Gideons Band | Page 4

lass gave her eyes and
mind to everything except her own footing caused him to keep his chief
watch on her. He even beckoned a black deck hand to do the same.
Wherever her glance went her gay interest went with it, either in a soft
soliloquizing laugh or in some demonstration less definite though more
radiant; some sign of delight from her lips, her eyes, her brow, her
springing step, dancing curls, or supple arms. The youth on the roof's
edge deepened his frown. At a point on the stage where its sheer, naked
sides spanned the narrow chasm through which the waters swept
between boat and wharf, her feet strayed too near one perilous edge,
and just then her eyes went up to him. The two glances had barely met
when she tripped and staggered. With a dozen others aboard and ashore,
he gave a start. She sent him a look of terror, then turned from deadly
pale to rosy red and gasped her thanks to the smiling deckhand, whose
clutch had saved her life. The next instant she was laughing elatedly to
her horrified nurse, and so disappeared with her kindred on the lower
deck and front stairs.
The mellow boom of the third and last parting signal diverted the

general mind, and a glance behind him showed the youth the close and
welcome presence of that superior-looking man in answer to whose
gesture the pilot had tolled the earlier bell. But this person was closely
preoccupied. Now his capable glance ran aft along every marginal line
of the boat, now it dropped below to where the big stage lay drawn in
athwart the forward deck from guard to guard. Now he gave short,
quiet orders to wharf and forecastle, now a single word or two to the
pilot-house. Far below, the engine bells jingled. The bowline was in. A
yeast of waters ran forward from the backing wheels, the breast line
slacked away in fierce jerks, and the Votaress began to depart.
Meantime there was an odd stir on shore. A cab whirled up furiously
and two more youths, shapely, handsome, and fashionable, twins
beyond cavil and noticeably older than their twenty years, visibly rich
in fine qualities but as visibly reckless as to what they did with them,
sprang out, flushed and imperious, to wave the Votaress. One of her
guards was still rubbing along the steamer beside her, but before the
pair could dash aboard this other boat and half across her deck, a gap
had opened, impossible to leap. They halted in rage as the more
compact youth on the moving steamer's roof, catching their attention,
pointed a good two miles up the river front. Yet what he said they
would not have known had not her mate repeated from the forecastle:
"Post forty-six! Drive up thah! We stop thah fo' a load of emigrants!"
They fled back to the cab. Aboard the receding boat the ruthless engine
bells jingled on; the broad waterside and the city behind it seemed,
from her decks, to draw away into the western clouds, and the yellow
river spread wide its shores in welcome to her swinging form. Now its
mighty current seemed to quicken and quicken as she gradually
overcame her down-stream drift, the ship-lined shores ceased to creep
up-stream--began to creep down--and her black crew, standing close
about the capstan, broke majestically into song:
"Oh, rock me, Julie, rock me."
From the forecastle her swivel pealed, her burgee ran down the
jack-staff, a soft, continuous tremor set in among all her parts, her

scape-pipes ceased their alternating roars, her engines breathed quietly
through her vast funnels, the flood spurted at her cutwater, white
torrents leaped and chased each other from her fluttering wheels, her
own breeze fanned every brow, and the Votaress was under way.

IV
THE FIRST TWO MILES
The youth whom we have called short, square, and so on crossed to the
starboard derrick post. Several passengers had come up to the roof, and
one who, he noticed, seemed, by the many kind glances cast upon her,
to be already winning favor, was the tallish lass with the red curls.
The nurse was still at her back. She drew close up beside him and stood
in the wind that ruffled her hat and pressed her draperies against her
form. Her servant betrayed a faint restiveness to be so near him, but the
girl, watching the steamer's watery path as it seemed of its own volition
to glide under the boat's swift tread, ignored him as completely as if he
were a part of the woodwork. The very good-looking man who was
"taking out" the boat returned from a short tour of the deck and halted
by the great bell over the foremost skylights; but