The Last of the Flatboats

“Look here,” said the boy. “If we let that water sit still long enough, all the mud would sink to the bottom and the water above would become clear. That’s what we should have to do with our drinking and cooking water on this boat if we hadn’t brought a filter along. Now you see that the water of this river is carrying more mud than it can keep dissolved. This mud is sinking to the bottom all the way from St. Louis to New Orleans. It is building up the bottom, raising it year by year, and so raising the river higher and higher. When the river was left free, the same thing happened, but whenever a flood came it would leave its built-up bed, run over its banks, and cut new channels for itself in the lowest country it could find. There are many lakes and ponds well away from the present river that were obviously a part of the channel once.

“When men began confining the river within its banks at all but the highest stages of water, and in many places at all stages, it couldn’t leave its old channels for new ones, no matter how much it had built up the bottom, and so the bed of the river steadily rose from year to year. That made the surface of the flood water higher, and so men had to build higher and higher levees to keep the floods from burying their plantations. As they have nothing better to make their embankments out of than the soft sandy loam of the bottom lands, the levees are not very strong at best, and the higher they are raised, the greater is the water pressure against them when the river is up. So they often give way, and when they do that the river rushes through the gap, or crevasse, as it is called, rapidly widening and deepening it, and pouring a torrent over all the country within reach. In such a flood as this men are kept watching the levees day and night to stop every little leak, lest it become a crevasse, and it is often necessary to forbid steamboats to pass near the shore, because the swells they make would wash over the tops of the levees and start crevasses in that way. Sometimes a strong wind pushes the water up enough to break a levee and destroy hundreds of lives and millions of dollars’ worth of property, for when a levee breaks, the region behind it is flooded too rapidly to permit much more than escape alive, and often it doesn’t permit even that.”

“What a destructive old demon this river is!” said Irv.

“Yes, at times,” replied the elder boy. “But it does a lot of good work as well as bad. It created all the lands that it overflows, and if man tries to rob it of its own, I don’t see why it is to be blamed for defending its possessions.”

“How do you mean that it created all the lands that it overflows?” asked Constant, who always wanted to learn all he could.

“Why, the geologists say that the Gulf of Mexico used to extend to Cairo, covering all the flat region in the Mississippi Valley south, except here and there a high spot like that on which Memphis stands. The high spots were islands in the Gulf.”

“But where did the land come from then?”

“Why, the Mississippi built it with its mud. It carries enough mud at all times to make half a state, if it were all brought together. When the river’s mouth was at Cairo, the river kept pouring mud into the Gulf. The mud sank, and in that way the shore-line was extended farther and farther south, spreading to the right and left as it went. The river is still doing this down at its mouth below New Orleans, and it has been doing it for millions of years. It has simply filled in all that part of the Gulf that once covered eastern Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and the lower parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri.”

“But why don’t other rivers do the same thing?” asked Constant.

“They do, in a degree,” said Ed. “You know there is always a bar in the sea just off the mouth of a river.”

“Yes, but – ”

“Well, most rivers carry very little mud in their water, and that little goes to make the bar at the mouth. The Mississippi carries so much mud that its bars become land, and the river cuts a channel through them, carrying its mud still farther into the sea. Then again, the Mississippi has floods every year or twice a year, and in some years three times, such as most rivers never have. This is because it carries in a single channel the water from twenty-eight states and a territory, as we saw on the map one day up the river. Now as soon as the river mud forms a bar that shows above water, vegetation begins to grow on it. When the next flood comes, it covers the new-made land and builds it higher by depositing a great deal more mud on top of it and among the vegetation, which, by checking the current at the bottom, helps the mud to lodge there. In that way, all the lowlands for hundreds of miles along this river were created. It took hundreds of thousands of years – perhaps millions of years – to do it, but it was done.”

Ed did not give this long explanation all in one speech. He was interrupted many times by Phil’s call of all hands to the sweeps, when rowing was necessary, and by other matters of duty, which it has not been necessary to detail here.

