Vandemarks Folly | Page 8

and back to Albany, carrying farm products, hides, wool,
wheat, other grain, and such things as potash, pearlash, staves, shingles,
and salt from Syracuse, and sometimes a good deal of meat; and what
the railway people call "way-freight" between all the places along the
route. Our boat was much slower than the packets and the passenger
boats which had relays of horses at stations and went pretty fast, and
had good cabins for the passengers, too, and cooks and stewards,

serving fine meals; while all our cooking was done by the captain or
one of our hands, though sometimes we carried a cook.
Bill, the man who answered "Ay, ay, sir!" when the captain asked him
to witness that he had refused me passage on the boat, was a salt-water
sailor who had signed on with the boat while drunk at Albany and now
said he was going to Buffalo to try sailing on the Lakes. The other man
was a green Irishman called Paddy, though I suppose that was not his
name. He was good only as a human derrick or crane. We used to look
upon all Irishmen as jokes in those days, and I suppose they realized it.
Paddy used to sing Irish comeallyes on the deck as we moved along
through the country; and usually got knocked down by a low bridge at
least once a day as he sang, or sat dreaming in silence. Bill despised
Paddy because he was a landsman, and used to drown Paddy's Irish
songs with his sailor's chanties roared out at the top of his voice. And
mingled with us on the boat would be country people traveling to or
from town, pedlers, parties going to the stopping-places of the
passenger boats, people loading and unloading freight, drovers with
live stock for the market, and all sorts of queer characters and odd fish
who haunted the canal as waterside characters infest the water-front of
ports. If I could live that strange life over again I might learn more
about it; but I saw very little meaning in it then. That is always the way,
I guess. We must get away from a type of life or we can't see it plainly.
That has been the way as to our old prairie life in Iowa. It is only within
the past few years that I have begun to see a little more of what it meant.
It was not long though until even I began to feel the West calling to me
with a thousand voices which echoed back and forth along the Erie
Canal, and swelled to a chorus at the western gateway, Buffalo.

2
Captain Sproule had carried me aft from the drivers' cabin to his own
while I was in a half-unconscious condition, and out of pure pity, I
suppose; but that was the last soft treatment I ever got from him. He
came into the cabin just as I was thinking of getting up, and sternly
ordered me forward to my own cabin. I had nothing to carry, and it was

very little trouble to move. We were moored to the bank just then
taking on or discharging freight, and Ace was in the cabin to receive
me.
"That upper bunk's your'n," he said. "No greenhorn gits my bunk away
from me!"
I stood mute. Ace glared at me defiantly.
"Can you fight?" he asked.
"I do' know," I was obliged to answer.
"Then you can't," said Ace, with bitter contempt. "I can lick you with
one hand tied behind me!"
He drew back his fist as if to strike me, and I wonder that I did not run
from the cabin and jump ashore, but I stood my ground, more from
stupor and what we Dutch call dumbness than anything else. Ace let his
fist fall and looked me over with more respect. He was a slender boy,
hard as a whip-lash, wiry and dark. He was no taller than I, and not so
heavy; but he had come to have brass and confidence from the life he
lived. As a matter of fact, he was not so old as I, but had grown faster;
and was nothing like as strong after I had got my muscles hardened, as
was proved many a time.
"You'll make a great out of it on the canal," he said.
"What?" said I.
"A boy that can't fight," said he, "don't last long drivin'. I've had sixteen
fights this month!"
A bell sounded on deck, and we heard the voice of Bill calling us to
breakfast. Ace yelled to me to come on, and all hands including the
captain gathered on deck forward, where we had coffee, good
home-made bread bought from a farmer's wife, fried cakes, boiled
potatoes, and plenty