THE RESCUE OF THE CASTAWAYS.
“The rescue occupied considerable time and work.” (See page 283.)

The Last of the Flatboats

A Story of the Mississippi and its
interesting family of rivers

By

GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON

Author of “The Big Brother,” “Captain Sam,”
“The Signal Boys,” “The Wreck of
the Red Bird,” etc., etc.

BOSTON
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY LOTHROP
PUBLISHING
COMPANY.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

TO MY LAST-BORN BOY

CARY EGGLESTON

A brave, manly fellow
Who knows how to swim
How to catch fish
How to handle his boat
How to shoot straight with a rifle
And how to tell the truth every time

I Dedicate

This Story about some other Boys of his kind

GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON

Culross-on-Lake-George

[Preface]

Vevay, from which “The Last of the Flatboats” starts on its voyage down the Mississippi, is a beautiful little Indiana town on the Ohio River, about midway between Cincinnati and Louisville. The town and Switzerland County, of which it is the capital, were settled by a company of energetic and thrifty Swiss immigrants, about the year 1805. Their family names are still dominant in the town. I recall the following as familiar to me there in my boyhood: Grisard, Thiebaud, Le Clerc, Moreraud, Detraz, Tardy, Malin, Golay, Courvoisseur, Danglade, Bettens, Minnit, Violet, Dufour, Dumont, Duprez, Medary, Schenck, and others of Swiss origin.

The name Thiebaud, used in this story, was always pronounced “Kaybo” in Vevay. The name Moreraud was called “Murrow.”

The map which accompanies this volume was specially prepared for it by Lieut.-Col. Alexander McKenzie of the Corps of Engineers of the United States Army. To his skill, learning, and courtesy I and my readers are indebted for the careful marking of the practically navigable parts of the great river system, and for the calculation of mileage in every case.

G. C. E.

[Contents]

The Last of the Flatboats

[CHAPTER I]

THE RESCUE OF THE PIGS

“Give it up, boys; you’re tired, and you’ve been in the water too long already. And, besides, I’ve decided that this job’s done.”

It was Ed Lowry who spoke. He was lying on the sand under a big sycamore tree that had slid, roots and all, off the river bank above, and now stood leaning like a drunken man trying to stand upright.

Ed was a tall, slender, and not at all robust boy, with a big head, and a tremendous shock of half-curly hair to make it look bigger.

The four boys whom he addressed had been diving in the river and struggling with something under the water, but without success. Three of them accepted Ed’s suggestion, as all of them were accustomed to do, not because he had any particular right to make suggestions to them, but because he was so far the moral and intellectual superior of every boy in town, and was always so wise and kindly and just in his decisions, that they had come to regard his word as a sort of law without themselves quite knowing why.

Three of the boys left the river, therefore, shook the water off their sunburned bodies,—for they had no towels,—and slipped into the loose shirt and cottonade trousers that constituted their sole costume.

The other boy—Ed’s younger brother, Philip—was not so ready to accept suggestions. In response to Ed’s call, he cried out in a sort of mock heroics:—

“Never say die! In the words of the immortal Lawrence, or some other immortal who died a long time ago, ‘Don’t give up the ship!’ I’m going to get that pig if it takes all summer.”

The boys all laughed as they threw themselves down upon the sand by Ed.

“Might as well let him alone,” said Will Moreraud; “he never will quit.”

Meantime Phil had dived three or four times more, each time going down head first, wrestling with the object as long as he could hold his breath, and each time manifestly moving one end or the other of it nearer the shore, and into shallower water, before coming to the surface again.

When he had caught his breath after the third or fourth struggle, he called out:—

“I say, boys, it isn’t a pig at all, but a good average-sized elephant. ‘Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish,’ I’m going to get that animal ashore.”

“He’ll do it, too,” said Constant Thiebaud.

“Of course he will,” drawled Irving Strong. “It’s a way he has. He never gives up anything. Don’t you remember how he stuck to that sum in the arithmetic about that cistern whose idiotic builder had put three different sized pipes to run water into it, and two others of still different sizes to run water out? He worked three weeks over that thing after all the rest of us gave it up and got Mrs. Dupont to show us—and he got it, too.”

“Yes, and he can do it now backwards or forwards or standing on his head,” said Constant Thiebaud; “while there isn’t another boy here that can do it at all.”

“Except Ed Lowry,” said Irving Strong. “But then, he’s different, and knows a whole lot about the higher mathematics, while we’re only in algebra. How is it, Ed? You’ve been sick so much that I don’t believe you ever did go to school more than a month at a time, and yet you’re ahead of all of us.”

Just then Phil came up after a long tussle under the water, and this time stood only a little way from shore where the water was not more than breast high. He cried:—

“Now I’ve ‘met the enemy and it’s ours,’ or words to that effect. I’ve got the elephant into three feet of water, but I can’t ‘personally conduct’ it ashore. Come here, all of you, and help.”

The boys quickly dropped out of their clothes, and went to their comrade’s assistance.

“What is the thing, anyhow?” asked Irving Strong.

“I don’t know,” said Phil. “All I know is that it’s got elbows and wrists and all sorts of burs on it, on which I’ve been skinning my shins for the last half hour; and that it is heavier than one of your compositions, Irv.”

The thing was in water so shallow that all the boys at once could get at it merely by bending forward and plunging their heads and shoulders under the surface. But it was so unwieldy that it took all five of them—for Ed too had joined, as he always did when there was need of him—fully ten minutes to bring it out upon shore.

“I say, boys,” said Ed, “this is a big find. It’s that ferry-boat shaft the iron man told us about, and you remember we are to have fifty dollars for it.”

“Then hurrah for Phil Lowry’s obstinate pertinacity!” said Irving Strong. “That’s what Mrs. Dupont called it when she bracketed his name and mine together on the bulletin-board as ‘Irreclaimable whisperers.’ Phil, you may be irreclaimable, but you’ve proved that this shaft isn’t.”

