THE TERROR OF THE RIVER
For the next few days the voyage was uneventful. There was very little
to be done at the sweeps--only now and then a ten minutes’ pull to keep
the boat off the banks and in the river. For the water was now so high
that there was no such thing as a channel to be followed.
In many places the stream had overflowed its banks and flooded the
country for miles inland on either side. Sometimes a strong current
would set toward the points where the water was going over the banks,
and a constant watchfulness was necessary to prevent the boat from being
drawn into these currents and “going off for a trip in the country,” as
Irv Strong expressed it. Whenever she manifested a disposition of that
kind, all hands worked hard at the sweeps till she was carried out of
the danger.
During these days Ed read a great deal, and the other boys read a little
and talked not a little. On one or two days there were heavy all-day
rains, and at such times Ed would have liked to remain in the cabin when
not needed at the sweeps, and the other boys, hearing him cough so
frequently, pleaded with Phil to let him stay under cover.
“We never really need him for rowing,” said they, “and he ought to stay
down below all the time when it’s wet, for the sake of his health.”
“That’s just where you differ in opinion from the doctor,” responded
Phil. “_He_ says I’m to keep Ed in the open air on deck all the time.
Air is his only medicine, the doctor insists, and I’m going to give him
his medicine, for I’ve made up my mind to take him back to Vevay a much
‘weller’ fellow than he’s ever been before. So on with your rubber
goods, Ed, and out with you!”
“You’re entirely right, Phil,” said the elder brother. “And I’m much
‘weller,’ as you call it, already. I don’t cough so much or so hard as I
did. I sleep better and eat better and feel stronger. I guess I’ve been
too much taken care of.”
“Oh, as to that, I expect to make an athlete of you yet,” said Phil.
Then turning to Irving, with moisture in his eyes, as Ed mounted to the
deck, he added: “I don’t know, Irv, but I’m doing what the doctor told
me was best. It _hurts_ me, but I do it for _his_ sake.”
“Of course you do. And of course it’s best, too. Ed really is getting
better. I’ve watched him closely.”
“Have you?” asked Phil, eagerly. “And are you sure he’s getting better?
Oh, are you _sure_?”
“Of course I am,” said Irv, beginning to feel the necessity of lapsing
into light chatter to escape an emotional crisis. “Of course I am. Why,
haven’t you noticed that since we ran out of milk and sugar he’s drunk
his coffee clear like an honest flatboatman? And haven’t you noticed
that he rebukes my ignorance and your juvenility with a vigor that no
really ill fellow could bring to bear? He’s all right--Look!” as the two
emerged on deck. “He’s actually trying to teach Jim Hughes how to splice
a rope! Nobody but a man full of robust energy to the bursting point
would ever try to teach that dullard anything.”
“He isn’t a dullard,” replied Phil. “He shams all that, I tell you.”
Irv didn’t argue the point. He didn’t care anything about it. He had
accomplished his purpose. He had diverted Phil’s and his own thoughts,
and prevented the little emotional breakdown that had been so imminent.
Why is it that boys are so ashamed of that which is best and noblest in
their natures?
They were nearing Cairo now, and there was no time for further talk.
With the river at its present stage, and with a high wind blowing, and a
heavy rain almost blinding them, it was not an easy thing to get their
boat safely into the pocket between Cairo and Mound City, amid the
scores and hundreds of coal barges that were harboring there. For the
flatboat even to touch one of the coal barges, unless very gently
indeed, meant the instant sinking of many hundreds of tons of coal, and
in all probability, the loss of the flatboat also.
At one time Phil--for he had ceased to think of Jim as a pilot, or even
as a person who could lend any but merely muscular assistance
anywhere--was on the point of giving up the idea of landing at all. He
debated with himself whether it would not be wiser to float on past
Cairo, into the Mississippi. But the boat was really very short of
provisions. The milk supply had given out two days after passing the
falls; their meal was almost exhausted; their salt had got wet; they had
no butter left; there was only half a pound of coffee in their canister;
and no flour whatever remained. There was a little bacon in their cargo,
and there were flour, eggs, cornmeal, onions, and potatoes also. But it
was their agreed purpose not to risk complications in their accounts by
taking any of their cargo for their own use except in case of extreme
necessity.
