SAILING UP STREAM.
As Sam Crayme strode toward the body of the town, his business
instincts took strong hold of his sentiments, in the manner natural
alike to saints and sinners, and he laid a plan of operations against
whiskey which was characterized by the apparent recklessness but actual
prudence which makes for glory in steamboat captains, as it does in
army commanders. As was his custom in business, he first drove at
full speed upon the greatest obstacles; so it came to pass that he
burst into his own house, threw his arm around his wife with more than
ordinary tenderness, and then looking into her eyes with the daring
born of utter desperation, said,
“Emily, I came back to sign the strongest temperance pledge that you
can possibly draw up; Fred Macdonald wanted to write out one, but I
told him that nobody but you should do it; you’ve earned the right to,
poor girl.” No such duty and surprise having ever before come hand
in hand to Mrs. Crayme, she acted as every true woman will imagine
that she herself would have done under similar circumstances, and this
action made it not so easy as it might otherwise have been to see just
where the pen and ink were, or to prevent the precious document, when
completed, from being disfigured by peculiar blots which were neither
finger-marks nor ink-spots, yet which in shape and size suggested both
of these indications of unneatness. Mrs. Crayme was not an adept at
literary composition, and, being conscious of her own deficiencies, she
begged that a verbal pledge might be substituted; but her husband was
firm.
“A contract don’t steer worth a cent unless it’s in writing, Emily,”
said he, looking over his wife’s shoulder as she wrote. “Gracious,
girl, you’re making it too thin; _any_ greenhorn could sail right
through that and all around it. Here, let _me_ have it.” And Crayme
wrote, dictating aloud to himself as he did so, “And the--party--of the
first part--hereby agrees to--do everything--else that the--spirit of
this--agreement--seems to the party--of the second--part to--indicate
or--imply.” This he read over to his wife, saying,
“That’s the way we fix contracts that aren’t ship-shape, Emily; a
steamboat couldn’t be run in any other way.” Then Crayme wrote at the
foot of the paper, “Sam. Crayme, Capt. Str. _Excellence_,” surveyed the
document with evident pride, and handed it to his wife, saying,
“Now, you see, you’ve got me so I can’t ever get out of it by trying to
make out that ’twas some other Sam Crayme that you reformed.”
“O husband!” said Mrs. Crayme, throwing her arms about the captain’s
neck, “_don’t_ talk in that dreadful business way! I’m too happy to
bear it. I want to go with you on this trip.”
The captain shrank away from his wife’s arms, and a cold perspiration
started all over him as he exclaimed,
“Oh, don’t, little girl! Wait till next trip. There’s an unpleasant set
of passengers aboard; the barometer points to rainy weather, so you’d
have to stay in the cabin all the time; our cook is sick, and his cubs
serve up the most infernal messes; we’re light of freight, and have got
to stop at every warehouse on the river, and the old boat’ll be either
shrieking, or bumping, or blowing off steam the whole continual time.”
Mrs. Crayme’s happiness had been frightening some of her years away,
and her smile carried Sam himself back to his pre-marital period as she
said,
“Never mind the rest; I see you don’t want me to go,” and then she
became Mrs. Crayme again as she said, pressing her face closely to her
husband’s breast, “but I hope you won’t get _any_ freight, _anywhere_,
so you can get home all the sooner.”
Then the captain called on Dr. White, and announced such a collection
of symptoms that the doctor grew alarmed, insisted on absolute quiet,
conveyed Crayme in his own carriage to the boat, saw him into his
berth, and gave to Fred Macdonald a multitude of directions and
cautions, the sober recording of which upon paper was of great service
in saving Fred from suffering over the Quixotic aspect which the whole
project had begun, in his mind, to take on. He felt ashamed even to
look squarely into Crayme’s eye, and his mind was greatly relieved when
the captain turned his face to the wall and exclaimed,
“Fred, for goodness’ sake get out of here; I feel enough like a baby
now, without having a nurse alongside. I’ll do well enough for a few
hours; just look in once in a while.”
During the first day of the trip, Crayme made no trouble for himself
or Fred: under the friendly shelter of night, the two men had a
two-hour chat which was alternately humorous, business-like, and
retrospective, and then Crayme fell asleep. The next day was reasonably
pleasant out of doors, so the captain wrapped himself in a blanket
and sat in an extension-chair on the guards, where with solemn face
he received some condolences which went far to keep him in good humor
after the sympathizers had departed. On the second night the captain
was restless, and the two men played cards. On the third day the
captain’s physique reached the bottom of its stock of patience, and
protested indignantly at the withdrawal of its customary stimulus; and
it acted with more consistency, though no less ugliness, than the human
mind does when under excitement and destitute of control. The captain
grew terribly despondent, and Fred found ample use for all the good
stories he knew. Some of these amused the captain greatly, but after
one of them he sighed,
“Poor old Billy Hockess told me that the only time I ever heard it
before, and _didn’t_ we have a glorious time that night! He’d just
put all his money into the _Yenesei_--that blew up and took him with
it only a year afterward--and he gave us a new kind of punch he’d got
the hang of when he went East for the boat’s carpets. ’Twas made of
two bottles of brandy, one whiskey, two rum, one gin, two sherry, and
four claret, with guava jelly, and lemon peel that had been soaking in
curaçoa and honey for a month. It looks kind of weak when you think
about it, but there were only six of us in the party, and it went to
the spot by the time we got through. Golly, but didn’t we make Rome
howl that night!”
