"I tell you, gentle-men, as sho' as man made the city an' Gawd made the country, he made this-yeh country last, when he'd got his hand in! You see that-ah house an' cedah grove on yan rise? Well, that's the old 'Good Luck Plantation.' Gid Hayle 'uz bawn thah. His fatheh went to Gawd f'om thah an' lef' it to Dan, the pilot, what 'uz lost on the Qua'—Hell! listen at me! As ef you didn't know that, which ev'y sight o' you stahts folks a-talkin' about it! But, Lawd! what a country this-yeh 'Azoo Delta is, to be sho'! Fo' craps! All this-yeh Mis'sippi Riveh, you mowt say, fo'm Cairo down, an' th' 'Azoo fo' the top-rail! Fo' craps—an' the money-makin'est craps! An' jest as much fo' game! Not pokeh but wile game; fo'-footen beasts afteh they kind an' fowl afteh they kind. An' ef a country's great fo' craps an' game, what mo' kin it be great faw what ain't pyo' Babylonian vanity an' Eu-rope-ian stinch?"
The commodore admitted that game was a good thing and that crops were even better.
"No, sir-ee! Game comes fust! Man makes the craps but Gawd made the game! It come fust when it fust come an' it comes fust yit! Lawd A'mighty! who wouldn't drutheh hunt than plough, ef he could hev his druthehs? But the game ain't what it wuz, not ev'm in this-yeh 'Azoo country an' not ev'm o' the feathe'd kind. Oh, wile turkey, o' co'se, they here yit, by thousan's, an' wile goose, an' duck, an' teal, by hund'eds o' thousan's, an' wile pigeon, clouds of 'em, 'at dahkened the noonday sun. Reckon you see' 'em do that, ain't you? I see' it this ve'y season. But, now, take the pelikin! if game is a fah' name fo' him—aw heh, as the case may be; which that bird—nine foot f'm tip to tip, the white ones—use' to be as common on this riveh as cuckle-burrs in a sheep's tail!" The jester laughed, or, more strictly, exhaled his mirth from the roof of a wide-spread mouth in a long hiss that would have been more like an angered alligator's if alligators used fine-cut tobacco. It was addressed to the commodore; for Hugh, his grandfather's conscious inferior in human charity, had turned the squarest back—for its height—aboard the Votaress, to gaze on a wonderful sight in the eastern sky. The exhorter resumed:
"Why, I ain't see' a pelikin sence I use' to flatboat down to Orleans—f'om Honey Islan' an' th' 'Azoo City. 'Pelikin in the wildeh-ness,' says the holy book, but they 'can't stan' the wildeh-ness!' They plumb gone!—vamoost!—down to the Gulf!—what few ain't been shot!" He grew indignant. "An' whahfo' shot? Faw noth'n'! Jeemany-crackies! gentle-men, it makes my blood bile an' my bile go sour! Ain't no bounty on pelikins. Dead pelikins ain't useful—naw awnamental—naw instructive, an' much less they don't tas'e good. No, suh, they jess shot in pyo' devil-ment by awngawdly damn fools—same as them on this boat all day 'istiddy a-poppin' they pistols at ev'y live thing they see'—fo' no damn' reason in the heab'ms above aw the earth beneath aw the watehs undeh the earth—Lawd! it mighty nigh makes me swah! An' I feel the heab'mly call—seein' as that-ah tub-shape' Methodis' bishop h-ain't feel it—fo' to tell you, commodo', you-all hadn't ought allowed that hell-fi'ud nonsense on Gawd's holy day."
Even to his grandfather's response Hugh paid no visible attention. The eastern sky had become such a picture that down forward at the break of the deck John Courteney rose eagerly from his chair and looked back and up to be sure that his son was one of its spectators. Yes, Hugh was just casting a like glance to him and now turned to invite the notice of his grandfather. The thunder-clouds had so encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp under the hills, some long-lost bend of the Mississippi or cut-off of the Yazoo, rose into the flood of beams an innumerable immaculate swarm of giant cranes. Half were white as silver, half were black as jet, and from moment to moment each jet magically turned to silver, each silver to jet, as on slowly pulsing wings they wove a labyrinthian way through their own multitude with never a clash of pinion on pinion, up, down, athwart and around, up, down, and around again, now raven black across the sun and now silver and snow against the cloud.
An awed voice broke the stillness and old Joy stood a modest step back from Hugh's side with rapt gaze on hill and sky.
XXXIII
TWINS AND TEXAS TENDER
"Sign f'om de Lawd!" droned the old woman. "It's de souls o' de saints in de tribilatioms o' de worl'!"