"Come," said Gideon, "never mind that. How did it happen?"

"It happened, sir, through my own incredible carelessness and by my own hand. Don't say a word! I would to God I had been the victim and had fallen dead in my tracks. If I had killed him I would have put the other load into my brain."

"Oh, if!" solemnly sneered the incredulous father. While he did so Julian, the profoundness of whose mental torture his father poorly saw, received from Ramsey his brother's summons and with her was turning away. He stopped and flashed back a look of agonized resentment, but Gideon met it with a beetling frown and neither gaze fell until Ramsey stepped between, facing the giant, and she and the brother backed away and were gone.

They sought the passenger deck. Between anguish for Lucian's calamity and anguish for his father's contumely there poured from Julian's lips in hectoring questions to Ramsey a further anguish of chagrin for the seeming triumph of Hugh's love. Two or three challenges she parried and while in a single utterance he launched out as many more they encountered at a wheel-house stair their mother and old Joy. He cut short all inquiries with a proffer to return to them and Ramsey post-haste and give a full account of the disaster.

Meantime down in the sick-room Lucian said to Phyllis, when they had been a few minutes alone:

"And now give me my medicine."

"Yes, sir; where is it?"

"Oh, damnation! in my saddle-bags on the washstand. What are you trying to talk white folks' English for?" He hardly spoke three words without a moan or an oath. "Do you find a measuring-glass?"

She found it.

"See a small bottle—dark liquid—about twice the size—of the glass?"

"Yass, suh, but it's full, suh."

"Hell! what of that? Fill the glass and give it to me!"

She filled it but paused. "It—it looks like la'danum."

"Oh, damn you, so did your great-grandmother. It's not laudanum. Did you ever smell vinegar in laudanum, or nutmeg? Give it here! God A'mighty, if I could reach you with my fist—Give me that glass!"

"Misteh Lucian, if this is la'danum——"

"You hell-fired idiot, it isn't! And if it was, such an overdose would only vomit me. Don't you know that?"

"Yass, suh, I know it would." But still she held back.

"Then give it here!"

Julian came in with alarm added to his other distresses.

"Oh, Luce! do you want to start that bleeding again?"

"I'd just as lief as not! Make that wench give me that glass or mash her head! She knows if it was laudanum it would merely puke me. Damn it, it's a simple euthanasia." The crafty sufferer felt assured his brother would neither know nor ask the smooth word's meaning.

Julian turned, savagely upon the maid. Heated with drink, enraged at himself, his father, Hugh Courteney, his sister, and his mother, he was in no mood to humor the contumacy of any freed slave and least of all this one. "Give it to him this instant," he cried. "Do you want to kill him?"

"No, Misteh Julian, that's exactly——"

He drew and levelled his revolver and then motioned with it a repetition of his command.

With a woe of protest in her eyes, Phyllis obeyed. Lucian swallowed the draught and sank to his pillow. Julian watched Phyllis slowly set down the glass and bottle.

"What did you say that stuff is?" he asked his brother, with an assumed lightness.

"Oh, a palliative for these infernal pains. Have you told the family what happened? Go do it." The speaker's tone grew lofty. "I want them to know it was all my fault! This girl can stay with me till you come back, and you can take your time. I shan't need you for an hour. Go, Jule, my brother. Oh don't harry me with idle questions."

As Julian presently shut himself out Phyllis, her fears for the patient disarmed by his transient excitement where she had looked for heaviness, laid her hand on a chair; but he stopped her. "You white nigger! would you presume to sit down in my presence? If you can't stand go outside—and shut the door. Oh, go anyhow! Life's more tolerable with you out of sight. If I want you I'll call."

The room was close abaft the wheel, where a widening of the guards made an inviting space, and out there Phyllis drew a chair up beside the door. A whitejacket came from the cabin in behalf of passengers in neighboring staterooms to ask what the commotion meant, and as she began to explain it away Ramsey and old Joy came down a near-by stair to watch with her or in her stead and to them she amplified her explanation. Ramsey listened at the door. The patient seemed to be asleep, so audible was his breathing.

She had a sudden thought: a doctor's saddle-bags always contain laudanum. Had Phyllis seen any—in another bottle, untouched? That would confirm the patient's denial. She beckoned and asked. Yes, Phyllis had seen it, labelled.

"And besides," Ramsey thought on, "neither twin has ever spoken falsely to the other." Why, then, sleep was good!

Even in outer sights and sounds there was solace and reassurance: in river and shore forever passing majestically up-stream through floods of moonlight; in the rhythmic flutter and rush of wheels and foam, and in the keen quiver of the Enchantress flying to New Orleans on the swiftest wings steam could give. Ramsey sent Phyllis up to bid Julian be at ease, and the maid, returning, announced that both the commodores had gone to rest but that madame was anxious to come back to the invalid the moment he would permit. She added, unasked, that Captain Hugh was in the captain's chair.

