28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
WAKING UP AN UGLY CUSTOMER.
THE steady beat of the wheels and the incessant
clank of the engines went on as usual. The boat
was loaded almost to her guards, and did not make
much speed. The wheels kept their persistent beat
upon the water, and the engines kept their rhythmical
clangor going, until August found himself getting drowsy.
Trouble, with forced inaction, nearly always has a soporific
tendency, and a continuous noise is favorable to sleep. Once or
twice August roused himself to a sense of his responsibility and
battled with his heaviness. It was nearing the end of his
watch, for the dog-watch of two hours set in at four o'clock.
But it seemed to him that four o'clock would never come.
An incident occurred just at this moment that helped him to
keep his eyes open. A man went aft through the engine-room
with a red handkerchief tied round his forehead. In spite of
this partial disguise August perceived that it was Parkins. He
passed through to the place where the steerage or deck passengers
are, and then disappeared from August's sight. He had
meant to disembark at a wood-yard just below Paducah, but for
some reason the boat did not stop, and now, as August guessed, he
was hiding himself from Paducah eyes. He was not much too
soon, for the great bell on the hurricane-deck was already ringing
for Paducah, and the summer dawn was showing itself faintly
through the river fog.
The alarm-bell rang in the engine-room, and Wehle stood by
his engine. Then the bell rang to stop the starboard engine,
and August obeyed it. The pilot of a Western steamboat depends
much upon his engines for steerage in making a landing,
and the larboard engine was kept running a while longer in order
to bring the deeply-loaded boat round to her landing at the primitive
wharf-boat of that day. There is something fine in the
faith with which an engineer obeys the bell of the pilot, not
knowing what may be ahead, not inquiring what may be the
effect of the order, but only doing exactly what he is bid when
he is bid. August had stopped his engine, and stood trying to
keep his mind off Parkins and the events of the night, that he
might be ready to obey the next signal for his engine. But the
bell rang next to stop the other engine, at which the second
engineer stood, and August was so free from responsibility in regard
to that that he hardly noticed the sound of the bell, until it
rang a second time more violently. Then he observed that the
larboard engine still ran. Was Munson dead or asleep? Clearly
it was August's duty to stand by his own engine. But then he
was startled to think what damage to property or life might take
place from the failure of the second engineer to stop his engine.
While he hesitated, and all these considerations flashed through
his mind, the pilot's bell rang again long and loud, and August
then, obeying an impulse rather than a conviction, ran over to
the other engine, stopped it, and then, considering that it had
run so long against orders, he reversed it and set it to backing
without waiting instructions. Then he seized Munson and
woke him, and hurried back to his post. But the larboard engine
had not made three revolutions backward before the boat, hopelessly
thrown from her course by the previous neglect,
struck the old wharf-boat and sunk it. But for the promptness
and presence of mind with which Wehle acted, the steamboat
itself would have suffered severely. The mate and then
the captain came rushing into the engine-room. Munson was
discharged at once, and the striker was promised engineer's
wages.
Gus went off watch at this moment, and the mud-clerk said
to him, in his characteristically indifferent voice, “Such luck, I
declare! I was sure you would be dismissed for meddling with
Parkins, and here you are promoted, I declare!”
The mishap occasioned much delay to the boat, as it was very
inconvenient to deliver freight at that day and at that stage of
water without the intervention of the wharf-boat. A full hour
was consumed in finding a landing, and in rigging the double-staging
and temporary planks necessary to get the molasses and
coffee and household “plunder” ashore. Some hint that Parkins
was on the river had already reached Paducah, and the sheriff
and two deputies and a small crowd were at the landing
looking for him. A search of the boat failed to discover him,
and the crowd would have left the landing but for occasional
hints slyly thrown out by the mud-clerk as he went about over
the levee collecting freight-bills. These hints, given in a noncommittal
way, kept the crowd alive with expectation, and when
the rumors thus started spread abroad, the levee was soon filled
with an excited and angry multitude.
If it had been a question of delivering a criminal to justice,
August would not have hesitated to tell the sheriff where to look.
But he very well knew that the sheriff could not convey the man
through the mob alive, and to deliver even such a scoundrel to
the summary vengeance of a mob was something that he could
not find it in his heart to do.
In truth, the sheriff and his officers did not seek very zealously
for their man. Under the circumstances, it was probable
he would not surrender himself without a fight, in which somebody
would be killed, and besides there must ensue a battle with
the mob. It was what they called an ugly job, and they were
not loth to accept the captain's assurance that the gambler had
gone ashore.
While August was unwilling to deliver the hunted villain
to a savage death, he began to ask himself why he might
not in some way use his terror in the interest of justice.
For he had just then seen the wretched and bewildered face of
Norman looking ghastly enough in the fog of the morning.
At last, full of this notion, and possessed, too, by his habit of
accomplishing at all hazards what he had begun, August strolled
back through the now quiet engine-room to the deck-passengers'
quarter. It was about half an hour before six o'clock, when the
dog-watch would expire and he must go on duty again.
In one of the uppermost of the filthy bunks, in the darkest
corner, near the wheel, he discovered what he thought to be his
man. The deck-passengers were still asleep, lying around stupidly.
August paused a moment, checked by a sense of the dangerousness
of his undertaking. Then he picked up a stick of
wood and touched the gambler, who could not have been very
sound asleep, lying in hearing of the curses of the mob on the
shore. At first Parkins did not move, but August gave him a
still more vigorous thrust. Then he peered out between the
blanket and the handkerchief over his forehead.
“I will take that money you won last night from that young
man, if you please.”
Parkins saw that it was useless to deny his identity. “Do
you want to be shot?” he asked fiercely.
“Not any more than you want to be hung,” said August.
“The one would follow the other in five minutes. Give back
that money and I will go away.”
The gambler trembled a minute. He was fairly at bay. He
took out a roll of bills and handed it to August. There was but
five hundred. Smith had the other four hundred and fifty, he
said. But August had a quiet German steadiness of nerve. He
said that unless the other four hundred and fifty were paid at
once he should call in the sheriff or the crowd. Parkins knew
that every minute August stood there increased his peril,
and human nature is now very much like human nature in the
days of Job. The devil understood the subject very well when
he said that all that a man hath will he give for his life. Parkins
paid the four hundred and fifty in gold-pieces. He would have
paid twice that if August had demanded it.
