In Horseshoe Cut-off the course was east. When Ned directed Ramsey's sight to its upper end, where the flood came into view from the north, she feared he would name the point it turned; but he forbore and she gazed on the thin old moon off in the southeast.

"Make out yan bunch o' sycamores?" was his nearest venture. The sycamores were on the point. Across the river where it ran concealed beyond those sycamores—he went on to tell—at the up-stream end of a low pencil stroke of forest between the head of the cut-off and the eastern stars, was another turn, Friar's Point. But her interest in points had faded, and whether friars abounded on that one or not she took pains not to inquire.

Instead, she was about to ask the cause of a strange silvering in the sky close over the black pencil stroke, when, as on Sunday, the morning star sprang into view and cast its tremulous beam on the waters. She gazed on the white splendor as genuinely enthralled as ever, though at the same time her eye easily, eagerly took in the first clerk, the senator, the general, and Hugh, standing about the captain's empty chair. They loomed as dimly as the sycamores, yet when a fifth figure drew near them she knew by his fine gait that it was the actor, relieved from the captain's sick-room by "California" and the cub pilot. A gesture from Hugh stopped him some yards off and he stood leaning on the bell.

For the actor was their theme. This was plain to every one in the pilot-house, the two waiters being gone. A remnant of the food was being consumed by "Harriet" and Joy. All the others were observing, like Ramsey, the morning star and the five men under it. Among her own and Mrs. Gilmore's draperies Ramsey found that lady's hand. Except a few low words between the pilots, conversation failed. Without leave-taking Ned left. Presently here he was beneath, on the skylight roof, and now he joined the actor. Ramsey let go the caressed hand and moved nearer to Watson. While he and she gazed far up the stream, yet watched the six men below, he repeated Ned's question.

"See that clump o' big sycamores a mite to lab-board o' where we're p'inted?"

She didn't believe she did.

"Well," he persisted, "that's it."

"That's what?"

"Why," said Watson, whose only aim was to set her once more at ease, "that's the p'int you——"

"Humph." She turned to the two ladies, who, with their eyes frankly below, were counselling together. "Let's go down there ourselves," she said, but they whispered on.

"Better not," put in Watson; "you can't help."

His kind intent did not keep the words from hurting. With a faint toss she said:

"I hoped we might be some hindrance."

She laughed in her old manner, dropped her glance again on the two men and the four, and hearkened. So did the two ladies beside her. They could all see who spoke below and could hear each voice in turn, though they could not catch what was said. The only sustained speeches were the senator's. The general's interpellations were little regarded. The silent pair at the bell heard everything of essential bearing.

The consciously belated senator had begun with rhetorical regrets for the captain's and the commodore's illness and with paternal enthusiasm for those on whom it had brought such grave new cares. His own sympathetic share in their anxieties, he had hurried on to say, had robbed him of sleep and driven him up here solely for this interview. On the way he had chanced upon the general in the——

"Sssame ffframe of mind," the general had said, while the senator pressed as straight on as the Votaress.

As far as the interests involved were private to this boat, he said, her officers and owners were entitled to keep them so and to be let alone in the management of them. But when that management became by its nature a vital part of an acute public problem—a national political issue—he felt bound, both as the Courteneys' private well-wisher and as a public servant, to urge such treatment of the matter as its national importance demanded. A spark, he said, might burn a city! A question of private ownership not worth a garnishee might set a whole nation afire! The arrival of Gilmore at the bell threw him into a sudden heat:

"My God! Mr. Courteney—Mr. clerk—I shan't offer to lay hands on any man; not I. All I ask is that you take yours off—of three. My dear sirs, equally as your true friend and as a lover of our troubled country I beg you to liberate those citizens of the sovereign State of Arkansas whom you hold in unlawful duress, and to hear before witnesses the plea they regard as righteous and of national concern."

The sight of Ned joining Gilmore heated him again: "Gentlemen, if you will do that, now, at once, you will save the fortunes of this superb boat, her honored owners, and their fleet. If you don't you wreck them forever before this day dawns. And you may—great heavens, gentlemen, you may see the first bloodshed of sectional strife."

"K-'tional ssstrife!" growled the general.

The clerk smiled. "Why, senator, those men don't go beyond Helena. They leave us there, before sun-up."

"Precisely, sir! And if they're not set free before you enter Helena Reach, or even pass Friar's Point, you may as well not free them at all."

Hugh glanced at the clerk as if to speak. The clerk nodded and in the pilot-house they saw Hugh begin:

"Mr. Senator, suppose we do that?"

"You would do me honor, sir, and yourselves more."

"Of course the watchmen of this boat watch."

As Hugh said this the cub pilot came from the captain's room with some word to Gilmore, who, though yearning to stay, left him and Ned and hastened back to the texas.

Meantime the senator: "I should hope so, sir. I hope every one on watch watches, sir."

