Jackson’s face now underwent a kaleidoscopic transformation ranging all the way from red to purple, and then to white. All his stolidity had vanished; he was no longer the slow countryman; he had become the courageous, impetuous Southerner.
“If you weren’t a boy,” he shouted, “I’d knock you down!”
“That wouldn’t prove your bravery,” returned George, regarding him with an expression of well-feigned contempt. “That would only show you to be a bully. If you have any courage in your veins—the kind of courage that most Southerners have—prove it by taking us across the river.”
The soldiers were gradually drawing near the wharf. Meanwhile George’s companions had caught his cue. He was trying to goad Jackson into ferrying them over the riotous stream.
“Humph!” said Macgreggor; “a good boatman is never afraid of the water; but our friend here seems to have a consuming fear of it!”
“He ought to live on a farm, where there is nothing but a duck pond in the shape of water,” added Jenks. Jackson was actually trembling with rage; his hands were twisting nervously.
Watson eyed him with seeming pity, as he said: “It’s a lucky thing for you that you didn’t enlist in the Confederate army. You would have run at the first smell of gunpowder!”
Jackson could contain his wrath no longer. “So you fellows think I’m a coward,” he cried. “Very well! I’ll prove that I’m not! Get into my boat, and I’ll take you across—or drown you all and myself—I don’t care which. But no man shall ever say that Ned Jackson is a coward!” He ran to the boat, leaped into it and beckoned to the Northerners. “Come on!” he shouted. Within a minute George, Macgreggor, Watson and Jenks were in the little craft, and the ferryman had unmoored it from the wharf.
“Never mind,” he cried, waving his hand to the soldiers, who had now reached the wharf. “I don’t want you. I’m going to ferry ’em over the river—or go to the bottom! It’s all right.”
Already were the voyagers in midstream, almost before they knew it. It looked as if Jackson, in his attempt to prove his courage, might only end by sending them all to the bottom. Waggie, who was now reposing in a pocket of George’s coat, suddenly gave a low growl. George produced from another pocket a bone which he had brought from Mrs. Page’s house, and gave it to the dog.