Fred shuddered, and experimented upon his friend with song; he was
rewarded by hearing the captain hum an occasional accompaniment; but,
as Fred got fairly into a merry Irish song about one Terry O’Rann, and
uttered the lines in which the poet states that the hero
“--took whiskey punch
Ivery night for his lunch,”
the captain put such a world of expression into a long-drawn sigh that
Fred began to feel depressed himself; besides, songs were not numerous
in Fred’s repertoire, and those in which there was no allusion to
drinking could be counted on half his fingers. Then he borrowed the
barkeeper’s violin, and played, one after another, the airs which had
been his favorites in the days of his courtship, until Crayme exclaimed,
“Say, Fred, we’re not playing church; give us something that don’t
bring all of a fellow’s dead friends along with it.”
Fred reddened, swung his bow viciously, and dashed into “Natchez Under
the Hill,” an old air which would have delighted Offenbach, but which
will never appear in a collection of classical music.
“Ah! that’s something like music,” exclaimed Captain Crayme, as Fred
paused suddenly to repair a broken string. “I never hear that but
I think of Wesley Treepoke, that used to run the _Quitman_; went
afterward to the _Rising Planet_, when the _Quitman’s_ owners put her
on a new line as an opposition boat. Wess and I used to work things so
as to make Louisville at the same time--he going up, I going down, and
then turn about--and we always had a glorious night of it, with one or
two other lively boys that we’d pick up. And Wess had a fireman that
could fiddle off old ‘Natchez’ in a way that would just make a corpse
dance till its teeth rattled, and that fireman would always be called
in just as we’d got to the place where you can’t tell what sort of
whiskey ’tis you’re drinking, and I tell you, ’twas so heavenly that
a fellow could forgive the last boat that beat him on the river, or
stole a landing from him. And _such_ whiskey as Wess kept! used to
go cruising around the back country, sampling little lots run out of
private stills. He’d always find nectar, you’d better believe. Poor
old boy! the tremens took him off at last. He hove his pilot overboard
just before he died, and put a bullet into Pete Langston, his second
clerk--they were both trying to hold him, you see--but they never laid
it up against him. I wish I knew what became of the whiskey he had on
hand when he walked off--no, I don’t, either; what am I thinking about?
But I do, though--hanged if I don’t!”
Fred grew pale: he had heard of drunkards growing delirious upon
ceasing to drink; he had heard of men who, in periods of aberration,
were impelled by the motive of the last act or recollection which
strongly impressed them; what if the captain should suddenly become
delirious, and try to throw _him_ overboard or shoot him? Fred
determined to get the captain at once upon the guards--no, into the
cabin, where there would be no sight of water to suggest anything
dreadful--and search his room for pistols. But the captain objected to
being moved into the cabin.
“The boys,” said the captain, alluding to the gamblers, “are mighty
sharp in the eye, and like as not they’d see through my little game,
and then where’d my reputation be? Speaking of the boys reminds me of
Harry Genang, that cleaned out that rich Kentucky planter at bluff one
night, and then swore off gambling for life and gave a good-by supper
aboard the boat. ’Twas just at the time when Prince Imperial Champagne
came out, and the whole supper was made of that splendid stuff. I guess
I must have put away four bottles, and if I’d known how much he’d
ordered, I could have carried away a couple more. I’ve always been
sorry I didn’t.”
Fred wondered if there was any subject of conversation which would not
suggest liquor to the captain; he even brought himself to ask if Crayme
had seen the new Methodist Church at Barton since it had been finished.
“Oh, yes,” said the captain; “I started to walk Moshier home one night,
after we’d punished a couple of bottles of old Crow whiskey at our
house, and he caved in all of a sudden, and I laid him out on the
steps of that very church till I could get a carriage. Those were my
last two bottles of Crow, too; it’s too bad the way the good things of
this life paddle off.”
The captain raised himself in his berth, sat on the edge thereof, stood
up, stared out the window, and began to pace his room with his head
down and his hands behind his back. Little by little he raised his
head, dropped his hands, flung himself into a chair, beat the devil’s
tattoo on the table, sprang up excitedly, and exclaimed,
“I’m going back on all the good times I ever had.”
