Chapter 5

His answer was a blow so swift that Hugh barely saw it. The singer fell as if he had slipped on ice. Yet promptly he was up again, and from right and left the brothers leaped at their foe. But while men rushed in and hustled the immigrant aft the negro who had saved Ramsey caught one twin as lightly as he had caught her, and Hugh, jerking the other to his knees, snatched up the bottle and whirled it overboard. A moment later he found himself backing up-stairs, followed closely by the pair. These were being pushed up from below by others, and, in lofty phrases hot with oaths, were accusing all Courteneys of a studied plan to insult, misguide, imperil, assault, and humiliate every Hayle within reach and of a cowardly use of deckhands and Dutchmen for the purpose.

His replies were in undertone: "Come up! Hush your noise, your mother'll hear you! Come on! Come up!"

On the boiler deck they halted. The crowd filled the stair beneath and he marvelled once more as he gazed on the two young Hectors, who, true to their ideals and loathing the obliquities of a moral world that left them off deputations, blazed with self-approval in a plight whose shame burned through him, Hugh Courteney, by sheer radiation.

"And as sure," said Julian, "as sure as _hell_, sir, your life's blood or that of your kin shall one day pay for this! To-night we are helpless. What is your wish?"

"My father's wish is that you go to your stateroom and berths and keep your word of honor given to him."

"That, sir, is what we were doing when a hired ruffian----"

"Never mind the hired ruffian. Charge that to me."

"Oh, sir, it is charged!" said the two. "And the charge will be collected!" They went their way.

[Footnote 1: [music]]

XIII

THE SUPERABOUNDING RAMSEY

In his hurricane-deck chair, with eyes out ahead on the water, John Courteney gently took his son's hand as the latter, returning to his side, stood without a word.

"Tucked in, are they, both of them?"

No reply.

"Hugh, I hear certain gentlemen are coming to ask me to put our deck passengers ashore."

"You can't do it, sir."

"Would you like to tell them so?"

"I'd like nothing better."

"Now that you've tasted blood, eh?"

No reply.

"It wouldn't be a mere putting of bad boys to bed, my son. It would be David and Goliath, with Goliath in the plural."

"Can't I pass them on to you if I find I must?"

"Of course you can. Hugh, I'm tempted to try you."

"I wish you would, sir."

"With no coaching? No 'Polonius to the players'?"

"I wish you would."

The father looked into the sky. "Superb night," he said.

Again no reply.

"Were you not deep in the spell of it when I found you here awhile ago?"

"Yes, I was."

"My son, I covet your better acquaintance."

"You mean I--say so little?"

"You reveal yourself so little. Even your mother felt that, Hugh."

"I know it, father. And yet, as for you----"

"Yes--as for me----?"

"I've never seen you without wanting to tell out all that's in me." The pair smiled to each other.

"And you say that at last, now, you can do it?"

"Did I say that, sir?"

"Not in words. But you seem all at once to be seeing things--taking hold of things--in a new way."

"The things themselves are new, sir. They're small, but--somehow--they've helped me on."

"Couldn't I guess one of them?"

"I hardly think so, sir; they're really such trifles."

"Well, for a first attempt, Ramsey."

"Yes. How did you guess that?"

"She's such a persuasive example of perfect openness."

"Her mother's a much lovelier one."

"No, Hugh; allowing for years, Miss Ramsey's even a better. But--another small thing--shall I mention it?"

"Yes, please."

"All these Hayles, to-night, bring up the past--ours."

"Yes!" said Hugh, and said no more, as if the remark had partly unlocked something and then stuck fast.

The questioner tried a smaller key. "What were you thinking," he asked, "when I joined you here to-night?"

"When you--? Oh, nothing we're thinking of now."

"At the same time, what was it?"

"Why--something rather too fanciful to put into words."

"All the same, let's have it."

"Well, for one thing, seeing and feeling this boat, with all its light and life, speeding, twinkling on and on through the night like a swarm of stars, the thought came--and I was wishing I could share it with you----"

The elder hand pressed the younger.

"The thought that since infinite space--" The thought seemed to stall, take breath, and start again--"since infinite space is lighted only by the stars, the rush and roll of this universe through space is forever and ever--in the large--a night scene--an eternal starlight. Is that absurd--to you?"