The hour passed and Julian reappeared. The partial relief of mind which had come to all the others had in degree reached him. It enabled him, as he came down the wheel-house stair, to reflect, though with a shudder, upon that furious treatment which alone, he had somewhere heard, would counteract an opium poisoning, and upon Lucian's utter inability to endure any part of such a treatment. He found Ramsey hearkening at the door again, newly disquieted. The two servants were out at the rail of the wide guards.

"Ought his breathing," she said, "to sound like that?"

Julian thought not, but even a sister's solicitude offended his lifelong sentiment of paramount ownership in his brother. "Stand away, I'll let you know," he replied, passed in, and closed the door.

Then all at once, as so often has happened to so many of us, he saw his heedlessness where he had fancied himself vigilant. The light was dim. He knelt close to the sleeper. One long stare into the pale yet livid face was enough. Lucian was dying. Julian leaped to his feet to seek aid but saw its futility and fell again to his knees. Lucian was dying of the "black-drop" which his brother, in haughty ignorance, by the hand of Phyllis, had given him.

Presently Julian found voice, yet, mindful still of the listening Ramsey, let himself only softly murmur: "Oh, Lucian, my brother! Oh, Lucian, my twin brother! I've killed you, killed you twice over, my twin brother! God! but you're right not to live a cripple. And it was I who crippled you! Oh, Lucian, I'm the cripple now!"

Ramsey tapped. He sprang to the door and without opening it answered: "Yes, in a minute. He—he's all right."

At the wash-stand he lifted the phial of black-drop still half full. As quietly as if the dose were a dram at the bar he filled the measuring—glass and drank its last drop. Then he turned to the door and barely opened it.

"He's all right, Ramsey.... Yes.... Yes. He's done just the right thing. So have I. Now, go away, please, wherever you like, only don't—stay—here just to bother us. I'll merely lie down beside him without—What?... No, go away! You'll find us all right in the morning."



LXIII

THE CAPTAIN'S CHAIR

On the next afternoon but one, while hundreds went down to the steamboat landing to view the new Enchantress, there was a double funeral in the old French cemetery, Saint Louis Street, New Orleans.

Returning from it together, Watson and his former "cub" spoke of Gideon Hayle.

"He takes the loss of them boys harder'n what I'd 'a' thought he would," said the younger pilot.

And Watson replied: "Yes, but he don't take it as hard as what, years ago, he tuck their fust refus'n' to go with him on the river."

They said no more all the way up Rampart Street to Canal, out Canal to the steamboat landing, and across the levee to the Enchantress. An hour later they stood in her wheel-house, looking down on the same Saturday afternoon five o'clock scene that Watson and Ned had thus contemplated from the Votaress a hundred months before.

Here were the same vast piles of harvest wealth, the same crowds and little flags, the same shouting and tumult only grown greater, the same open sky—though of October—the same many-pillared cloud of black smoke, the same smartly painted bumboats selling oranges, bananas, pineapples, corals, and seashells—many of the latter treated with puritanic art, having, that is, the Lord's Prayer bitten into them with muriatic acid. Here lay the same yellow harbor with many more fussy little tugs in it, its water low yet still mast-deep, its yard-long catfish and fathom-long gars leaping and wallowing after their prey, its white gulls flashing about the steamers' pantry windows. Here was the same black forest of ships in the up-stream and down-stream distance and here, finally, the same public hope and pride grown wider and loftier in their last affluence before entering that purgatory of civil war which now seems but a bad dream outlived.

Steam was up on the Enchantress, and every now and then her mighty wheels tugged on her hawsers. In the crowd gathered on the wharf to see her go were the Gilmores and the half dozen from Vicksburg and the Bends. Up on the hurricane-deck were two or three small knots of passengers, chiefly ladies, unknown to the Gilmore group; but beside a derrick post, where we first saw Hugh on the Votaress, stood the three Hayles, old Joy, and "California"—bound once more for the gold-diggings. Near the Hayles, yet nearer the bell, was Hugh, in command.

"You don't reckon," said a voice in the throng, "that that's her captain, do you?"

"No," said another, "I should think not."

"Yes," said the very human Gilmore, "that's the captain."

Vicksburg and the Bends sent up smiles and faint wavings to Ramsey and her mother and only did not call to them because they were in a great city. It made them very proud and happy to see Hugh the master of this, to them, matchless wonder of utility and beauty, and they could not help saying things to each other with voice enough to let strangers around them know he was their personal friend. While they did so who should alight from a cab and glance up to Hugh but his grandfather. Hugh answered with a gesture toward the Gilmores, to whom the old gentleman promptly turned. There had arisen among the boats a good-natured custom of giving friends a free trip eight miles up the river, to the suburb of Carrollton. So a word from the commodore was enough; the players and their group hurried aboard with him and as they touched the lower deck the last bell sounded and the lines were cast off.

When they reached the hurricane-deck they were in the middle of the stream. They did not join the senior Hayles at once; Ramsey met them and with her they stood on the skylight roof watching the shores to see when they should stop drifting and gain headway. Over on the "Algiers" side of the harbor lay the Paragon, repairing a smashing she had got at the wharf through the bad handling of another boat, else the Hayles would hardly have been going home on the Enchantress.