It was just below the little old town of Vevay on the Ohio River, where Swiss names and some few Swiss customs still survived long after the Swiss settlers of 1805 were buried. To be exact, it was at “The Point,” where all Vevay boys went for their swimming because it lay a little beyond the town limits, and so Joe Peelman, the marshal, could not arrest them for swimming there in daylight without their clothes.

During the high water of the preceding winter a barge loaded with pig-iron had broken in two there and sunk. The strong current quickly carried away what was left of the wrecked barge,—which had been scarcely more than a great oblong box,—leaving the iron to be undermined by the water and to sink into the sand and gravel of the bottom.

The agent who came to look after matters quickly decided that at such a place very little of the cargo could ever be recovered—not enough to justify him in sending a wrecking force there. He thought, too, that by the time of summer low water—for the Ohio runs very low indeed in July and August—the iron would have settled and scattered too much to be worth searching for.

But Phil Lowry not only never liked to give up, he never liked to see anybody else give up. So what he looked upon as the iron man’s weak surrender gave him an idea. He said to the agent:—

“That iron’s where we boys go swimming in summer-time. If we get any of it out during the low water, can we have it? Is it ‘finder’s keeper’?”

“Well, no,” said the man, hesitating. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you boys get out any considerable quantity,—say fifty tons or more,—enough to justify me in sending a steamboat after it, I’ll pay you three dollars a ton salvage for it.”

So the boys formed a salvage copartnership. Long-headed Ed Lowry, in order to avoid misunderstandings, drew up an agreement, and the iron man signed it. It gave the boys entire charge of the wreck, and bound the owner to pay for recovered iron as he had proposed. Just before signing the paper the agent remembered the ferry-boat wheel shaft, which had been a part of the cargo; and as it was a valuable piece of property, which he particularly wanted to recover, he added a clause to the contract agreeing to pay an additional fifty dollars for it, if by any remote chance it should be saved.

During the summer the boys had been specially favored by circumstances. The river had gone down much earlier that year than usual, and it went at last much lower than it had done for many years past. As a consequence they had prospered well in their enterprise. Their pile of iron “pigs” on the shore when the shaft was found amounted to three hundred tons, and the agent was to arrive by the packet that night to pay for it and take possession. This was, therefore, their last day’s work, and thanks to Philip Lowry’s “obstinate pertinacity” it was the most profitable day’s work of them all.

[CHAPTER II]

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

When the wheel shaft was tugged ashore, the boys slipped on their clothes again and retired to the shade of the big sycamore tree, where Ed Lowry had left the book he had been reading. Ed Lowry always had a book within reach.

Philip threw himself down to rest. He was not only tired, he was physically “used up” with his labors under water in tugging first one and then the other end of the heavy shaft toward the shore.

It would have been very hard work even in the open air. Under water, and without breath, it had completely exhausted the boy. Just now he was bent upon sleep. So in spite of the sun glare, and in spite of the chatter around him, and still more, in spite of a sense of triumph which was strong enough in him to have kept anybody else awake, he fell into a profound slumber.

“Well, we’ve finished the job,” said Constant Thiebaud after a while. “What’s the result, Ed?”

Ed Lowry pulled a memorandum out of his pocket and studied it for a while.

“We have saved a trifle over three hundred tons of pig-iron,” he replied, “and for that, at $3.00 a ton, will get a little over $900. We’re to get $50 more for the shaft, which makes $950. It’ll be a trifle more than that, but not enough more to count. My calculation is that we shall have about $190 apiece when the agent settles with us to-night—possibly $195.”

“And a mighty good summer’s work it is,” said Will Moreraud.

“Especially as it’s been all fun,” said Irv Strong, “to a parcel of amphibious Ohio River boys who would have stayed in the water most of the time anyhow. It’s better fun diving after pig-iron than after mussel-shells, isn’t it?”

Irving was the only boy in the party whose people were comparatively well-to-do, and who could therefore afford to think of the fun they had had without much concern for the profits. But Irv Strong had no trace of arrogance in his make-up. He could have dressed, if he had chosen, in much better fashion than any other boy in town. But he chose instead to wear blue cottonade trousers and a tow linen shirt, and to go barefoot just as his comrades did. So in speaking of the pleasure they had had, he put the matter in a way that all could sympathize with. For truly they had had more “fun” as he called it, than ever before in their lives. Ed Lowry could have told them why. He could have explained to them how much a real purpose, an object worth struggling for, adds to the enjoyment people get out of sport; but Ed usually kept his philosophy to himself except when there was a need for it. Just now there was no need. The boys were as happy as possible in the completion of their task, just as they had been as happy as possible in performing it. Satisfaction is better than an explanation at any time, and Ed Lowry knew it.

There was silence for a considerable time. Perhaps all the boys were tired after their hard day’s work. Presently Constant Thiebaud spoke.

“A hundred and ninety dollars apiece! That’s more money than any of us ever saw before. I say, boys, what are we going to do with it?”

There was a pause.

“Let him speak first who can speak best,” said Irv Strong. “So, Ed Lowry, what are you going to do with your share of the money?”

“I’m going shopping with it—shopping for some ‘bargain counter’ health,” replied the tall boy.

“How do you mean?” asked two boys at once, and eagerly.

“Well, my phthisic was very bad last winter, you know. It isn’t phthisic at all, I think. Phthisic is consumption, and I haven’t that—yet.”

He spoke hopefully, rather than confidently. He hoped his malady might not be a fatal one, but sometimes he had doubts.

Let me say here that his hope was better founded than his fear. For at this latter end of the century, Ed Lowry—under his own proper name and not under that which I am hiding him behind in this story—is not only living, but famous. His bodily strength has always been small, but the work he has done in the world with that big brain of his has been very great, and his name—the real one I mean—is familiar to everybody who reads books or cares for American history.

“But whatever it is,” Ed continued, “the doctor wants me to go South for this winter, and now that I’ve got money enough, I’m going to do it.”

“But you haven’t got money enough,” said Irv Strong. “A hundred and ninety dollars won’t much more than pay your steamboat fare to New Orleans and back. What are you going to live on down there—especially if you get sick?”

