[Illustration: THE RESCUE OF THE CASTAWAYS.
“The rescue occupied considerable time and work.” (See page 283.)]
The Last of the Flatboats
_A Story of the Mississippi and its
interesting family of rivers_
By
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
Author of “The Big Brother,” “Captain Sam,”
“The Signal Boys,” “The Wreck of
the Red Bird,” etc., etc.
BOSTON
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY LOTHROP
PUBLISHING
COMPANY.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
_TO MY LAST-BORN BOY_
CARY EGGLESTON
_A brave, manly fellow
Who knows how to swim
How to catch fish
How to handle his boat
How to shoot straight with a rifle
And how to tell the truth every time_
I Dedicate
_This Story about some other Boys of his kind_
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
_Culross-on-Lake-George_
Preface
Vevay, from which “The Last of the Flatboats” starts on its voyage down
the Mississippi, is a beautiful little Indiana town on the Ohio River,
about midway between Cincinnati and Louisville. The town and Switzerland
County, of which it is the capital, were settled by a company of
energetic and thrifty Swiss immigrants, about the year 1805. Their
family names are still dominant in the town. I recall the following as
familiar to me there in my boyhood: Grisard, Thiebaud, Le Clerc,
Moreraud, Detraz, Tardy, Malin, Golay, Courvoisseur, Danglade, Bettens,
Minnit, Violet, Dufour, Dumont, Duprez, Medary, Schenck, and others of
Swiss origin.
The name Thiebaud, used in this story, was always pronounced “Kaybo” in
Vevay. The name Moreraud was called “Murrow.”
The map which accompanies this volume was specially prepared for it by
Lieut.-Col. Alexander McKenzie of the Corps of Engineers of the United
States Army. To his skill, learning, and courtesy I and my readers are
indebted for the careful marking of the practically navigable parts of
the great river system, and for the calculation of mileage in every
case.
G. C. E.
Contents
Chapter Page
I. The Rescue of the Pigs 9
II. How it All Began 17
III. Captain Phil 27
IV. A Hurry Call 33
V. On the Banks of the Wonderful River 40
VI. The Pilot 47
VII. Talking 56
VIII. The Right to the River 62
IX. What happened at Louisville 71
X. Jim 77
XI. The Wonderful River 86
XII. The Wonderful River’s Work 95
XIII. The Terror of the River 105
XIV. In the Home of the Earthquakes 118
XV. In the Chute 131
XVI. “Talking Business” 147
XVII. At Anchor 161
XVIII. At Breakfast 170
XIX. Scuttle Chatter 179
XX. At Memphis 190
XXI. A Wrestle with the River 198
XXII. In the Fog 209
XXIII. Through the Crevasse 219
XXIV. A Little Amateur Surgery 228
XXV. A Voyage in the Woods 236
XXVI. The Crew and their Captain 245
XXVII. A Struggle in the Dark 251
XXVIII. A Hard-won Victory 261
XXIX. Rescue 278
XXX. A Yazoo Afternoon 291
XXXI. An Offer of Help 304
XXXII. Publicity 312
XXXIII. Down “The Coast” 324
XXXIV. A Talk on Deck 336
XXXV. Looking Forward 348
XXXVI. The Last Landing 361
XXXVII. Red-Letter Days in New Orleans 370
XXXVIII. “It” 379
The Last of the Flatboats
CHAPTER I
THE RESCUE OF THE PIGS
“Give it up, boys; you’re tired, and you’ve been in the water too long
already. And, besides, I’ve decided that this job’s done.”
It was Ed Lowry who spoke. He was lying on the sand under a big sycamore
tree that had slid, roots and all, off the river bank above, and now
stood leaning like a drunken man trying to stand upright.
Ed was a tall, slender, and not at all robust boy, with a big head, and
a tremendous shock of half-curly hair to make it look bigger.
The four boys whom he addressed had been diving in the river and
struggling with something under the water, but without success. Three of
them accepted Ed’s suggestion, as all of them were accustomed to do,
not because he had any particular right to make suggestions to them, but
because he was so far the moral and intellectual superior of every boy
in town, and was always so wise and kindly and just in his decisions,
that they had come to regard his word as a sort of law without
themselves quite knowing why.
Three of the boys left the river, therefore, shook the water off their
sunburned bodies,--for they had no towels,--and slipped into the loose
shirt and cottonade trousers that constituted their sole costume.
The other boy--Ed’s younger brother, Philip--was not so ready to accept
suggestions. In response to Ed’s call, he cried out in a sort of mock
heroics:--
“Never say die! In the words of the immortal Lawrence, or some other
immortal who died a long time ago, ‘Don’t give up the ship!’ _I’m_ going
to get that pig if it takes all summer.”
The boys all laughed as they threw themselves down upon the sand by Ed.
“Might as well let him alone,” said Will Moreraud; “he never will quit.”
Meantime Phil had dived three or four times more, each time going down
head first, wrestling with the object as long as he could hold his
breath, and each time manifestly moving one end or the other of it
nearer the shore, and into shallower water, before coming to the surface
again.
