Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing himself at the very moment
that Rogers had originally spoken.
I retorted that the idea would have occurred to me plenty soon enough,
and without anybody’s help. I was slow about thinking, maybe, but I was sure.
This matter warmed up into a quarrel; then into a fight; and each man
got pretty badly battered. As soon as I had got myself mended up after
a fashion, I ascended to the hurricane deck in a pretty sour humor.
I found Captain McCord there, and said, as pleasantly as my humor would permit–
‘I have come to say good-bye, captain. I wish to go ashore at Napoleon.’
‘Go ashore where?’
‘Napoleon.’
The captain laughed; but seeing that I was not in a jovial mood,
stopped that and said–
‘But are you serious?’
‘Serious? I certainly am.’
The captain glanced up at the pilot-house and said–
‘He wants to get off at Napoleon!’
‘Napoleon ?’
‘That’s what he says.’
‘Great Caesar’s ghost!’
Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The captain said–
‘Uncle, here’s a friend of yours wants to get off at Napoleon!’
‘Well, by —-?’
I said–
‘Come, what is all this about? Can’t a man go ashore at Napoleon
if he wants to?’
‘Why, hang it, don’t you know? There ISN’T any Napoleon any more.
Hasn’t been for years and years. The Arkansas River burst through it,
tore it all to rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi!’
‘Carried the WHOLE town away?-banks, churches, jails,
newspaper-offices, court-house, theater, fire department,
livery stable EVERYTHING ?’
‘Everything. just a fifteen-minute job.’ or such a matter.
Didn’t leave hide nor hair, shred nor shingle of it, except the
fag-end of a shanty and one brick chimney. This boat is paddling
along right now, where the dead-center of that town used to be;
yonder is the brick chimney-all that’s left of Napoleon.
These dense woods on the right used to be a mile back of the town.
Take a look behind you–up-stream–now you begin to recognize
this country, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most wonderful thing I ever heard of;
by a long shot the most wonderful–and unexpected.’
Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, meantime, with satchels
and umbrellas, and had silently listened to the captain’s news.
Thompson put a half-dollar in my hand and said softly–
‘For my share of the chromo.’
Rogers followed suit.
Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rolling
between unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where I
used to see a good big self-complacent town twenty years ago.
Town that was county-seat of a great and important county; town with
a big United States marine hospital; town of innumerable fights–
an inquest every day; town where I had used to know the prettiest girl,
and the most accomplished in the whole Mississippi Valley;
town where we were handed the first printed news of the ‘Pennsylvania’s’
mournful disaster a quarter of a century ago; a town no more–
swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes; nothing left but a
fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney!
Chapter 33
Refreshments and Ethics
IN regard to Island 74, which is situated not far from the former Napoleon,
a freak of the river here has sorely perplexed the laws of men and made
them a vanity and a jest. When the State of Arkansas was chartered,
she controlled ‘to the center of the river’–a most unstable line. The State
of Mississippi claimed ‘to the channel’–another shifty and unstable line.
No. 74 belonged to Arkansas. By and by a cut-off threw this big island out
of Arkansas, and yet not within Mississippi. ‘Middle of the river’ on one
side of it, ‘channel’ on the other. That is as I understand the problem.
Whether I have got the details right or wrong, this FACT remains:
that here is this big and exceedingly valuable island of four thousand acres,
thrust out in the cold, and belonging to neither the one State nor the other;
paying taxes to neither, owing allegiance to neither. One man owns
the whole island, and of right is ‘the man without a country.’