“Why,” he replied, “did you ’uns intend to go on her?”
“Yes,” said I.
“Yonder she goes!” he said, coolly, as he pointed out the window looking down the river.
Yes, the St. Louis had gone, and was just disappearing round a bend nearly half a mile distant.
If the reader wants to know what pure, unalloyed anguish is, I can tell him that I experienced it on this occasion. There I was, fifty miles from my destination, and the propeller, on which I had spent several such happy days, gliding away and disappearing from my gaze, bearing from me the many good friends I had made among the passengers, whom I should now never, probably, see again, depriving me of the melancholy pleasure of bidding them good-by, and also of taking the address of a handsome young lady I fell in love with—to say nothing of my trunk, and some other articles I prized highly, scattered about in my state-room.
“I told you so,” said I to my conscience-stricken companion.
He gazed from the window, threw down his cue, and pronounced a great many words, in rapid succession, which, if found in the Scriptures, are not found exactly in the same order in which he uttered them. His case was worse than mine. His destination was Buffalo; and should we fail to reach Detroit ere the propeller should leave there—and we had little hope in that direction—he would lose four hundred miles of his ride. Besides, he had left his overcoat and revolver in his state-room, and who should answer for their safety?
As for me, my trunk was checked to Detroit, and I felt sure that it would be put off there; but in my state-room were left my chess-board, a set of chessmen, and other property, amounting in all to the value of about fifteen dollars—and what hope had I of ever seeing them again? Kein!
“Well,” said I, “let us make the best of it.”
“Yes, we might as well finish the game now,” said he, ruefully.