When he had caught his breath after the third or fourth struggle, he
called out:--
“I say, boys, it isn’t a pig at all, but a good average-sized elephant.
‘Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish,’ _I’m_ going to get that
animal ashore.”
“He’ll do it, too,” said Constant Thiebaud.
“Of course he will,” drawled Irving Strong. “It’s a way he has. He never
gives up anything. Don’t you remember how he stuck to that sum in the
arithmetic about that cistern whose idiotic builder had put three
different sized pipes to run water into it, and two others of still
different sizes to run water out? He worked three weeks over that thing
after all the rest of us gave it up and got Mrs. Dupont to show us--and
he got it, too.”
“Yes, and he can do it now backwards or forwards or standing on his
head,” said Constant Thiebaud; “while there isn’t another boy here that
can do it at all.”
“Except Ed Lowry,” said Irving Strong. “But then, he’s different, and
knows a whole lot about the higher mathematics, while we’re only in
algebra. How is it, Ed? You’ve been sick so much that I don’t believe
you ever did go to school more than a month at a time, and yet you’re
ahead of all of us.”
Just then Phil came up after a long tussle under the water, and this
time stood only a little way from shore where the water was not more
than breast high. He cried:--
“Now I’ve ‘met the enemy and it’s ours,’ or words to that effect. I’ve
got the elephant into three feet of water, but I can’t ‘personally
conduct’ it ashore. Come here, all of you, and help.”
The boys quickly dropped out of their clothes, and went to their
comrade’s assistance.
“What is the thing, anyhow?” asked Irving Strong.
“I don’t know,” said Phil. “All I know is that it’s got elbows and
wrists and all sorts of burs on it, on which I’ve been skinning my shins
for the last half hour; and that it is heavier than one of your
compositions, Irv.”
The thing was in water so shallow that all the boys at once could get at
it merely by bending forward and plunging their heads and shoulders
under the surface. But it was so unwieldy that it took all five of
them--for Ed too had joined, as he always did when there was need of
him--fully ten minutes to bring it out upon shore.
“I say, boys,” said Ed, “this is a big find. It’s that ferry-boat shaft
the iron man told us about, and you remember we are to have fifty
dollars for it.”
“Then hurrah for Phil Lowry’s obstinate pertinacity!” said Irving
Strong. “That’s what Mrs. Dupont called it when she bracketed his name
and mine together on the bulletin-board as ‘Irreclaimable whisperers.’
Phil, you may be irreclaimable, but you’ve proved that this shaft
isn’t.”
It was just below the little old town of Vevay on the Ohio River, where
Swiss names and some few Swiss customs still survived long after the
Swiss settlers of 1805 were buried. To be exact, it was at “The Point,”
where all Vevay boys went for their swimming because it lay a little
beyond the town limits, and so Joe Peelman, the marshal, could not
arrest them for swimming there in daylight without their clothes.
During the high water of the preceding winter a barge loaded with
pig-iron had broken in two there and sunk. The strong current
quickly carried away what was left of the wrecked barge,--which had
been scarcely more than a great oblong box,--leaving the iron to be
undermined by the water and to sink into the sand and gravel of the
bottom.
The agent who came to look after matters quickly decided that at such a
place very little of the cargo could ever be recovered--not enough to
justify him in sending a wrecking force there. He thought, too, that by
the time of summer low water--for the Ohio runs very low indeed in July
and August--the iron would have settled and scattered too much to be
worth searching for.
But Phil Lowry not only never liked to give up, he never liked to see
anybody else give up. So what he looked upon as the iron man’s weak
surrender gave him an idea. He said to the agent:--
“That iron’s where we boys go swimming in summer-time. If we get any of
it out during the low water, can we have it? Is it ‘finder’s keeper’?”
“Well, no,” said the man, hesitating. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do.
If you boys get out any considerable quantity,--say fifty tons or
more,--enough to justify me in sending a steamboat after it, I’ll pay
you three dollars a ton salvage for it.”
So the boys formed a salvage copartnership. Long-headed Ed Lowry, in
order to avoid misunderstandings, drew up an agreement, and the iron man
signed it. It gave the boys entire charge of the wreck, and bound the
owner to pay for recovered iron as he had proposed. Just before signing
the paper the agent remembered the ferry-boat wheel shaft, which had
been a part of the cargo; and as it was a valuable piece of property,
which he particularly wanted to recover, he added a clause to the
contract agreeing to pay an additional fifty dollars for it, if by any
remote chance it should be saved.
During the summer the boys had been specially favored by circumstances.
The river had gone down much earlier that year than usual, and it
went at last much lower than it had done for many years past. As a
consequence they had prospered well in their enterprise. Their pile of
iron “pigs” on the shore when the shaft was found amounted to three
hundred tons, and the agent was to arrive by the packet that night to
pay for it and take possession. This was, therefore, their last day’s
work, and thanks to Philip Lowry’s “obstinate pertinacity” it was the
most profitable day’s work of them all.