a blow like this she isn't what I thought her, and I'll have to build another.
Far up above the yellow river, perched on top of the "Texas," or topmost tier of cabins, was the pilot-house, that honorable eminence of glass and painted wood which it was the ambition of every boy along the river some day to occupy. This was a great square box, walled in mainly with glass.
There were two pretty girls in the pilot-house, and the artist thought their presence there accounted for the serene voyage, for the masts of a wrecked schooner rising out of the shallows to the north reminded him that this is a dangerous coast.
His thoughts had reached thus far when he arrived in the pilot-house. Grasping the switch-handle of the great electric lantern, he proceeded to switch the light on and off rapidly, which act had the effect of almost immediately attracting the attention of the three men who were sitting on the skylight of the wreck.
I took my station on top of the pilot-house of the leading boat, so that I might see over the banks of the stream and across the bottom lands to the high hills which bounded the valley. The afternoon was a lovely one. Summer clouds lazily drifted across the sky, the boats were dressed in their colors and swarmed with the men like bees.
It was during his stay on this boat that Captain Sellers introduced the tap of the bell as a signal to heave the lead, previous to which time it was the custom for the pilot to speak to the men below when soundings were wanted. The proximity of the forecastle to the pilot-house, no doubt, rendered this an easy matter; but how different on one of our palaces of the present day.
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