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Bill had disappeared some time before the skipper came aboard and was busy, no doubt, in the engine-room. In the shrouded bows one of the crew was working a fog-horn at irregular intervals, and for a while every blast was answered by a hoot from the steam-whistle above the bridge. This lasted three hours or more.
"Too late!" cried the Dodo. "You shall go on the next journey." And with a shriek from the steam-whistle the horses began to go around. "There you are, you see," said the Dodo, complacently regarding the result of his efforts. "I said it was an easy matter to set them going."
Crowds of the Japanese gathered round and looked on the repeated circlings of the train with unabated pleasure and surprise, unable to repress a shout of delight at each blast of the steam-whistle. The telegraph, with its wonders, though before witnessed, still created renewed interest, and all the beholders were unceasing in their expressions of curiosity and astonishment.
Presently a shrill sound, very faint but prolonged, was heard, showing that she was blowing her steam-whistle as a precaution. "Strange, is it not, that the very thing we have been talking about should happen?" said Mabberly. "Nay," returned Jackman, lightly, "we were talking about being run down, and we have not yet come to that."
Even the towns on the smaller streams tributary to the great river, had their own fleets. Sixteen vessels plied between Nashville and New Orleans. The Red River, and even the Missouri, began to echo to the puffing of the exhaust and the shriek of the steam-whistle.
A sound like the constant blowing of a steam-whistle in the distance was said to be produced by a large monkey. Yells, hoarse or shrill, and roars more or less guttural, were significant of any of the wild beasts with which the forest abounds, and recalled the verse in Psalm civ., "Thou makest darkness that it may be night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do move."
One morning there was a great commotion on deck, and all the convalescents balanced themselves on the rail, shivering in their pajamas, and pointed one way. The transport was moving swiftly and smoothly through water as flat as a lake, and making a great noise with her steam-whistle.
"Nothing nothing," he answered hurriedly. "I've been a little worried about business lately but come," he said, rising, "let us go outside, for I see your father has got that girl with the steam-whistle voice to sing." The girl with the steam-whistle voice was Julia Featherweight, the sister of Rolleston's inamorata, and Madge stifled a laugh as she went on to the verandah with Fitzgerald.
The Dutch gunner appeared on the forecastle of the Bonito, and with him a couple of men. They stood looking at the coast, and Jasper lost himself in a loverlike trance. The deep-toned blast of the gunboat's steam-whistle made him shudder by its unexpectedness. Slowly he looked about. Swift as lightning he leaped from where he stood, bounding forward along the deck.
If the reports in the last box chanced to leave any misgivings on his mind concerning a treacherous crossing, he had his remedy; he blew his steam-whistle in a peculiar way as soon as he saw a boat approaching; the signal was answered in a peculiar way if that boat's pilots were association men; and then the two steamers ranged alongside and all uncertainties were swept away by fresh information furnished to the inquirer by word of mouth and in minute detail.
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