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"Back out o' 'em! Pull up the Au Fer side, and we'll break through 'em in the bay!" Against the ebb tide close along Au Fer reef, the oarsman toiled until Crump, the lookout, grumbled again. "The shoal's blocked wi' 'em! They're stranded on the ebb. Tedge, yeh'll have to wait for more water to pass this bar inside 'em.
Perhaps the man he had killed rode with this stampede? Tedge shrank under the lilies perhaps they could protect him now? Even the last stroke of his hands made luminous beauty of the under-running tide. An outward-bound shrimp lugger saw the figures on Au Fer reef and came to anchor beyond the shoals.
He had seen the master and crew laughing while the fire mounted. Tedge came to him. "We're quittin' ship," he growled. "Yes, but the cattle " The other looked stupefiedly at him. "We got to pull inside afore the sea comes up " "Well, break the pens, can't you? Give 'em a chance to swim for a bar. I'm a cowman myself I cain't let dumb brutes burn and not lift a hand "
Anyhow, the cattle were milling desperately around in the pen; the stranger who said his name was Milt Rogers would be a lacerated lump of flesh in that mad stampede long ere the fire reached him. Tedge got his tin document box and went aft. Crump and Hogjaw were already in the flat-bottomed bayou skiff, holding it off the Marie Louise's port runway, and the master stepped into it.
There they were, upright, tranquil, immense hyacinths their spear-points three feet above the water, their feathery streamers drifting six feet below; the broad, waxy leaves floating above their bulbous surface mats they came on silently under the stars; they vanished under the stars seaward to their death. "Yeh!" roared Tedge.
By the Intercoastal Canal and the shallow string of bays along the Texas-Louisiana line, the bayou boat could crawl safely back to the grassy swamp lands that fringe the sugar plantations of Bayou Teche. Tedge had bought his living cargo so ridiculously cheap that if half of them stood the journey he would profit. And they would cost him nothing for winter ranging up in the swamp lands.
On one end, in faded gilt, was the name "B. Tedge." Rogers had seen it on the grimy shelf in the pilothouse on the Marie Louise. He felt for the rope; the skiff was barely scraping bottom. Yes, they had moored it here they must be camped on the sands of Au Fer, awaiting the dawn. A boat?
The black oarsman's eyes narrowed and he crouched dumbly as he rowed. Tedge was behind him Tedge of the Marie Louise who could kill with his fists. No, Hogjaw knew nothing he never would know anything. "I jest took him on out o' kindness," mumbled Tedge. "I got no license fer passenger business. Jest a bum I took on to go and see his swamp girl up Des Amoureaux.
He knew the reason: the mighty Mississippi was at high flood, and as always then, a third of its yellow waters were sweeping down the Atchafalaya River on a "short cut" to the Mexican Gulf. And somewhere above, on its west bank, the Atchafalaya levees had broken and the flood waters were all through the coastal swamp channels. Tedge grimly knew what it meant.
It was nothing a child could have put it out with a bucket of sand. But upon it fell Tedge and the engineer, stamping, shouting, shoving oil-soaked waste upon it, and covertly blocking off the astounded black deckman when he rushed to aid. "Water, Hogjaw!" roared the master. "She's gainin' on us she's under the bilge floor now!" He hurled a bucket viciously at his helper.
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