"What'll her name be? Another e-double-s, of course?"
"No, I've just been telling your father—here comes the Antelope. I was telling him that grandfather——"
An overhead roar of reply to the signal of the approaching boat drowned all words, but Ramsey had learned on coming aboard that the grandfather was still sound though beyond four score, and her one vivid wish now was to know more not of him but of Hugh and her father. Yet she had to let Hugh hand her up the pilot-house stair, and without him rejoined the Gilmores while Watson spoke down to the man in the captain's chair as to the light-draught Antelope having come up through the chute of Island So-and-so. She was just in time to accept her share in the splendor and gayety of the two boats' meeting and passing. As the picture dissolved, Mrs. Gilmore slyly pinched Ramsey's finger while asking Watson:
"Why don't our men sing? I want some more 'Lindy!"
Had she not heard the signal for the lead? No, in the excitement she had not, though both Ramsey and "California" had, there being to them an unfailing poetry in the casting of the lead, whether by day or, as now, by the glare of a torch basket let down close to the water under the starboard freight guards. At one end of the breast-board the two ladies, at the other the actor and the Californian, looked out and down. The boat's builder had left his seat and stood with Hugh at the forward rail. From the freight guards, far below, the leadsman, unseen up here except to experienced "poetic vision," sent up a long-drawn chant telling the fathoms of depth shown on the sounding-line that flew forward from his skilled hand into the boat's moonlight shadow, plunged to the river's bed, vibrated past his feet in the glare of the pine torch, stretched aft while he chanted, and was recovered in dripping coils and hove again.
"Mark under wa-ater, twai-ai-ain."
As the notes resounded Hugh looked up to the pilots and in his quietest speaking voice repeated:
"Mark under water, twain."
But our concern here is mainly with those for whom the scene, the calls, veiled two private conversations. Three or four times the one melodious cry, following as many casts, rose from below, and each time, with all its swing and melody left out, Hugh passed it on up to the pilots. Between the strains Gilmore said softly to "California":
"My dear fellow, no. Every time we show ourselves their partisans we make heavier hauling for them. They'd tell us so, only that—don't you see?—they can't even do that. It would be infra dig." But in fact Ramsey was just then telling something much like that to his wife.