The Story of Duciehurst: A Tale of the Mississippi

by Charles Egbert Craddock

In his personal absorptions Floyd-Rosney had not noticed the rain. “Is it more than a ‘season,’ do you think?—the breaking up of this long drought?” Floyd-Rosney quickly adopted the incidental tone.

He was so essentially a proud man that he would fain think well of himself. His credulity expanded eagerly to the hope that to others the episode of the morning might seem, as apparently to this man, only a bit of gay badinage, the feminine insolence of a much indulged wife to her lenient lord and master. To himself it could not bear this interpretation, nor to her. He could never forget nor forgive the impulse that informed it. But he was quick to seize the opportunity to reinstate his self-possession, nay, the only possibility to “save his face” and hold up his head. Such demands his assuming dignity made on the deference of all about him that taken in this wise the incident could hardly appear serious.

“If there were thunder and lightning it might seem the equinoctial,” said Ducie, “although it is something late in the year.”

They had walked together down the saloon and to the forward part of the cabin where they stood at the curving glass front looking out on vacancy. The rain fell, not in torrents now, but in unbroken sheets of gray crystal, opaque and veined with white. As the water struck the guards it rebounded with the force of the downfall in white foam more than a foot high, while sweeping away over the edge with the impetus and volume of a cataract. But for the list of the boat, for the Cherokee Rose had not grounded fair and square on the sand-bar, this flood would have been surging through the saloon, but the rain drove with the gusts and, the windward side being several inches lower than the other, the downpour struck upon it and recoiled from the slant. The sound was something tremendous; the savagery of the roar of the columns of rain falling upon the roof was portentous, sinister, expressive of the unreasoning rage of the tempestuous elements and of the helplessness of human nature to cope with it. Suddenly, whether the turmoil had in some sort abated, or alien sounds were more insistently apparent, a new clamor was in the air,—a metallic clanking, repetitious, constantly loudening, was perceptible from the lower deck. Then ensued a deep, long-drawn susurrus. The engines were astir once more. Obviously, an effort was in progress to get the Cherokee Rose off the bar under her own steam. A babel of joyous, excited comment in the saloon, at the extreme pitch of the human voice, could hardly be heard in the midst of the turmoil without. All agreed that a vast flood must have fallen to raise the river sufficiently to justify the attempt.

“We are below the junction of several tributaries in this vicinity that bring down a million tuns a minute in such weather as this,” commented one of the passengers.

Another, of the type that must have information at first hand, rushed to the door to secure a conference with the Captain, regardless, or, perhaps, unconscious, of the remonstrance of the others. As the door opened in his hand a torrent of water rushed in, traversing the length of the saloon over the red velvet carpet, and a blast of the wind promptly knocked him off his feet, throwing him across the cabin against a huddle of overturned chairs. The other men, with one accord, sprang forward, and it was only with the united strength of half a dozen that the door could be forced to close, although its lock seemed scarcely able to hold it against the pressure from without. For the wind had redoubled its fury. This region is the lair of the hurricane, and there was a prophetic anxiety in every eye.

It is, indeed, well that these great elemental catastrophes are as transient as terrible. Human nerves could scarcely sustain beyond the space of a minute the frightful tumult that presently filled the air. The wind shrilled with a keen sibilance, and shouted in riotous menace that seemed to strike against the zenith and rebound and reëcho anew. The sense of its speed was appalling. The thunderous crashing of the forests on the river bank told of the riving of timber and the up-rooting of great trees laid flat in the narrow path of the hurricane. For in the limitations of the track lies the one hope of escape from this sudden frenzy of the air. Its area of destruction may be fifty miles in length, but is often only a hundred yards or so in width, cut as straight as a road and as regular, when this awful, invisible foe marches through the country. Perhaps this was the thought in the mind of every man of the little coterie, the chance that the Cherokee Rose might be outside the path of the hurricane. The next moment a hollow reverberation of an indescribably wide and blaring sound broke forth close at hand, as the smoke-stacks of the Cherokee Rose crashed down on the texas and rolled thence on the hurricane deck, the guy wires jangling loose and shivering in keen, metallic tones. The boat yawed over, suddenly smitten, as it were, by one fierce stroke. The furniture, the passengers, all were swept down the inclined plane of the floor of the saloon and against the mirrored doors of the staterooms. An aghast muteness reigned for one moment of surprise and terror. Then cries broke forth and futile and frantic efforts were made to reach the upper portion of the cabin. A wild alarm was heard that the boat was on fire,—that the boat had slipped off the sand-bar and was sinking. Reiterated shouts arose for the officers, the Captain, the clerks, the pilot, the mate, and the tumult without was reflected by the confusion and terror within.

Ducie’s brain seemed awhirl at the moment of the disaster. As he regained his mental poise he saw Mrs. Floyd-Rosney on her knees frantically struggling with the door of her stateroom, the lock evidently having somehow sprung in the contortions of the steamer under the blast. She looked up at him for an instant, but her tongue was obviously incapable of framing a word in the excitement of that tempestuous crisis. Ducie suddenly remembered, what everyone else but the mother had forgotten, that the little boy had scarcely five minutes earlier gone to the stateroom to be dealt with for the kissing microbes. Observing the inadequacy of her efforts Ducie rushed to her assistance and sought, by main strength, to force open the twisted and warped door. It was so difficult to effect an entrance that he began to doubt if this could be done without an axe, when he succeeded in splintering it a trifle where it had already showed signs of having sustained a fracture. Into the aperture thus made he thrust his foot and then wedged in his knee, finally shattering a panel from the frame, to the horror of the prisoners within, whose voices of terror found an echo in Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s anguished exclamations.

Ducie triumphantly lifted out little Ned and then the old colored nurse was dragged through the aperture, scarcely sufficient for the transit.

“There you are, good as new,” cried Ducie genially.