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Sometimes the rivers were deep, and the wagons were ferried over on a flatboat that was fastened to a wire rope, while oxen and horses swam through the water behind them. If it did not rain, the children and all were happy, and it did seem like a picnic.

"We are going out of here together," said Mario; "but John and I will conduct you only to the door of the hut. Thence we shall return to the flatboat, and all that two men can do to save our fortune shall be done. You, monsieur, have enough to do to take care of your daughters. To you, M. Carpentier to you, son Celestino, I give the care of these women and children."

For their transportation ashore we carried a stout flatboat, brought for the purpose in the steamer's hold. "In the meantime I walked with Carlos to the camp and made the soldiers a little speech in Spanish, which they received with enthusiasm; and then I had some wine and a cigarette in Carlos's tent. Later we walked back to the river to see how the unloading was being conducted.

Allen at the back oar, Abe at the front oar, had a hard time keeping the big flatboat from turning over. At the end of each day, the boys tied up the boat at some place along the shore. One night after they had gone to sleep, several robbers crept on board. Abe and Allen awoke just in time. After a long, hard fight, the robbers turned and fled.

Ah! grand Dieu! she puts me in mind of a soldier. I'm afraid of her. She smokes she swears she carries a pistol, like a man." At last the 15th of May came, and papa took us on board the flatboat and helped us to find our way to our apartment. If my father had allowed Carlo, he would have ruined himself in furnishing our room; but papa stopped him and directed it himself.

But they journeyed on, Françoise ever looking out the carriage window for the flatboat, and Suzanne crying: "Annie, my sister Annie, do you see nothing coming?" And about two miles from where Franklin was to be they came upon it, greeted with joyous laughter and cries of "Miss Souzie! O Miss Souzie!" from the women and the children, and from Mario: "I have it, Signor! I have it!

We started off right proudly in the Miriam, but, alas, pride goes before destruction, and we had hardly left the heavy flatboat a little behind us, when our machinery broke down, and we had to wait until the clumsy scow overtook us, when we became common passengers again, and drifted down the stream to the Mariscal, passing the Lumeha plantation, an American enterprise.

It would go no higher than our knees, and the sound which the regiment made in marching was like that of a great flatboat going against the current. It had been a sad, lavender-colored day, and now that the gloom of the night was setting in, and not so much as a hummock showed itself above the surface, the Creoles began to murmur. And small wonder!

"Wait until Jim Hill eats his breakfast and perhaps he'll get an armful of wood for us," shouted down the captain in derision. After that, Jim managed to load up a flatboat or two, and always had a little wood in reserve. The young man was now fairly launched in business. The mystery of manifesting, billing, collecting; the matter of "shorts," "overs," and figuring damages were to him familiar.

With something suspiciously like an oath, the major turned away and, hurrying along the street, descended that which sloped down the bluff to the river. Here stood an officer, while in the water lay a flatboat which already held, besides two rowers, a horse and a pair of fat saddle-bags. Without a word Phil jumped in and the rowers struck their oars into the water.