THE TERROR OF THE RIVER

For the next few days the voyage was uneventful. There was very little to be done at the sweeps—only now and then a ten minutes’ pull to keep the boat off the banks and in the river. For the water was now so high that there was no such thing as a channel to be followed.

In many places the stream had overflowed its banks and flooded the country for miles inland on either side. Sometimes a strong current would set toward the points where the water was going over the banks, and a constant watchfulness was necessary to prevent the boat from being drawn into these currents and “going off for a trip in the country,” as Irv Strong expressed it. Whenever she manifested a disposition of that kind, all hands worked hard at the sweeps till she was carried out of the danger.

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

“We never really need him for rowing,” said they, “and he ought to stay down 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,” responded Phil. “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 him his 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 rubber goods, 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 I did. I sleep better and eat better and feel stronger. I guess I’ve been too 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 the deck, he added: “I don’t know, Irv, but I’m doing what the doctor told me 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 getting better. 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 lapsing into 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 drunk his coffee clear like an honest flatboatman? And haven’t you noticed that he rebukes my ignorance and your juvenility with a vigor that no really ill fellow could bring to bear? He’s all right—Look!” as the two emerged on deck. “He’s actually trying to teach Jim Hughes how to splice a rope! Nobody but a man full of robust energy to the bursting point would 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 had accomplished 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 in their 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 a heavy rain almost blinding them, it was not an easy thing to get their boat safely into the pocket between Cairo and Mound City, amid the scores and hundreds of coal barges that were harboring there. For the flatboat even to touch one of the coal barges, unless very gently indeed, meant the instant sinking of many hundreds of tons of coal, and in all probability, the loss of the flatboat also.

At one time Phil—for he had ceased to think of Jim as a pilot, or even as a person who could lend any but merely muscular assistance anywhere—was on the point of giving up the idea of landing at all. He debated with himself whether it would not be wiser to float on past Cairo, into the Mississippi. But the boat was really very short of provisions. The milk supply had given out two days after passing the falls; their meal was almost exhausted; their salt had got wet; they had no 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 it was their agreed purpose not to risk complications in their accounts by taking any of their cargo for their own use except in case of extreme necessity.

“And as for eggs,” said Irv Strong, “I fear that those in our cargo are beginning to be too far removed from the original source of supply,—too remotely connected with the hens of Switzerland County, Indiana, as it were,—too—well, they seem to me far more likely to give satisfaction to educated palates in New Orleans ‘omelettes with onions’ and the like, than on our frugal table. Besides, our cabin is rather small and it would be troublesome to have to go up on deck every time the cook wanted to break an egg.”

“You forget, Irv,” said Ed, “we aren’t more than ten or twelve days out yet, 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 a month. At any rate, Phil’s plan of not eating up our cargo is a good one.”

Between Cairo and Memphis lay about two hundred and forty miles of difficult river, and in all that distance there was not a town of any consequence, at least as a market in which to buy boat stores. So the necessity of landing at Cairo for supplies overrode all considerations of difficulty and danger in the young captain’s mind, and after some very hard work and some narrow escapes, he succeeded in securely tying up The Last of the Flatboats in the bend.

During their stay at Cairo Jim Hughes was again ill, afflicted this time with 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 crew did 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 the party by his presence.”

“No,” decided Phil, “I wanted to put him ashore at Craig’s Landing, but I’ve got over that desire. He interests me now in his way. I’ve discovered a good deal about him, and I mean to find out more. He’s going somewhere, and I want to find out where it is. No, boys, we’ll keep 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 in every direction. The upper Mississippi was at a tremendous stage. The Missouri was pouring a vast flood into it. The Tennessee and Cumberland were adding enormously every hour to the great volume of water that was pouring down out of the overflowed and still swelling Ohio. In short, one of those great Mississippi floods was at hand which come only when all the rivers—those from north, west, east, and south—“run out” at the same time.

