A shrill scream rent the air. It seemed for one moment as if Captain Treherne himself had made a discovery, so elated were his eyes, so triumphant was his face, changed almost out of recognition in the moment. Agitated as he was he had lost his balance and was swaying to and fro as if he might pitch head-foremost into the river.
“If you don’t want the whole water-side popilation rowing out here to see what’s the matter aboard you had better make him stop that n’ise,” the shanty-boater urged. “Gag him. Take his handhercher, or his hat,” he recommended, still swiftly rowing.
The dull, purplish twilight of the slow-coming day gave little token of stir amongst the few scattered inhabitants of the riverside within earshot; cottonpickers are never in the field till the sun has dried the dew from the plant, but Jorrocks was mindful of the fact that there are barnyard duties in an agricultural community requiring early rising; cows are to be milked, horses fed and watered, and any bucolic errand might bring to the bank an inquisitive interest in these weird cries ringing from shore to shore in an intensity of agonized emotion. The suggestion of Jorrocks was acted upon instantly. Binnhart roughly knocked the hat from Captain Treherne’s head, crushed it into a stiff, shapeless mass, thrust it between his jaws, attempting to secure it with his large linen handkerchief, despite his strenuous resistance. The struggle was fierce, and the miscreants were dismayed by the strength the victim put forth. The two could scarcely hold him; over and again he shook off both Binnhart and Connover. The shanty-boater had great ado even with his practiced skill to keep the skiff from overturning altogether, as it listed from side to side as the weight of the combatants shifted. The stranger fought with a sort of frenzy, striking, kicking, butting with his head, even biting with his strong snapping jaws.
“He is like a maniac,” cried Binnhart, in amaze, and once more that awful cry rang upon the air, shrill, wild, freighted with demoniacal bursts of laughter, yet with an intonation more pathetic than tears.
Not until Jorrocks shipped his oars and, leaning forward, caught Treherne’s feet, throwing him on his back in the bottom of the boat, was the gag again introduced into his mouth, to be promptly and dexterously ejected as he sought to rise. Again was the semi-nautical skill of the shanty-boater of avail. A crafty knot in a rope’s end and the stranger’s arms were pinioned to his side, and while the gag was secured the surplusage of the cord was bound again and again about his legs till he was helpless, able neither to move nor to speak. Only his wild eyes expressed his indomitable courage, his sense of affronted dignity, his resentful fury.
“I do declar’ I’m minded to spit in his face,” exclaimed Binnhart, vindictively, as panting and breathless, he towered above his victim, lying at his feet.
“Better not!” the shanty-boater admonished the blacksmith. Then, in a lower voice: “You fool you, we depend on his good will to show us the place where the swag is hid.”
“Tend to your own biz,” roughly replied Binnhart. “Look where your boat is driftin’. Bound for Vicksburg, ain’t ye?”
For, left to its own devices when the oarsman had gone to the aid of his comrades, the skiff had been carried by the swift current far down the stream and toward the bank, so close, indeed, that Binnhart apprehended its grounding. He had not an acquaintance with the river front equal to the practical knowledge of the shanty-boater, whose peregrinations made him the familiar of every bogue and bight, of every bar and tow-head for a hundred miles or more.
“Look what’s ahead of your blunt pig-snout, an’ maybe ye’ll have sense enough to follow it,” Jorrocks retorted.