The father smiled: "Why, no. I merely--doubt it. All starlight is sunlight--near enough by."

"Yes. But between stars there is no near-by, is there?"

"That depends on who's looking, I think. We mustn't impute human eyes to God--or angels--or saints. You remember the word: 'Darkness and light are both alike to thee'?"

"Yes," pensively said Hugh, rejoicing in this converse yet wondering why it made him feel so childish to speak his best while Hayle's twins showed up in so manly a fashion when they spoke their worst. "Yes, I thought of that, too. Yet I was glad to believe there will always be plenty of starlight for those who love it----"

"Wow!" yelled Ramsey in his ear.

With a gulp he whirled and faced her where, limp with laughter, she hung and swung on the captain's chair. Its occupant quietly rose. The old nurse wrung her hands, and Ramsey, in an agony of mirth and dismay, cringed back on her. Suddenly the maiden stood at her best height and with elaborate graciousness said:

"I _hope_ I haven't interrupted!"

The father's hand appeasingly touched the son's while playfully he said: "You have a hopeful nature, Miss Ramsey." And then, as her disconcerted eyes widened, he asked: "Where did you come from just now?"

He saw that if she spoke she must weep. Instead she jauntily waved a whole arm backward and upward to the pilot-house. Then, her self-command returning, she remarked, for Hugh in particular: "It's nice up there. They don't snub you." She twitched a shoulder at him, made eyes to his father, and once more tinkled her laugh, interiorly, as though it were a door-bell.

The captain was amused, yet he gravely began to ask: "Does your mother----?"

"Know I'm out? She doth. First time I've been out o' bed this late in all my long and checkered career."

"If she does, Miss Ramsey, will you go up to the pilot once more and tell him to land the boat at the wood-yard just this side of Bonnabel plantation?"

Her mouth fell open: "Who, me? Tell the--?" She swept the strategist with a quick, hurt glance, but beamed again beneath his kind eyes. "_I get your idea_," she said, snatched the nurse's arm, and hurried off with her, humming and tripping the song she had quoted.

The captain looked again into "infinite space." The wide scene was shifting. High beyond the _Votaress's_ bow the stars of the west swung as if they shifted southward. The moon crossed her silvering wake from larboard quarter to starboard. The _Antelope_ shone close ahead. "To me, Hugh," he lightly resumed, "this boat, full of all sorts of people, isn't so much like your swarm of stars as it is like just one little whole world."

"Yes," said the son, facing him sidewise so that no Ramsey might again surprise them: "I see it that way too. Father"--the father had stirred as if to leave him--"I want to tell you some things about our past. But I can't tell them piecemeal. I must find some time when you're off watch."

"And when Miss Ramsey's asleep?"

"Yes."

"Why have you never told me before?"

"I've tried for years. The power wasn't in me. I've had to grow up to it. But, as you say, 'now, at last,' I can do it."

The captain turned away and looked up to the dim pilot-house. Out of it came the tranquil voice of the pilot who earlier had talked with the twins: "Caving bank above has planted snags at that wood-yard, sir. Whippoorwill Ferry's a better landing, on t'other side, head o' the crossing."

"Well, Mr. Watson, land there."

The boat was sweeping close by the west-shore village of Bayagoula, that lay asleep where the stream for a brief space widened to a mile. Her veering jack-staff hid the north star a moment, then crept to right of it and pointed up a five-mile reach of dim waters and dimmer shores, hard on the heels of the panting _Antelope._ But the captain's eye lingered behind and above him. Between him and the pilot-house, softly veiled by its moonlight shadow, stood in unconscious statuesqueness on the front overhang of the texas roof, between the towering chimneys, Ramsey.

Her rippling curls and slim shoulders stood above the shade that enveloped the rest of her form and showed dark against the feeble light of the moon at her back. As he looked she uttered a droll sound--fair counterfeit of the harsh note a mocking-bird speaks to himself before his nightly outburst--and then broke forth in a voice as untrained, but as fresh and joyous and as reckless of reproof or praise, as the bird's:

"'O, the lone, starry hours give me, love, When still is the beautiful night----'"

At sight of a second and third figure he moved that way, while below the singer's feet sounded a mother's moan: "Ramsey! mon Dieu! my chile! come down from yondeh!"