The irrepressible Phil selected this as the time to wake up. “Well,” he said, sitting up in the sand and locking his muscular arms around his knees, “I’m in this game a little bit myself. I’ve got one whole hundred and ninety dollars’ worth of stake in that big pile of iron; and from Mrs. Dupont down to the last one-suspendered chap in the lot of you, you are all always talking about my ‘obstinate pertinacity.’ Well, my ‘pertinacity’ just now ‘obstinately’ declares that Ed shall take my share in the stake and spend it for his health. He shakes his head, but if he won’t, then I ‘solemnly swear or affirm’ that I’ll take every dollar of it out to the channel there and throw it in. I’ll—”

But Phil had broken down. His affection for his half-invalid brother was the one thing that nothing could ever overcome. He didn’t weep. That is to say, none of the boys saw him shed tears, but instead of finishing the sentence he was uttering, he suddenly became interested in the pebbles along the river shore, fifty yards lower down the stream.

Ed, too, found it difficult just then to say anything. Ed had always been disposed to worry himself about Phil—to regulate him, and when he couldn’t do that, to suffer in his own mind and conscience for his brother’s misdeeds—which, after all, were usually nothing worse than manifestations of excessive boyish enthusiasm, the undue use of slang, and an excessive devotion to purposes which Ed’s calmer temper could not quite approve. Just now Ed had made a new discovery. He had found out something of the rattling, restless, reckless boy’s character which he had never fully known before. For he did not know, as the other boys did, how Phil, a year ago, had waited for half an hour behind the schoolhouse, and armed with stones had wreaked a fearful vengeance upon the big bully twice his size, who had used his strength cruelly to torment Ed’s weakness. That story had been kept from Ed, because it was well understood that he did not approve of fighting; and the boys, who fully sympathized with the little fellow’s animosity against the big bully, didn’t want him censured for his battle and victory.

So there was silence after Phil’s declaration of his purpose, which every boy there knew that he would fulfil to the letter. At last Ed said:—

“On my own share of the money I could go by taking deck passage.”

“Yes,” cried Phil, suddenly reappearing in a sort of wrath that was very unusual with him—“yes, and live on equal terms with a lot of dirty, low-lived wretches—ugh! Now see here, Ed! I’ve told you you are to take my share of the money. If you don’t, I’ll do exactly what I said,—I’ll get it changed into coin, and I’ll drop it into the river at a point where no diving will ever get it. I’ve said my say. I’ll do my do.”

“Look here,” drawled Irv Strong, after a moment. “Let’s all go to New Orleans, and don’t let’s pay any steamboat fare at all except to get back!”

“But how?” asked three boys, in a breath.

“Let’s run a flatboat! In my father’s day, pretty nearly all the hay, grain, bacon, apples, onions, and the like, grown in this part of the country, were sent to New Orleans in flatboats. I don’t see why it wouldn’t pay for us to take a flatboat down the river now. We’ve more than enough money to build and run her, and we can get a cargo, I’ll bet a brass button.”

The boys were all eagerness. They knew, of course, what a flatboat was, but they had seen very few craft of that sort, as the old floating flatboats had almost entirely given place on the Ohio to barges, towed, or rather pushed, by big, stern-wheel steamboats. For the benefit of readers who never saw anything of the kind, let me explain.

A flatboat was simply a big, overgrown, square-bowed and square-sterned scow, with a box-like house built on top. She could carry a very heavy cargo without sinking below her gunwales, and the house on top, with its roof of slightly curved boards, was to hold the cargo. There was a little open space at the bow to let freight in and out, while a part of the deck-house at the stern was made into a little box-like cabin for the crew. The scow part, or boat proper, was strongly built, with great timber gunwales, and a bottom of two-inch plank tightly caulked. The freight-house built on it was so put together that only a few of the planks were required to have nails in them, so that when the boat reached New Orleans she could be sold as lumber for more than she had originally cost.

She was simply floated down the river by the current. There were two big oars, or “sweeps,” as they were called, with which the men by rowing could give the craft steerage way—that is to say, speed enough to let the big steering oar throw her stern around as a rudder does, and guide her course. All this was necessary in making sharp turns in the channel to keep off bars; but as the flatboats usually went down the river only at high stages of water, the chief use of the oars was to make landings.

Ed could have told his comrades some interesting facts concerning the enormous part that the flatboats once played in that commerce which built up the great Western country; but, as Irv Strong said, there was “already a question before the house. That question is, ‘Why can’t we five fellows build a flatboat, load her, and take her down the river?’ We’ll be the ‘hands’ ourselves, and won’t charge ourselves any wages, so we can certainly carry freight cheaper than any steamboat can. We’ll earn some more money, perhaps, and if we don’t, we’ll have lots of fun, and best of all, we’ll ‘bust that broncho,’ or bronchitis of Ed’s—for that’s what it is. They call it phthisic only because that’s the very hardest word in the book to spell.”

The sun was getting low, but the boys were deeply interested. They would have determined upon the project then and there but for Ed’s caution. As it was, they made him a sort of committee of one to inquire into details, to find out what it would cost to build a flatboat, what living expenses would be necessary for her boy crew, what it would cost them for passage back from New Orleans, and on what terms they could get a cargo.

This is how it all began.

[CHAPTER III]

CAPTAIN PHIL

Ed’s report was in all respects favorable to the enterprise. Perry Raymond, who in the old days had built many scores of flatboats, was now too old to undertake an active enterprise. But he told Ed, to the very last board, how much lumber would be required, and the price of every stick in it. He volunteered, as a mere matter of favor and without any charge whatever, to superintend and direct the work of the boys in building a boat for themselves. The result was that they could build a boat for a very small fraction of their money, and Perry promised to show them how to caulk it for themselves.

Ed had seen the principal merchants of the place, also. It was their practice to exchange goods for country produce—any sort that might come to them, whether hay, or onions, or garlic, or butter, or eggs, or wheat, or wool, or corn, or apples, or what not.

