Once more the hurricane deck. What space! What freedom! Again from the airy, sun-beaten roof, that felt as thin underfoot as the levelled wing of an eagle, the eye dropped far below to where the tawny waters glided to meet the cleaving prow or foamed away from the smiting wheels. Again the dazzled vision rose into the infinite blue beyond clouds and sun, or rested on the green fringes of half-drowned shores forever passing in slow recessional.

Four in the afternoon. Esperance Point rounded and left astern in the east. Ellis Cliffs there too, whitening back to the western sun. Saint Catherine's Bend next ahead, gleaming a mile and a quarter wide where it swung down from the north. And the Votaress herself! Once again that perfect grace in the faint up-curve, at stem and stern, of the low white rail that rimmed the deck. Again, above the stained-glass skylights of the cabin, the long white texas, repeating the deck's and cabin's lines in what Ramsey called a "higher octave," its narrow doors overhung with gay scrollwork, and above its own roof, like a coronet, the pilot house, with Watson just returned to the wheel. Once more the colossal, hot-breathing twin chimneys, their slender iron braces holding them so uprightly together and apart, the golden globe—emblem of the Courteney fleet—hanging between them, and their far-stretched iron guys softly harping to one another in the breeze. All these again, and away out beyond the front rail, with a hundred feet depth of empty air between, the jack-staff, high as a pine and as slim for its height as a cane from the brake, its halyards whipping cheerily, the black night-hawk at its middle, a golden arrow at its peak.

John Courteney, coming up into this scene, laid a hand on his solitary chair at the forward rail but then paused. Between the chair and the skylights behind it stood the squire's sister and brother-in-law and Ramsey. Yes, they eagerly agreed with him, the view ahead was certainly dazzling. Ramsey would have asked a question, but the husband remembered the contagion from whose field below the captain had just come, the wife noticed that the presence of ladies would keep the captain standing, and the three, remarking that such a scene was too brilliant to confront, moved aft. As they went, Watson, up at the wheel, and Ned, his partner, lingering by him, had a half-length view of them, their lower half being hid by the cabin roof, close under whose edge their feet passed, where its shadow kept the deck cool. The wife still had her embroidery, the husband his De Bow. By certain changes about Ramsey's throat and shoulders Ned noticed that she was in yet another dress, whose skirt—such part as showed above the cabin roof—was in flounces almost to the waist. He would tell that at home to his wife and daughter, who now and then depended on him for fashions, with striking results. Watson, too, noticed Ramsey, yet his chief attention remained, as steadily as his gaze, on his steering-mark far up in the bight of the sunlit bend, at the same time including, here below, his seated commander.

"Cap' ought to be pootty tol'able tired, Ned."

"Well, now, he jest ought!" The partner dropped back and perched on the visitor's bench, whence he could still see the river though not the closely intervening cabin—and texas roofs; and all the two said later was without an exchange of glances. Watson thought the captain would "rest more now, on watch, than what he did before, off," having got matters running so much smoother down below; though the cholera was "a-growin', straight along."

Ned told of his pleasure in seeing Hugh conduct the senator down to the devotional services: "Lard, they hev done him brown, ain't they?—atween 'em, Hugh and Hayle's girl?"

"With some help," said Watson, modestly. "That petition—ef th's anything else aboard this boat as dead as what it is"—he ran into inelegancies.

Ned offered to bet it was not dead inside the senator, and Watson admitted that the statesman would probably never forgive the "genteel" way he had been euchred; though like euchre, he said, a lot of it was luck.

"But, man! the bluff he kin put up! Couldn't believe my eyes when we'd passed the hat an' adjourned an' I see him a-standin' at the fork o' the for'a'd stairs, ag'in the trunk room, same ole bell-wether as ever, a-makin' a bully speech to Madame Hayle an' that Marburg chap down in the gangway, foot o' the steps, an' a-present'n' him our 'oblations'—says he—meanin' the swag!"

"An' her a-translat'n' for him!" said Ned, fancying the scene, with the senator, under his mask, "a-gritt'n' his tushes!" and Watson, to heighten it, told of Hugh and the actor at one head of the double stair, and Mrs. Gilmore and Ramsey at the other—"a-chirpin' him on, an' the whole b'iler deck, ladies and gents, takin' it in, solid!"

The senator was long-headed. "Yes, an' yit Hugh's throwed him fair jest by main strength an' awk'ardness."

"I dunno!" said Ned. "It wuz long-headed, too, fo' Hugh an' the play-acto's to give him the job."

"It wuz long-headed in her who put 'em up to it."

"Oh, look here! She didn't do that, did she?"

"'Less'n I'm a liar," replied Watson, eyes front.

"Hunh! Wonder which! Say, Wats'; on the b'iler deck—did she have on this gownd she's a-wearin' now?"

"No," said Watson, tardily, with eyes still up-stream.

"Not wast'n' yo' words," said the inquirer.

"No."

"A short answer turneth away wrath, I s'pose."

"It turneth away discussion o' ladies' gownds."

"Lard! I don't discuss 'em to excess. Noticed hern—its upper works—an' a flounce or two—an' sort o' wondered as to the rest of it, how much water it's a-drawin'. Anything li-bell-ious about that?"

"No, considerin' the source."

Ned slipped from the bench to go, but Watson looked back with a light beckon of the head and he turned to the wheel. Thence he glanced down over the breast-board, over the forward eaves of the texas, down to the skylight roof and upon several persons. First, the boat's commander. He was leaving his seat at the approach, from the head of a boiler-deck stair, of Madame Hayle and the doctor. On the skylight roof, near the bell, were the two players, just greeting Hugh as from the other side he reached the deck and stepped up to their level. On the same roof, midway between these and the front of the texas, were the squire's sister and her husband returning from their search for shade. And lastly, close after them, came Ramsey, a source of general astonishment. For the gown she was in and whose lower possibilities had aroused Ned's avowed and Watson's concealed interest was her mother's and swept the deck.

Madame Hayle grew more beautiful as with a play of indignation which wholly failed to disguise her pleasure she cried: "By what per-mission? by what per-mission have you pud—my—clothes?"

The girl would have flown to her arms but the doctor forbade, and for second choice she set up a dainty tripping to and fro athwartships; dipping, rising, skipping, swaying, bridling, like a mocking-bird on a garden wall. It made Ned and Watson themselves worth seeing. Professional dignity set their faces like granite though every vein seethed with a riot of laughter. But the laughter's chief cause was not Ramsey.

"Look at Hugh," muttered Watson, gently drawing down the wheel for the Votaress to sweep round into a northward reach at whose head Natchez Island would presently show itself. To look at Hugh took nerve, but in a moment——

"Look at her," said Ned.... "There! she tipped her nose at him!"

"She didn't!"

"She did. Wats', yo' game ain't never goin' to work."

"Ned, y'ain't got the sense of a loon."

"Well, I swear I've got more'n Hugh—or her."