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Updated: June 2, 2025
Her builder, familiarly known to a generation of rivermen as Billy King, deserves to rank with Henry Shreve. Commissioned in 1844 to build the J. M. White for J. M. Converse of St. Louis, with funds supplied by Robert Chouteau of that city, King proceeded to put into effect the knowledge which he had derived from a close study of the swells made by steamboats when under way.
Then we carried him into the starboard foc'sle, and placed him in my bunk, which had a comfortable mattress. "Now you see what he got?" said Boston, wiping his hands on his greasy pants. "And you see what you got. And you know what happened to Big 'Un. Well, how about it, Shreve? Do you stand with us?" "With the crowd, sink or swim that's what we want to know?" added Blackie. I sized them up.
Briggs, the mate, confided to me in a soft aside that the chap was making the voyage because he knew he had an audience which couldn't escape unless it jumped over the side. Captain Shreve didn't confide; his face kept its accustomed expression of serenity, and he made no attempt to stem the author's flood of words.
"If that talk gets aft, the Old Man will have you thumped into a jelly, just as an example to the other stiffs," I warned him. He gave the devil's cackle that passed with him for a laugh, and stepping close to my side, spoke directly into my ear. "Who is going to take the talk aft? Not you. Blackie and me know that Jack Shreve ain't a snitch. Not the Big 'Un.
Captain Shreve grunted at this the first sound he had been able to squeeze into the talk for half an hour. But the author did not pause; in fact he hastened on, as though determined to forestall any interruption. Talk! I don't know when that fellow found any time to write. He was too eager to tell the world about his gift.
"Now, here's the lay, Shreve we got to put a stop to this sort o' work." He pointed to the bunk that held Holy Joe. "That means we got to take charge of this hooker," he went on. "All hands are agreed to it. But where do you stand with us, or against us?" I made my plea for peace, knowing beforehand it was useless. "How about Newman?" I said.
Jest run slap bang into rich relations. How much is the doctor wuth? He never met me, but they say Deville is a choice mackerel, for a Frenchman. I was about to say, I went down to Cinc'natti on the Enterprise last December. Best boat on the river, Captain Shreve says, and the fourth one built. I have saw the Orleens, the Comet and the Vesuvius, but the Enterprise knocks 'em all.
"Why, no," answered she, puzzled. "There was an old fellow named Shreve who ran steamboats before Jackson fought the redcoats at New Orleans. In Shreve's time the cabins were curtained off, just like these new-fangled sleeping-car berths. The old man built wooden rooms, and he named them after the different states, Kentuck, and Illinois, and Pennsylvania.
He did not answer for a moment, and I turned away towards my bunk. But at that he reached out a detaining hand. "You are a big man, Shreve," he said. "Not such a difference in our sizes but that a man might mistake us after dark. Keep your weather eye lifted, lad; you, too, must look behind when you walk in the dark." "And what shall I look for?" asked I. "Death," he said.
A day or two later she had had another gift; had opened the tiny Shreve box with a sudden hammering at her heart, with a presage of delight. She had found a silver-topped candy jar, and the card of Mr. John Martin Lloyd, and under the name, in tiny letters, the words "O fudge!" The girls laughed over this nonsense appreciatively, but there was more than laughter in Cherry's heart.
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