BEN LOSES HOPE AND TURNS NAVIGATOR.
When the captain regained the "Roarer" and Bertha and Ben were safely
stowed in the little stave-cabin, with kind faces bending over and kind
hands ministering to them, Cap'n Willum Smiff walked slowly toward
Lieutenant Jeremiah Jarphly and said:
"Jerry, yoh recommember this morn' when we tossed thet thar stave fur
the chute or agin hit?"
"Yes."
"Well, Jerry, thet wus a _bowed stave_, an' I spit on the _bowed side_
of hit, an' by rights the bowed side oughter hev cum down--but hit
did't, Jerry."
"No."
Then Cap'n Smiff looked hard at his Lieutenant, as though he was trying
to shape some unfamiliar thoughts into words.
"No, hit didn't, Jerry. The bent side didn't come down--_it come up_.
An' it war agin science, Jerry; but hit come up an' we tuk toh the
chute, an'--an' mought hev sumthin'--thar mought somebody--I dunno--I
_swar_ I dunno!" and, as though the unfamiliar thoughts were muddling
his brain, Cap'n Willum Smiff walked back to the stem of the "steer'n
o'r," and slowly straddling it, deluged his surroundings in tobacco
juice, while he lost himself in profound meditation.
There are others than unsophisticated Captain William Smith who have
pondered deeply on the same subject, and been lost at sea far from the
lighthouse of FAITH.
That evening found the "Roarer" with a line out to a check post on the
levee below the city of Vicksburg. On parting from the crew of the
flatboat Bertha had distributed all she had of value about her person
among them, and bestowed upon Cap'n Smith a glittering diamond cluster
ring from off her hand. Cap'n Willum Smiff at first refused to take
it, but comprehending that he would hurt the young lady's feelings
by refusing longer, he suspended the jewel with a piece of tow about
his neck, and vowed that there it should stay 'till death did them
part. Alas, for the fragile nature of human vows! In less than a week
the diamonds glistened on the person of a New Orleans bar-tender;
hypothecated for drinks; while Cap'n Willum Smiff and Lieutenant
Jarphly were on one of their "Reg'lar Pelican Sprees! A howlin'
Wilderness! You bet!"
After Bertha had been comfortably cared for in bed at the hotel, where
she immediately retired under the direction of a physician, Ben, first
refreshing himself with a good meal, which she insisted upon his
eating, went to the telegraph office and sent the following message to
Mr. Charles Braster of the firm of Braster & Chetwick, Poydras Street,
New Orleans: "Your niece is here safe. Is Mr. Braster in the city?" And
then with a beating heart he awaited a reply. For Ben had formed new
hopes, and thought that perhaps the disaster on the Argenta might after
all have been a stroke of good fortune in his favor. In the course of
half an hour an answer was returned, and as the boy delivered it to
him, he had not the courage to look at it. He unfolded the dispatch,
trembled, then folding it up again without reading, placed it in his
pocket and hastened toward the hotel. Having walked a block he gained
heart, and slowly taking the dispatch from his pocket, unfolded it and
read:
"Thank God. Arthur and myself are both here safe. Come down on the
Natchez to-night."
(signed) "CHARLES BRASTER."
That was all. But it was quite enough. His last hope lay in the dust.
"Arthur and myself are here safe." He read it again as if hoping
against hope. Blackoat was saved! Blackoat was safe and the idol of his
life had passed from his grasp.
He could not meet her again; he dared not. Seating himself in the
office of the hotel he wrote the following note:
DEAR MISS BERTHA:--I wish you joy. _Both_ of your relatives are
safe. Oh, Bertha, I dare not see you again, my darling, my darling.
Pardon my weakness, but if you only knew how sore my heart is you
would pity me. We will probably never meet again. May your life be
one of joy and happiness. You will do _your_ duty nobly--I will,
please God, try to do mine. God bless you, my darling, God bless
you. May your future be as full of sunlight as the labor of my life
would have made it. Again farewell--Heaven bless you.
BEN.
Having dispatched this to Bertha with the telegram he walked out into
the street--again a _tramp_. And a tramp with a sad, sad heart.
