"Yes, sir," said the steward.
Continuously the dividends of Bird, Bird and Co. outweighed every other consideration, and the Flamingo dodged on with her halting voyage. At the first place he put in at, Kettle sent off an extravagant cablegram of recent happenings to the representative of the Insurance Company in England. It was not the cotton season, and the Texan ports yielded the steamer little, but she had a ton or so of cargo for almost every one of them, and she delivered it with neatness, and clamored for cargo in return. She was "working up a connection." She swung round the Gulf till she came to where logs borne by the Mississippi stick out from the white sand, and she wasted a little time, and steamed past the nearest outlet of the delta, because Captain Kettle did not personally know its pilotage. He was getting a very safe and cautious navigator in these latter days of his prosperity.
So she made for the Port Eads pass, picked up a pilot from the station by the lighthouse, and steamed cautiously up to the quarantine station, dodging the sandbars. Her one remaining passenger had passed from an active nuisance to a close and unheard prisoner, and his presence was almost forgotten by every one on board, except Kettle and the steward who looked after him. The merchant seaman of these latter days has to pay such a strict attention to business, that he has no time whatever for extraneous musings.
The Flamingo got a clean bill from the doctor at the quarantine station, and emerged triumphantly from the cluster of craft doing penance, and, with a fresh pilot, steamed on up the yellow river, past the white sugar-mills, and the heavy cypresses behind the banks. And in due time the pilot brought her up to New Orleans, and, with his glasses on the bridge, Kettle saw his acquaintance, Mr. Lupton, waiting for him on the levee.
He got his steamer berthed in the crowded tier, and Mr. Lupton pushed on board over the first gang-plank. But Kettle waved the man aside till he saw his vessel finally moored. And then he took him into the chart-house and shut the door.
"You seem to have got my cable," he said. "It was a very expensive one, but I thought the occasion needed it."
His visitor tapped Kettle confidentially on the knee. "You'll find my office will deal most liberally with you, Captain. But I can tell you I'm pretty excited to hear your full yarn."
"I'm afraid you won't like it," said Kettle. "The man's obviously dead, and, fancy it or not, I don't see how your office can avoid paying the full amount. However, here's the way I've logged it down"--and he went off into detailed narration.
The New Orleans heat smote upon the chart-house roof, and the air outside clattered with the talk of negroes. Already hatches were off, and the winch chains sang as they struck out cargo, and from the levee alongside, and from New Orleans below and beyond, came tangles of smells which are peculiarly their own. A steward brought in tea, and it stood on the chart-table untasted, and at last Kettle finished, and Lupton put a question.
"It's easy to tell," he said, "if they did swap names. What was the man that went overboard like?"