The Last of the Flatboats

by George Cary Eggleston

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE TERROR OF THE RIVER

  For the next few days the voyage was uneventful. There was very littleto be done at the sweeps--only now and then a ten minutes' pull to keepthe boat off the banks and in the river. For the water was now so highthat there was no such thing as a channel to be followed.

  In many places the stream had overflowed its banks and flooded thecountry for miles inland on either side. Sometimes a strong currentwould set toward the points where the water was going over the banks,and a constant watchfulness was necessary to prevent the boat from beingdrawn into these currents and "going off for a trip in the country," asIrv Strong expressed it. Whenever she manifested a disposition of thatkind, all hands worked hard at the sweeps till she was carried out ofthe danger.

  During these days Ed read a great deal, and the other boys read a littleand talked not a little. On one or two days there were heavy all-dayrains, and at such times Ed would have liked to remain in the cabin whennot needed at the sweeps, and the other boys, hearing him cough sofrequently, pleaded with Phil to let him stay under cover.

  "We never really need him for rowing," said they, "and he ought to staydown 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," respondedPhil. "_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 himhis 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 rubbergoods, 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 Idid. I sleep better and eat better and feel stronger. I guess I've beentoo 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 thedeck, he added: "I don't know, Irv, but I'm doing what the doctor toldme 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 gettingbetter. 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 lapsinginto 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 drunkhis coffee clear like an honest flatboatman? And haven't you noticedthat he rebukes my ignorance and your juvenility with a vigor that noreally ill fellow could bring to bear? He's all right--Look!" as the twoemerged on deck. "He's actually trying to teach Jim Hughes how to splicea rope! Nobody but a man full of robust energy to the bursting pointwould 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 hadaccomplished 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 intheir 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 aheavy rain almost blinding them, it was not an easy thing to get theirboat safely into the pocket between Cairo and Mound City, amid thescores and hundreds of coal barges that were harboring there. For theflatboat even to touch one of the coal barges, unless very gentlyindeed, meant the instant sinking of many hundreds of tons of coal, andin all probability, the loss of the flatboat also.

  At one time Phil--for he had ceased to think of Jim as a pilot, or evenas a person who could lend any but merely muscular assistanceanywhere--was on the point of giving up the idea of landing at all. Hedebated with himself whether it would not be wiser to float on pastCairo, into the Mississippi. But the boat was really very short ofprovisions. The milk supply had given out two days after passing thefalls; their meal was almost exhausted; their salt had got wet; they hadno 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 itwas their agreed purpose not to risk complications in their accounts bytaking any of their cargo for their own use except in case of extremenecessity.

  "And as for eggs," said Irv Strong, "I fear that those in our cargo arebeginning to be too far removed from the original source of supply,--tooremotely connected with the hens of Switzerland County, Indiana, as itwere,--too--well, they seem to me far more likely to give satisfactionto educated palates in New Orleans 'omelettes with onions' and the like,than on our frugal table. Besides, our cabin is rather small and itwould be troublesome to have to go up on deck every time the cook wantedto break an egg."

  "You forget, Irv," said Ed, "we aren't more than ten or twelve days outyet, 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 amonth. At any rate, Phil's plan of not eating up our cargo is a goodone."

  Between Cairo and Memphis lay about two hundred and forty miles ofdifficult river, and in all that distance there was not a town of anyconsequence, at least as a market in which to buy boat stores. So thenecessity of landing at Cairo for supplies overrode all considerationsof difficulty and danger in the young captain's mind, and after somevery hard work and some narrow escapes, he succeeded in securely tyingup _The Last of the Flatboats_ in the bend.

  During their stay at Cairo Jim Hughes was again ill, afflicted this timewith 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 crewdid 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 theparty by his presence."

  "No," decided Phil, "I wanted to put him ashore at Craig's Landing, butI've got over that desire. He interests me now in his way. I'vediscovered a good deal about him, and I mean to find out more. He'sgoing somewhere, and I want to find out where it is. No, boys, we'llkeep 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 inevery direction. The upper Mississippi was at a tremendous stage. TheMissouri was pouring a vast flood into it. The Tennessee and Cumberlandwere adding enormously every hour to the great volume of water that waspouring down out of the overflowed and still swelling Ohio. In short,one of those great Mississippi floods was at hand which come only whenall the rivers--those from north, west, east, and south--"run out" atthe same time.

