IN THE FOG

The boat was now in a part of the river where the land on both sides lies very low, behind very high levees. These are the richest cotton lands in the world, and their owners have tried to reclaim all of them from the river floods instead of taking only part of them for cultivation. Along other parts of the stream there are levees only here and there, leaving the river a chance to spread out over great areas of unreclaimed land, thus relieving the levees of much of the pressure upon them. Here, however, the line of embankment is continuous on both sides of the stream. For long distances the river is held between the two lines of artificially made banks.

The water was now within a few inches of the top of the levees, and twenty or thirty feet above the level of the lands in the rear. The strain upon the embankments was almost inconceivably great, while the destruction which any break in that long line of earthworks would involve was appalling even to think of.

The boys could see gangs of men at work wherever any weakness showed itself in the embankments, while sentinels, armed with shotguns, were everywhere on guard to prevent mischief-makers from cutting the levees. For, incredible as it may seem, men have sometimes been base enough to do this in order to let the river out of its banks, and thus reduce the danger of a break farther up stream where their own interests lay. For, of course, when a crevasse occurs at any point it lets so much water run suddenly out of the banks that the river falls several inches for many miles above, and the strain on the levees is greatly reduced.

As the boys were floating down the middle of the flood, watching the work on the levees with keen interest, the air began to grow thick. A few minutes later a great bank of dense fog settled down upon them, covering all things as with a blanket. The shores and the great trees that grew upon them were blotted out. Then as the fog grew thicker and thicker, even the river disappeared, except a little patch of it immediately around the boat. On every side was an impenetrable wall of mist, and ragged fragments of it floated across the deck so that when they stood half the boat’s length apart the boys looked like spectres to each other.

“I say, Phil, hadn’t we better go ashore or anchor?” said Constant.

“Where is the shore?” asked Phil, quietly.

“Why, there’s a shore on each side of us.”

“Certainly. But in what direction? Which way is across the river, which way up the river, which way down the river?”

“Why, the current will tell that,” said Constant.

“How are we going to find out which way the current runs?” asked Phil, with a quizzical smile.

“Easy enough; by looking at the driftwood floating by,” said the boy, going to the side of the boat to peer at the surface of the river through the fog. Presently he called out in amazement:—

“Why, the whole thing has stopped—the drift, the river, and the flatboat! We’re lying here just as still as if we were on solid ground.”

“On the contrary,” said Phil, “we’re floating down stream at the rate of several miles an hour.”

“But—”

“Think a minute, Constant,” said Phil. “We are floating just as fast as the river runs. The drift-wood is doing the same thing. The water, the drift, and the flatboat are all moving in the same direction at precisely the same speed.”

“Oh, I see,” said Constant, with an astonished look in his eyes. “We’ve nothing to measure by. We can’t tell which way we’re going, or how fast, or anything about it.”

“Why not come to anchor, then?” asked Irv. “If we keep on floating, nobody knows where we may go to. If there should be any gap in the line of levees anywhere, we might float into it. It would just tickle this flatboat to slip off on an expedition of that sort. Why not anchor till the fog lifts?”

“First, because we can’t,” said Phil. “The water is much too deep. But even if we could, it would be the very worst thing we could do. It would bring us to a standstill, while everything else afloat would keep on swirling past us, some of it running into us. If we should anchor here in the strong current, The Last of the Flatboats would soon have as many holes in her as a colander.”

“Then what do you intend to do, Phil?” asked Ed.

“Precisely nothing whatever,” answered the young captain. “Anything we might do would probably make matters worse. You see we were almost exactly in the middle of the river when the fog came down on us. Now, if we do nothing, the chances are that the current will carry us along somewhere near the middle, or at least well away from the shores. If it don’t, we can’t help it. The only thing we can do is to keep as close a watch as we can all around the boat, for we don’t know which end or which side of her is in front now. I want one fellow to go to the bow, one to the stern, and one to each side, and watch. If we are about to run into a bank or anything else, call out, and we may save ourselves at the last minute. That’s all we can do for the present. So go now!”

