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The factory greatly wanted a flat-bottom iron steamer, a stern-wheeler, with sliding keel, and furnaces fit for burning half-dried wood a craft of fourteen tons, costing perhaps L14 per ton, would be ample in point of size, and would save not a little money to the trader. I was at last fortunate in securing the "Eliza," belonging to Messrs. Hatton and Cookson.
Captain Mellon grinned; the others were speechless; they tried persuasion, but saw it was useless; and then they said good-bye to me, and our stern-wheeler headed about and started for up river. Ehrenberg had become truly my old man of the sea; I could not get rid of it. There I must go, and there I must stay, until circumstances and the Fates were more propitious for my departure.
Crump, the engineer, shot a sullen look at the master ere he turned back to the crude oil motor whose mad pounding rattled the old bayou stern-wheeler from keel to hogchains. "She's full ahead now!" grunted Crump.
She was snagged and lost in 1814, but by that time others were in the field, first of all the "Comet," a stern-wheeler of twenty-five tons, built at Pittsburg, and entering the New Orleans-Natchez trade in 1814.
We ascertained that the boats would start on the return trip to the mouth of White river as soon as they unloaded their army freight. This was accomplished by the next morning, we boarded the first one ready to start, a small stern-wheeler, and some time on the second day thereafter arrived at the mouth of White river.
He would stand upon the bridge for hours, with folded arms and impassive face, staring ahead as the oily waters moved slowly under the bow of the stern-wheeler.
When he got abreast he stopped and waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. But I didn't feel gay any more. I says to myself I've botched my chances by that; I surely have, if he meets up with Hal Clayton. "Well, about three in the morning I fetched Elexandria and see this stern-wheeler laying there, and was very glad, because I felt perfectly safe, now, you know.
Lieutenant Mayne could not take his cruiser the Plumper higher than Langley; and there the forces were transferred to Tom Wright's stern-wheeler, the Enterprise. But, when they arrived at Hope, the whole affair looked like semi-comic vaudeville.
His origin was strange enough, but still stranger was a fact which I soon learnt after I made the acquaintance of Gifoon, and travelled up the Nile with him for three days. We sat talking late into the night, on the top deck of the stern-wheeler mail boat, with a British officer acting as interpreter. Gifoon knew only two cities besides Cairo.
About it there was every sign of activity. A chunky stern-wheeler, with blow-off valve hissing, stood by a boom of logs in the bay, and men were moving back and forth across the swifters, making all ready for a tow. Stella marked a new bunkhouse. Away back on the logging ground in a greater clearing she saw the separate smoke of two donkey engines.
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