  The river was full of drift; great uprooted trees and timbers fromhouses and barns that had been swept from their foundations and reducedto wreckage; driftwood from thousands of miles of shore. Flotsam ofevery conceivable kind covered the face of the waters so completely thatit looked as if one might almost walk across, stepping from one floatingmass to another.

  And there was a menace in it, too, that was ever present. The uprootedtrees refused to float steadily. They turned over and over like giantstroubled in their sleep with Titanic nightmares. They lashed theirwide-reaching limbs in fury, while currents and cross-currents causedthe floating stuff to rush hither and thither, now piling it high andgrinding it together with destructive energy, now scattering it againand leaving great water spaces clear.

  Now and then a house or a barn would float by, crushed half out ofshape, but not yet twisted into its original materials. Altogether theriver presented a spectacle that would have inspired any old Greekpoet's imagination to create a dozen new gods and a score of hithertounknown demons to serve as the directors of it all.

  So _The Last of the Flatboats_ tarried in the bend
above Cairo, waitingfor the worst of the drift to run by before again venturing upon thebosom of the great flood.

  "I say, Ed," said Phil, looking out upon the vast waste of water withits seething surface of wreckage, "nothing in all that you have told usabout the river has given me so good an idea of its tremendous power asthe sight of that,"--waving his hand toward the stream.

  "Of course not," replied the elder. "Nothing that anybody could say in alifetime could equal that demonstration of power. Nobody that ever livedcould put this wonderful river into words. I have told you fellows onlyof the good it has done--only of its beneficence. You see now what powerof malignity and destructiveness it has. This single flood has alreadydestroyed hundreds of lives and swept away scores and hundreds of homes,and obliterated millions of dollars' worth of property. Before it isover the hundreds in each case will be multiplied into thousands. Evennow, right here at Cairo, a great disaster impends. Every able-bodiedman in the town has been sent with pick or shovel or wheelbarrow to worknight and day in strengthening and raising the levees. There are tenthousand people in this town. With the Mississippi on one side and theOhio on the other, and with their floods united across country above thetown, these helpless people have nothing in the world but an embankmentof earth between them and death. Their homes lie from twenty to thirtyfeet below the level of the water that surrounds them on every side. Andthat level is rising every hour, every minute. It is already severalinches above the top of their permanent levees. The flood is held incheck 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 athousand men are working ceaselessly by night and by day to build thebarriers 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. Ifthe levee should give way at any point on any side, Niagara itself wouldbe a mere brook compared with the torrent that would rush into thetown. One of the engineers said to me to-day that the pressure upon thelevees 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 ofwater a sudden chance to fall thirty feet or so. Now think what thatwould mean! The engineer, when I asked him, answered,--'Well, it wouldmean that in ten minutes the whole city of Cairo would be sweptcompletely off the face of the earth. Not only would no building be leftstanding in the town, but there would be literally not one stone orbrick left on top of another. Indeed, the very land on which the citystands, the entire point, would be scooped out fifty feet below itspresent level and carried bodily away into the river. The site of thetown 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 withall 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 andPompeii?" asked Irv.

  "It's sometimes because they must, because they have nowhere else tolive."

  "Yes," said Ed, "but it is oftener because they have the courage to facedanger for the sake of bettering themselves or their children in one wayor another. Did it ever occur to you that all that is worth while inhuman achievement has been accomplished by the men who, for the sake ofan advantage of one kind or another, were willing to risk their lives,encounter danger in any form, however appalling, endure hardships of themost fearful character, and take risks immeasurable? That is the sort ofmen that in frail ships sailed over the seas to America and conqueredand settled this country, fighting Indians and fevers and famines andall the rest of it. It was that sort of men,--and women, too,--for don'tforget that in all those enterprises the women risked as much as the mendid and suffered vastly more,--it was that sort of men and women whopushed over the mountains and built up this great West of ours. Talkabout the heroism of war! why, all the wars in all the world neverbrought out so much of really exalted heroism as that displayed by asingle 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 herois the man who, in pursuit of any worthy purpose,--though it be only tomake more money for the support of his family,--calmly faces the risks,endures the hardships, and performs the tasks that fall to his lot. Thehighest courage imaginable is that which prompts a man to do his duty ashe understands it, with absolute disregard of consequences to himself."

  That night Phil read his newspapers very diligently. Especially, hestudied the portraits and the minute descriptions given of the man whowas "carrying" the proceeds of the great bank robbery. Somehow, Phil wasbecoming more and more deeply interested in that subject.