The wisdom of Phil’s decision to do nothing except watch alertly was clear to all his comrades, so they took the places he had assigned them, while he busied himself first at one point and then at another, thinking all the while whether there might not be something else that he could do—some precaution not yet thought of that he could take. He went to the pump now and then and worked it till no more water came up. He went below two or three times to see that nothing was wrong with the cargo. The boys, meanwhile, were walking back and forth on their beats, each carrying a boat-hook with which to “fend off” the larger bits of drift which the eddies, cross currents, and those strange disturbances in the stream called “boils,” sometimes drove against the gunwales.

The “boils” referred to are peculiar to the Mississippi, I believe. They are whirlpools, caused by the conflict of cross currents, and, as Will Moreraud said during this day of close watching, they are “sometimes right side up and sometimes upside down.” That is to say, sometimes a current from beneath comes to the surface like water in a boiling kettle and seems to pile itself up in a sort of mound for a half minute or so, while sometimes there is a genuine whirlpool strong enough even to suck a skiff down, as old-time flatboatmen used to testify.

These were anxious hours for the young captain and his crew, but worse was to come. For night fell at last with the fog still on, and between the fog and the darkness it was no longer possible to see even the water at the sides of the boat from the deck.

The crew had eaten no dinner that day. They had forgotten all about their meals in the eagerness of their watching. Now that watching was no longer possible they remembered their appetites, and had an evening dinner instead of supper.

They set their lights of course, though it was of little use from any point of view. They could not be seen at a distance of twenty yards, and moreover there was nobody to see them.

“There’s not much danger of any steamboat running into us now,” said Phil, who had carefully thought the matter out.

“Why not?” asked Ed.

“Because this fog has lasted for nearly twelve hours now, and by this time every steamboat is tied up to some bank or tree. For no pilot would think of running in such a cloud after finding any shore to which he could make his boat fast.”

“But how can a steamboat find the shore when we can’t?” asked Will.

“Because she can keep running till she finds it; and if she runs slowly she can back when she finds it till she makes an easy landing. She has power, and power gives her control of herself. We have none, except what the sweeps give us. In fogs like this steamboats always hunt for the shores and tie up till the fog lifts. So after ten or twelve hours of it, there are no steamboats prowling around to run into us.”

“Another advantage the steamboats have in hunting for the shore,” said Will, “is that they can blow their whistles and listen for echoes. They can tell in that way not only in which direction the shore is, but about how far away it is.”

“How do steamships manage in fogs out at sea?” asked Constant.

“Theoretically,” replied Ed, “they slow down and blow their whistles or their ‘sirens,’ as they call the big steam fog-horns that can be heard for many miles. But in fact the big ocean steamships drive ahead at full speed—twenty miles an hour or more—blowing their sirens—till they hear some other ship’s siren. Then they act according to fixed rules, each ship turning her helm to port—that is to say to the left—so that they sail well away from each other.”

“But what if there are sailing vessels in the way?”

“They also have fog-horns, but they sometimes get themselves run down by steamships, and once in a great while one of them runs into the side of a steamship. The Cunard steamer Oregon was sunk in that way by a sailing craft. That sort of thing would happen oftener if the big steamships were to stop or run very slowly in fog. By running at full speed they make it pretty sure that they will themselves do any running down that is to be done. With their enormous weight and great speed they can cut a sailing vessel in two without much danger of serious damage to themselves, and as they have hundreds of people on board while a sailing ship has a very few, the steamship captains hold that it is right to shift the danger in that way.”

The night dragged slowly along. Now and then a little conversation would spring up, for the boys were sleeping very little, but often there would be no word spoken for an hour at a time.

The fog made the air very chill, and the boys, who remained on deck all night, had to stir about frequently to keep reasonably warm.

The fog began whitening at last as the daylight dawned, and all the boys strained their eyes to see through it.

But it showed no sign of lifting.