Читать книгу "Bring Me His Ears" - Clarence Edward Mulford - Страница 6

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TOM CHANGES HIS PLANS

Dawn broke dull and cold, but without much wind, and when Tom awakened he heard the churning of the great paddle wheel, the almost ceaseless jangling of the engine room bell and the complaining squeaks of the hard-worked steering gear. A faint whistle sounded from up river, was answered by the Missouri Belle, and soon the latter lost headway while the two pilots exchanged their information concerning the river. Again the paddles thumped and thrashed and the boat shook as it gathered momentum.

On deck he found a few early risers, wrapped in coats and blankets against the chill of the morning hour. The overcast sky was cold and forbidding; the boiling, scurrying surface of the river, sullen and threatening. Going up to the hurricane deck he poked his head in the pilot house.

"Come on in," said the pilot "We won't go fur today. See that?"

Tom nodded. The small clouds of sand were easily seen by eyes such as his and as he nodded a sudden gust tore the surface of the river into a speeding army of wavelets.

"Peterson jest hollered over an' said Clay Point's an island now, an' that th' cut-off is bilin' like a rapids. Told me to look out for th' whirlpool. They're bad, sometimes."

"To a boat like this?" asked Tom in surprise.

"Yep. We give 'em all a wide berth." The wheel rolled over quickly and the V-shaped, tormented ripple ahead swung away from the bow. "That's purty nigh to th' surface," commented the pilot. "Jest happened to swing up an' show its break in time. Hope we kin git past Clay before th' wind drives us to th' bank. Look there!"

A great, low-lying cloud of sand suddenly rose high into the air like some stricken thing, its base riven and torn into long streamers that whipped and writhed. The gliding water leaped into short, angry waves, which bore down on the boat with remarkable speed. As the blast struck the Missouri Belle she quivered, heeled a bit, slowed momentarily, and then bore into it doggedly, but her side drift was plain to the pilot's experienced eyes.

"We got plenty o' room out here fer sidin'," he observed; "but 'twon't be long afore th' water'll look th' same all over. We're in fer a bad day." As he spoke gust after gust struck the water, and he headed the boat into the heavier waves. "Got to keep to th' deepest water now," he explained. "Th' snags' telltales are plumb wiped out. I shore wish we war past Clay. There ain't a decent bank ter lie ag'in this side o' it."

For the next hour he used his utmost knowledge of the river, which had been developed almost into an instinct; and then he rounded one of the endless bends and straightened out the course with Clay Point half a mile ahead.

"Great Jehovah!" he muttered. "Look at Clay!"

The jutting point, stripped bare of trees, was cut as clean as though some great knife had sliced it. Under its new front the river had cut in until, as they looked, the whole face of the bluff slid down into the stream, a slice twenty feet thick damming the current and turning it into a raging fury. Some hundreds of yards behind the doomed point the muddy torrent boiled and seethed through its new channel, vomiting trees, stumps, brush and miscellaneous rubbish in an endless stream. Off the point, and also where the two great currents came together again behind it two great whirlpools revolved with sloping surfaces smooth as ice, around which swept driftwood with a speed not unlike the horses of some great merry-go-round. The vortex of the one off the point was easily ten feet below the rim of its circumference, and the width of the entire affair was greater than the length of the boat. A peeled log, not quite water-soaked, reached the center and arose as vertical as a plumb line, swayed in short, quick circles and then dove from sight. A moment later it leaped from the water well away from the pool and fell back with a smack which the noise of the wind did not drown. To starboard was a rhythmic splashing of bare limbs, where a great cottonwood, partly submerged, bared its fangs. To the right of that was a towhead, a newly formed island of mud and sand partly awash.

The pilot cursed softly and jerked on the bell handle, the boat instantly falling into half speed. He did not dare to cut across the whirlpool, the snag barred him dead ahead, and it was doubtful if there was room to pass between it and the towhead; but he had no choice in the matter and he rang again, the boat falling into bare steerageway. If he ran aground he would do so gently and no harm would be done. So swift was the current that the moment he put the wheel over a few spokes and shifted the angle between the keel-line and the current direction, the river sent the craft sideways so quickly that before he had stopped turning the wheel in the first direction he had to spin it part way back again. The snag now lay to port, the towhead to starboard, and holding a straight course the Missouri Belle crept slowly between them. There came a slight tremor, a gentle lifting to port, and he met it by a quick turn of the wheel. For a moment the boat hung pivoted, its bow caught by a thrusting side current and slowly swinging to port and the snag. A hard yank on the bell handle was followed by a sudden forward surge, a perceptible side-slip, a gentle rocking, and the bow swung back as the boat, entirely free again, surged past both dangers.

The pilot heaved a sigh of relief. "Peterson didn't say nothin' about th' snag or th' towhead," he growled. Then he grinned. "I bet he rounded inter th' edge o' th' whirler afore he knowed it was thar! Now that I recollect it he did seem a mite excited."

"Somethin' like a boy explorin' a cave, an' comin' face to face with a b'ar," laughed Tom. "I recken you fellers don't find pilotin' monotonous."

"Thar ain't no two trips alike; might say no two miles, up or down, trip after trip. Here comes th' rain, an' by buckets; an' thar's th' place I been a-lookin' fer. Th' bank's so high th' wind won't hardly tech us."

He signaled for half speed and then for quarter and the boat no sooner had fallen into the latter than her bow lifted and she came to a grating stop. The crew, which had kept to shelter, sprang forward without a word and as the captain crossed the bow deck the great spars were being hauled forward. After the reversed paddles had shown the Belle to be aground beyond their help, the spars were put to work and it was not long before they pushed her off again, and a few minutes later she nosed against the bank.

The pilot sighed and packed his pipe. "Thar!" he said, explosively. "Hyar we air, an' we ain't a-goin' on ag'in till we kin see th' channel. No, sir, not if we has ter stay hyar a week!"

Tom led the way below and paused at the foot of the companionway as he caught sight of Patience. He glowed slightly as he thought that she had been waiting for him; and when he found that she had not yet entered the cabin for breakfast, the glow became quite pronounced. He had seen many pretty girls and had grown up with them, but the fact that she was pretty was not the thing which made her so attractive to him. There was a softness in her speaking voice, a quiet dignity and a certain reserve, so honest that it needed no affectations to make it sensed; and under it all he felt that there was a latent power of will that would make panicky fears and actions impossible in her. And he never had perceived such superb defenses against undue familiarity, superb in their unobtrusiveness, which to him was proof of their sincerity and that they were innate characteristics. He felt that she could repel much more effectively without showing any tangible signs of it than could any woman he ever had met. He promised himself that the study of her nature would not be neglected, and he looked forward to it with eagerness. There was, to him, a charm about her so complex, so subtle that it almost completed the circle and became simple and apparent.

She smiled slightly and acknowledged his bow as he approached her.

"Good morning, Miss Cooper. Have you and your uncle breakfasted?"

"Not yet," she answered, turning toward the cabin. "I think he is waiting for us. Shall we go in?"

The plural form of the personal pronoun sent a slight thrill through him as he opened the door for her, showed her to the table, and seated her so that she faced the wide expanse of the river.

"I imagined that I felt bumps against the boat sometime during the night," she remarked. She looked inquiringly at Tom and her uncle. "Did we strike anything?"

"Why," Tom answered in simulated surprise, "no one said anything about it to me, and I've been with the pilot almost since dawn. The whole fact of the matter is that this river's dangers are much over-estimated, considering that boats of thirty feet and under have been navigating it since before the beginning of this century. And they had no steam to help them, neither."