The second lighter of cotton was towed down to us by quite a large high-pressure steamer, the Olive Branch, that was going on to Pass Christian with passengers. After dinner that day, Mr. Bowker, who was in an unusually amiable mood, called out, “You, Bob, take Charlie with you in the dingey, and go on board that steamer, and see if you can’t get me some newspapers.”
Charlie was the new boy, the successor to Jim, who had unostentatiously departed from the ship, “between two days,” in Liverpool, last voyage. As Charlie was my junior, I took a great and not unnatural pleasure in making him as uncomfortable as possible when an opportunity presented. So I hauled the dingey up at once to the gangway, and, rousing Charlie up from his unfinished dinner, started off for the steamer.
I had already become quite a good boatman, but this was a novel experience for me, and indeed it was quite a delicate matter to lay a small boat safely alongside one of those great side wheel steamers while she was still in motion,—for the Olive Branch had not anchored, but had only stopped her engines and was slowly drifting.
As I approached the steamer I saw a man standing well forward of the wheel-house with a line ready to throw to us, and I headed the boat for him. As we came within good distance we tossed in our oars, the line was thrown, Charlie caught it, but stumbled and fell, and in a moment the dingey had capsized, and we were in the water and under the wheel of the steamer!
Unfortunately I had never learned to swim; and as I was heavily clad I went down in the cold salt water of the bay like a stone, and for a few seconds experienced all the agonies of drowning!
Then I rose and, as I came to the surface, found myself among the “buckets” of the great wheel of the steamer, which were green and slimy with river moss, and as slippery as ice. By a tremendous physical effort I succeeded in getting astride of one of these buckets, and obtained a precarious position of comparative safety, as I thought at first.
But, to my horror, I was scarcely out of the water when the wheel commenced very slowly revolving. The terror of that moment I shall never forget. The recollection of it returns to me now, after all these years, and in my bad attacks of nightmare I sometimes fancy myself clinging again with desperation to a slowly revolving wheel, drenched, shivering with cold, and expecting each moment a horrible death!
In my agony I shouted aloud; but, inclosed on all sides as I was by the wheel-box, I felt sure that my cries could not be heard. In the darkness of this prison box the wheel slowly, very slowly revolved, carrying me up toward the top of the cover, where I fully expected to be ground to pieces; or if perchance I escaped that fate, I knew that I would be drowned when I was drawn under the water in the fearful suction beneath the wheel.
Escape seemed impossible, but frantic with fear I again shouted at the top of my shrill young voice till my lungs seemed ready to burst. Then the wheel stopped. There was a pause; I heard the noise of hurried feet upon the wheel-box above me, a trap door was opened, and the blessed light of day came struggling in.
I saw a man looking earnestly down into the darkness of the space beneath him, and I tried to call out, but my voice seemed paralyzed, and, for the moment, I could not make a sound.