Gideons Band | Page 3

the bell on the roof above it was any captain to be seen.
At the front angle of the roof's larboard rail a youth, quite alone, leaned
against one of the tall derrick posts to get its shade. He was too short,
square, and unanimated to draw much attention, although with a faint
unconscious frown between widely parted brows his quiet eyes fell
intently upon every detail of the lively scene below.
The whole great landing lay beneath his glance, a vivid exposition of
the vast, half-tamed valley's bounty, spoils, and promise; of its motley
human life, scarcely yet to be called society, so lately and rudely
transplanted from overseas; so bareboned, so valiantly preserved, so
young yet already so titanic; so self-reliant, opinionated, and uncouth;
so strenuous and materialistic in mind; so inflammable in emotions; so
grotesque in its virtues; so violent in its excesses; so complacently
oblivious of all the higher values of wealth; so giddied with the new
wine of liberty and crude abundance; so open of speech, of heart, of
home, and so blithely disdainful of a hundred risks of life, health, and
property. And all this the young observer's glance took in with maybe
more realization of it than might be looked for in one not yet
twenty-one. Yet his fuller attention was for matters nearer and of much
narrower compass.
He saw the last bit of small freight come aboard and the last belated
bill-lading clerk and ejected peddler go ashore. He noted by each
mooring-post the black longshoreman waiting to cast off a hawser. He
remarked each newcomer who idly joined the onlooking throng.

Especially he observed each cab or carriage that hurried up to the
wharf's front. He studied each of the alighting occupants as they
yielded their effects to the antic, white-jacketed mulatto cabin-boys,
behind whom they crossed the ponderous unrailed stage and vanished
on their up-stairs way to the boiler deck, the cabin, and their staterooms.
Had his mild scrutinizings been a paid service, they could hardly have
been more thorough.
By and by two or three things occurred in the same moment. A number
of boats above Canal Street and several of lesser fame below sounded
their third bell, cast off, and backed out into the stream. The many
pillars of smoke widened across the heavens into one unrifted cloud
with the sunbeams illumining its earthward side. Now it overhung the
busy landing and now, at the river's first bend, it filled the tops of the
dark mass of spars and cordage that densely lined the long curve of the
harbor's up-town shipping.
At the same time, while the foremost boats were still in sight, the two
pilots in the pilot-house of the lingering Votaress quietly took stand at
right and left of the wheel with their eyes on a distant vehicle, a private
carriage. It came swiftly out of Common Street and across the broad
shell-paved levee. As quietly as they, the youth at the derrick post
regarded it, and presently, looking back and up, he gave them a slight,
gratified nod. Through the lines of onlookers the carriage swept close
up to the stage and let down two aristocratic-looking men. The taller
was full fifty years of age, the other as much as seventy-five, but both
were hale and commanding.
As they started aboard the younger glanced up brightly to the unsmiling
youth at the roof's rail and then threw a gesture, above and beyond him,
to the pilot-house. One of the pilots promptly sounded the bell. Down
on the forecastle a dozen deck-hands, ordered by a burly mate, leaped
to the stage and began, with half as many others who ran ashore on it,
to heave it aboard. But a sharp "avast" stopped them, and four or five
cabin-boys gambolled out on it ashore. A smart hack came whirling up
in its own white shell dust, and a fledgling dandy of seventeen sprang
down from the seat of his choice by the driver before the vehicle could

stop or the white jackets strip it of its baggage.

III
CERTAIN PASSENGERS
From his dizzy outlook the older youth dropped his calm scrutiny upon
the inner occupants as they alighted and followed the boy on board.
First came a red-ringleted, fifteen-year-old sister, fairly good-looking,
almost too free of glance, and--to her high-perched critic--urgently
eligible to longer skirts. Behind her appeared an old, very black nurse
in very blue calico and very white turban and bosom kerchief; and
lastly a mother--of many children, one would have said--still perfect in
complexion, gracefully rounded, and beautiful.
This was the first time he on the hurricane deck had ever seen them, but
he knew at once who they were and looked the closer on that account.
The self-oblivious elation with which the slim