AT MEMPHIS
About ten or twenty miles above Memphis the flatboat met a steamboat. It
was out looking for the flatboat. Not only had bank officers and law
officers arrived at Memphis, but they had become so apprehensive at the
delay of the flatboat that they had chartered the steamboat and gone in
search of her.
One of the bank officers came aboard, and to him Phil explained the
situation, receiving in return the warmest congratulations upon the
capture.
“We’ll take you in tow,” said the bank officer. “That will hurry
matters, and we’ve men waiting at the wharf with all the necessary
papers and arrest warrants.”
“But you must land us above or below the town,” said Phil.
“Why? Why not at the wharf?”
“Because we’re making this voyage as cheaply as possible, and mustn’t
pay any unnecessary wharfage fees.”
“Wharfage fees be hanged!” replied the man. “I’ll take care of all
that. Why, I’d pay your wharfage fees at every landing from here to New
Orleans. I’d buy your flatboat and all her cargo ten times over. Why,
my boy, you don’t know what a big piece of work you’ve done, or how
grateful we are. Wharfage fees!” with an accent of amused disgust. “What
are wharfage fees when you’ve caught the fellow and secured the plunder?
And even that isn’t the best of it. The letters you’ve got”--for Phil
had outlined their contents in his telegram to Cincinnati--“have enabled
us to arrest the whole gang already. We’ve got ’em all, and you’re
entitled to the credit of enabling us to break up the strongest band of
bank robbers that was ever organized in this country. So--” signalling
to the steamer--“send a line aboard and we’ll be at Memphis in an hour
or two. In the meantime you and your companions must take breakfast on
the steamboat.”
The flatboat was quickly made fast at the side of the steamer, and three
of the boys went aboard for breakfast, the other two following when the
first three returned. For until all legal forms should be completed, and
Jim Hughes safely delivered to the officers of the law, Phil had no
notion of leaving that worthy or the flatboat holding him, in charge of
anybody except himself or his comrades. When he himself went to
breakfast, he left Irv Strong in command, with Constant for his
assistant, and Ed as guard over Hughes in the cabin.
At Memphis the legal formalities were conducted on the part of the boys
by a lawyer whom Phil employed to see to it that their interests should
be guarded. They lay there for two days. Jim Hughes was delivered to the
authorities. The reward of five thousand dollars was paid over to Phil
in currency. He divided the money equally among the crew. But as it
would never do to carry so great a sum with them on the flatboat, they
converted it into drafts on New York, which all the boys sent to the
bank in Vevay, the money to be held there till their return.
As to supplies for the flatboat, the Cincinnati banker made some lavish
gifts. He sent on board fresh beef enough to last several days, four
hams, two strips of bacon, two pieces of dried beef, ten pounds of
coffee, five pounds of tea, a bag of flour, a sack of salt, a dozen
loaves of fresh bread, a big box of crackers, five pounds of butter, a
basket of eggs, two or three cases of canned vegetables and fruits, some
canned soups, a large can of milk packed in ice, a sack of dried beans,
a bunch of bananas, a box of oranges, and finally, a large, iced cake
with miniature American flags stuck all over it.
“I can talk now,” said Hughes to Ed, after the law officers had received
and handcuffed him; “and I’ve got just one thing to say. I never had
anything against any of you fellows except that brother Phil of yours.
But for his meddling, I’d be a free man now. I’ve ‘got it in for’ him.”
“Oh, as to that,” drawled Irv Strong, “by the time you’ve served your
ten or twenty years in State Prison, I imagine Phil will be sufficiently
grown up to hold his own with you. He’s a ‘pretty sizable’ fellow even
now, for his age.”
“Tell us something more interesting, Jim,” said Will Moreraud. “Tell us
why you tried to run us on Vevay Bar and again on Craig’s Bar.”
“I didn’t try to run you on them. I tried to run you behind them into
the Kentucky shore channel.”
“What for?”
“Oh, I was in a hurry to get down the river, and I didn’t want you to
make that long stop at Craig’s Landing. If I could have run you behind
those bars, you’d have been at Carrollton before you could pull up, and
of course it wouldn’t have paid you to get the boat towed back up the
river. I was trying to hurry, that’s all; and I knew the river better
than Captain Phil suspected.”
That was all of farewell there was between the crew of _The Last of the
Flatboats_ and her late pilot. When some one suggested to Phil that he
should speak for the party and express regret at the necessity that had
governed their course, Phil said:--
“But I don’t feel the least regret. I am glad we’ve secured him and his
gang. It restores a lot of plunder to the people to whom it belongs; it
breaks up a very dangerous band of burglars; and it will help teach
other persons of that kind how risky it is to live by law-breaking.
Perhaps it will help to keep many people honest. No, I’m not sorry that
we’ve been able to render so great a service to the public, and I’m not
going to pretend that I am.”
“You’re right, Phil,” said Ed.
“Of course he is,” said Irv; “and as for Jim Hughes, he will get only
what he deserves. If there were no laws, or if they were not enforced by
the punishment of crime, there wouldn’t be much ‘show’ for honest people
in this world.”
“There wouldn’t be any honest people, I reckon,” said Will, “for honest
people simply couldn’t live. Everybody would have to turn savage and
robber, or starve to death.”
“Yes,” said Ed. “That’s how law originated, and civilization is simply a
state of existence in which there are laws enough to restrain wrong.
When the savage finds that he can’t defend himself single-handed against
murder and robbery, he joins with other savages for that purpose. That
makes a tribe. It must have rules to govern it, and they are laws. It is
out of the tribal organization that all civilized society has grown,
mainly by the making of better and better laws, or by the better and
better enforcement of laws already made.”
“Then are we all savages, restrained only by law from indulging in every
sort of crime?” asked Phil. “I, for one, don’t feel myself to be in
that condition of mind.”
“By no means,” replied the elder boy. “We are the products of habit
and heredity. We have lost most of our savage instincts by having
restrained them through generations, just as cows and dogs have done.
You see, it is a law of nature that parents are apt to transmit their
own characteristics to their children. As one of the great scientific
writers puts it, ‘the habit of one generation is the instinct of the
next.’ If you want a dog to hunt with, you choose one whose ancestors
have been in the habit of hunting, because you know that he has
inherited the habit as an instinct. Yet the highest-bred setters,
pointers, and fox hounds are all descended ultimately from a common
ancestry of wild dogs, as fierce, probably, as any wolf ever was.
They have been for many generations under law,--the law of man’s
control,--and so they have not only lost their wildness, but have
acquired new instincts, new capacities, and a new intelligence.”
“I see,” said Phil, meditatively. “It is a long-continued course of
timely spanking that has slowly changed us from savages into fellows
able to run a flatboat and inclined to wear trousers.”
“Ah, as to that,” said Irv, “we haven’t quite got rid of our savage
instincts even yet. I for one am savagely hungry for some of that beef
our Cincinnati friend sent on board, and I suspect the rest of the tribe
are in the same condition.”