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Updated: May 20, 2025
The forest is not wholly separated from the mundane world for occasionally a faint echo of the Rouen railway is heard, a toot from a river tug-boat bringing coal up-river to Paris, the strident notes of automobile horns, or that of a hooting steam-tram which scorches along the principal roadway over which state coaches of kings and courtiers formerly rolled.
For a Spanish gun-boat had been crippled and forced to run herself aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the limelight a cub reporter had projected a new "hero," a ready-made, warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.
And while she was dancing the second extra with the first comer at four o'clock the next morning, Guy Oscard was racing out of Plymouth Sound into the teeth of a fine, driving rain. On the bridge of the trembling tug-boat, by Oscard's side, stood a keen-eyed Channel pilot, who knew the tracks of the steamers up and down Channel as a gamekeeper knows the hare-tracks across a stubble-field.
While crossing the bridge, February 22, I was surprised to notice two of them sitting upon a bird-box over the draw, which just then stood open for the passage of a tug-boat. The toll-gatherer told me they had come "from some place" eight or ten days before. His attention had been called to them by his cat, who was trying to get up to the box to bid them welcome.
All at once, unexpectedly, his doubts were resolved into a certainty that it was not the same, for even while he was wondering, a strange thing happened: A long, low, gray shape, something like a built-for-speed tug-boat with a short funnel, darted into view from between two keys, and, crossing the wake of the revenue cutter, glided swiftly along the very course the Arrow had taken, heading back toward Snipe Point.
A black flag was the signal of this privileged position, which suggested the "Jolly Roger" to Crawford's thoughts, and gave a sense of insolent audacity when great liners of ten or fifteen thousand tons were seen making way for a tug-boat towing a couple of lighters.
I speculated as to what it was going to do. I once saw an ant running away with a piece of cheese eight or ten times larger than itself. I could not help thinking of it, when I found the chubby, smoky-nosed tug-boat towing the Typhoon out into the Mississippi River. In the middle of the stream we swung round, the current caught us, and away we flew like a great winged bird.
The latter was either quite dry or in raging flood. Close under the hill huddled two buildings, half logs, half mud. There the horses were changed by strange men with steel glints in their eyes, like those you see under the brows of a north-country tug-boat captain.
"Bear a hand," he cried, "else I'll be torn to bits." Several hands grasped the line in a moment. "My! wot a wopper," exclaimed Tim Rokens. "Och! don't he pull? Wot a fortin he'd make av he'd only set his-self up as a tug-boat in the Thames!" "If only we had him at the oar for a week," added Gurney. "Hoich! doctor, have ye strength to set disjointed limbs?"
The tug-boat gossip informed me that Dick Kennet was dead blown up, near Memphis, and killed; that several others whom I had known had fallen in the war one or two of them shot down at the wheel; that another and very particular friend, whom I had steered many trips for, had stepped out of his house in New Orleans, one night years ago, to collect some money in a remote part of the city, and had never been seen again was murdered and thrown into the river, it was thought; that Ben Thornburgh was dead long ago; also his wild 'cub' whom I used to quarrel with, all through every daylight watch.
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