Whenever it was possible to land the boat for the night, the boys did so, and when no banks were in sight where a mooring could be made, they sought for some bend or pocket reasonably free from the more dangerous kinds of drift, and came to anchor for safety during the hours of darkness. Navigation was difficult and perilous now even in daytime when they could make out the course of the river by sight and keep away from treacherous shore currents, for the drift was very heavy. By night it was doubly dangerous.

Even in the daytime Phil kept the entire crew on deck at all times except when one of them went below to prepare food. Their meals were eaten on deck with a broad plank for table, even when it rained heavily, as it very often did. They slept on deck, too, under a rude shelter made of the tarpaulin. All this Phil regarded as necessary under the circumstances. Even when tied up to the trees or anchored in the snuggest cove to be found, it was sometimes necessary to jump into skiffs and “fend off” great threatening masses of drift. To this duty the calls were very frequent indeed.

Poor Phil got scarcely any sleep at all during these trying days and nights. The sense of responsibility was so strong upon him that he scarcely dared relax his personal watchfulness for a moment. But under the urgent pleadings of his comrades he would now and then leave another on duty in his place and throw himself down for a nap. He did this only when the conditions seemed most favorable, and usually even then he was up again within the half hour.

The escapes of the boat from damage or destruction were many and narrow, even under this ceaseless watching, and the strain at last began to show its effects upon the tough nerves of Captain Phil. He almost lived upon strong coffee. The coffee was an excellent thing for him under the circumstances, but his neglect to take other food was a dangerous mistake. He was still strong of body, but he was growing nervous and even a trifle irritable.

His comrades remonstrated with him for not sleeping, and begged him to eat.

“I don’t want to eat, I tell you,” he said, with much irritation in his voice.

“But you’ll break down, Phil, if you keep this up,” said Ed, “and then where shall we be? Without your judgment and quickness to see the right thing at a critical moment this boat would have gone to the bottom days ago. We need you, old fellow.”

The boys all joined in the pleading, and Phil at last sat down with them and tried to eat, but could not.

“No, no, don’t drink any coffee yet,” said Will, almost pulling the cup out of his hands. “It’ll kill the little appetite you’ve got. Eat first, and drink your coffee afterward.”

“Wait a minute,” said Irv, stretching out his long legs, and with a spring rising to his feet. “Wait a minute, and I’ll play Ganymede, the cup-bearer.”

He went below, where he broke an egg in a large soda-water glass and whipped it up with an egg-beater. Then he filled the glass with milk, of which they still had a gallon or so left, and again using the egg-beater, whipped the whole into a lively froth, adding a little salt to give it flavor and make it more digestible.

“Here, Phil,” he said, as he reappeared on deck, “drink this. You’ll find it good, and it is food of the very best sort, as well as drink.”

Phil took the glass, tasted its contents, and then drained it at a draught.

“Make me another, won’t you, Irv?” said Phil about five minutes later; “somehow that one has got lonely and wants a companion.”

Irv was glad enough to do so, and by the time Phil had slowly swallowed his second glass, he not only felt himself fed, but he was so. His nerves grew steady again, there was no further irritation in his voice, and by the time that the next meal was ready the boy had regained his appetite.

The boat came to anchor for the night a little after supper, and as the anchorage was particularly well protected behind a heavily timbered point of submerged land, Phil consented to take a longer sleep than he had done for several days past.

Irv and Constant remained on duty for several hours, after which Ed and Will took their places. Only twice during the night did Phil awake. Each time he arose, went all around the deck, inspecting the situation, and then lay down again upon the boards.

By morning he was quite himself again.