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

And there was a menace in it, too, that was ever present. The uprooted trees refused to float steadily. They turned over and over like giants troubled in their sleep with Titanic nightmares. They lashed their wide-reaching limbs in fury, while currents and cross-currents caused the floating stuff to rush hither and thither, now piling it high and grinding it together with destructive energy, now scattering it again and leaving great water spaces clear.

Now and then a house or a barn would float by, crushed half out of shape, but not yet twisted into its original materials. Altogether the river presented a spectacle that would have inspired any old Greek poet’s imagination to create a dozen new gods and a score of hitherto unknown demons to serve as the directors of it all.

So The Last of the Flatboats tarried in the bend above Cairo, waiting for the worst of the drift to run by before again venturing upon the bosom of the great flood.

“I say, Ed,” said Phil, looking out upon the vast waste of water with its seething surface of wreckage, “nothing in all that you have told us about the river has given me so good an idea of its tremendous power as the sight of that,”—waving his hand toward the stream.

“Of course not,” replied the elder. “Nothing that anybody could say in a lifetime could equal that demonstration of power. Nobody that ever lived could put this wonderful river into words. I have told you fellows only of the good it has done—only of its beneficence. You see now what power of malignity and destructiveness it has. This single flood has already destroyed hundreds of lives and swept away scores and hundreds of homes, and obliterated millions of dollars’ worth of property. Before it is over the hundreds in each case will be multiplied into thousands. Even now, right here at Cairo, a great disaster impends. Every able-bodied man in the town has been sent with pick or shovel or wheelbarrow to work night and day in strengthening and raising the levees. There are ten thousand people in this town. With the Mississippi on one side and the Ohio on the other, and with their floods united across country above the town, these helpless people have nothing in the world but an embankment of earth between them and death. Their homes lie from twenty to thirty feet below the level of the water that surrounds them on every side. And that level is rising every hour, every minute. It is already several inches above the top of their permanent levees. The flood is held in check 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 a thousand men are working ceaselessly by night and by day to build the barriers 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. If the levee should give way at any point on any side, Niagara itself would be a mere brook compared with the torrent that would rush into the town. One of the engineers said to me to-day that the pressure upon the levees 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 of water a sudden chance to fall thirty feet or so. Now think what that would mean! The engineer, when I asked him, answered,—‘Well, it would mean that in ten minutes the whole city of Cairo would be swept completely off the face of the earth. Not only would no building be left standing in the town, but there would be literally not one stone or brick left on top of another. Indeed, the very land on which the city stands, the entire point, would be scooped out fifty feet below its present level and carried bodily away into the river. The site of the town 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 with all 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 and Pompeii?” asked Irv.

“It’s sometimes because they must, because they have nowhere else to live.”

“Yes,” said Ed, “but it is oftener because they have the courage to face danger for the sake of bettering themselves or their children in one way or another. Did it ever occur to you that all that is worth while in human achievement has been accomplished by the men who, for the sake of an advantage of one kind or another, were willing to risk their lives, encounter danger in any form, however appalling, endure hardships of the most fearful character, and take risks immeasurable? That is the sort of men that in frail ships sailed over the seas to America and conquered and settled this country, fighting Indians and fevers and famines and all the rest of it. It was that sort of men,—and women, too,—for don’t forget that in all those enterprises the women risked as much as the men did and suffered vastly more,—it was that sort of men and women who pushed over the mountains and built up this great West of ours. Talk about the heroism of war! why, all the wars in all the world never brought out so much of really exalted heroism as that displayed by a single 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 hero is the man who, in pursuit of any worthy purpose,—though it be only to make more money for the support of his family,—calmly faces the risks, endures the hardships, and performs the tasks that fall to his lot. The highest courage imaginable is that which prompts a man to do his duty as he understands it, with absolute disregard of consequences to himself.”

That night Phil read his newspapers very diligently. Especially, he studied the portraits and the minute descriptions given of the man who was “carrying” the proceeds of the great bank robbery. Somehow, Phil was becoming more and more deeply interested in that subject.