AT MEMPHIS

About ten or twenty miles above Memphis the flatboat met a steamboat. It was out looking for the flatboat. Not only had bank officers and law officers arrived at Memphis, but they had become so apprehensive at the delay of the flatboat that they had chartered the steamboat and gone in search of her.

One of the bank officers came aboard, and to him Phil explained the situation, receiving in return the warmest congratulations upon the capture.

“We’ll take you in tow,” said the bank officer. “That will hurry matters, and we’ve men waiting at the wharf with all the necessary papers and arrest warrants.”

“But you must land us above or below the town,” said Phil.

“Why? Why not at the wharf?”

“Because we’re making this voyage as cheaply as possible, and mustn’t pay any unnecessary wharfage fees.”

“Wharfage fees be hanged!” replied the man. “I’ll take care of all that. Why, I’d pay your wharfage fees at every landing from here to New Orleans. I’d buy your flatboat and all her cargo ten times over. Why, my boy, you don’t know what a big piece of work you’ve done, or how grateful we are. Wharfage fees!” with an accent of amused disgust. “What are wharfage fees when you’ve caught the fellow and secured the plunder? And even that isn’t the best of it. The letters you’ve got”—for Phil had outlined their contents in his telegram to Cincinnati—“have enabled us to arrest the whole gang already. We’ve got ’em all, and you’re entitled to the credit of enabling us to break up the strongest band of bank robbers that was ever organized in this country. So—” signalling to the steamer—“send a line aboard and we’ll be at Memphis in an hour or two. In the meantime you and your companions must take breakfast on the steamboat.”

The flatboat was quickly made fast at the side of the steamer, and three of the boys went aboard for breakfast, the other two following when the first three returned. For until all legal forms should be completed, and Jim Hughes safely delivered to the officers of the law, Phil had no notion of leaving that worthy or the flatboat holding him, in charge of anybody except himself or his comrades. When he himself went to breakfast, he left Irv Strong in command, with Constant for his assistant, and Ed as guard over Hughes in the cabin.

At Memphis the legal formalities were conducted on the part of the boys by a lawyer whom Phil employed to see to it that their interests should be guarded. They lay there for two days. Jim Hughes was delivered to the authorities. The reward of five thousand dollars was paid over to Phil in currency. He divided the money equally among the crew. But as it would never do to carry so great a sum with them on the flatboat, they converted it into drafts on New York, which all the boys sent to the bank in Vevay, the money to be held there till their return.

As to supplies for the flatboat, the Cincinnati banker made some lavish gifts. He sent on board fresh beef enough to last several days, four hams, two strips of bacon, two pieces of dried beef, ten pounds of coffee, five pounds of tea, a bag of flour, a sack of salt, a dozen loaves of fresh bread, a big box of crackers, five pounds of butter, a basket of eggs, two or three cases of canned vegetables and fruits, some canned soups, a large can of milk packed in ice, a sack of dried beans, a bunch of bananas, a box of oranges, and finally, a large, iced cake with miniature American flags stuck all over it.

“I can talk now,” said Hughes to Ed, after the law officers had received and handcuffed him; “and I’ve got just one thing to say. I never had anything against any of you fellows except that brother Phil of yours. But for his meddling, I’d be a free man now. I’ve ‘got it in for’ him.”

“Oh, as to that,” drawled Irv Strong, “by the time you’ve served your ten or twenty years in State Prison, I imagine Phil will be sufficiently grown up to hold his own with you. He’s a ‘pretty sizable’ fellow even now, for his age.”

“Tell us something more interesting, Jim,” said Will Moreraud. “Tell us why you tried to run us on Vevay Bar and again on Craig’s Bar.”

“I didn’t try to run you on them. I tried to run you behind them into the Kentucky shore channel.”

“What for?”

“Oh, I was in a hurry to get down the river, and I didn’t want you to make that long stop at Craig’s Landing. If I could have run you behind those bars, you’d have been at Carrollton before you could pull up, and of course it wouldn’t have paid you to get the boat towed back up the river. I was trying to hurry, that’s all; and I knew the river better than Captain Phil suspected.”

That was all of farewell there was between the crew of The Last of the Flatboats and her late pilot. When some one suggested to Phil that he should speak for the party and express regret at the necessity that had governed their course, Phil said:—

“But I don’t feel the least regret. I am glad we’ve secured him and his gang. It restores a lot of plunder to the people to whom it belongs; it breaks up a very dangerous band of burglars; and it will help teach other persons of that kind how risky it is to live by law-breaking. Perhaps it will help to keep many people honest. No, I’m not sorry that we’ve been able to render so great a service to the public, and I’m not going to pretend that I am.”

“You’re right, Phil,” said Ed.

“Of course he is,” said Irv; “and as for Jim Hughes, he will get only what he deserves. If there were no laws, or if they were not enforced by the punishment of crime, there wouldn’t be much ‘show’ for honest people in this world.”

“There wouldn’t be any honest people, I reckon,” said Will, “for honest people simply couldn’t live. Everybody would have to turn savage and robber, or starve to death.”

“Yes,” said Ed. “That’s how law originated, and civilization is simply a state of existence in which there are laws enough to restrain wrong. When the savage finds that he can’t defend himself single-handed against murder and robbery, he joins with other savages for that purpose. That makes a tribe. It must have rules to govern it, and they are laws. It is out of the tribal organization that all civilized society has grown, mainly by the making of better and better laws, or by the better and better enforcement of laws already made.”

“Then are we all savages, restrained only by law from indulging in every sort of crime?” asked Phil. “I, for one, don’t feel myself to be in that condition of mind.”

“By no means,” replied the elder boy. “We are the products of habit and heredity. We have lost most of our savage instincts by having restrained them through generations, just as cows and dogs have done. You see, it is a law of nature that parents are apt to transmit their own characteristics to their children. As one of the great scientific writers puts it, ‘the habit of one generation is the instinct of the next.’ If you want a dog to hunt with, you choose one whose ancestors have been in the habit of hunting, because you know that he has inherited the habit as an instinct. Yet the highest-bred setters, pointers, and fox hounds are all descended ultimately from a common ancestry of wild dogs, as fierce, probably, as any wolf ever was. They have been for many generations under law,—the law of man’s control,—and so they have not only lost their wildness, but have acquired new instincts, new capacities, and a new intelligence.”

“I see,” said Phil, meditatively. “It is a long-continued course of timely spanking that has slowly changed us from savages into fellows able to run a flatboat and inclined to wear trousers.”

“Ah, as to that,” said Irv, “we haven’t quite got rid of our savage instincts even yet. I for one am savagely hungry for some of that beef our Cincinnati friend sent on board, and I suspect the rest of the tribe are in the same condition.”