IN THE FOG
The boat was now in a part of the river where the land on both sides
lies very low, behind very high levees. These are the richest cotton
lands in the world, and their owners have tried to reclaim all of them
from the river floods instead of taking only part of them for
cultivation. Along other parts of the stream there are levees only here
and there, leaving the river a chance to spread out over great areas of
unreclaimed land, thus relieving the levees of much of the pressure upon
them. Here, however, the line of embankment is continuous on both sides
of the stream. For long distances the river is held between the two
lines of artificially made banks.
The water was now within a few inches of the top of the levees, and
twenty or thirty feet above the level of the lands in the rear. The
strain upon the embankments was almost inconceivably great, while the
destruction which any break in that long line of earthworks would
involve was appalling even to think of.
The boys could see gangs of men at work wherever any weakness showed
itself in the embankments, while sentinels, armed with shotguns, were
everywhere on guard to prevent mischief-makers from cutting the levees.
For, incredible as it may seem, men have sometimes been base enough to
do this in order to let the river out of its banks, and thus reduce the
danger of a break farther up stream where their own interests lay. For,
of course, when a crevasse occurs at any point it lets so much water run
suddenly out of the banks that the river falls several inches for many
miles above, and the strain on the levees is greatly reduced.
As the boys were floating down the middle of the flood, watching the
work on the levees with keen interest, the air began to grow thick. A
few minutes later a great bank of dense fog settled down upon them,
covering all things as with a blanket. The shores and the great trees
that grew upon them were blotted out. Then as the fog grew thicker and
thicker, even the river disappeared, except a little patch of it
immediately around the boat. On every side was an impenetrable wall of
mist, and ragged fragments of it floated across the deck so that when
they stood half the boat’s length apart the boys looked like spectres to
each other.
“I say, Phil, hadn’t we better go ashore or anchor?” said Constant.
“Where is the shore?” asked Phil, quietly.
“Why, there’s a shore on each side of us.”
“Certainly. But in what direction? Which way is across the river, which
way up the river, which way down the river?”
“Why, the current will tell that,” said Constant.
“How are we going to find out which way the current runs?” asked Phil,
with a quizzical smile.
“Easy enough; by looking at the driftwood floating by,” said the boy,
going to the side of the boat to peer at the surface of the river
through the fog. Presently he called out in amazement:--
“Why, the whole thing has stopped--the drift, the river, and the
flatboat! We’re lying here just as still as if we were on solid
ground.”
“On the contrary,” said Phil, “we’re floating down stream at the rate of
several miles an hour.”
“But--”
“Think a minute, Constant,” said Phil. “We are floating just as fast as
the river runs. The drift-wood is doing the same thing. The water, the
drift, and the flatboat are all moving in the same direction at
precisely the same speed.”
“Oh, I see,” said Constant, with an astonished look in his eyes. “We’ve
nothing to measure by. We can’t tell which way we’re going, or how fast,
or anything about it.”
“Why not come to anchor, then?” asked Irv. “If we keep on floating,
nobody knows where we may go to. If there should be any gap in the line
of levees anywhere, we might float into it. It would just tickle this
flatboat to slip off on an expedition of that sort. Why not anchor till
the fog lifts?”
“First, because we can’t,” said Phil. “The water is much too deep. But
even if we could, it would be the very worst thing we could do. It would
bring us to a standstill, while everything else afloat would keep on
swirling past us, some of it running into us. If we should anchor here
in the strong current, _The Last of the Flatboats_ would soon have as
many holes in her as a colander.”
“Then what do you intend to do, Phil?” asked Ed.
“Precisely nothing whatever,” answered the young captain. “Anything we
might do would probably make matters worse. You see we were almost
exactly in the middle of the river when the fog came down on us. Now, if
we do nothing, the chances are that the current will carry us along
somewhere near the middle, or at least well away from the shores. If it
don’t, we can’t help it. The only thing we can do is to keep as close a
watch as we can all around the boat, for we don’t know which end or
which side of her is in front now. I want one fellow to go to the bow,
one to the stern, and one to each side, and watch. If we are about to
run into a bank or anything else, call out, and we may save ourselves at
the last minute. That’s all we can do for the present. So go now!”
