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Updated: June 25, 2025
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.
The boat was a moving earthquake by this time: "How is she now?" "A hundred and ninety-six and still a-swelling! water, below the middle gauge-cocks! carrying every pound she can stand! nigger roosting on the safety-valve!" "Good! How's your draft?" "Bully! Every time a nigger heaves a stick of wood into the furnace he goes out the chimney, with it!"
The boat was a moving earthquake by this time: "How is she now?" "A hundred and ninety-six and still a-swelling! water, below the middle gauge-cocks! carrying every pound she can stand! nigger roosting on the safety-valve!" "Good! How's your draft?" "Bully! Every time a nigger heaves a stick of wood into the furnace he goes out the chimney, with it!"
The children and the slaves were not much more at ease after finding out that this monster was a creature of human contrivance than they were the night before when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth. They started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss, and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered.
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