“I want to speak to Joshua Berridge,” he consulted a paper in his hand. “He lives here, doesn’t he?”
“My dad-in-law,” she explained, suavely; “but he ain’t at home just now, though”—with a facetious smile, “’twon’t be long ’fore he comes—most supper time, ye know. Won’t ye kem in an’ wait?”
Ducie declined this invitation and sat meditatively eyeing the waste of waters, for the river was now at its full scope, barring inundation, and stretched in great majesty to a bank scarcely visible on the farther shore.
“I ain’t sure, but what ye mought find him over on the old Che’okee Rose,” she said, speculatively, for Ducie was very comely and she had a special impulse to be polite to so worthy an object of courtesy.
“Is the old steamboat there yet?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at the murky swirls of the swift current. There was now no sign of the sand-bar on which the ill-fated craft had stranded. The foaming waves raced past and submerged its whole extent. None might know where it lay. A deep-water craft, drawing many feet, might have unwittingly plied above its expanse. Only a fraction of the superstructure of the steamboat—the pilot-house and texas, and the upper part of the cabin, showed above the waste of waters to distinguish the spot where the steamer had run aground and the pitiless storm had flayed out all its future utility.
“The wreckers have been down time and again,” she went on with a note of apology. “They tuk off all the vallybles before the water riz,—the kyarpets, an’ funnicher, an’ mirrors, an’ sech—even the big chimbleys. The water got the rest, but wunst in a while ef us pore folks wants somethin’ that be lef’ fur lost—like some henges, or somthin’ we jest tries to supply ourse’fs ez bes’ we kin.”
Adrian was still silently looking at the wreck that he had such cause to remember, with all that had since come and gone.
“Well, I reckon Dad is over there now, hunting fur them henges,” said the woman, speculatively. “Leastwise,” holding her palm above her eyes, “’pears like I kin see a boat on the tother side, a-bobbin at the e-end of a painter!”
Adrian moved with a sudden resolution. The oars smote the water, and with curt and formal thanks for the information, he began to row strongly across the current that despite his best endeavors carried him continually down and down the river, and required him to shape his course diagonally athwart the stream to counteract its impetus.
The woman stood for a time aimlessly watching him, as the rhythmic oars plied, and the skiff, shadowless this dull day, kept on its way. At last she turned within and shut the door.