“And as for eggs,” said Irv Strong, “I fear that those in our cargo are
beginning to be too far removed from the original source of supply,--too
remotely connected with the hens of Switzerland County, Indiana, as it
were,--too--well, they seem to me far more likely to give satisfaction
to educated palates in New Orleans ‘omelettes with onions’ and the like,
than on our frugal table. Besides, our cabin is rather small and it
would be troublesome to have to go up on deck every time the cook wanted
to break an egg.”
“You forget, Irv,” said Ed, “we aren’t more than ten or twelve days out
yet, and eggs keep pretty well for a much longer time than that.”
“True,” said Irv; “but it seems to me that we’ve been on the river for a
month. At any rate, Phil’s plan of not eating up our cargo is a good
one.”
Between Cairo and Memphis lay about two hundred and forty miles of
difficult river, and in all that distance there was not a town of any
consequence, at least as a market in which to buy boat stores. So the
necessity of landing at Cairo for supplies overrode all considerations
of difficulty and danger in the young captain’s mind, and after some
very hard work and some narrow escapes, he succeeded in securely tying
up _The Last of the Flatboats_ in the bend.
During their stay at Cairo Jim Hughes was again ill, afflicted this time
with chills and fever. But he angrily refused to have a doctor called,
and as Ed could find no trouble with his pulse or temperature, the crew
did not insist upon summoning medical assistance.
“Let’s put him ashore and be rid of him,” suggested Will Moreraud.
“Yes, let’s!” said Constant. “He’s of no use to us, and he spoils the
party by his presence.”
“No,” decided Phil, “I wanted to put him ashore at Craig’s Landing, but
I’ve got over that desire. He interests me now in his way. I’ve
discovered a good deal about him, and I mean to find out more. He’s
going somewhere, and I want to find out where it is. No, boys, we’ll
keep him on board for a while.”
At Cairo Phil bought a large supply of newspapers from Chicago, St.
Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans. They reported increasing floods in
every direction. The upper Mississippi was at a tremendous stage. The
Missouri was pouring a vast flood into it. The Tennessee and Cumberland
were adding enormously every hour to the great volume of water that was
pouring down out of the overflowed and still swelling Ohio. In short,
one of those great Mississippi floods was at hand which come only when
all the rivers--those from north, west, east, and south--“run out” at
the same time.
The river was full of drift; great uprooted trees and timbers from
houses and barns that had been swept from their foundations and reduced
to wreckage; driftwood from thousands of miles of shore. Flotsam of
every conceivable kind covered the face of the waters so completely that
it looked as if one might almost walk across, stepping from one floating
mass to another.
And there was a menace in it, too, that was ever present. The uprooted
trees refused to float steadily. They turned over and over like giants
troubled in their sleep with Titanic nightmares. They lashed their
wide-reaching limbs in fury, while currents and cross-currents caused
the floating stuff to rush hither and thither, now piling it high and
grinding it together with destructive energy, now scattering it again
and leaving great water spaces clear.
Now and then a house or a barn would float by, crushed half out of
shape, but not yet twisted into its original materials. Altogether the
river presented a spectacle that would have inspired any old Greek
poet’s imagination to create a dozen new gods and a score of hitherto
unknown demons to serve as the directors of it all.
So _The Last of the Flatboats_ tarried in the bend above Cairo, waiting
for the worst of the drift to run by before again venturing upon the
bosom of the great flood.
“I say, Ed,” said Phil, looking out upon the vast waste of water with
its seething surface of wreckage, “nothing in all that you have told us
about the river has given me so good an idea of its tremendous power as
the sight of that,”--waving his hand toward the stream.