It was their business to know pretty accurately how much of each kind of produce they were likely to get during any given season in return for their goods, and how best to market it. They knew to a nicety how much butter and how many eggs or how many bushels of onions or how many pounds of hay they could get for a parasol or a bit of lace or a calico dress or a sack of coffee. Their chief problem was how to sell all these things to the best advantage afterward. Usually they found their best market down the river.

So when Ed Lowry presented the case to them they were quick to see advantage in it. His proposal was that the boys should provide the flatboat and take her to New Orleans at their own expense; that the merchants should furnish a cargo to be sold on commission either at New Orleans or on “the coast,” as the river country for a few hundred miles above that city is called, the boys to have a certain part of the money as freight and a certain other part as “commission.”

Every merchant in town was ready to furnish a part of the cargo, and it seemed altogether probable that the boys would easily secure more freight than they could carry, though their flatboat was to be one of the biggest that ever floated down the river. As she was likely also to be one of the last, coming as she did long after that system of river transportation had been generally abandoned, Irv Strong, in a burst of eloquence, proposed that she should be called The Last of the Flatboats, in order, he said, “that she may take rank with those noble literary productions, ‘The Last of the Barons,’ ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ ‘The Last of the Mamelukes,’ ‘The Last Days of Pompeii,’ and ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel.’”

Ed Lowry laughed, and the other boys voted for the name proposed.

As the boat was nearing completion, a few weeks later, and indeed had already received a part of her cargo, the question arose, who should be her captain.

The first impulse of everybody concerned was to say “Ed Lowry,” but Ed vetoed that.

“I’m an invalid,” he said, “or half an invalid at the best, and this thing isn’t play. There are very serious duties for the captain of a flatboat to do. He must be able to expose himself in all weathers, which I can’t do. He must be ready in resource and very quick to decide. In an emergency, it is far more important to have a quick decision than a wise one, and especially to have the one who decides a resolute person who will carry his decision into effect.”

“I see,” said Irving Strong. “What we need in a captain is ‘obstinate pertinacity.’ I move that Phil Lowry, as the possessor of a large and varied stock of that commodity, be made captain of The Last of the Flatboats.”

As Phil was the very youngest of the group, and as he had always been regarded rather as a ready than a discreet thinker, there was a moment’s hesitation. But a little thought convinced every one of the boys that Phil was by all odds the one among them best fit to undertake the difficult task of command—the one most likely to bring the enterprise to a successful termination, especially if any serious difficulties should arise, as was pretty certain to happen.

“It’s an awful responsibility for Phil to assume,” said Ed that night to their widowed mother, a woman of unusual wisdom.

“Yes,” she replied; “but, after all, he is the one best fit, and that ought to be the only ground on which men or boys are selected for places of responsibility. Besides, it will educate Philip in much that he needs to learn. No matter what happens on the voyage, he will come back the better for it. He ought to have the discipline that responsibility gives. The one lesson he most needs to learn is that he is not merely an individual, but a part of a whole: that his conduct in any case affects others as well as himself, and that he is, therefore, responsible to others and for others. It is well that you boys have made him your captain. Now remember to hold up his hands and obey him loyally in every case of doubt. That will be hard for you, Edward, because of your superior knowledge—”

“No, it won’t, mother, pardon me,” responded Ed: “first, because I know too much about some things not to know that other people know more than I do about others; and secondly, because I thoroughly understand what Napoleon meant when he said that ‘one bad general in command of an army is better than two good ones.’ The most unwise order promptly executed usually results better than the wisest order left open to debate. Phil will never leave things open to debate when the time comes for quick action, and besides, mother, I have a much better opinion of Phil’s capacity for command than you think. His readiness and resourcefulness are remarkable. He may or he may not get us safely to New Orleans. But if he doesn’t, I shall be perfectly certain that nobody else in the party could.”

So it was that Phil Lowry, the youngest of the party, and the most harum-scarum boy in all Vevay, was chosen captain of The Last of the Flatboats by those who were to voyage with him, simply because they all believed him to be the one best fit for the place.

[CHAPTER IV]

A HURRY CALL

Without theorizing about it, and, indeed, without knowing the fact, Phil began at once to rise to his responsibility. The success of the enterprise, he felt, depended in a large degree upon him, and he must think of everything necessary in advance.

One night, late in September, he asked his comrades to meet him “on business” in Will Moreraud’s room over a store. When they were all gathered around the little pine table with a smoky lamp on it, Phil drew out a carefully prepared memorandum and laid it before him. Then he began:—

“As you’ve made me responsible in this business, I’ve been studying up a little. The river’s going to rise earlier than usual this year, and in two weeks at most there’ll be water enough to get the boat over the falls at Louisville.”

“How do you know that?” broke in Constant Thiebaud, incredulously.

“Because there has already been a smart rise all along, as you know, and heavy rains are falling in the West Virginia and Pennsylvania mountains. The Allegheny River is bank full; the Monongahela is over its banks; and the Muskingum and the Big Kanawha and the Little Kanawha are all rising fast. There’ll be lots of water here almost before we know it.”

“Whew!” cried Irving Strong, rising,—for he could never sit still when anything interesting was under discussion,—“but how in the name of all the ’ologies do you know what’s going on in the Virginia mountains, and the rivers, and all that?”

“I’ve been reading the Cincinnati papers every day since you made me ‘It’; that’s all. Mr. Schenck lends them to me.”

“Well, Gee Whillicks!” exclaimed Constant, “who’d ’a’ thought of that!”

“No matter,” said Phil, a little abashed by the approbation of his foresight which he saw in all the boys’ eyes and heard in all their voices. “No matter about that; but I’ve more to say. The sooner we can get away with the flatboat, the better.”

“Why? What difference does it make?”

“Well, for most of the things we are taking as freight the prices are apt to be much higher in the fall than later, after the steamboats load up the market. That’s what Mr. Shaw says, and he knows. So we must get the boat loaded just as quickly as we can, and go out as soon as there is water enough to get her over the falls.”

