CHAPTER XXI.
THE TRIP OF THE TUG.
The tug-boat was a little thing, and not very clean; but she was strong and sea-worthy, we were told, and therefore we were satisfied. There was a small deck aft, on which Corny and Rectus and I sat, with Celia, the colored woman; and there were some dingy little sleeping-places, which were given up for our benefit. The captain of the tug was a white man, but all the rest, engineer, fireman and hands—there were five or six in all—were negroes.
We steamed down the Savannah River in pretty good style, but I was glad when we got out of it, for I was tired of that river. Our plan was to go down the coast and try to find tidings of the boats. They might have reached land at points where the revenue cutters would never have heard from them. When we got out to sea, the water was quite smooth, although there was a swell that rolled us a great deal. The captain said that if it had been rough he would not have come out at all. This sounded rather badly for us, because he might give up the search, if a little storm came on. And besides, if he was afraid of high waves in his tug, what chance could those boats have had?
Toward noon, we got into water that was quite smooth, and we could see land on the ocean side of us. I couldn't understand this, and went to ask the captain about it. He said it was all right, we were going to take the inside passage, which is formed by the islands that lie along nearly all the coast of Georgia. The strips of sea-water between these islands and the mainland make a smooth and convenient passage for the smaller vessels that sail or steam along this coast. Indeed, some quite good-sized steamers go this way, he said.
I objected, pretty strongly, to our taking this passage, because, I said, we could never hear anything of the boats while we were in here. But he was positive that if they had managed to land on the outside of any of these islands, we could hear of them better from the inside than from the ocean side. And besides, we could get along a great deal better inside. He seemed to think more of that than anything else.
We had a pretty dull time on that tug. There wasn't a great deal of talking, but there was lots of thinking, and not a very pleasant kind of thinking either. We stopped quite often and hailed small boats, and the captain talked to people whenever he had a chance, but he never heard anything about any boats having run ashore on any of the islands, or having come into the inside passage, between any of them. We met a few sailing vessels, and toward the close of the afternoon we met a big steamer, something like northern river steamers. The captain said she ran between the St. John's River and Savannah, and always took the inside passage as far as she could. He said this as if it showed him to be in the right in taking the same passage, but I couldn't see that it proved anything. We were on a different business.
About nine o'clock we went to bed, the captain promising to call us if anything turned up. But I couldn't sleep well—my bunk was too close and hot, and so I pretty soon got up and went up to the pilot-house, where I found the captain. He and one of the hands were hard at work putting the boat around.
"Hello!" said he. "I thought you were sound asleep."