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She must have noticed his signal, for she was now headed directly for the transport, and Ridge, clinging with one hand to an awning stanchion as he stood on the rail, frantically waved his hat. Suddenly a bellow of rage close at hand caused him to look in-board. The Captain of the transport, his face purple with passion, was rushing towards the jack-staff.
The Amaranth drew steadily up till her jack-staff breasted the Boreas's wheel-house climbed along inch by inch till her chimneys breasted it crept along, further and further, till the boats were wheel to wheel and then they, closed up with a heavy jolt and locked together tight and fast in the middle of the big river under the flooding moonlight!
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.
It seemed to their excited fancies as if the ghost of Old Squaw herself, the disappointed Indian mother who had, according to tradition, lived so long in loneliness upon this mountain, were joining in their mirth with haggish peals. The canoe had turned bottom uppermost. On righting it they found that the jack-staff had been dislodged.
The young man who had urged the necessity for silence was groping round it, fumbling with the sharp bow, in which he fixed a short pole or "jack-staff," with some object at present no one could discern what on top. "There, I've got the jack rigged up!" he whispered presently. "Step in now, Neal, and I'll open it. Have you got your rifle at half-cock? That's right. Be careful.
Well, Willoughby, do you take it, this nightmare that I thought was dead and buried a dozen times take it and study it over, from alow and aloft, from for'ard and aft, inside and outside and topside and 'tween-decks, from mast-head to keelson, from figure-head to jack-staff; study it and stay with it, and from out of your nineteen years' experience and you're no green apprentice-boy, Willoughby see if you can't construct an endorsement that will lay the damned ghost of it for good and all.
Then such a scramble as there is to get aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freight and to discharge freight, all at one and the same time; and such a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitate it all with! Ten minutes later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys.
Dominion ships were to fly the white ensign at the stern as the symbol of the Crown's authority and the distinctive flag of the Dominion at the jack-staff. Then came the reciprocity fight, the blocking of supplies by the Conservatives, and the general elections of September, all intervening before any tender had been finally accepted.
"Let me see the casualties, quick." That night a fog rolled up from the swamps, and in the morning jack-staff was hid from pilot-house.
Then such a scramble as there is to get aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freight and to discharge freight, all at one and the same time; and such a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitate it all with! Ten minutes later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys.
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