“But we can’t do that,” said Ed, “because most of the produce we are to take hasn’t been brought to town yet. The hay is here, of course, but apples have hardly begun to come in—”

“That’s just what I’m coming to,” interrupted Phil. “I’ve been studying all that. We could get enough freight for two cargoes by waiting for it, but the best figuring I can do shows only about three-quarters of a load now actually in town. I propose that we go to work to-morrow and get the other quarter. That’s what I called you together for.”

“Where are we to get it?”

“Along the river, below town—in the neighborhood of Craig’s Landing.”

“But how?” asked Ed.

“By hustling. I’ve made out a list of everybody that produces anything for ten miles down the river and five miles back into the hills,—Mr. Larcom, Captain John Wright, Johnny Lampson, Mr. Albritton, Gersham McCallum and his brother Neil, Algy Wright, Mr. Minnit, Dr. Caine, Mr. Violet—and so on. Craig’s Landing is the nearest there is to all of them, and they can all get their produce there quickly. I propose that every boy in the crew take his foot in his hand early to-morrow morning, and that we visit every farmer in the list and persuade him to send his stuff to the landing at once. I’ve already seen Captain Wright,—saw him in town to-day,—and he promises me thirty barrels of apples and seventy bushels of onions with some other things. I’ll go myself to Johnny Lampson. He has at least a hundred barrels of apples, and I’ll get them. They aren’t picked yet, but I’ll offer him our services to pick them immediately for low wages, and so—”

“I say, boys!” broke in Irv Strong, “I move three cheers for ‘obstinate pertinacity.’ It’s the thing that ‘goes’ in this sort of business.”

“And in most others,” quietly rejoined Ed Lowry. “I’m afraid I’ve never properly appreciated it till now.”

Phil had some other details to suggest, for he had been trying very earnestly to think of everything needful.

They would need some skiffs, and he reported that Perry Raymond had six new ones, of his own building, which he proposed to let them have as a part of the cargo. They were to use any of them as needed on the voyage, and their use was to offset freight charges. They were to sell the skiffs at New Orleans or above, and to have a part of the proceeds as commission.

“I move we accept the offer,” said Will Moreraud. “It’s a good one.”

“It is already accepted,” replied the young captain a trifle sharply. “I closed the bargain at once.”

His tone was not arrogant, but it was authoritative. It was a new one for him to take, and it rather surprised the boys, but on the whole it did not displease them. It meant that their young captain intended to be something more effective than the chairman of a debating club; that having been asked to assume authority, he purposed to exercise it; that being in command, he meant to command in fact as well as in name.

Some of them talked the matter over later that evening, and though they felt a trifle resentful at first, they finally concluded that the boy’s new attitude promised well for the enterprise, and, better still, that it was right.

“You see he isn’t ‘cocky’ about it at all,” said Will Moreraud; “it just means that in this game he’s ‘It,’ and he’s going to give the word.”

“It means a good deal more than that,” said shrewd Irv Strong, who had been born the son of an officer in a regular army post. “It means we’ve picked out the right fellow to be our ‘It,’ and I, for one, stand ready to support him with my eyes shut, every time!”

“So do I,” cried out all the lads in chorus. “Only you see,” said Constant, “we didn’t quite expect it from Phil. Well—maybe if we had, we’d have voted still louder for him for captain; that is, if we’ve got any real sense.”

“It means,” said Ed, gravely, “that if we fail to get The Last of the Flatboats safely to New Orleans, it will be our own fault, not his.”

“That’s so,” said Irving Strong. “But who’d ever have expected that rattlepate to think out everything as he has done?”

“And to be so desperately in earnest about it, too!” said another.

“Well, I don’t know,” responded Irving. “You remember how he stuck to that cistern sum. It’s his way, only he’s never before had so serious a matter as this to deal with, and I imagine we have never quite known what stuff he’s made of.”

“Anyhow,” said Will, “we’re ‘his to command,’ and we’ll see him through.”

With a shout of applause for this sentiment the boys separated for sleep.

[CHAPTER V]

ON THE BANKS OF THE WONDERFUL RIVER

It was a busy fortnight that followed. The boys visited every farmer within six miles of the landing to secure whatever freight he might be willing to furnish. They picked and barrelled all of Lampson’s apples, dug and bagged and barrelled all the potatoes in that neighborhood, and got together many small lots of onions, garlic, dried beans, and the like, including about ten barrels of eggs. These last they collected in baskets, a few dozen from each farm, and packed them at the landing. Of course every shipper’s freight had to be separately marked and receipted for, so that the proper returns might be made.

During all this time the boys had lived in a camp of their own making at the landing, partly to guard the freight against thieves, partly to get used to cooking, etc., for themselves, partly to learn to “rough it,” generally, and more than all because, being healthy-minded boys, they liked camping for its own sake.

Their little shelter was on the shore, just under the bank. They occupied it only during rains. At other times they lived night and day in the open air. They worked all day, of course, leaving one of their number on guard, but when night came, they had what Homer calls a “great bearded fire,” built against a fallen sycamore tree of gigantic size, and after supper they sat by it chatting till it was time to sleep.

They were usually tired, but they were excited also, and that often kept them awake pretty late. The vision of the voyage had taken hold upon their imaginations. They pictured to themselves the calm joy of floating fifteen hundred miles and more down the great river, of seeing strange, subtropical regions that had hitherto been but names to them, seeming as remote as the Nile country itself until now.

And as they thought, they talked, but mainly their talk consisted of questions fired at Ed Lowry, who was very justly suspected of knowing about ten times as much about most things as anybody else in the company.

Finally, one night Irv Strong got to “supposing” things and asking Ed about them.

“Suppose we run on a sawyer,” he said. Ed had been telling them about that particularly dangerous sort of snag.

“Well,” said Ed, “we’ll try to avoid that, by keeping as nearly as we can in the channel.”

“But suppose we find that a particularly malignant sawyer has squatted down in the middle of the channel, and is laying for us there?”

“I doubt if sawyers often do that,” said Ed, meditatively.

“Well, but suppose one cantankerous old sawyer should do so,” insisted Irv. “You can ‘suppose a case’ and make a sawyer anywhere you please, can’t you?”

