WHAT HAPPENED AT LOUISVILLE
Just before the landing was made at Louisville, Jim Hughes was seized
with an attack of cramps and took to his bunk, where he remained until
near the time for the boat to be afloat again. The boys had feared that
he might go ashore there and get a new supply of liquor, and they had
even made careful plans to prevent him from bringing any aboard. His
sudden sickness rendered all their plans superfluous.
At Louisville Phil got a fresh supply of newspapers, giving all the
latest news concerning the great bond robbery, and took them aboard to
read at leisure. He learned that there was no need of hiring a pilot to
take the boat over the falls, which in fact are not falls at all, but
merely rapids. At very high water such as just then prevailed, the only
difference between that part of the river called the falls and any other
part was that that part had a much swifter and far less steady current
than prevailed elsewhere.
“I could take your money for piloting you over the falls,” said the
genial old pilot to whom Phil had applied, “but it would be robbery. I’m
a pilot, not a pirate, you see. All you’ve got to do, my boy, is to put
your flatboat well out into the river and let her go. She’ll amble over
the falls at this stage of the water as gently as a well-built girl
waltzes over a ball-room floor. She’ll turn round and round, just as the
girl does, but it’ll be just as innocent-like. There’ll be never less
than twenty-five foot o’ water under your gunwales, and there simply
can’t any harm come to you. Don’t pay anybody anything to pilot you
over. Do it yourself, and if anything happens to you, just let old Jabez
Brown know where it happened, please. For if there’s any new rocks
sprouted up on the falls of the Ohio since the water rose, an old falls
pilot like me just naterally wants to know about ’em.”
After laying in the provision supply that was needed, including
especially a big can of milk packed in a barrel of cracked ice, Phil
returned to the boat and announced his purpose of “running the falls”
without a pilot. It was at supper in the cabin that he made the
announcement, and Jim Hughes, who had been lying in his bunk with his
face toward the bulkhead, suddenly sat up.
“Good!” he said. “They ain’t no use fer a pilot when the river’s bank
full this way. When’ll you start, Phil?”
“Just after daylight to-morrow morning,” replied the captain.
“Well, I feel so much better,” said Jim, getting out of his bunk, “I
think I’ll sample the pork and potatoes and throw in just a little o’
that hot corn bread and the new butter for ballast.”
“For a man who a few hours ago was violently ill with an intestinal
disorder,” remarked Irv Strong a little later with a very pronounced
note of sarcasm in his tone, “it seems to me, Jim, that you’re eating a
tolerably robust supper. Now if I’d had the cramps you’ve been suffering
from to-day, I really wouldn’t venture upon cabbage and potatoes boiled
with salt pork. I’d try something ‘bland’ first, like a half pound of
shot or a pig’s knuckle, or a bologna sausage or a few soft-boiled
cobble-stones.”
But Jim was deaf to the sarcasm and went on eating voraciously.
“Wonder what that fellow is afraid of,” said Phil to Irv as they went
out on deck to set the lights and make ready for the night.
“Don’t at all know,” responded Irv, “unless he owes money to somebody in
Louisville. All I know is that he must have feigned that attack of
cramps, else he couldn’t eat now in the way he does. He didn’t want to
go ashore with you as you proposed, to hunt for a falls pilot.”
“Yes,” said Ed Lowry, “I’ve known all day that he was shamming, because
he hasn’t had the slightest touch or trace of proper symptoms. Even when
he professed to be in the most excruciating pain his pulse wasn’t in the
least bit disturbed. I’m no doctor, but I know enough to say positively
that a man with any such cramps as he pretended to have simply couldn’t
have kept his pulse calmly beating seventy-two times a minute as his
did. I timed it three times and then quit bothering with the fellow
because I knew he was shamming.”
“Wonder what he meant by it,” said Will.
“Shoo!” said Constant; “he’s listening at the top of the gangway.”
“And _I_ wonder what _that_ means,” said Phil, whose alert observation
of the professed pilot had never been relaxed since the episode at
Craig’s Landing; “I wonder what he’s listening for.”
There was naturally no response, for the reason that nobody had anything
to suggest. So the boys went toward the bow where the anchor-light hung,
to hear Phil read in his newspapers all the latest details about the
great bond robbery. They read on deck rather than in the cabin, because
one boy must at any rate remain there on watch, and they all wished to
hear.
The newspapers related that one of the gang of robbers was believed to
have got away with the stolen bonds and money, and that the main purpose
now was to find him. One man connected with the crime was already in
custody, and from hints given by him it was hoped that he might turn
state’s evidence in his own resentment against the “carrier of the
swag,” who, it was believed, had deserted his fellow thieves, or some of
them, and meant to keep the whole of the proceeds of the robbery for
himself and one or two others. At any rate, the man in custody had given
hints that were thought to be distinctly helpful toward the discovery
of the “carrier” and his partners who had betrayed the rest of their
fellows.
The case was very interesting, but the boys must be up early in the
morning, so at last they broke up their little confab, and all but one
of them went to bed. Constant Thiebaud, who first reached the
ladder-head, found Jim Hughes seated there with his head just above the
deck.
“I thought you were in bed long ago,” said Constant.
“So I was,” said Jim; “but I got restless and came out for some air.”
It wasn’t at all the kind of sentence that Jim Hughes was accustomed to
frame, and the boys observed the fact. But they had got used to what Irv
Strong called Jim’s “inadvertent lapses into grammar,” and so they went
to their bunks without further thought of the matter.