On that bluff, in colonial days, had stood Fort Rosalie, whose dire tragedy Ramsey, down in the cabin, found Gilmore, at table, recounting to Hugh and others: murder of its French settlers by Natchez Indians and the extermination of the Natchez tribe by the French from New Orleans. He was brief, and for a good ending went on to recall his own first sight of the spot, before the time of steamboats, when Natchez was a village; how, as his low broadhorn came drifting down around this point close above it, the bold rise swung into view, crowned with pines, its lower parts evergreen with the bay magnolia, and its precipitous front lighted up, as now, with the last beams of day. He made it seem so fair and important that Ramsey's native pride and a shame of her previous blindness almost drove her from the board to take a last look at it from the stern guards; but she was again in her mother's seat and again very hungry. He was good company to every one, the actor; always acting, yet always as natural as if acting and nature were one; a quiet education to Hugh, an unfailing joy to his wife, and both to Ramsey.
After supper the players got out an old two-act play for the next evening's entertainment. They cast Hugh and Ramsey for two small rôles, and for two larger ones found a young brother and sister—of Napoleon—at the mouth of the Arkansas—who would have just time to act them before leaving the boat. Supper had prevented its guests from seeing the Votaress turn Giles's Bend and Rifle Point and meet another boat as glittering as she and pass Lake Saint John and Fairchild's Bend—where the river widened to three miles about Fairchild's double island. Wherefore the indulgent Gilmores, on Ramsey's pleading, elected to coach first the brother and sister—of Napoleon—letting Hugh ascend to the starlight of the roof and Ramsey follow attended once more by old Joy.
She met Hugh at the foot of the pilot-house steps. "We are postponed!" she said, "you and me—I!"
"Yes. Do you know for what?"
"Yes, because those other two parts are so much bigger than ours, and because—I d'n' know—I believe they think I'm sleepy—ha, ha! I'm glad, for I want to study this river, all I can, day and night. And you—must, mustn't you?"
"Yes," he said, which was all he was to say in the play.
Half-way up the steps she halted: "You're to be a captain on it yourself as soon as you're fit, ain't you?"
"If that time ever comes."
"Phew! how modest" She stared an instant, turned her back, clasped the rail, and with her forehead on her arms laughed till Hugh was weary—not necessarily long.
He spoke: "Here come the Westwood and the Antelope."