Everybody laughed. Then Ed said: “Now listen to me, boys. I’ve been getting together all the books I can borrow that tell anything about the country we’re going through, and I’ll have them all on board. My plan is to lie on my back in the shade somewhere and read them while you fellows pull at the oars, cook the meals, and do the work generally. Then, when you happen to have a little leisure, as you will now and then, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned by my reading.”

“Oh, that’s your plan, is it?” asked Phil.

“Yes, I’ve thought it all out carefully,” laughed Ed.

“Well, you’ll find out before we get far down the river what the duties of a flatboat hand are, and you’ll do ’em, too, ‘accordin’ to the measure of your strength,’ as old Mr. Moon always says in experience meeting.”

“But reading and telling us about it is what Ed can do best,” said Will Moreraud, “and that’s what we’re taking him along for.”

“Not a bit of it,” quickly responded Phil. “We’re taking him along to make him well and strong like the rest of us, and I’m going to keep him off his back and on his feet as much as possible, and besides—”

“But, Phil, old fellow,” Ed broke in, “didn’t you understand that I was only joking?”

Ed asked the question with a tender solicitude to which Phil responded promptly.

“Of course I did,” he replied. “You always do your share in everything, and sometimes more. But I don’t think you understand. You know we started this thing for you. I don’t know—maybe you’ll never get well if we don’t do our best to make you—” but Phil had choked up by this time, and he broke away from the group and went down by the river. A little later Ed joined him there and, grasping his hand, said:—

“I understand, old fellow.”

“No, you don’t; at least not quite,” replied the boy, who had now recovered control of his voice. “You see it’s this way. You and I are twins. You’re some years older than I am, of course, but we’ve always been twins just the same.”

“Yes, I understand all that, and feel it.”

“No, not all,” persisted the younger boy. “You see I’ve got all the health there is between us, and it isn’t fair. If you should—well, if anything should happen to you, I’d never forgive myself for not finding out some way of dividing health with you—”

“But, my dear brother—” broke in Ed.

“Don’t interrupt me, now,” said Phil, almost hysterically, “because I must tell you this so that you will understand. When we made up this scheme and you fellows chose me captain, I got to thinking how much depended on me. There was the cargo, representing other people’s money, and I was responsible for that. There was the safety of the boat and crew, and that depended upon me, too. But these weren’t the heavy things to me. There was your health! That depended on me in a fearful way. I felt that I must find out what was best for you to do and then make you do it.” He laughed a little. “That sounds funny, doesn’t it? The idea of my ‘making’ you do things!—Never mind that. I went to Dr. Gale—”

“What for?” asked Ed, in astonishment at this new revelation of the change in Phil’s happy-go-lucky ways.

“To find out just what it would be best for you to do and not to do, in order to make you well and strong like me.” He choked a little, but presently recovered himself and continued. “I found out, and I mean to make you do the things that will save you, even if you hate me for my—”

He could say no more. There was no need. Ed, with his ready mind and big, generous heart, understood, though he wondered. He grasped his brother’s hand again and said, between something like sobs:—

“And I’ll obey you, Phil! Thank you, and God bless you! Be sure I could never hate you or do anything but love you, and you must always know that I understand.”

Then the two turned away from each other.

On their return to Vevay a few evenings later, Ed said to his mother:—

“You were right, mother; responsibility has already worked a miracle in Phil’s character.”

“No, you are wrong,” said the wise mother. “It is only that you have never quite understood your brother until now. Nothing really changes character—at least nothing changes it suddenly. Circumstances do not alter the character of men or women or boys. They only call out what is already there. Responsibility and his great affection for you have not changed your brother in the least. They have only served to make you acquainted with him as you never were before.”

“Be very sure I shall never misunderstand him again!” said the boy, with an earnestness not to be mistaken.

LOADING THE FLATBOAT.
“They worked like beavers getting cargo aboard.”

[CHAPTER VI]

THE PILOT

The boys went hurriedly back to Vevay. They had cargo enough and to spare. Indeed, they feared they might have difficulty in bestowing it all on their boat. And the rise in the river was coming even earlier and faster than Phil had calculated. They must get the Vevay part of their load on board and drop down to Craig’s Landing before the water should reach their freight there, which lay near the river. So they hired a farm hand to watch the goods at the landing and hastened to town.

There they worked like beavers, getting cargo aboard, for it was no part of their plan to waste money hiring anybody to do for them anything that they could do for themselves. They loaded the boat under Perry Raymond’s supervision, for even the tightest and stiffest boat can be made to leak like a sieve if badly loaded.

Finally, everything was ready. The town part of the cargo was well bestowed. Ed Lowry had deposited his books on top of tiers of hay bales, in between barrels, and in every other available space, for there was no room for them in the little cabin at the stern, where the boys must cook, eat, sleep, and live. The cabin wasn’t over twelve feet by ten in dimensions, and a large part of its space was taken up by the six sleeping-bunks. For besides themselves there was a pilot to be provided for.

His name was Jim Hughes. Beyond that nobody knew anything about him. He had come to Vevay, from nowhere in particular, only a few days before the flatboat’s departure, and asked to be taken as pilot. He was willing to go in that capacity without wages. He wanted “to get down the river,” he said, and professed to know the channels fairly well.

“If he does,” said Ed Lowry, “he knows a good deal more than most of the old-time flatboat pilots did. With the maps I’ve secured I think we can float the boat down the river without much need of a pilot anyhow. But as Hughes offers to go for his passage, we might as well take him along. We may get into a situation where his knowledge of the river, if he has any, will be of use to us.”

So Jim Hughes was shipped as pilot of The Last of the Flatboats.

When all was ready that gallant craft was cast loose at the Ferry street landing, and as she drifted into the strong current, there was a cheer from the boys on shore who had assembled to see their schoolmates off.

“She floats upon the bosom of the waters,” cried Irv Strong, “with all the grace of a cow learning to dance the hornpipe.”

Irv was in exuberant spirits, as he always was in fact. He was like soda water with all its fizz in it, no matter what the circumstances might be, and just now the circumstances were altogether favorable.