The crew of the Enchantress stood about her capstan and their chantey-man, ready to sing when the swivel should peal and her burgee run down; but the Gilmore group were too far aft to see them. The player's wife, speaking gravely with Ramsey in low tones, remarked with sudden gayety:

"I see why we're here behind the bell. You're afraid they'll sing——"

Ramsey made a pleading gesture.

"Why, what can you expect," asked her friend; "not 'Bounding Billow'?"

Ramsey, laughing, could only repeat the gesture. The swivel pealed, down sank the burgee, a wind began to ruffle their brows, and up rolled the song:

"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sea ships come an' go, On de finess boat dat eveh float," etc.

It was still coming up when a young man not of the Gilmore group surprised the actor a moment aside.

"Mr. Gilmore, is that Commodore Hayle over there?... I thought it must be. I suppose he's going up home to settle his two sons' affairs. Mr. Gilmore, they wan't bad, they were only wild. Sad, their having to be buried in the city. But in this climate, you know—hmm!—yes."

The song and his observations crossed back and forth.

"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, you'd ought to come befo'"— (Chorus.)

"You don't remember me, Mr. Gilmore, but I was on the Votaress with you and your lady and Madame Hayle and those twins and all. I married the young lady I was keeping company with then. There she is. Don't you re-collect my lending you my field-glass at the Devil's Elbow?"

"Dear me! was that you at the devil's elbow! I—I hope I returned them."

"Oh, you did! You remember the first clerk of the Votaress! He's her captain now. And Ned—you remember Ned, the pilot, don't you? Well, he's on her yet. I see you're lost in admiration of this most unusual sunset. We almost always have these unusual sunsets. This is a wonderful country."

"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sweet cane honey flow'. (Chorus.)

"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, love a-knockin' at de do'." (Chorus.)

Now the boat was in the pilot's hands. Hugh joined Madame Hayle and the two commodores at the derrick post. The same shrewd texas tender who had once abstracted the weapons of the twins from their stateroom set a second chair beside the captain's. Hugh offered the two seats to the commodores, but both declined. They of Vicksburg and the Bends watched the gorgeous October sunset beyond the low, flat orangeries on their right. "California" was with them and told them of the sunsets on the great plains. Gilmore generously kept the one-time lender of the field-glass and the lender's mouse of a wife beguiled with anecdotes while Mrs. Gilmore talked on with Ramsey, making fond and welcome incursions into her confidence.

"Isn't it ridiculous," murmured Ramsey, "that he seems condemned to do everything in the tamest possible way? Not that he cares; he seems almost to like it so. It's so right now. He can't proclaim anything. And—you see why, don't you?—neither can I."

"Ramsey, you needn't. Only do one thing for us, Gilmore and me, and we'll know. When we've landed and the boat starts away again and he—" She finished in a voice too small for type.

At Six Mile Point the actor escaped his bonds and for a moment got Hugh into his sole possession.

"Certainly, under these conditions," he assented, "you can't assert anything—of that particular sort. But see here: You can tell me, just for us two Gilmores exclusively, what your next boat will be named. Can't you?"

"Yes," said Hugh, "she'll be the—" He let Gilmore speak the name interrogatively and merely nodded, smiling.

The Enchantress was within five minutes' run of Carrollton when Watson dropped a quiet word to the roof, where both the Courteneys and Gideon were looking up-stream at a downward-bound steamer which had rounded to and landed under Nine-Mile Point.

"What is she?" asked Gilmore of Watson for his group.

"A Hayle boat, the Troubadour," said the pilot; "probably putting off some sugar-house machinery."

The Enchantress neared the huge Carrollton levee. "Good-by." "Good-by." "Good-by." "Good-by." Down they hurried, the old commodore, the players, the extraneous pair, and the six from Vicksburg and the Bends, followed to the stage plank by "California," and waved to from the after guards by Joy and Phyllis.

"Good-by." "Good-by!" The beautiful craft backed away and turned for Nine-Mile Point. And here came the Troubadour, with whistles trumpeting a troubadour's salute to the new queen of the river. The Hayle boat's people had espied their own commodore and the black mass on their forecastle were singing "Gideon's Band."

With whistles above and song below the Enchantress replied. The whistles ceased; the song was "'Lindy":

"Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to meet to paht no mo', On de finess boat dat eveh float' In de O—hi—o, De Mas-sis-sip-pi aw de O—hi—o."

Back at Carrollton on the crown of the levee, standing apart from their companions, the players gazed after the Enchantress. The three Hayles had returned to their stand by the derrick post. Hugh was near the two chairs. The actor softly spoke:

"Shall I tell you what Hugh told me?"

"Yes," said the wife.

"Then tell me what Ramsey told you."

"Nothing. She's going to tell it now. Watch!"

They watched together. Ramsey crossed to Hugh, and seemed to speak a word or two, not more. He sat down in the captain's chair and she took the one beside him.

Even Vicksburg and the Bends understood that.

"He told me," murmured the actor, "that the next Courteney boat will be the Ramsey Hayle."



[Transcribers Note: # is used to indicate bolded text.]

THE END