CHAPTER XXII

IN THE FOG

The boat was now in a part of the river where the land on both sides lies very low, behind very high levees. These are the richest cotton lands in the world, and their owners have tried to reclaim all of them from the river floods instead of taking only part of them for cultivation. Along other parts of the stream there are levees only here and there, leaving the river a chance to spread out over great areas of unreclaimed land, thus relieving the levees of much of the pressure upon them. Here, however, the line of embankment is continuous on both sides of the stream. For long distances the river is held between the two lines of artificially made banks.

The water was now within a few inches of the top of the levees, and twenty or thirty feet above the level of the lands in the rear. The strain upon the embankments was almost inconceivably great, while the destruction which any break in that long line of earthworks would involve was appalling even to think of.

The boys could see gangs of men at work wherever any weakness showed itself in the embankments, while sentinels, armed with shotguns, were everywhere on guard to prevent mischief-makers from cutting the levees. For, incredible as it may seem, men have sometimes been base enough to do this in order to let the river out of its banks, and thus reduce the danger of a break farther up stream where their own interests lay. For, of course, when a crevasse occurs at any point it lets so much water run suddenly out of the banks that the river falls several inches for many miles above, and the strain on the levees is greatly reduced.

As the boys were floating down the middle of the flood, watching the work on the levees with keen interest, the air began to grow thick. A few minutes later a great bank of dense fog settled down upon them, covering all things as with a blanket. The shores and the great trees that grew upon them were blotted out. Then as the fog grew thicker and thicker, even the river disappeared, except a little patch of it immediately around the boat. On every side was an impenetrable wall of mist, and ragged fragments of it floated across the deck so that when they stood half the boat’s length apart the boys looked like spectres to each other.

“I say, Phil, hadn’t we better go ashore or anchor?” said Constant.

“Where is the shore?” asked Phil, quietly.

“Why, there’s a shore on each side of us.”

“Certainly. But in what direction? Which way is across the river, which way up the river, which way down the river?”

“Why, the current will tell that,” said Constant.

“How are we going to find out which way the current runs?” asked Phil, with a quizzical smile.

“Easy enough; by looking at the driftwood floating by,” said the boy, going to the side of the boat to peer at the surface of the river through the fog. Presently he called out in amazement: —

“Why, the whole thing has stopped – the drift, the river, and the flatboat! We’re lying here just as still as if we were on solid ground.”

“On the contrary,” said Phil, “we’re floating down stream at the rate of several miles an hour.”

“But – ”

“Think a minute, Constant,” said Phil. “We are floating just as fast as the river runs. The drift-wood is doing the same thing. The water, the drift, and the flatboat are all moving in the same direction at precisely the same speed.”

“Oh, I see,” said Constant, with an astonished look in his eyes. “We’ve nothing to measure by. We can’t tell which way we’re going, or how fast, or anything about it.”

“Why not come to anchor, then?” asked Irv. “If we keep on floating, nobody knows where we may go to. If there should be any gap in the line of levees anywhere, we might float into it. It would just tickle this flatboat to slip off on an expedition of that sort. Why not anchor till the fog lifts?”

“First, because we can’t,” said Phil. “The water is much too deep. But even if we could, it would be the very worst thing we could do. It would bring us to a standstill, while everything else afloat would keep on swirling past us, some of it running into us. If we should anchor here in the strong current, The Last of the Flatboats would soon have as many holes in her as a colander.”

“Then what do you intend to do, Phil?” asked Ed.

“Precisely nothing whatever,” answered the young captain. “Anything we might do would probably make matters worse. You see we were almost exactly in the middle of the river when the fog came down on us. Now, if we do nothing, the chances are that the current will carry us along somewhere near the middle, or at least well away from the shores. If it don’t, we can’t help it. The only thing we can do is to keep as close a watch as we can all around the boat, for we don’t know which end or which side of her is in front now. I want one fellow to go to the bow, one to the stern, and one to each side, and watch. If we are about to run into a bank or anything else, call out, and we may save ourselves at the last minute. That’s all we can do for the present. So go now!”

