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What with the one way and the other, she bewitched the happy young fellow, and she had bewitched several others since the Thanksgiving visit of Mr Maxwell. Clifton scarcely knew what had happened to him till he stood in the desolate station in Montreal, watching the train that carried her and her friends to meet the upward-bound boat at Lachine.
Captain Mellen told that sometimes schooner barges were used in the lower canyons, where the wind was either upstream or downstream. When it was downstream, the upward-bound craft moored until the breeze changed to astern. The deck hands were Cocopah or Yuma Indians, amphibious, always ready to plunge overboard to help in lightening their craft over any of the numerous sand bars.
Twenty seconds later the telegraph operator at the lonely little way station of Tierra Blanca saw a heroic bit of man-play. The upward-bound Carbonate train was whistling in the gorge below when out of the snow-wreaths shrouding the new line a big engine shot down to stop with fire grinding from the wheels, and a man dropped from the high cab to dash across to the station platform.
The most careful dispositions were accordingly made, with this object in view; the gig, in charge of an officer, was daily dispatched to the entrance of the lagoon in order that, herself concealed, her crew might maintain a watch upon the river and report the passage of any vessels upward-bound for the Camma Lagoon, while, so far as our own quarters were concerned, everything was allowed to remain as nearly as possible as it was before it fell into our hands, in order that, should a slaver arrive at the factory, there should be nothing about the place to give the alarm until it should be too late for her to effect her escape.
Upward-bound junks, in addition to their sails, have an immense hawser, made of twisted bamboo splits, leading from the top of the mainmast to the river bank, and to the shore end of which, for a length of about forty to a hundred feet, the trackers fasten the yokes, with one of which each man is supplied, and which are long enough to admit a play of ten or fifteen feet on either side of the cable.
It was almost four o'clock, the hour designated for her meeting, when she enveloped herself in her waterproof cloak, drew the hood over her hat, and almost ran for several squares from Mrs. Brompton's, toward a line of street cars which would convey her to the vicinity of the park. She succeeded in meeting an upward-bound car, entered, and breathed more freely.
Before dark the ice greatly increased in quantity, and from the cabin where, enveloped in rugs, I was having tea, the boatmen's excited voices could be heard making frequent inquiries of upward-bound junks as to our prospects of getting through, for they were Tientsin men and anxious to get their boats home before the river was frozen up.
Downward a hundred feet and they collided with the upward-bound skip, to fend off from it and start on again. The air grew colder, more moist. The carbides spluttered and flared. Then a slight bump, and they were at the bottom. Fairchild started to crawl out from the bucket, only to resume his old position as Harry yelled with fright. "Don't do it!" gulped the Cornishman.
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