“I say, boys,” he cried, “let’s have a little dance on deck! Tune up your fiddle, Constant.”

Constant dived into the cabin and quickly returned with his violin, playing a jig even as he emerged from the little trap-door at the top of the steps.

Phil did not join in the dance, for he had discovered a cause of anxiety. Their pilot was making a great show of activity where none whatever was needed. From the Ferry street landing to “The Point” the current ran swiftly in a straight line, and if let alone, the boat would have gone in precisely the right direction. But Hughes was not letting her alone. With long sweeps of his great steering-oar he was driving her out dangerously near the head of the bar, now under water but still a shoal.

Phil, who was observing closely, called out:—

“I say, Jim, you must run further inshore, or you’ll hit the head of the bar.”

“Lem me alone,” said Jim. “I know the river.”

Just then the boat scraped bottom on the bar. Phil called out quickly:—

“All hands to the larboard oars! Give it to her hard!” and himself seizing the steering oar, he managed by a hair’s breadth to swing the great box—for that is all that a flatboat is—into the deep and rapid channel near the Indiana shore.

As she drifted into safe water, Phil said:—

“That’s incident number one in the voyage.”

“Yes, and it came pretty near being chapter first and last in the log-book of The Last of the Flatboats,” replied Irv Strong.

For several miles now there was nothing to do but float. But Phil was closely watching Jim Hughes and observed that that worthy made three visits to the hold,—as the cargo part of the boat is called,—going down each time by the forward ladder and not by the stairs leading to the cabin.

When the boat reached the big eddy about half a mile above Craig’s Landing, it was necessary for all hands to go to the oars again in order to make the landing.

Presently Phil observed that Hughes was steering wildly. His efforts with the steering oar were throwing the boat far out into the river, away from the shore on which they were to land, and directly toward the head of a strong channel which at this stage of water ran like a mill-race along the Kentucky shore on the farther side of Craig’s bar. Should the boat be sucked into that channel, she would be carried many miles down the stream before she could ever be landed even on the wrong side of the river, and she could never come back to Craig’s Landing unless towed back by a steamboat.

Phil, seeing the danger, asked: “Why don’t you keep her inshore?”

“None o’ yer business. I’m steerin’,” answered the pilot.

One quick, searching glance showed Phil the extent of the man’s drunkenness,—or his pretence of drunkenness,—for Phil had doubts of it. There were certain indications lacking. Yet if the fellow was shamming, he was doing it exceedingly well. His tongue seemed thick, his eyes glazed, and his walk across the deck appeared to be a mere stagger, supported by the great oar that he was wielding to such mischievous effect.

There was not a moment to be lost if the landing was to be made at all. Phil called all the boys to the larboard sweep and went to take possession of the steering-oar. Jim Hughes resisted violently. Phil, with a quietude that nobody had ever before seen him display under strong excitement, picked up a bit of board from the deck, and instantly knocked the big hulking fellow down by a blow on the head.

The man did not get up again or indeed manifest consciousness in any way. If this troubled the boy, as of course it must, he at least did not let it interfere with his duty. He had a difficult task to do and he must do it quickly. He gave his whole mind to that. The boys obeyed with a will his shouted orders to “pull hard!” then for two of them to go to the starboard oar and “back like killing snakes.” In a little while the boat swung round, and Phil called to Will Moreraud to “take a line ashore in the skiff and make it fast.” The youth did so, just in time to prevent the boat from grounding in the shoal water below the landing.

When everything was secure and the strenuous work done, the boy sank down upon the deck and called to his brother.

“See if I’ve killed him, won’t you, Ed? I can’t.”

A very slight examination showed that, while the blow from the bit of plank had brought some blood from the pilot’s head, it had done no serious damage. His stupor, it was Ed’s opinion, was due to whiskey, not to his chastisement.

Nevertheless it was a very bad beginning to the voyage, and Phil was strongly disposed to discharge the fellow then and there, and trust, as he put it, to “a good map, open eyes, and ordinary common sense, as better pilots than a drunken lout who probably doesn’t know the river even when he is sober.”

But the other boys dissuaded him. They thought that Jim’s intoxication was the result of his joy at getting off; that they could find his jug in its hiding-place and throw it overboard,—which presently they did,—and that after he should get sober, Jim’s experience in flat-boating might be of great advantage to them.

“You see,” said Ed Lowry, “we’ve taken a big responsibility. All this freight, worth thousands of dollars, belongs to other people, and I suppose half of it isn’t even insured because the rates on flatboats are so high. Think if we should lose it for lack of a pilot!”

“Yes, think of that!” said two or three in a breath.

“Very well,” said Phil. “I yield to your judgment. But my own opinion is that such a pilot is worse than none. I’ll keep him for the present. But I’ll watch him, and if he gets any more whiskey or plays us any more tricks, I’ll set him ashore once for all if it’s in the middle of an Arkansas swamp.”

The river was rising now, more and more rapidly every hour. There was three days’ work to do getting the rest of the cargo aboard and making room for it in the crowded hold. But at Ed Lowry’s suggestion the boys avoided overtaxing themselves. The energetic Swiss blood in the veins of Constant Thiebaud and Will Moreraud prompted them to favor long hours for work on the plea that they could make it up by rest while floating down the river.

But under Ed’s advice Phil overruled them, and it was decided to breakfast at six o’clock, work from seven to twelve, dine, rest for an hour, and work again till five.

[CHAPTER VII]

TALKING

The pleasantest part of the day, under this arrangement, was that between five o’clock and bedtime.

The boys talked then, and talking is about the very best thing that anybody ever does. It is by talk that we come to know those about us and make ourselves known to them. It is by talk that we learn to like our fellows, by learning what there is in them worth liking. And it is by talk mainly that we find out what we think and correct our thinking.

Ed Lowry was reading a book one day, when suddenly he looked up and said:—

“I say, fellows, this is good. Lord Macaulay said he never knew what he thought about any subject until he had talked about it. Of course that’s so with all of us, when you come to think of it.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Phil. “I often talk about things and don’t know what I think about ’em even after I’ve talked. Here’s this big bond robbery, for example. I’ve read all about it in the Cincinnati newspapers and I’ve talked you fellows deaf, dumb, and blind concerning it. Yet, I don’t know even now what I think about it.”

