IN THE HOME OF THE EARTHQUAKES

One night soon after The Last of the Flatboats left Cairo, Phil’s compass showed that the Mississippi River, whose business it was to run toward the south, was in fact running due north. Phil recognized this as one of the vagaries of the wonderful river. Consulting his map, he found that the river knew its business, that the boat was in New Madrid Bend, where for a space the strangely erratic river runs north, only to turn again to its southerly course, after having asserted its liberty by running in a contrary direction as it does at Cairo, where a line drawn due north from the southerly point of Illinois cuts through a part of Kentucky, a state lying to the south of Illinois. No ordinary map shows this, but it is nevertheless true. Illinois ends in a hook, which extends so far south and so far east as to bring a part of Illinois to the southward of Kentucky.

Phil had fully grasped this fact. He had reconciled himself to the eccentricities of the wonderful river, and was entirely content to float northward, so long as that seemed to be the river’s will.

But about midnight there came a disturbance. First of all there was a great roar, as of artillery or Titanic trains of cars somewhere in the centre of the earth. Then there were severe blows upon the bottom of the flatboat, blows that threatened to break its gunwales in two. Then three great waves came up the river, curling over the flatboat’s bow and pouring their floods into her hold, as if to swamp her. Then the boat swung around, changed her direction, and for a time ran up the stream, while waves threatened at every moment to overwhelm her.

Phil, who was on watch at the time, ran to the scuttle to call his comrades, but there was no occasion. The tremendous thumps on the bottom of the boat and the swaying of everything backward and forward had awakened them, and, half clad, they were rushing on deck.

Just then the boat struck upon a shore bar and went hard aground. The water that had come in over her bow had more than filled the bilge; but how far the disturbance had made the boat leak, Phil could not find out, for she was now resting upon a sandbank near the shore, and of course, supported as she was by the river bottom, she could not settle farther. So Phil ordered all hands to the pumps, in order to get out the wave water, and to find out as soon as she should float again what water there might be coming in through leaks caused by the disturbance just experienced.

A little pumping showed that the boat was not leaking seriously. The water in the hold went down in about the same proportion that the pumps poured it out, thus showing that no additional supply was coming in anywhere.

In half an hour the pumps ceased to “draw.” That is to say, no water came out in response to their activity. But the flatboat was still aground.

“Never mind about that,” said Irv Strong. “The river is still rising rapidly, and it will soon float us.”

“Yes,” answered Phil, “if we are on a level bar and if the boat has undergone no strain. You see as long as we have bottom under us, we shan’t leak to any serious extent. But when we float again, the great weight of our cargo will make every open seam admit water to its full capacity.”

“Of course,” said Irv. “But what makes you think there are any open seams?”

“Nothing,” answered Phil, “except a general impulse of precaution. We went aground very easily. In fact, I didn’t know we were aground till I saw the water flowing by, and by the way, it is RUNNING UP STREAM!” As he said this he leaned over the side and observed the water carefully.

The other boys joined him and observed the same phenomenon, largely in wonder, but almost half in fright. The Mississippi River was unquestionably running the wrong way, and that, too, when a great flood was pouring down it and seeking its way to the sea.

“What does it all mean, Ed?” asked Will Moreraud. “Tell us about it, for of course you know.”

“I don’t know whether I know or not,” responded Ed, with more of hesitation than was usual in his tone. “I think we have had a small earthquake. We are in the midst of a region of small earthquakes. We are in New Madrid Bend, and for the best part of a century that has been a sort of earthquake nest.”

“The river is running down stream again,” called out Constant, “and we are beginning to float, too.”

“So we are,” said Irv Strong, going to the side and inspecting. “Let’s go below and find out whether or not we’re leaking.”

The suggestion was a timely one. Phil indeed had anticipated it, and when his comrades went below they found him there with a lantern, minutely inspecting every point where incoming water might be looked for.

Their search clearly revealed the fact that the flatboat—which was now again floating down the stream—was not leaking more than she did ordinarily, not so much that a few minutes’ pumping now and then could not keep her bilge empty.

Having satisfied themselves of the boat’s safety, the boys returned to the deck, and renewed their demands upon Ed for an explanation.

“Well, you see,” said Ed, “we’re in New Madrid Bend. Now, as I said a while ago, for the best part of a century, and probably for all the centuries before that, this region has been the home of earthquakes, not very great ones, but such as we have just experienced. Along about 1811 and 1812 it was distressed with much severer ones in an uncommon degree. We have just had the Mississippi River running up stream for five or ten minutes as a result of one of these disturbances. In 1811 it ran up stream for three full days and nights. Great fissures were opened in the earth all over the country round about, and as they always, or at least generally, ran north and south, the settlers used to fell trees east and west, and build their cabins upon them, so that they might not be swallowed up by the earthquakes.”

“Why didn’t they run away from so appalling a danger?” asked Irv Strong.

“Because they were pioneers,” answered Ed, “because they were the sort of heroes we were talking about at Cairo, men who took all the risks that might come to them in order that they might secure advantages to themselves and their children. Men of that sort do not run away from earthquakes, any more than they run away from Indians, or fevers, or floods, or any other dangers. And by the way, these same people had Indians to contend with, in their very ugliest moods.”

“How so?” asked two of the boys at once.

“Why, in the time of the great earthquakes, all of Western Tennessee and Kentucky, and the greater part of Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama were inhabited by savage Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and other hostile tribes. At that time the great Indiana chief, Tecumseh, conceived his plan of uniting all the tribes from Indiana—then a part of the Northwest Territory—to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida, in a league for determined resistance to the westward advance of the whites.

