University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
CAP'N AMBUSTER'S SKIFF.

It was a busy afternoon at the Dunderbunk
Foundry.

The Superintendent had come back with his
pocket full of orders. Everybody, from the Czar
of Russia to the President of the Guano Republic,

was in the market for machinery. Crisis was gone
by. Prosperity was come. The world was all
ready to move, and only waited for a fresh supply
of wheels, cranks, side-levers, walking-beams, and
other such muscular creatures of iron, to push
and tug and swing and revolve and set Progress
a-going.

Dunderbunk was to have its full share in supplying
the demand. It was well understood by this
time that the iron Wade made was as stanch as the
man who made it. Dunderbunk, therefore, Head
and Hands, must despatch.

So it was a busy afternoon at the industrious
Foundry. The men bestirred themselves. The
furnaces rumbled. The engine thumped. The
drums in the finishing-shop hummed merrily their
lively song of labor. The four trip-hammers —
two bull-headed, two calf-headed — champed, like
carnivorous maws, upon red bars of iron, and over
their banquet they roared the big-toned music of
the trip-hammer chorus, —

By this massive refrain, ringing in at intervals
above the ceaseless buzz, murmur, and clang
throughout the buildings, every man's work was
mightily nerved and inspired. Everybody liked to
hear the sturdy song of these grim vocalists; and
whenever they struck in, each solo or duo or quatuor
of men, playing Anvil Chorus, quickened time,
and all the action and rumor of the busy opera

went on more cheerily and lustily. So work kept
astir like play.

An hour before sunset, Bill Tarbox stepped into
Wade's office. Even oily and begrimed, Bill could
be recognized as a favored lover. He looked more
a man than ever before.

“I forgot to mention,” says the foreman, “that
Cap'n Ambuster was in, this morning, to see you.
He says, that, if the river 's clear enough for him
to get away from our dock, he 'll go down to the
City to-morrow, and offers to take freight cheap.
We might put that new walking-beam, we 've just
rough-finished for the `Union,' aboard of him.”

“Yes, — if he is sure to go to-morrow. It will
not do to delay. The owners complained to me
yesterday that the `Union' was in a bad way for
want of its new machinery. Tell your brother-in-law
to come here, Bill.”

Tarbox looked sheepishly pleased, and summoned
Perry Purtett.

“Run down, Perry,” said Wade, “to the `Ambuster,'
and ask Captain Isaac to step up here a
moment. Tell him I have some freight to send by
him.”

Perry moved through the Foundry with his usual
jaunty step, left his dignity at the door, and ran
off to the dock.

The weather had grown fitful. Heavy clouds
whirled over, trailing snow-flurries. Rarely the
sun found a cleft in the black canopy to shoot
a ray through and remind the world that he was

still in his place and ready to shine when he
was wanted.

Master Perry had a furlong to go before he reached
the dock. He crossed the stream, kept unfrozen
by the warm influences of the Foundry. He ran
through a little dell hedged on each side by dull
green cedars. It was severely cold now, and our
young friend condescended to prance and jump
over the ice-skimmed puddles to keep his blood in
motion.

The little rusty, pudgy steamboat lay at the
down-stream side of the Foundry wharf. Her
name was so long and her paddle-box so short,
that the painter, beginning with ambitious large
letters, had been compelled to abbreviate the last
syllable. Her title read thus: —

I. AMBUSTer.

Certainly a formidable inscription for a steamboat!

When she hove in sight, Perry halted, resumed
his stately demeanor, and embarked as if he were a
Doge entering a Bucentaur to wed a Sea.

There was nobody on deck to witness the arrival
and salute the magnifico.

Perry looked in at the Cap'n's office. He beheld
a three-legged stool, a hacked desk, an inky steel-pen,
an inkless inkstand; but no Cap'n Ambuster.

Perry inspected the Cap'n's state-room. There
was a cracked looking-glass, into which he looked;
a hair-brush suspended by the glass, which he
used; a lair of blankets in a berth, which he had

no present use for; and a smell of musty boots,
which nobody with a nose could help smelling.
Still no Captain Ambuster, nor any of his crew.

Search in the unsavory kitchen revealed no cook,
coiled up in a corner, suffering nightmares for the
last greasy dinner he had brewed in his frying-pan.
There were no deck hands bundled into
their bunks. Perry rapped on the chain-box and
inquired if anybody was within, and nobody answering,
he had to ventriloquize a negative.

The engine-room, too, was vacant, and quite as
unsavory as the other dens on board. Perry patronized
the engine by a pull or two at the valves,
and continued his tour of inspection.

The Ambuster's skiff, lying on her forward deck,
seemed to entertain him vastly.

“Jolly!” says Perry. And so it was a jolly
boat in the literal, not the technical sense.

“The three wise men of Gotham went to sea in
a bowl; and here 's the identical craft,” says
Perry.

He gave the chubby little machine a push with
his foot. It rolled and wallowed about grotesquely.
When it was still again, it looked so comic, lying
contentedly on its fat side like a pudgy baby, that
Perry had a roar of laughter, which, like other
laughter to one's self, did not sound very merry,
particularly as the north-wind was howling ominously,
and the broken ice, on its downward way,
was whispering and moaning and talking on in a
most mysterious and inarticulate manner.

“Those sheets of ice would crunch up this skiff,
as pigs do a punkin,” thinks Perry.

And with this thought in his head he looked out
on the river, and fancied the foolish little vessel
cast loose and buffeting helplessly about in the
ice.

He had been so busy until now, in prying about
the steamboat and making up his mind that Captain
and men had all gone off for a comfortable supper
on shore, that his eyes had not wandered toward
the stream.

Now his glance began to follow the course of
the icy current. He wondered where all this supply
of cakes came from, and how many of them
would escape the stems of ferry-boats below and
get safe to sea.

All at once, as he looked lazily along the lazy
files of ice, his eyes caught a black object drifting
on a fragment in a wide way of open water opposite
Skerrett's Point, a mile distant.

Perry's heart stopped beating. He uttered a
little gasping cry. He sprang ashore, not at all
like a Doge quitting a Bucentaur. He tore back
to the Foundry, dashing through the puddles, and,
never stopping to pick up his cap, burst in upon
Wade and Bill Tarbox in the office.

The boy was splashed from head to foot with
red mud. His light hair, blown wildly about,
made his ashy face seem paler. He stood panting.

His dumb terror brought back to Wade's mind
all the bad omens of the morning.

“Speak!” said he, seizing Perry fiercely by the
shoulder.

The uproar of the Works seemed to hush for an
instant, while the lad stammered faintly, —

“There 's somebody carried off in the ice by
Skerrett's Point. It looks like a woman. And
there 's nobody to help.”