The Rose of Old St. Louis | Page 8

a stiff south-eastern breeze, assisted by vigorous strokes of their paddles, and I could see that against the swift current they were straining every nerve and yet were steadily being borne below the village and the landing-place.
Paddling on the Schuylkill and the Delaware was ever a favorite pastime with me, and I doubt not I was a little proud of my skill. Forgetting my recent illness and the weak state it had left me in, I seized the paddle from a young fellow who seemed to me well-nigh giving over, and unceremoniously tumbled him out of his seat into the bottom of the boat, while I took his place. To my astonishment, I found this was an entirely different stream from the steadily flowing rivers of the East. My paddle was like to be snatched from my hand at the first dip into the powerful current, and though I saved it by a mad and desperate clutch, yet it felt like a feather in my hands, and I saw my captain (who had witnessed my peremptory usurpation of the paddle) trying to suppress a sly smile, while my mortified ears caught the sound of derisive snickers behind me, and Yorke, the impudent black, grinned openly from ear to ear.
The worst of it was, I myself could see we were losing ground more rapidly than before. Now, I had ever a horror of owning myself beaten (unless it were in argument, for I have no skill with words). I would fight to the last gasp, but I would never surrender, which is sometimes a foolish way, but more often wins victory out of defeat. With my captain looking on, I felt that defeat even in so small a matter would be a disgrace I could never survive. And so, admonishing myself to keep cool, and remembering a turn of the wrist that an old Indian had taught me in Pennsylvania, I very soon caught the trick of the blade and found myself holding my own. Hope returned, and I gradually put forth more and more strength, until, to my great satisfaction, I at last saw that we were no longer drifting down-stream, but steadily making head against the current, with fair promise of reaching our landing-place. Then, indeed, did I feel exultant, and such courage leaped through my veins, and so swift and sure and strong were my strokes, that I felt I could alone, with my single arm, bring the great boat to harbor. But for the second time that morning was my vanity my undoing. We did indeed make the landing, where a great concourse of people had gathered to meet us, among them a stately Spanish don (who, I had no doubt, was the governor) surrounded by a retinue of officers; but as the keel of our boat grounded in the soft mud and my captain called me to come with him to meet the governor, and I arose in my place to obey him, suddenly a great blackness and dizziness seized me, and I knew no more until I opened my eyes to find myself being borne, on the shoulders of four men, up the steep bluff toward the village street. I insisted in the most forcible terms on being put upon my feet at once, but as I spoke in English, and the soldiers were either Spanish or creole French, my entreaties and imprecations were lost upon them. Nor did my kicking and pushing avail me any better; they but held me the more firmly for my struggles. Then I called out lustily for help, and the ever-ready Yorke (but with the grin that I had learned at times to consider detestable) ran to my aid.
"Yorke!" I shouted to him; "make the rascals put me down this minute, and do you, sir, shut that domtiferous mouth of yours. I warn you, sir, you grin at your peril!"
My mother had ever a horror of the oaths with which gentlemen lard their conversation, and because I loved and honored her greatly, I had resolved that I would never, to use her words, "sully my mouth" with one. But often feeling the need of some more emphatic expressions than our language provides except in the form of oaths, I had coined for myself a small vocabulary to be used on occasions requiring great emphasis. Since these words all began with a d, I had the satisfaction of feeling that I was sufficiently emphatic without violating the respect due my mother.
Whether it was the strangeness of the form of my imprecations or the length of my adjective that scared Yorke, certain it is that he was sobered at once, and with the solemnity of the Spanish don himself he soon made the soldiers understand that they must put me down.