Читать книгу The Last of the Flatboats - Eggleston George Cary, Marbourg Dolores - Страница 10

Just before the landing was made at Louisville, Jim Hughes was seized with an attack of cramps and took to his bunk, where he remained until near the time for the boat to be afloat again. The boys had feared that he might go ashore there and get a new supply of liquor, and they had even made careful plans to prevent him from bringing any aboard. His sudden sickness rendered all their plans superfluous.

At Louisville Phil got a fresh supply of newspapers, giving all the latest news concerning the great bond robbery, and took them aboard to read at leisure. He learned that there was no need of hiring a pilot to take the boat over the falls, which in fact are not falls at all, but merely rapids. At very high water such as just then prevailed, the only difference between that part of the river called the falls and any other part was that that part had a much swifter and far less steady current than prevailed elsewhere.

“I could take your money for piloting you over the falls,” said the genial old pilot to whom Phil had applied, “but it would be robbery. I’m a pilot, not a pirate, you see. All you’ve got to do, my boy, is to put your flatboat well out into the river and let her go. She’ll amble over the falls at this stage of the water as gently as a well-built girl waltzes over a ball-room floor. She’ll turn round and round, just as the girl does, but it’ll be just as innocent-like. There’ll be never less than twenty-five foot o’ water under your gunwales, and there simply can’t any harm come to you. Don’t pay anybody anything to pilot you over. Do it yourself, and if anything happens to you, just let old Jabez Brown know where it happened, please. For if there’s any new rocks sprouted up on the falls of the Ohio since the water rose, an old falls pilot like me just naterally wants to know about ’em.”

After laying in the provision supply that was needed, including especially a big can of milk packed in a barrel of cracked ice, Phil returned to the boat and announced his purpose of “running the falls” without a pilot. It was at supper in the cabin that he made the announcement, and Jim Hughes, who had been lying in his bunk with his face toward the bulkhead, suddenly sat up.

“Good!” he said. “They ain’t no use fer a pilot when the river’s bank full this way. When’ll you start, Phil?”

“Just after daylight to-morrow morning,” replied the captain.

“Well, I feel so much better,” said Jim, getting out of his bunk, “I think I’ll sample the pork and potatoes and throw in just a little o’ that hot corn bread and the new butter for ballast.”

“For a man who a few hours ago was violently ill with an intestinal disorder,” remarked Irv Strong a little later with a very pronounced note of sarcasm in his tone, “it seems to me, Jim, that you’re eating a tolerably robust supper. Now if I’d had the cramps you’ve been suffering from to-day, I really wouldn’t venture upon cabbage and potatoes boiled with salt pork. I’d try something ‘bland’ first, like a half pound of shot or a pig’s knuckle, or a bologna sausage or a few soft-boiled cobble-stones.”

But Jim was deaf to the sarcasm and went on eating voraciously.

“Wonder what that fellow is afraid of,” said Phil to Irv as they went out on deck to set the lights and make ready for the night.

“Don’t at all know,” responded Irv, “unless he owes money to somebody in Louisville. All I know is that he must have feigned that attack of cramps, else he couldn’t eat now in the way he does. He didn’t want to go ashore with you as you proposed, to hunt for a falls pilot.”

“Yes,” said Ed Lowry, “I’ve known all day that he was shamming, because he hasn’t had the slightest touch or trace of proper symptoms. Even when he professed to be in the most excruciating pain his pulse wasn’t in the least bit disturbed. I’m no doctor, but I know enough to say positively that a man with any such cramps as he pretended to have simply couldn’t have kept his pulse calmly beating seventy-two times a minute as his did. I timed it three times and then quit bothering with the fellow because I knew he was shamming.”

“Wonder what he meant by it,” said Will.

“Shoo!” said Constant; “he’s listening at the top of the gangway.”

“And I wonder what that means,” said Phil, whose alert observation of the professed pilot had never been relaxed since the episode at Craig’s Landing; “I wonder what he’s listening for.”

There was naturally no response, for the reason that nobody had anything to suggest. So the boys went toward the bow where the anchor-light hung, to hear Phil read in his newspapers all the latest details about the great bond robbery. They read on deck rather than in the cabin, because one boy must at any rate remain there on watch, and they all wished to hear.

The newspapers related that one of the gang of robbers was believed to have got away with the stolen bonds and money, and that the main purpose now was to find him. One man connected with the crime was already in custody, and from hints given by him it was hoped that he might turn state’s evidence in his own resentment against the “carrier of the swag,” who, it was believed, had deserted his fellow thieves, or some of them, and meant to keep the whole of the proceeds of the robbery for himself and one or two others. At any rate, the man in custody had given hints that were thought to be distinctly helpful toward the discovery of the “carrier” and his partners who had betrayed the rest of their fellows.

The case was very interesting, but the boys must be up early in the morning, so at last they broke up their little confab, and all but one of them went to bed. Constant Thiebaud, who first reached the ladder-head, found Jim Hughes seated there with his head just above the deck.

“I thought you were in bed long ago,” said Constant.

“So I was,” said Jim; “but I got restless and came out for some air.”

It wasn’t at all the kind of sentence that Jim Hughes was accustomed to frame, and the boys observed the fact. But they had got used to what Irv Strong called Jim’s “inadvertent lapses into grammar,” and so they went to their bunks without further thought of the matter.