"They do. And so we know that you and the general know, perfectly, that the same men who want those three released want Mr. Gilmore put ashore. Is that your wish, too?"

"It is, sssir," put in the general while the senator did some rapid thinking. Now he too replied:

"Mm—no, sir, it is not. And yet—yes, sir, it is."

"Then you would advise us to do that also?"

"I would advise you to do that also."

"Why?"

"Good Lord! my young friend, to save you! you, your father, grandfather, boats, all, and Mr. Gilmore himself!"

"How about his wife?"

"And his wife. For her to be with him may help him if he goes. It can't if he stays." The speaker had let his voice rise. The pilot-house group caught his words. Also they saw the cub pilot detain Ned when he started forward.

"Let's go down there ourselves," repeated Ramsey; but the parson's wife had whisperingly laid both hands on the wife of the actor, and Ramsey chafed to no avail.

The senator's voice dropped again. "Good God, sir, you know the longer they're aboard the worse it will be for them, and they've got to go some time or at Louisville a mob will burn the Votaress to the water's edge with them on her."

The two stared at each other, the senator's mind bewailing the loss of each golden moment. The night was not too dark to show him the poker face fitting its nickname insufferably. But not until its owner spoke again did he frown—to hide an exultant surprise.

"They could leave their maid, you think, with Madame Hayle?" was Hugh's astonishing inquiry. The senator had expected of him nothing short of a grim defiance.

"They could—they can," replied both he and the soldier. "That'll satisfy everybody." The general saw only the surface of the proposition but the senator perceived in it all the opportunity their two modest accomplices of the boiler deck asked. That pair and their adherents—not followers—you wouldn't catch them leading—they and their gathering adherents would construe the landing of the players as an attempt to deliver them out of their hands and would undertake to seize and maltreat the actor, at least, the moment he should be off the boat. That they were likely to fail was little to the senator; there would be a tumult, so managed as to bring Hugh to the actor's rescue, and in the fracas Hugh was sure of a hammering he would not only never forget but would discern that he owed, first and last, to him, the senator.

Hugh glanced at the clerk. "You had just recommended Delta Landing." The clerk nodded and he turned back to the senator. "We'll be there inside of half an hour."

"Delta will do," said the senator, his frown growing.

Hugh nodded to the clerk. The clerk looked over to Ned.

"Think Delta's above water?"

"Oh—eyes and nose out, Watson allows."

"Delta'll be all right," persisted the senator.

The clerk glanced up to the pilot-house. "Mr. Watson, we'll stop at Delta, to put off a couple o' passengers."

"Yes, sir." The group at the pilot's back gasped at each other. Then Ramsey gasped at him.

"Oh, what does that mean?" she demanded. But his gaze remained up the river as he kindly replied:

"What it says, I reckon. Don't fret, ladies—when you don't know what to do, don't do it."

"Ho-o-oh!" cried Ramsey, whisking away, "I will!"

"Lawd 'a' massy!" Old Joy sprang for the door, but Ramsey was already out on the steps and scurrying down them. On the texas roof, however, she took a wrong direction and lost time; slipped forward round the pilot-house counting on steps which were not, and never had been, out there. Returning she lost more by meeting old Joy in the narrow way between the house and the edge of the texas roof, and when at length she sprang away for the after end of the texas and the only stair she was now sure of, whom should she espy bound thither ahead of her but Mrs. Gilmore. In that order the three hurried down to the guards of the texas and forward along them by its stateroom doors.

Meantime, out at the bell the clerk had left Hugh and privately sent Ned and the cub pilot different ways. Hugh moved a pace or two aside to observe the Antelope out on their larboard quarter. The senator and the general moved with him.

"She'll pass you again at Delta," remarked the senator. "You see, general—you see, Mr. Courteney,—at Delta they" (the players) "can very plausibly explain—there won't be more than two or three, if any, to explain to—that they're running from the cholera and want to hail the Westwood, which they won't more than just have time to do.

"She won't mind taking them," he babbled on, "already having the cholera herself. Not many up-river boats would answer a hail from Delta, but she will, for she'll see they're from this boat and that it's your wish. There she comes round the bend now. Yes, Delta's a lot safer for 'em than Helena with its wharf-boat and daylight crowd and those three red-hots going ashore with 'em. On the Westwood they can put up with any yarn that'll carry 'em through. They're actors and used to that sort o' thing."

Musingly Hugh broke in: "Counting all the chances, isn't there a touch of cruelty in this, to the lady at least?"

"Oh, now, my young friend—" the senator began to rejoin, but two men lounging by stopped to ask after the father and grandfather. They were the second engineer and his striker, presently to go on watch.

Mrs. Gilmore, coming along the texas guards, met the cub pilot. He perched on the railing to let her pass and a few strides farther on began to do the same for Ramsey.