“Of course not,” replied the elder. “Nothing that anybody could say in a
lifetime could equal that demonstration of power. Nobody that ever lived
could put this wonderful river into words. I have told you fellows only
of the good it has done--only of its beneficence. You see now what power
of malignity and destructiveness it has. This single flood has already
destroyed hundreds of lives and swept away scores and hundreds of homes,
and obliterated millions of dollars’ worth of property. Before it is
over the hundreds in each case will be multiplied into thousands. Even
now, right here at Cairo, a great disaster impends. Every able-bodied
man in the town has been sent with pick or shovel or wheelbarrow to work
night and day in strengthening and raising the levees. There are ten
thousand people in this town. With the Mississippi on one side and the
Ohio on the other, and with their floods united across country above the
town, these helpless people have nothing in the world but an embankment
of earth between them and death. Their homes lie from twenty to thirty
feet below the level of the water that surrounds them on every side. And
that level is rising every hour, every minute. It is already several
inches above the top of their permanent levees. The flood is held in
check only by a temporary earthwork, built on top of the permanent one.
It is no wonder that the embankments are ablaze with torches and that a
thousand men are working ceaselessly by night and by day to build the
barriers higher.”
“What if a levee should break?” asked Will, in awe.
“Ten thousand people would be drowned in ten minutes,” answered Phil,
who had been studying the matter even more closely than Ed had done.
“Cairo lies now in a triangle, with the floods on all three sides. If
the levee should give way at any point on any side, Niagara itself would
be a mere brook compared with the torrent that would rush into the
town. One of the engineers said to me to-day that the pressure upon the
levees at this stage of water amounts to thousands of millions of tons.
Should there be a break at any point, it would give to all this ocean of
water a sudden chance to fall thirty feet or so. Now think what that
would mean! The engineer, when I asked him, answered,--‘Well, it would
mean that in ten minutes the whole city of Cairo would be swept
completely off the face of the earth. Not only would no building be left
standing in the town, but there would be literally not one stone or
brick left on top of another. Indeed, the very land on which the city
stands, the entire point, would be scooped out fifty feet below its
present level and carried bodily away into the river. The site of the
town would lie far beneath the surface of the water.’”
“And all this may happen at any moment now?” asked Constant.
“Yes,” said Phil. “But it is not likely, and brave men are fighting with
all their might to prevent it. Let us hope they will succeed.”
“Why do people live in such a place?” asked Will.
“Why do men live and plant vineyards high up on the slopes of Vesuvius,
knowing all the time the story of what happened to Herculaneum and
Pompeii?” asked Irv.
“It’s sometimes because they must, because they have nowhere else to
live.”
“Yes,” said Ed, “but it is oftener because they have the courage to face
danger for the sake of bettering themselves or their children in one way
or another. Did it ever occur to you that all that is worth while in
human achievement has been accomplished by the men who, for the sake of
an advantage of one kind or another, were willing to risk their lives,
encounter danger in any form, however appalling, endure hardships of the
most fearful character, and take risks immeasurable? That is the sort of
men that in frail ships sailed over the seas to America and conquered
and settled this country, fighting Indians and fevers and famines and
all the rest of it. It was that sort of men,--and women, too,--for don’t
forget that in all those enterprises the women risked as much as the men
did and suffered vastly more,--it was that sort of men and women who
pushed over the mountains and built up this great West of ours. Talk
about the heroism of war! why, all the wars in all the world never
brought out so much of really exalted heroism as that displayed by a
single company of pioneer emigrants from Virginia or North Carolina,
crossing the mountains into Kentucky, Tennessee, or Indiana.”
“Then these Cairo people are heroes in their way?” asked Irv.
“Yes,” replied Ed, “though they don’t know it. Heroes never do. The hero
is the man who, in pursuit of any worthy purpose,--though it be only to
make more money for the support of his family,--calmly faces the risks,
endures the hardships, and performs the tasks that fall to his lot. The
highest courage imaginable is that which prompts a man to do his duty as
he understands it, with absolute disregard of consequences to himself.”
That night Phil read his newspapers very diligently. Especially, he
studied the portraits and the minute descriptions given of the man who
was “carrying” the proceeds of the great bank robbery. Somehow, Phil was
becoming more and more deeply interested in that subject.