The muddy sea has raised a ferment of excitement, and many, who have all faith in the ship’s reckoning, still look forward as though they could look through the hundred miles before us, and see the wished-for land. Night closes, however, leaving us surrounded by the same muddy waves; but we turn in, with the strong assurance that to-morrow we shall make the Pass.
Land! But hidden under low fogs, that, I am told, brood over this delta of the Mississippi. From the crosstrees can be seen one or two steam-tugs, vessels at anchor, and distant salt marshes; but from the deck we peer about in all directions, and see nothing in the fog. A pilot moves the ship up to her anchorage. We are to wait perhaps only the moving of the tugs—perhaps the falling of the river; the river is up, and as was foretold by the Captain, the water is down.
The explanation of this paradox is simple. The water on the bar is ocean water, though discolored by the river. Its height is always a tidal height, that is, it rises with the tide, not with the river. The freshets, while they do not add to the height of the water, nevertheless bring down large quantities of mud, which settles on the bar, and thus builds up the bottom without raising the surface of the water. The pilots measure from the bottom, and finding it nearer the surface than it was, say that the water has fallen, when in fact it is the bottom that has risen. Then come the tides and wash away the loose mud upon the bar, and thus the water deepens while the river falls.
We are again at anchor; a tug is heard in the fog, and all turn anxiously toward it. The Captain of the tug hails the Captain of the ship, and demands what water she draws.
“Sixteen feet and a half,” is the answer. “Will that do?”
The Captain of the tug says it is doubtful—they are going down to tug another ship that draws fifteen and a half, and if they get her over, they will tug us at the next flood-tide.
That ship is the transport “William Woodbury.” She comes down gallantly, the soldiers crowding her bulwarks, two powerful tugs puffing at her sides, and every sail set. We watch her with anxiety. She passes a buoy that we think marks the bar, and all seems well. The mate says he “don’t know but akind of believes she’s over.” As he speaks, she swings round, stops, and sticks fast. The steam-tugs pull her backward and forward and sidewise, and at last over the bar; she disappears in the fog beyond, and we await with fresh anxiety the flood-tide of the afternoon.
These tugs have one strange appendage in the form of a ladder as high as the smoke-pipe; on the top of this is a chair, and in this chair is a man. It is the pilot who thus looks over the low fogs of the Pass. From this high place we hear the voice of one, toward evening, and soon two tugs come down to try their strength in dragging our ship through two feet of mud. The heaviest hawser is out on deck and an end run over either side to the stubborn little tug that lies there. The anchor is tripped, a sail or two set, and with good headway, we approach the bar. Suddenly every one who is on his legs takes an unexpected step forward—the hawser parts—the tugs break loose—and we are hard aground. But the tugs do not give it up. They reattach themselves and drag us, after many efforts, out of the mud and back to where we started.
We approach the bar again cautiously; but again we feel the vessel grounding, and again she stands still. The tugs tug away as though striving to drag us through by main strength, and many declare that we are moving slowly. A neighboring buoy, however, stays close beside us, and after half an hour’s hard work, shows that we have not moved a foot. Still the tugs tug as obstinately as ever. They drag us back and try afresh—now to the right—now to the left—panting, puffing and blowing. The pilots sit enveloped in clouds of black coal smoke, and shout, and scream. At last, with the last rays of daylight, and the last swelling of the tide, and the last strands of the hawser, and at the moment when all efforts must cease, we are dragged across the bar, and enter the Mississippi.