The girl's eyes stayed in the sky, but one mutinous foot so keenly smote the roof that her nurse, approaching behind, stopped short, and from Hugh came a laugh, a thin, involuntary treble, which caused Ramsey visibly to flinch.

"Ramsey!" entreated her mother again, but----

"Just this one moment, beloved mom-a! Listen, oh, listen, everybody! to my midnight thought!" The rhapsodist struck a stiffer pose and began with all her voice, "Since infinite space is lighted only by the stars! their rush and roll--te rum te riddle, te rum te ree----"

"Ramsey!"

"--Is an eternal starlight!" The girl hugged and kissed her black nurse: "Oh, mammy Joy! is that absurd to you?"

"Ram-zee!" cried the mother. But a toll of the great bell silenced her. Another solemnly followed, and when a third completed the signal to land, the staggering footsteps of the vanished girl dragging old Joy with her in full retreat were a relief to every ear. As madame turned to say good night a last bleat came out of the darkness:

"Please don't, anybody, tell about the _Quakeress_ to-night!"

XIV

THE COMMITTEE OF SEVEN

"Hitherto," said the senator, in his stateroom, to the bishop and the judge, "there really has been no need to take any assertive step."

He was explaining his slowness as head of the deputation and was glad, he said, to have a word apart with these two. The room could not seat seven and for the moment the other four were at the bar, where standing was so much easier than elsewhere.

Their business, the seven's, he added, was with the captain, and officially the captain had gone off duty at eight o'clock and was on again only now, at midnight, in the "middle watch." Even yet there need be no hurry; what they wanted done could not be done before early morning, at Prophet's Island.

The bishop approved. "Don't cross the bridge till you get to it," he quoted.

The judge--whose elderly maiden sister was aboard and abed but awake and alarmed and amazed and astounded that he should be so helpless--assented, too, but thought there was now no call for further delay; Prophet's Island was nearer every moment and the sooner "those people" were well ashore the safer--and easier--for everybody.

"I was giving our numbers time to grow," remarked the senator.

"And the cholera time to spread?" queried the judge.

"We're but a small minority yet," persisted the senator.

"A minority always rules," smilingly said the bishop.

The senator smiled back. "There are two or three hundred of those deck passengers alone," he responded.

"Senator," said the judge, "what of that? We've taken upon ourselves to speak for all the cabin passengers on this boat, whether as yet they agree with us or not. They are as numerous as those foreigners, sir, and, my God! sir, _they_ are our own people. Self-preservation is the first law!"

"Oh, surely you know," protested the senator, "I'm with you, heart and soul! We must extricate these people of our own from a situation whose desperateness most of them do not recognize. We'll go to the captain now, as soon as--as we must. But let us agree right here that whatever we require him to do we also require him to do of his own free will. He must shift no responsibility upon us. You have, of your sort, bishop, a constituency quite as sensitive as the judge's or mine, and we don't want to give any one a chance to start a false story which we might find it difficult to run down. And so we can hardly be too careful----"

The absent four had returned while he spoke. "Sir," interrupted the general, whose th's were getting thick, "ththat is what we have been--too careful!"

The hearts of the four were on fire. A chance word of the barkeeper, they said, had sent them to the stateroom of Hayle's twins, who, with tears of wrath, had confessed themselves prisoners; prisoners of their own word of honor--"after being knocked down----"

"What?" cried senator, judge, and bishop.

"Yes, sirs, one of them literally knocked down by the acknowledged minion of one Courteney, for having ventured to differ politically with another and for daring to mention the pestilence to a third."

The seven poured out to the guards and started for the roof. The bell up there tolled for the landing at Whippoorwill Ferry. About to ascend a stair, they uncovered and stood aside while Madame Hayle and a cabin maid passed down on their way back to the immigrants' deck. By the time the roof was reached the boat was close inshore. The captain had begun to direct her landing. The engine bells were jingling. Tall torch baskets were blazing on the lower-deck guards, and another burial awaited only the running out of the big stage. Now it hurried ashore, a weirdly solemn pageant. The seven, looking down upon it, regained a more becoming composure. When the swift task was done, the torches quenched, and the boat again under way and her movements in control of the pilot, they once more looked for the captain. His chair was empty, but his room was bright and its door ajar. Within, however, was only the wholly uninspiring figure of Hugh, at a table, where he was just beginning to write. He rose and seemed sedately to count his visitors.