The wisdom of Phil’s decision to do nothing except watch alertly was
clear to all his comrades, so they took the places he had assigned them,
while he busied himself first at one point and then at another,
thinking all the while whether there might not be something else that
he could do--some precaution not yet thought of that he could take. He
went to the pump now and then and worked it till no more water came up.
He went below two or three times to see that nothing was wrong with the
cargo. The boys, meanwhile, were walking back and forth on their beats,
each carrying a boat-hook with which to “fend off” the larger bits of
drift which the eddies, cross currents, and those strange disturbances
in the stream called “boils,” sometimes drove against the gunwales.
The “boils” referred to are peculiar to the Mississippi, I believe. They
are whirlpools, caused by the conflict of cross currents, and, as Will
Moreraud said during this day of close watching, they are “sometimes
right side up and sometimes upside down.” That is to say, sometimes a
current from beneath comes to the surface like water in a boiling kettle
and seems to pile itself up in a sort of mound for a half minute or so,
while sometimes there is a genuine whirlpool strong enough even to suck
a skiff down, as old-time flatboatmen used to testify.
These were anxious hours for the young captain and his crew, but worse
was to come. For night fell at last with the fog still on, and between
the fog and the darkness it was no longer possible to see even the water
at the sides of the boat from the deck.
The crew had eaten no dinner that day. They had forgotten all about
their meals in the eagerness of their watching. Now that watching was no
longer possible they remembered their appetites, and had an evening
dinner instead of supper.
They set their lights of course, though it was of little use from any
point of view. They could not be seen at a distance of twenty yards, and
moreover there was nobody to see them.
“There’s not much danger of any steamboat running into us now,” said
Phil, who had carefully thought the matter out.
“Why not?” asked Ed.
“Because this fog has lasted for nearly twelve hours now, and by this
time every steamboat is tied up to some bank or tree. For no pilot would
think of running in such a cloud after finding any shore to which he
could make his boat fast.”
“But how can a steamboat find the shore when we can’t?” asked Will.
“Because she can keep running till she finds it; and if she runs slowly
she can back when she finds it till she makes an easy landing. She has
power, and power gives her control of herself. We have none, except what
the sweeps give us. In fogs like this steamboats always hunt for the
shores and tie up till the fog lifts. So after ten or twelve hours of
it, there are no steamboats prowling around to run into us.”
“Another advantage the steamboats have in hunting for the shore,” said
Will, “is that they can blow their whistles and listen for echoes. They
can tell in that way not only in which direction the shore is, but about
how far away it is.”
“How do steamships manage in fogs out at sea?” asked Constant.
“Theoretically,” replied Ed, “they slow down and blow their whistles or
their ‘sirens,’ as they call the big steam fog-horns that can be heard
for many miles. But in fact the big ocean steamships drive ahead at full
speed--twenty miles an hour or more--blowing their sirens--till they
hear some other ship’s siren. Then they act according to fixed rules,
each ship turning her helm to port--that is to say to the left--so that
they sail well away from each other.”
“But what if there are sailing vessels in the way?”
“They also have fog-horns, but they sometimes get themselves run down by
steamships, and once in a great while one of them runs into the side of
a steamship. The Cunard steamer _Oregon_ was sunk in that way by a
sailing craft. That sort of thing would happen oftener if the big
steamships were to stop or run very slowly in fog. By running at full
speed they make it pretty sure that they will themselves do any running
down that is to be done. With their enormous weight and great speed they
can cut a sailing vessel in two without much danger of serious damage to
themselves, and as they have hundreds of people on board while a sailing
ship has a very few, the steamship captains hold that it is right to
shift the danger in that way.”
The night dragged slowly along. Now and then a little conversation would
spring up, for the boys were sleeping very little, but often there would
be no word spoken for an hour at a time.
The fog made the air very chill, and the boys, who remained on deck all
night, had to stir about frequently to keep reasonably warm.
The fog began whitening at last as the daylight dawned, and all the boys
strained their eyes to see through it.
But it showed no sign of lifting.