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The crew of the steamer was composed of a queer mixture of elements; and, whatever their moral qualities may have been, their appearance would not have been altogether reassuring to a man, for instance, travelling with a good many valuables about him. The little steamer was not uncomfortable. She was a flat-bottomed river-boat, and carried cargoes of hides and other Saladero produce.
Ay! in the worst of my twenty years, the nights in the cursed river-boat they called the hulks, I could bear them I was shut up with in the dark, and the vermin that crawled about us, and a'most laugh to be able to hear it again, and bless God that it sent him to Hell without time for a prayer!"
Nell and Baby had had a quarrel over the puffing out of the air-cushions, and were too tired and cross to make it up again; Pip had hit Bunty over the head for no ostensible reason, and received two kicks in return; Judy's head ached, and the noise, was not calculated to cure it; Meg had grown weary of staring out into the moving darkness, and wondering whether Alan would notice she was never on the river-boat now; and the poor little General was filling the hot air with expostulations, in the shape of loud roars, at the irregularities of the treatment he was undergoing.
The few cabins all you get is the bare room are on the upper deck, which is the white man's domain, while the boiler and freight human and otherwise are on the lower. This is the bailiwick of the black. These boats always stop at night for wood, the only fuel, and the natives are compelled to go ashore and sleep on the bank. The Congo river-boat is a combination of fortress, hotel, and menagerie.
Large numbers of Chinese live a kind of aquatic life, and make their home on board a river-boat. The husband goes on shore to his work, and his wife meantime adds to the income of the family by ferrying persons from bank to bank, or letting out the boat to pleasure parties always reserving one half of its accommodation for herself and household.
During the earliest hour of the dawn the red light of a light-draught river-boat startled the outlying pickets down-stream, and the Far West, answering the muffled hail from shore, responded, through the medium of a mate's stentorian tones, "News that'll rout you fellows out."
Whenever the river-boat came up, we were sure to have guests, for many officers went into the Territory via Ehrenberg. Sometimes the "transportation" was awaiting them; at other times, they were obliged to wait at Ehrenberg until it arrived.
Then we had the pictures at the quay: the ferryboat, and the red-sailed river-boat, getting under way, and bound up the stream.
"But ships a'n't like they oncst was, ladies," he added, "before men put these here heavy iron ingines to work in 'em it's like cropping a bird's wing to make a river-boat of a ship, and a dead, dead shame to shorten sails till it looks like a young gal dressed in breeches or any other onnatural thing for a sailing-ship and a full-flowing petticoat always rise up in a true man's mind together God bless them both, I say."
Then was heard the crashing plunging sound of the paddle-wheels as they beat the brown water, and then the ringing of the bell, and the shouts of command passing from captain to mate, and from mate to "deck hands," and in five minutes after, the "Houma" Red River-boat, lay side by side with the old "Sultana."
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