I hear thy airy step so light,
Thou com'st to wish thy love good night.
Good night, my love, good night."
Good night, Votaress! He could not know, nor Ramsey, nor any of those among whom they stood, that these bends were never again to see you in your beauty—though in tragedy, yes! yes! They knew that in the shipyards of the Ohio you were to receive a beautiful rejuvenation; but knew not that then, as a dove may be caught by a lynx, you were to be caught by a great war, a war greater than the great river, and should return to these scenes a transport; a poor, scarred, bedraggled consort to gunboats; slow reptilian monsters of iron ugliness and bellowing ferocity. They knew not of days when you must swarm with blue soldiers—including Marburg—sometimes hot and merry for battle, sometimes shot-torn, fever-wasted, yellow-eyed, a human rubbish of camp and siege, lighter part of the deadly price of conquered strongholds and fallen cities—Forts Henry and Donelson, Columbus, Island Ten, Fort Pillow, Port Hudson, Vicksburg, Memphis; or that, after all, in recovered decency, honored poverty, you should wear out a gentle old age as a wharf-boat to your unspeakable inferiors. And neither could they, those voyagers on the new steamer, foresee the happier vision of their Enchantress living through the war charmedly unscathed, sharing the palmiest days of the Mississippi's navigation without ever being surpassed in speed or beauty, even by younger Courteney boats, and at last falling asleep peaceably at her moorings hard by the vast riverside railway warehouses on the outskirts of a greater New Orleans.
All this forces its way through the mind while we see the meeting boats cover half the run between them. On the Enchantress a deck-hand mounted the capstan.
"They're going to sing," hurriedly said Ramsey to Hugh. "I wish they'd sing ''Lindy Lowe' that I've heard about!"
And whether by happy chance or on some signal dropped down from him or because the chantey was a new one and the crew were glad to show it off, it was chosen. The two steamers passed close with a happy commotion throughout both and the song swelled. Then the wooded crest of the bar hid each from each, and Hugh turned to Gideon: "Now, commodore, if Miss Hayle is willing I'd like to take you both below and show you over the boat—before supper."
When their descent brought them to the boiler deck the song was yet in full swing. When, passing on down, they reached the engine room the fact was amusingly clear to many on all decks, among them the Gilmores, the Californian, and Watson, that the singers had lit on a new bearing for their lines and were singing them now in compliment to a certain two whose story was by this time known to all on board. Whether, back between the sweeping cranks and shafts of the two great engines and wheels, behind the "doctor" and the "donkey" and with Hugh and Ramsey at his elbows, the alert Gideon heard the song at all was doubtful; so deep in debate were the two men, the quiet and the loud, on dimensions and powers: length, beam, hold, stroke, diameters of cylinders and of wheels, in such noted cases as the Chevalier, the Eclipse, the J. M. White, the Natchez, Antelope, Paragon, Quakeress, and Autocrat. The three were there yet when the song's last echo died, with Island Sixty-four eastward astern, Sixty-five southward ahead, the brief twilight failing and the supper bell ringadang-dinging.
At table a far-away whistle softly roared and the Enchantress sonorously responded.
"A Hayle boat," said Ramsey to Hugh; "the Regent."