It was the last day of September. He was two hundred miles by land and
twice as many by river from New Orleans, and had but a day more and
a portion of October the 2d to win his wager in. His chances looked
desperate. But he was indifferent whether he won or lost. A dull, dead
apathy to everything had taken possession of him. He felt that it was
a luxury to be a vagabond, an outcast, a tramp, and half inclined not
to go to New Orleans at all, but to start off on a roving career, and
ramble, ramble, ramble, trying to get away from himself.
"Ye're a stout looking lad; can ye handle a barry? If ye can I'm taking
down a gang of fifty min the night to Burk's work on the levee fifteen
mile this side of Baton Rouge, and if yez wants to come along, a dollar
a day and four jiggers is the pay," and the stout florid man who
addressed him asked:
"Will yez go or not? Make yer answer quick, for I'm in a hurry."
"Yes, I'm in for a job, and ready," replied Ben, seizing the
opportunity to leave Vicksburg.
"Very well," said the man. "Go down and get aboord the Roddy for she'll
be laving in an hour. I will see ye on boord and pass yez down."
So on board the Roddy went Ben, and before she started forty more
men engaged for the levee squad had joined him. In ten minutes'
conversation with these he discovered that not one half of them had any
intention of working on the levee. They were simply _travelling_. Some
were, like himself, on their way to New Orleans. Others were off of
the great Harvest Range, and had already stole their way thus far and
were simply "putting in the winter." That is, drifting from place to
place as sweet fancy directed them. They would stop at the levee camp
and live off of its rations until hunted out, after which they would
take up their line of tramping without an object in view or an ambition
to prompt them. As they went down stream now, so the spring would see
them going up, and the summer months find them scattered through the
northern states. Had one of them been termed a professional tramp or
"dead beat" he would have repelled the insinuation with indignation.
They were after work but never caught up with it. There were some
Americans in the crowd on the boat but the majority were foreigners.
"Why don't you stay and work at the levee?" Ben asked one of them; "you
can earn a dollar a day at it."
"I'm a brick mason," he replied. "I can not do levee work. Neither can
you, as you'll find out if you stop and try it."
"But is there no other work save leveeing in the country?" asked Ben.
"Oh, yes; there's cotton picking. Lots of the bums work all winter
at it. They get from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a quarter a
hundred, and can earn from one to two dollars a day. But the living
is beastly! The southern people _mean_ well enough, but they have no
idea how a laboring man is treated up north, and they use you just the
same as they do the niggers; give you rations--a peck of corn meal,
five pounds of salt pork and a pound of salt a week. You take this and
cook it the best way you can, and sleep in the cotton pen, or any where
you please--that's _your_ lookout. Working for the niggers, a man gets
treated a great deal better than he does working for the white people.
The niggers feed you better and they are surer pay."
"What!" cried Ben; "Do the colored people employ white men?"
"_Do_ they? Well I should say. Thousands of 'em every winter. A good
many of the blacks own land and are well fixed, while nearly all of
them that don't own no land of their own, work land on shares."
Ben shortly found a clean spot on the deck and lying down took a much
needed sleep.
It was early morning, and still dark, when they disembarked at the
camp. The men were all up, however, and as he passed through one of the
sheds he had an opportunity for investigating the mysteries of a levee
camp. There was not much to see. A long line of rough board bunks, two
tier high, were ranged on both sides of the shanty, that was supposed
to accommodate four hundred men. That was all. No other furniture, no
other necessaries or comfort. Ben thought it a close approach to a
stable. Which indeed it was, only the animals cared for were human.
While looking about him a bell rang, at sound of which there was a
general cry of "Jiggers! Jiggers!" and a rush by the four hundred for
the outside, where they surged in impatience about a man mounted on a
barrel, who was dealing out whiskey to them in a small tin cup. This
was the "Jigger boss," and four of these cupfuls of the liquor were a
man's daily rations.