“It was an opportune time, for a little later the British, being at war with us, came to Florida and undertook to form an offensive and defensive alliance with the Indians, whom they supplied with guns and ammunition, for the destruction of the United States. And but for Jackson’s superb war against the Creeks, and later his victory at New Orleans, they would have succeeded in splitting this country in two.

“When Tecumseh went south to secure the coÖperation of the Creeks, Choctaws, and Seminoles in this plan for the destruction of our country, he told the Muscogees that on his return to the north he would ‘stamp his foot’ and they would feel the earth tremble.

“The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812, which extended into Alabama and Georgia, came just in time to fulfil this prophetic threat, and there is no doubt that they played a great part in provoking the most dangerous Indian war this country ever knew—the most dangerous because, before it was over, there came to our shores a great British army, the flower of English soldiery, under command of Pakenham, Wellington’s most trusted lieutenant—to capture New Orleans and secure control of our wonderful river, and all the region west of it.”

“And why didn’t they do it?” asked Will Moreraud.

“Because of Andrew Jackson,” answered Ed. “He went to New Orleans to meet them. He had no army, but he created one mostly in a single afternoon. His only experienced troops were three hundred Tennessee volunteers under Coffee, one of his old Indian fighters. But he had some backwoods volunteers, and he enlisted all the merchants he could in New Orleans, and all their clerks, all the ragamuffins of the city, all the wharf rats, and all the free negroes there, and armed them as best he could. Half of Pakenham’s force had moved from Lake Borgue to a point a few miles below the city. Without waiting for a force fit to fight them with, Jackson cried ‘Forward’ to his motley collection of men, and on the night of December 23, 1814, he attacked the great veteran English army in the dark. It was a fearful fight, and the vigor of it and its insolence as a military operation so appalled the British, that they waited for more than two weeks for the rest of their forces to come up before trying again to capture the city,—a thing which they had intended to do the next morning without the loss of a man. In the meantime, Jackson had fortified himself, and reËnforcements had come to him, so that when the British were at last ready, on the 8th of January, 1815, to advance to what they still expected to be the easy conquest of the city, they were ‘licked out of their boots.’ That, in brief, is the story of the battle which for the second time decided American independence. For the British in the War of 1812-14 had nothing less in view than the re-conquest of our country, and the restoration of the states to the condition and status of British colonies.”

“But how about the earthquakes?” asked Irv; “why is this region subject to them more than others?”

“I’m not sure that I know,” said Ed. “But countries in the neighborhood of volcanoes are usually either peculiarly subject to earthquakes or especially exempt from them. It seems that sometimes the volcanoes act as safety valves, while sometimes they don’t work in that way till after the region round about has been greatly shaken up, preparatory to an eruption.”

“But what have volcanoes got to do with New Madrid Bend?” asked Phil. “There aren’t any volcanoes in the United States.”

“No,” said Ed, thoughtfully; “but there are some hot springs over in Arkansas, not very far from here, and they are volcanic of course in their origin and character. Perhaps if the Arkansas hot springs were a robust volcano, instead of being what they are, there would not be so many earthquakes in this part of the country. If they threw out stones and lava and let off steam generally as Vesuvius and Etna and the others do, perhaps this part of the country wouldn’t have so many agues.”

Just then the boat heeled over, the river was broken into great waves again, and all creation seemed to be see-sawing north and south. Phil called the boys to the sweeps, as a matter of precaution, but the boat was helpless in the raging river. She was driven ashore again; that is to say, she was driven over the brink of a submerged river bank, where she stuck securely in the mud.

This second earthquake did not last more than thirty or forty seconds, but that was long enough to get The Last of the Flatboats into the worst trouble that she had yet encountered. She seemed to be bending in the middle as if resting upon a fallen tree with both ends free.

Phil quickly manned the skiffs and instituted an inspection. By the use of poles and lead lines he soon discovered that two-thirds of the boat’s length lay upon a reasonably level bank, the remaining third overhanging it. It was this that was bending her so dangerously.

“Get inside, boys, quick,” he called to his comrades. “The boat’s bow overhangs the bank. We must get all the freight out of it as quickly as possible.”

Then in brief sentences he gave his commands.

“Roll those apple barrels into the cabin! Carry those bags of meal on deck and well astern! Take the anchor there, too! Lighten the bow all you can!”

The boys worked like beavers, and after a while the entire forward part of the boat was free of freight. The cabin as a consequence was full, and the deck so piled up with bags and barrels that ordinary navigation would have been impossible. But at any rate, the danger of breaking the boat in two was averted.

Phil then got into a skiff with Irv, and armed with some lanterns, went carefully all around the boat, measuring depths and looking for possibly open seams or other damage. When he returned to the deck he reported:—

“We are lying in about six inches of Missouri mud with two and a half feet of water above it, trespassing to that extent upon somebody’s farm. But the reports from up the rivers when we were at Cairo were that at least twelve inches more water might be expected within forty-eight hours, and as it is raining like Noah’s flood now, and we only need a few inches of water to set us free, we’ll be afloat again by morning if we don’t have another earthquake to send us still farther out into the country.”

The event justified Phil’s prediction. About five o’clock in the morning the flatboat floated again, and with a few vigorous strokes of the sweeps she was sent out into the middle of the river. Then Phil gave orders for the restoration of the freight to its proper place. Not until that was done was it possible to get breakfast, for the cabin had been piled full of freight, and when it was done, Phil devoted himself for an hour or more, before he would eat, to an inspection of the boat. He found and stopped a few leaks that had been made by the strain, which had caused the oakum to loosen in the seams.

The rain continuing, the boys had a dull day of it, but at any rate their boat was in good condition, and was now again floating down stream toward her destination.