“I know what I think,” said Will Moreraud. “I think the detectives are ‘all off.’”

“How?” asked all the boys in chorus.

“Well, they’re trying to find the man who is supposed to be carrying the plunder. It seems to me they’d better look for the other fellows first; for if they were caught, they’d soon enough tell where the man that carries it is. They wouldn’t go to jail and leave him with the stuff.”

“The worst of it is they’re publishing descriptions of the fellow and even of what they’ve noticed concerning his clothes and beard, as if a thief that was up to a game like that wouldn’t change his clothes and part his hair differently and wear a different sort of beard, especially after he’s been told what they’re looking for.”

“Yes, that’s so,” said Irving Strong, reading from one of Phil’s Cincinnati newspapers:

“‘Red hair’—a man might dye that—‘parted on the left side and brushed forward’—he might part it in the middle and brush it back, or have it all cut off with one of those mowing machines the barbers use, just as Jim Hughes does with his—”

“Now I come to think of it,” continued Irv, after a moment’s thought, “Jim answers the description in several ways,—limps a little with his left leg, has red hair when he permits himself to have any hair at all, has lost a front tooth, and speaks with a slight lisp.”

“Oh, Jim Hughes isn’t a bank burglar,” exclaimed Will Moreraud. “He hasn’t sense enough for anything of that sort.”

“Of course not,” said Irv. “I didn’t mean to suggest anything of the kind. I merely cited his peculiarities to show how easily a detective’s description might lead men into mistakes. Why, Jim might even be arrested on that description.”

“But all that isn’t what Macaulay meant,” said Ed. “He meant that a man never really knows what he thinks about any subject till he has put his thought into words and then turned it over and looked at it and found out exactly what it is.”

“I guess that’s so,” drawled Irv. “I notice that whenever I try to think seriously—”

The boys all laughed. The idea of Irv Strong’s thinking seriously seemed peculiarly humorous to them.

“Well, I do try sometimes,” said Irv, “and whenever I do, I put the whole thing into the exactest words I can find. Very often, when I get it into exact words, I find that my opinions won’t hang together and I’ve got to reconstruct them.”

“Exactly!” said Ed Lowry. “And that is the great difficulty animals have in trying to think. They haven’t any words even in their minds. They can’t put their thoughts into form so as to examine them. It seems to me that language is necessary to any real thinking, and that it is the possession of language more than anything or everything else that makes man really the lord of creation.”

“Yes,” said Phil. “Even Bre’r Rabbit and Bre’r Fox and all the rest of them are represented as putting their thoughts into words.”

“Perhaps,” said Irv, “that’s the reason why educated people think more soundly than uneducated ones. They have a nicer sense of the meaning of words.”

“Of course,” said Ed. “I suppose that is what President Eliot of Harvard meant when he said that ‘the object of education is to teach a man to express his thought clearly in his own language.’”

“Very well,” said Phil. “My own thought, clearly expressed in my own language, is that it’s time for supper. Come, stir your stumps, ye philosophical pundits! Bring me the skillet and the frying-pan, the salt pork to fry, and prepare the apples and potatoes and eggs to cook in the fat thereof. In the classic language of our own time, get a move on you, and don’t forget the coffeepot; nor yet the coffee that is to be steeped therein!”

The boys were ready enough to respond. Their appetites, sharpened by hard work in the open air, were clamorously keen. The supper promised—fried pork, fried apples, fried eggs, and coffee with a short-cake—seemed to them quite all that could be desired in the way of luxury. They could eat it with relish, and sleep in entire comfort afterward. Probably not one of my readers in a hundred could digest such a supper at all. That is because not one reader in a hundred gives himself a chance for robust health by working nine hours a day and living almost entirely in the open air.

Jim came out when supper was ready and helped eat it there on the shore. At other than mealtimes it was his custom to stay on board the flatboat, and not only so, but to keep himself below decks, although the weather was still very warm. He had got over his drunkenness, but he was still moody, apparently in resentment of the rough-and-ready treatment he had received at Phil’s hands.

He rarely talked at all; when he did talk, it was usually in the dialect of an entirely uneducated person. But now and then he used expressions that no such person would employ.

“He seems to slip into his grammar now and then,” was Irv Strong’s way of putting it.

[CHAPTER VIII]

THE RIGHT TO THE RIVER

By the time that the last of the cargo was bestowed, the boat was so full that there was scarcely a place in which to hang the four fire-extinguishers which Mr. Schenck had supplied for the protection of the cargo, of which he owned a considerable part.

The river by this time was bank full. Indeed, the flatboat lay that last night almost under an apple tree, and directly over the place where three days before the boys had cooked their meals.

When the final start was made, therefore, it was only necessary to give three or four strokes of the great “sweeps” to shove the craft out into the stream. After that she was left free to float. The biggest bars were at least ten feet under water, and the boat “drew” less than three feet, heavily laden as she was. For the rest, the current could be depended upon to “keep her in the river,” as boatmen say, and the boys had nothing to do, between Craig’s Landing and Louisville, fifty or sixty miles below, except pump a little now and then, cook their meals, and set up the proper lights at night. Of course someone was always “on watch,” but as the time was divided between the five, that amounted to very little.

As the boat neared Louisville, Ed suggested to his brother that he had better land above the town, and not within its limits.

“Why?” asked Phil. “We’ve got to get some provisions as well as hire a falls pilot, and it will be more convenient if we land at the levee.”

“But it will cost us five or ten dollars in good money for wharfage,” replied Ed.

“But if we land above the town, how do we know the man owning the land on which we tie up won’t charge us just as much?” asked Irv Strong, who had never seen a large city and wanted to get as good a glimpse as he could of this one.

“Because the Mississippi River and its tributaries are not ‘navigable’ waters, but are ‘public highways for purposes of commerce,’” responded Ed. “If they weren’t that last, we couldn’t run this boat down them at all.”