After all had received their jiggers, the cry of "grub pile! grub
pile!" was taken up by the crowd, and a rush made for a long line of
tables standing under another shed. These were loaded with tin plates
and pannikins, iron forks and knives, stacks of snowy wheat bread, (for
the levees have as fine bread as there is in the country) juvenile
mountains of smoking "salt-horse," and immense platters of the fruit
known as the "spud laurel," while great pots of a dirty brown liquid,
facetiously termed "coffee" were liberally scattered about. This
constituted breakfast. Our hero ate heartily, aided in his gastronomic
efforts by a number of tallow dips stuck in their own grease along the
tables at intervals, and which were continually being knocked over by
the banqueters as they passed along the food. The repast finished Ben
went with the crowd to the levee, just as it became light enough to see
to work. There he became proprietor of a shovel and wheelbarrow, and
was stationed in a line with twelve others; similar squads occupying
the levee-line for a distance of half a mile. Scarce had he thrown
three shovels full of dirt into his vehicle, when a shrill little voice
piped out, "up all!" and the line began to wheel their barrows up a
steep incline of planks, on to the broad "dump" that constituted the
levee they were building.
"Oye, ye little dyvil, yez is at it airly!" shouted one.
"He haven't a spoonful of dirt in his barry!" said another.
"Be jazez, we'll chuck him into the drink!" said a third.
"And the dyvil fly away wid the bones of the little ferrit!" cried a
fourth.
These remarks were directed at a little withered-up old man who was
"fore-barrow man," or leader of the gang.
"If McCarty don't take that lad and put him to sturring pots in the
soup house, we'll murther him!" exclaimed an exasperated levee builder
in the line.
"Can't he purt a dacent man that'll do a dacent day's wurruk in the
lade, and not be havin' that canary there killin' of the min wid his
'up alls' an' his own barry without the bottom of it covered?"
"Dyvil blow McCarty and dyvil blow little Dinny, but I'll crish the
skull av him in wid a blow of me shovel if he don't be loadin his
barry, and not running the feet off av us!"
The little man treated the remarks with dignified indifference, and
his "up alls" continued to be a theme of hot maledictions. He was a
little used up old levee builder, whose only usefulness now consisted
in his being able to hurry the rest of the gang, as a "fore-barrow"; a
position that no good laborer would have cared to have filled with the
intention of imposing on his co-laborers.
The third time Ben wheeled his "buggy" up the steep incline of planks,
he wheeled it off, and both he and the barrow had a fall of six
feet much to the hilarity of the gang. This happened to him twice in
succession, and as he was ascending the third time off he went, and
toppled the plank over with him, bringing three other barrows and their
navigators to the ground. A loud howl of execrations greeted this
catastrophe. Our hero was called a "watchmaker!" "a flute-player!" "a
dancing-master!" "a mud-clark!" "a 'sodden'!" "To go tip the plank over
on the min!" "Waz it their loif he waz afther!" "Sure it's graves he
should be using his shovel at, and not livyin'!"
The howlings attracted the walking-boss to the spot.
"What the dyvil did yez go for to tip the plank over on the min for?"
he asked.
Ben replied that it was an accident.
"An occident! Howly Mother! An wazn't the plank afoor yer nose? Would
yez want a barn flure to roll the barry on?"
Ben mollified the boss's wrath by telling him of his late shipwreck and
the weakness caused thereby.
"Well, ye poor dyvil, yez doan't want to be stoppin' on the livy.
Every year there do be rigimints of min that's not fit to shovel
sawdust, come tramping along, and aten' the camps up. But you've been
missfourtinate. The best yez'll do for yersel will be to get to New
Orleans and pick up a job yez 'ud be more used to. Go yez now to the
cook's shanty and tell thim to give yez bread and mate; that'll stay by
yez till ye make Baton Rouge, and then yez can get on a boat the night
and be in New Orleans in the mornin'."
Ben thanked the kind hearted boss, and started down the levee with
a big package of bread and "salt-horse" under his arm. He arrived
at Baton Rouge, the former capital of the State of Louisiana, after
dusk, and during the evening, crawled in among the cotton-bales of a
Yazoo River stern-wheel freight-boat. No one was on the lookout for
passengers, as the boat carried none, so he was left undisturbed, and
soon fell into a sound sleep.
Daylight was beaming upon him when he was awakened by a rough shake.
"Git up boss, git up. We muss have dis yere bale ob cotton!"
He awoke to find the boat stopped, and a gang of black long-shore men
unloading her.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"Whare are yere? Why yere at New Orl'ns, ob course!"
New Orleans!
The tramp was done!
The wager won!
New Orleans!