The wisdom of Phil’s decision to do nothing except watch alertly was clear to all his comrades, so they took the places he had assigned them, while he busied himself first at one point and then at another, thinking all the while whether there might not be something else that he could do – some precaution not yet thought of that he could take. He went to the pump now and then and worked it till no more water came up. He went below two or three times to see that nothing was wrong with the cargo. The boys, meanwhile, were walking back and forth on their beats, each carrying a boat-hook with which to “fend off” the larger bits of drift which the eddies, cross currents, and those strange disturbances in the stream called “boils,” sometimes drove against the gunwales.

The “boils” referred to are peculiar to the Mississippi, I believe. They are whirlpools, caused by the conflict of cross currents, and, as Will Moreraud said during this day of close watching, they are “sometimes right side up and sometimes upside down.” That is to say, sometimes a current from beneath comes to the surface like water in a boiling kettle and seems to pile itself up in a sort of mound for a half minute or so, while sometimes there is a genuine whirlpool strong enough even to suck a skiff down, as old-time flatboatmen used to testify.

These were anxious hours for the young captain and his crew, but worse was to come. For night fell at last with the fog still on, and between the fog and the darkness it was no longer possible to see even the water at the sides of the boat from the deck.

The crew had eaten no dinner that day. They had forgotten all about their meals in the eagerness of their watching. Now that watching was no longer possible they remembered their appetites, and had an evening dinner instead of supper.

They set their lights of course, though it was of little use from any point of view. They could not be seen at a distance of twenty yards, and moreover there was nobody to see them.

“There’s not much danger of any steamboat running into us now,” said Phil, who had carefully thought the matter out.

“Why not?” asked Ed.

“Because this fog has lasted for nearly twelve hours now, and by this time every steamboat is tied up to some bank or tree. For no pilot would think of running in such a cloud after finding any shore to which he could make his boat fast.”

“But how can a steamboat find the shore when we can’t?” asked Will.

“Because she can keep running till she finds it; and if she runs slowly she can back when she finds it till she makes an easy landing. She has power, and power gives her control of herself. We have none, except what the sweeps give us. In fogs like this steamboats always hunt for the shores and tie up till the fog lifts. So after ten or twelve hours of it, there are no steamboats prowling around to run into us.”

“Another advantage the steamboats have in hunting for the shore,” said Will, “is that they can blow their whistles and listen for echoes. They can tell in that way not only in which direction the shore is, but about how far away it is.”

“How do steamships manage in fogs out at sea?” asked Constant.

“Theoretically,” replied Ed, “they slow down and blow their whistles or their ‘sirens,’ as they call the big steam fog-horns that can be heard for many miles. But in fact the big ocean steamships drive ahead at full speed – twenty miles an hour or more – blowing their sirens – till they hear some other ship’s siren. Then they act according to fixed rules, each ship turning her helm to port – that is to say to the left – so that they sail well away from each other.”

“But what if there are sailing vessels in the way?”

“They also have fog-horns, but they sometimes get themselves run down by steamships, and once in a great while one of them runs into the side of a steamship. The Cunard steamer Oregon was sunk in that way by a sailing craft. That sort of thing would happen oftener if the big steamships were to stop or run very slowly in fog. By running at full speed they make it pretty sure that they will themselves do any running down that is to be done. With their enormous weight and great speed they can cut a sailing vessel in two without much danger of serious damage to themselves, and as they have hundreds of people on board while a sailing ship has a very few, the steamship captains hold that it is right to shift the danger in that way.”

The night dragged slowly along. Now and then a little conversation would spring up, for the boys were sleeping very little, but often there would be no word spoken for an hour at a time.

The fog made the air very chill, and the boys, who remained on deck all night, had to stir about frequently to keep reasonably warm.

The fog began whitening at last as the daylight dawned, and all the boys strained their eyes to see through it.

But it showed no sign of lifting.

