“Who’s on watch down there?”
A hollow, unhuman voice rumbled up through the tube in answer:
“I am. Second engineer.”
“Good! You want to stir your stumps, now, Harry–the Amaranth’s just
turned the point–and she’s just a–humping herself, too!”
The pilot took hold of a rope that stretched out forward, jerked it
twice, and two mellow strokes of the big bell responded. A voice out on
the deck shouted:
“Stand by, down there, with that labboard lead!”
“No, I don’t want the lead,” said the pilot, “I want you. Roust out the
old man–tell him the Amaranth’s coming. And go and call Jim–tell him.”
“Aye-aye, sir!”
The “old man” was the captain–he is always called so, on steamboats and
ships; “Jim” was the other pilot. Within two minutes both of these men
were flying up the pilothouse stairway, three steps at a jump. Jim was
in his shirt sleeves,–with his coat and vest on his arm. He said:
“I was just turning in. Where’s the glass”
He took it and looked:
“Don’t appear to be any night-hawk on the jack-staff–it’s the Amaranth,
dead sure!”
The captain took a good long look, and only said:
“Damnation!”
George Davis, the pilot on watch, shouted to the night-watchman on deck:
“How’s she loaded?”
“Two inches by the head, sir.”
“‘T ain’t enough!”
The captain shouted, now:
“Call the mate. Tell him to call all hands and get a lot of that sugar
forrard–put her ten inches by the head. Lively, now!”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
A riot of shouting and trampling floated up from below, presently, and
the uneasy steering of the boat soon showed that she was getting “down by
the head.”
The three men in the pilot house began to talk in short, sharp sentences,
low and earnestly. As their excitement rose, their voices went down.
As fast as one of them put down the spy-glass another took it up–but
always with a studied air of calmness. Each time the verdict was:
“She’s a gaining!”
The captain spoke through the tube:
“What steam are You carrying?”
“A hundred and forty-two, sir! But she’s getting hotter and hotter all
the time.”
The boat was straining and groaning and quivering like a monster in pain.
Both pilots were at work now, one on each side of the wheel, with their
coats and vests off, their bosoms and collars wide open and the
perspiration flowing down heir faces. They were holding the boat so
close to the shore that the willows swept the guards almost from stem to
stern.
“Stand by!” whispered George.
“All ready!” said Jim, under his breath.
“Let her come!”
The boat sprang away, from the bank like a deer, and darted in a long
diagonal toward the other shore. She closed in again and thrashed her
fierce way along the willows as before. The captain put down the glass:
“Lord how she walks up on us! I do hate to be beat!”
“Jim,” said George, looking straight ahead, watching the slightest yawing
of the boat and promptly meeting it with the wheel, “how’ll it do to try
Murderer’s Chute?”
“Well, it’s–it’s taking chances. How was the cottonwood stump on the
false point below Boardman’s Island this morning?”
“Water just touching the roots.”
“Well it’s pretty close work. That gives six feet scant in the head of
Murderer’s Chute. We can just barely rub through if we hit it exactly
right. But it’s worth trying. She don’t dare tackle it!”–meaning the
Amaranth.
In another instant the Boreas plunged into what seemed a crooked creek,
and the Amaranth’s approaching lights were shut out in a moment. Not a
whisper was uttered, now, but the three men stared ahead into the shadows
and two of them spun the wheel back and forth with anxious watchfulness
while the steamer tore along. The chute seemed to come to an end every
fifty yards, but always opened out in time. Now the head of it was at
hand. George tapped the big bell three times, two leadsmen sprang to
their posts, and in a moment their weird cries rose on the night air and
were caught up and repeated by two men on the upper deck:
“No-o bottom!”
“De-e-p four!”