“You’re only getting ready to try a new kind, Sam,” said Fred.
“Well, I’m going back on my friends.”
“Not on all of them; the dead ones would pat you on the back, if they
got a chance.”
“A world without whiskey looks infernally dismal to a fellow that isn’t
half done living.”
“It looks first-rate to a fellow that hasn’t got any back-down in him.”
“Curse you! I wish I’d made _you_ back down when you first talked
temperance to me.”
“Go ahead! Then curse your wife--don’t be afraid; you’ve been doing it
ever since you married her.”
Crayme flew at Macdonald’s throat; the younger man grappled the
captain and threw him into his bunk. The captain struggled and glared
like a tiger; Fred gasped, between the special efforts dictated by
self-preservation,
“Sam, I--promised to--to see you--through--and I’m--going to--do it,
if--if I have to--break your neck.”
The captain made one tremendous effort; Fred braced one foot against
the table, put a knee on the captain’s breast, held both the captain’s
wrists tightly, looked full into the captain’s eyes, and breathed a
small prayer--for his own safety. For a moment or two, perhaps longer,
the captain strained violently, and then relaxed all effort and cried,
“Fred, you’ve whipped me!”
“Nonsense! whip yourself,” exclaimed Fred, “if you’re going to stop
drinking.”
The captain turned his face to the wall and said nothing; but he
seemed to be so persistently swallowing something that Fred suspected
a secreted bottle, and moved an investigation so suddenly that the
captain had not time in which to wipe his eyes.
“Hang it, Fred,” said he, rather brokenly; “how _can_ what’s babyish in
men whip a full-grown steamboat captain?”
“The same way that it whipped a full-grown woolen-mill manager once, I
suppose, old boy,” said Macdonald.
“Is that so?” exclaimed the captain, astonishment getting so sudden
an advantage over shame that he turned over and looked his companion
in the face. “Why--how are you, Fred? I feel as if I was just being
introduced. Didn’t anybody else help?”
“Yes,” said Fred, “a woman; but--you’ve got a wife, too.”
Crayme fell back on his pillow and sighed. “If I could only _think_
about her, Fred! But I can’t; whiskey’s the only thing that comes into
my mind.”
“Can’t think about her!” exclaimed Fred; “why, are you acquainted with
her yet, I wonder? _I’ll_ never forget the evening you were married.”
“That _was_ jolly, wasn’t it?” said Crayme. “I’ll bet such sherry was
never opened west of the Alleghanies, before or----”
“_Hang_ your sherry!” roared Fred; “it’s your wife that I remember.
_You_ couldn’t see her, of course, for you were standing alongside of
her; but the rest of us--well, I wished myself in your place, that’s
all.”
“Did you, though?” said Crayme, with a smile which seemed rather proud;
“well, I guess old Major Pike did too, for he drank to her about twenty
times that evening. Let’s see; she wore a white moire antique, I think
they called it, and it cost twenty-one dollars a dozen, and there was
at least one broken bottle in every----”
“And I made up my mind she was throwing herself away, in marrying a
fellow that would be sure to care more for whiskey than he did for
her,” interrupted Fred.
“Ease off, Fred, ease off now; there wasn’t any whiskey there; I tried
to get some of the old Twin Tulip brand for punch, but----”
“But the devil happened to be asleep, and you got a chance to behave
yourself,” said Fred.
Crayme looked appealingly. “Fred,” said he, “tell me about her
yourself; I’ll take it as a favor.”
“Why, she looked like a lot of lilies and roses,” said Fred, “except
that you couldn’t tell where one left off and the other began. As she
came into the room _I_ felt like getting down on my knees. Old Bayle
was telling me a vile story just then, but the minute _she_ came in he
stopped as if he was shot.”
“He wouldn’t drink a drop that evening,” said Crayme, “and I’ve puzzled
my wits over that for five years----”
“She looked _so_ proud of _you_,” interrupted Fred with some impatience.
“Did she?” asked Crayme. “Well, I guess I _was_ a good-looking
fellow in those days: I know Pike came up to me once, with a glass
in his hand, and said that he ought to drink to _me_, for I was the
finest-looking groom he’d ever seen. He was so tight, though, that he
couldn’t hold his glass steady; and though you know I never had a drop
of stingy blood in me, it _did_ go to my heart to see him spill that
gorgeous sherry.”
“She looked very proud of _you_,” Fred repeated; “but I can’t see why,
for I’ve never seen her do it since.”
“You _will_, though, hang you!” exclaimed the captain. “Get out of
here! I can think about her _now_, and I don’t want anybody else
around. No rudeness meant, you know, Fred.”
Fred Macdonald retired quietly, taking with him the keys of both doors,
and feeling more exhausted than he had been on any Saturday night since
the building of the mill.