"We are looking for the captain," said the senator.

"He's down on the after lower deck, sir."

"Oh!" The bushy brows of the inquirer lifted. "Will you send for him? We can't very well go down there."

"That's true, sir," said Hugh, feeling the irony, "unless you wish to help." He looked from one to another, but none of the seven wished to help.

"Do you mean to say," broke in the general, "ththat we can't sssee ththe captain of ththis boat unless we nurse the cholera?"

"No, sir, I don't mean that, though he's very much occupied. If you will state your business to me I will send for him unless I can attend to it myself."

"Why, my young friend," said the senator, "does that strike you as due courtesy to a delegation like this?"

"No, sir, ordinarily it would not be, sir. But my father--I am the captain's son--knowing you were coming and what you were coming for, waited for you as long as he could. Just now he is extremely busy, sir, doing what he can--short-handed--for the sick and dying." The captain's son, in spite of himself, began to warm up. "Those hundreds of people down yonder, sir, are homeless, friendless, dumb--you may say--and in his personal care. He has left me here to see that your every proper wish has every attention. Gentlemen, will you please be seated?" He resumed his own chair and at top speed began again to write.

It was a performance not pleasant for any one. He felt himself culpably too full of the resentful conviction that this ferment, whose ultimate extent nobody could predict, was purely of those Hayle twins' brewing, and he knew he was speaking too much as though to them and them alone. He was the only Courteney who could do this thing so badly, yet it must be done. Still writing, he glanced up. Not a visitor had stooped to sit. He dipped his pen but rose up again. "What can I do for you, sirs?"

"We have told you," said the senator. "Send for the captain!"

"Will you please say what you want him for?"

"No, sir! We will tell him that when he comes!"

"He'll not come, sir. I shan't send."

The senator glared steadily into the youth's face, and the youth, forgetting their disparity of years, glared as steadily back. The bishop blandly spoke:

"Senator, will you allow me, for an instant--? Mr. Courteney, you will admit that this steamboat is not your property?"

"She's as much mine as anybody's, sir. I am one third owner of her."

The bishop's pause was lengthy. Then--"Oh, you are! Well, however that may be, sir, your father ought to realize--and so ought you, sir--that we cannot consent to conduct an affair like this in a second-handed way."

"It really isn't second-handed, sir; but if you think it is and if you're willing to put your request in writing and will dictate it to me, here and now----"

The senator exploded: "Damn the writing!" He whirled upon the bishop: "Your pardon, sir!"

"Some one had to say it," jovially answered the bishop. Everybody laughed. Hugh dipped his pen once more.

"Shall I put that down, also?" he asked, looking to the bishop and the senator by turns.

"Put what?--down where?" they asked. "What are you writing there, anyhow?"

"Our conversation."

The senator stiffened high: "For what, sir?"

And the bishop asked, "A verbatim report to the captain?"

"Yes, sir, and the newspapers."

"Insolence!" exclaimed the general, but was hushed by the squire, though the squire's own brow lowered.

"Who will vouch for your accuracy?" loftily asked the senator.

"I'll send now for witnesses." The youth reached toward a bell-cord. But the senator lifted a hand between:

"Stop, sir. There will be nothing to witness. Nevertheless you know, of course, that this is not the end."

"I see that, sir."

"When your passengers awake in the morning, your real, your cabin passengers, they will, they _shall_ awake to the deadly hazard of their situation. Gentlemen, there will be available landings beyond Prophet's Island. We shall reach Turnbull's Island by noon and Natchez Island before sundown. Meantime, sir, this mortal peril to hundreds of our best people is wholly chargeable to your captain."

"Captain and owners," said Hugh.

"Captain and owners! Good night, sir."

"Good night, gentlemen."

