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"Just as I expected," said the Captain under his breath. "That lobster of an Anthony doesn't know enough to watch out for snags." It was characteristic of the Winnebagos and the Sandwiches that there was no noise or confusion over the mishap. Everybody sat quiet while Uncle Teddy paddled alongside the impaled canoe and gave directions for releasing her.
"Well, I am heartily glad," Frank said, "that we are tied safely up, out of the way of floating trees, snags, or anything of the kind. I always like hearing the wind when I am snug, and I shall sleep sound knowing that I am not going to hear your shout of 'Watch on deck' in my ear." In spite of the howling of the gale Frank slept soundly.
"Mat's got her wish at last," I said, as we sat with Uncle Esmond after dinner under a big maple tree and looked out at the far yellow Missouri, churning its spring floods to foam against the snags along its high-water bound. "What's Mat's wish?" Uncle Esmond asked. "To have a good home and stay there. She wished that one night, years ago back in old Fort Bent.
You see, I knows 'bout hit, 'bout them other things I mean, 'cause I was borned and growed up a-knowin' 'bout 'em; an' an' the next time you-all writes er book, Mr. Burns, I 'low you-all ought ter put in 'bout them there snags an' things, 'cause folks sure got ter know 'bout 'em, if they ain't a-wantin' ter git drowned." When Judy had gone into the house, Brian again sat alone on the porch.
The river was at low stage and the Explorer butted into snags and muddy banks continually. Finally there was disaster when Black Canyon was reached, when the boat ran upon a sunken rock. Ives rowed as far up as Vegas Wash. In 1866, the Arizona Legislature, at Prescott, by resolution thanked "Admiral" Robert Rogers, commander of the steamer Esmeralda, and Capt.
Now a government snag-boat may be defined as a boat maintained by the government for the sole purpose of sailing the river and dodging snags. This particular snag-boat, I learned afterward in the course of a long cruise behind her, holds the snag-boat record. I consider her pilot a truly remarkable man. He seemed to have dodged them all.
As night came on, they were compelled to trust to luck. They fell repeatedly on the untraveled banks and tore their clothing to shreds in the underbrush they could not see. Both men were badly scratched and bleeding. A dozen times, in their wild dashes from bank to bank, they struck snags and were capsized.
The freshets had uptorn from the banks the tallest trees, which in places formed a timber-floor; and the surf-boat gallantly charged, till she leaked, the huge trunks, over which she had often to be lifted. Nothing would be easier than to clear away these obstacles; a few pounds of gun-cotton would remove snags and sawyers, and dredging by boats would do the rest.
The captain was an ex-pilot of the lower river, taciturn and surly of disposition. Our pilot had been drunk for a week at the levee of St. Louis and I misdoubt that all snags and sandbars looked alike to him. Among the skin-clad trappers, hunters and long-haired plainsmen, I saw but one woman, and she certainly was fit to bear them company.
She looked for a full minute as if spellbound with terror, her gaze centred at the most repulsive human face she ever had seen the face of Davy's mother. The woman was a giantess, a huge, hideous creature with the face of a man, hairy and bloated. Her unkempt hair was grey almost to whiteness, her teeth were snags, and her eyes were almost hidden beneath the shaggy brow.
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