CHAPTER XXIII

THROUGH THE CREVASSE

As the daylight increased, it became possible to see a little further into the fog, and there was now a little air stirring in fitful fashion, which tore holes in the thick bank of mist, but only for a moment or two at a time.

Through one of these brief openings Phil presently made a startling discovery. The flatboat was running at an exceedingly rapid rate along a nearly overflowed levee on the Mississippi side of the river, and within fifty or sixty feet of it. The crest of the embankment rose only a few inches above the level of the water, and the current was swifter than any that Phil had seen since the flatboat had left the falls of the Ohio behind. What it all meant Phil did not know, nor could he imagine how or why the boat had drifted out of the main current to the shore in this way; but he felt that there was danger there, and calling his comrades to the sweeps, made every effort to regain the outer reaches of the river. But try as they might at the oars, the boat persisted in hugging the bank, while her speed seemed momentarily to increase. Men on the levee were calling to Phil, but so excitedly that he could not make out their meaning.

Presently there was another little break in the fog-bank, and Phil saw what was the matter. Just ahead of the boat the levee had given way, and the river was plunging like a Niagara through a crevasse, already two or three hundred feet wide, and growing wider with every second. The boat had been caught in the current leading to the crevasse, and was now being drawn into the swirling rapid.

Phil had hardly time to realize the situation before the boat began whirling about madly, and a moment later she plunged head foremost through the crevasse and out into the seething waste of waters that was now overspreading fields and woodlands beyond. As the land here lay much lower than the surface of the river, and as the country had not yet had time, since the levee broke, to fill to anything like the river level, passing through the crevasse was like plunging over a cataract, and after passing through, the boat was carried forward at a truly fearful speed across the fields. Fortunately, she encountered no obstacle. Had she struck anything in that mad career, the box-like craft would have been broken instantly to bits.

As she receded from the river she left the worst of the fog behind. It was possible now to see for fifty or a hundred yards in every direction, and what the boys saw was appalling. There were horses and cattle frantically struggling in the water, only to sink beneath it at last, for even the strongest horse could not swim far in a surging torrent like that.

There were cross currents of great violence too, and eddies and whirlpools created by the seemingly angry efforts of the water to find the lowest levels and occupy them. These erratic currents took possession of the boat, and whirled her hither and thither, until her crew lost all sense of direction and distance, and everything else except the necessity of clinging to the sweep bars to avoid being spilled overboard by the sudden careenings of the boat to one side and then the other, and her plungings as the water swept her onward.

Once they saw a human being struggling in the seething water. A moment later he was gone, but whether drowned or carried away to some point of rescue there was no way of finding out.

Once they swept past a stately dwelling-house, submerged except as to its roof; what fate had befallen its inhabitants they could never know, for the next instant a strong current caught the boat, and drove it, side first, straight toward a great barn that had been carried off its foundations and was now afloat. For a moment the boys expected to be driven against the barn with appalling violence – an event that would have meant immediate destruction. But the currents changed in an instant, so that the barn was carried in one direction and the boat in another. As the two drifted apart there were despairing cries from the floating building, which had been badly crushed in collision with something, and was in danger of falling to pieces at any moment. The boys looked, and caught a glimpse of a number of negro children clinging to the wrecked structure. An instant later the barn disappeared in what was left of the fog.

The boys were sickened by what they had seen and by what they felt must be its sequel. It is a fearful thing to have to stand still, doing nothing, when human creatures are being carried to a cruel death before one’s eyes. But as yet the boys could do nothing except cling to their own boat. Two of their skiffs had been carried away, and it would have been certain death to make even an effort to launch any of the others.

They were swept on and on for miles. They had passed beyond the cultivated lands and out into a forest. Here the danger was greater than ever, as a single collision with a tree would have made an end of everything. But the turbulence of the water was slowly subsiding at last, and the boat floated, still unsteadily indeed, but with less violent plungings than before. It was possible now, by exercising great care, to move about a little, and Phil quickly seized the opportunity to get some things done that he deemed necessary.