Rifles still continued to crack, and not a few bullets came aboard the Milly Ayer. Captain Royce got away from his queer “tow” without much difficulty, however, and when day dawned was ten miles on his way up the Mississippi, bound for St. Louis.
It is said that Cairo did not get back to its former moorings for a week or more. And for years afterward rivermen were wont to relate the story of the joke which “Mack” Royce played on the “town.”
The Milly Ayer was five days going from the confluence of the Ohio up to St. Louis. But, at a little before noon on the 27th, it arrived in sight of the pretty clearing on the west bank of the Mississippi, where stood the hundred and eighty houses of squared logs which comprised the St. Louis of 1803.
Pierre Laclede, a French trader, cleared a site and built the first houses here in 1764. In 1803 the houses of the French traders and principal citizens stood along Main Street, each at the center of what is now a city block, surrounded by high palisades, or stone walls, for defensive purposes. Fruit and vegetable gardens were within these enclosures. There were two small taverns, a bakery, two smithies and two grist-mills. Many of the people were traders, and kept a stock of goods at their houses.
The luxuries, and even the necessities, of life were excessively dear; coffee was two dollars a pound, and sugar equally high-priced. A knowledge of this had led Captain Royce to lay in a stock of these staples, after consenting to take Lieutenant Grimsby as a passenger. And, as the event proved, he was able to clear a dollar a pound on four quintals of each.
At the outset, however, a mad prank on the part of the lieutenant came near getting them in trouble. Knowing that the French at St. Louis cherished a vast admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte, and were expecting that he would shortly take possession of the Mississippi Valley, Grimsby bethought himself—since their pet bear was named Napoleon—to have some sport from the coincidence. He said nothing to Captain Royce, but persuaded Lewis and Moses to assist him, and told them what to shout as they drew in to the landing-place.
“NAPOLEON IS HERE! VIVE NAPOLEON!”
In those days the arrival of a keel-boat from New Orleans was an event. Not more than ten came up in the course of a season. As soon as the Milly Ayer was sighted, nearly the whole population came running to the river bank, and were both astonished and immensely delighted to see Moses and Lewis waving the tricolor from the top of the deck-house and hear them shouting:
“Vive Napoleon!” “Napoleon est ici!” (Napoleon is here!) “Napoleon chez vous!”