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"The water looks very high to me, but the bottom shifts. Will you station a deck-hand on each side of the boat to sound, captain?" I went down to the main deck, and placed Buck on one side, and Hop on the other. They were provided with poles, marked off in feet. I had seen them used by other boats on the Ocklawaha, and so had the deck-hands.
On boarding her they had released a pinioned, gagged, and hungry captain in the pilot-house, and an engineer, fireman, and two deck-hands, similarly limited, in the lamp-room.
The deck-hands got down to two feet and a half. When Hop said two feet, Cornwood rang to back her. This was the draft of the boat aft. One of the flat-boats which were stowed away aft, and which we had had no occasion to use before, was put into the water, and with Buck I went ahead, with a sounding-pole in my hand.
He caught Decherd by the collar, wrenched the revolver from his pocket and pushed him down the stair, then dragged him along the lower deck. They passed a line of sleeping deck-hands too stupid to observe them. Dragging astern of the boat, high between the two long diverging lines of the rolling wake, there rode a river skiff at the end of its taut line.
Of course, if I wanted to run aground, it was none of his affair etc., etc. Then I stationed the sturdiest of the two deck-hands on the port bow with a long oar, while I took the starboard with another. Very slowly and cautiously we made in, pointing straight for a thick growth of mangrove bushes. Samson stood there and called: "All right, sar. Keep straight on. You'll see your way in a minute."
After that we were good friends, and he would say to me, "George, you are the only man that can whip my deck-hands." "For those that fly may fight again, Which he can never do that's slain; Hence, timely running's no mean part Of conduct in the martial art; By which some glorious feats achieve, As citizens by breaking thrive."
Eddring helped them in, took up the oars, and the two deck-hands, who had been holding the skiff, clambered back aboard the Queen. Eddring settled himself to the oars, and they cast off. The little skiff rocked, tossed, turned, and headed toward the shore under the strong stroke of the oars.
The electric trams and motor buses annoy him. And not one of the young stokers and deck-hands just ashore and paid off, or else waiting at a likely corner for news of a ship, could possibly know the skipper and his honourable records. They do not know that once, in that office, Tom was a famous and respected figure.
No longer are seen the gilded names of famous competitors, "The Lee," "The Natchez," but unheralded boats are numerous, and the deck-hands' chorus comes with a swell over the water, and the wharf is a jungle of trade. In the French market they drank black coffee, listening to the strange chatter about them, and then aimlessly they strolled away. "What's your programme?" the boy asked.
"'What do you mean, says I, 'by serving gentlemen with a lot of truck only suitable for deck-hands on a Mississippi steamboat? We're going out to get something decent to eat. "I walked up the street with the unhappy plainsman. He saw a saddle- shop open, and some of the sadness faded from his eyes.
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