Captain Andy thought only in terms of waterways. Despite the prim little house in Thebes, home, to Andy, was a boat. Towns and cities were to him mere sources of supplies and passengers, set along the river banks for the convenience of steamboats. He knew every plank in every river-landing from St. Paul to Baton Rouge. As the sky is revealed, a printed page, to the astronomer, so Andy Hawks knew and interpreted every reef, sand bar, current, and eddy in the rivers that drained the great Mississippi Basin. And of these he knew best of all the Mississippi herself. He loved her, feared her, respected her. Now her courtiers and lovers were deserting her, one by one, for an iron-throated, great-footed, brazen-voiced hussy. Andy, among the few, remained true.
To leave the river—to engage, perforce, in some landlubberly pursuit was to him unthinkable. On the rivers he was a man of consequence. As a captain and pilot of knowledge and experience his opinion was deferred to. Once permanently ashore, penduluming prosaically between the precise little household and some dull town job, he would degenerate and wither until inevitably he who now was Captain Andy Hawks, owner and master of the steamboat Creole Belle, would be known merely as the husband of Parthy Ann Hawks, that Mistress of the Lace Curtains, Priestess of the Parlour Carpet, and Keeper of the Kitchen Floor. All this he did not definitely put into words; but he sensed it.
He cast about in his alert mind, and made his plans craftily, and put them warily, for he knew the force of Parthenia’s opposition.
“I see here where old Ollie Pegram’s fixing to sell his show boat.” He was seated in the kitchen, smoking his pipe and reading the local newspaper. “Cotton Blossom, she’s called.”
Parthy Ann was not one to simulate interest where she felt none. Bustling between stove and pantry she only half heard him. “Well, what of it?”
Captain Andy rattled the sheet he was holding, turned a page leisurely, meanwhile idly swinging one leg, as he sat with knees crossed. Each movement was calculated to give the effect of casualness.
“Made a fortune in the show-boat business, Ollie has. Ain’t a town on the river doesn’t wait for the Cotton Blossom. Yessir. Anybody buys that outfit is walking into money.”
“Scallywags.” Thus, succinctly, Parthenia thought to dismiss the subject while voicing her opinion of water thespians.
“Scallywags nothing! Some of the finest men on the river in the show-boat business. Look at Pegram! Look at Finnegan! Look at Hosey Watts!”
It was Mrs. Hawks’ habit to express contempt by reference to a ten-foot pole, this being an imaginary implement of disdain and a weapon of defence which was her Excalibur. She now announced that not only would she decline to look at the above-named gentlemen, but that she could not be induced to touch any of them with a ten-foot pole. She concluded with the repetitious “Scallywags!” and evidently considered the subject closed.