For half an hour the _Votaress_ headed west. Then the north star crept forward from starboard beam to bow and then back from bow to larboard beam. Plaquemine town, bayou, and bend swept past, and as she laid her course east for Manchac bayou, bend, and point a tranquil voice came up to the pilot-house from the darkness forward of the bell: "Where is Hugh, Mr. Watson?"

"He's just turned in, sir."

XV

MORNING WATCH

Twinkled quite away were the four hours of middle watch.

All the gentler turnings of the journey's first hundred miles were finished and the many hundred miles of its wider contortions were well begun. One winding of thirty-five miles had earned but twelve of northward advance. But at any rate that was now far downstream. Baton Rouge, the small capital of the State, crowning the first high bank you reach, was some six miles astern. In the dark panorama of the shores, decipherable only to a pilot's trained sight, the unbroken procession of sugar estates was broken at last and the shining _Votaress_, having rounded a point from north to west, was crossing close above it with Seven Lakes and the Devil's Swamp on her starboard bow. The _Antelope_ glimmered a short mile behind.

It was the first mate's watch. On the hurricanedeck he paced at ease across and across near the front rail, where at any instant his eye could drop to its truer domain, the forecastle. The westerly moon hung high over the larboard bow. Now the boat ran so close along the lowland that in smiting the water each bucket of her shoreward wheel drew a separate echo from the dense wood, as if a phantom boat ran beside her among the moss-draped cypresses. Ramsey! what thrills you were missing!

She knew it. In her sleep she lay half consciously resenting the loss. Under the next point a close turn led into a long northeastward reach, and as the _Votaress_ bore due north across it the morning star, at one flash, blazed out on the dark world and down the flood. Through her stateroom's high window its silvery beam found Ramsey in the upper berth and opened her eyelids with a touch. Staring on the serene splendor, she would soon have slept again, but just then the many lights of a large steamer glided out of the next bend above and Ramsey sprang to an elbow to watch its swift approach and await her own boat's passing call and the other's reply. Now the _Votaress_ tolled a single stroke, as if to cry: "Hail, friend, we take the starboard."

With bird-like speed the shining apparition came on, and after a few seconds--that seemed endless--its soft, slow note of assent floated over the waters. Crossing the star's slender path on a long oblique, the wonder came, came on, came close, glittered by, and was gone; now lowland and flood lay again in mystic shadows, and the heavenly beacon of dawn, shedding a yet more unearthly glory than before, swung nearer and nearer to the _Votaress's_ course until it vanished forward of the great wheel-house as she headed northeast.

The very pilot at the helm was not more awake than the reclining Ramsey as she pondered the hours, each one a year, that had passed since she came aboard. All their happenings, dark and bright; all their speeches; all their faces, male, female, aged, adolescent, juvenile, danced through her fancy with a variety and multiplicity of values which seven such little country-girl minds as hers, thought she, could hardly make room for. It seemed as though a shower of coined gold were overflowing her wee muslin apron of an intelligence and dropping through it. She could scarcely remain in the berth. Listen! Was her mother awake, in the lower one? The boat veered a trifle back northward and suddenly again, hovering over dim water and shore and blazing like a herald angel, was the morning star, a scant point or so to "stabboard." She chuckled, softly, at the word.

Gently her name was called, beneath her: "Ramsey?"

She let her face into the pillow and shook with the fun of it. If she should squeak half a note of reply she would be ordered to stay abed. Soon the mother rose and began stealthily to dress. No doubt it was to return to those poor Germans below. The thought was very sobering. Ramsey yearned to go with her, but knew she might as well ask leave to ride in the white yawl which, night and day, so incessantly, invitingly skimmed, zigzagged, foamed, and bounded after the _Votaress_, holding on to her fantail by its jerking painter.

The yawl reminded her of the boy Hugh. He seemed to belong to the boat in much the same way as it. He _was_ a boy, nothing else--humph!--pooh!--though he seemed to think himself the elephant of the show. A boy, and yet with what a mind! Not that she should ever want one like it--whoop! what would she ever do with it? No wonder she had laughed in his face. Without laughter she would have been his tossed and trampled victim. Laughter was her ladder; the ladder up which the circus girl runs to sit on the elephant's shoulder.