They said no more all the way up Rampart Street to Canal, out Canal to the steamboat landing, and across the levee to the Enchantress. An hour later they stood in her wheel-house, looking down on the same Saturday afternoon five o'clock scene that Watson and Ned had thus contemplated from the Votaress a hundred months before.
Here were the same vast piles of harvest wealth, the same crowds and little flags, the same shouting and tumult only grown greater, the same open sky—though of October—the same many-pillared cloud of black smoke, the same smartly painted bumboats selling oranges, bananas, pineapples, corals, and seashells—many of the latter treated with puritanic art, having, that is, the Lord's Prayer bitten into them with muriatic acid. Here lay the same yellow harbor with many more fussy little tugs in it, its water low yet still mast-deep, its yard-long catfish and fathom-long gars leaping and wallowing after their prey, its white gulls flashing about the steamers' pantry windows. Here was the same black forest of ships in the up-stream and down-stream distance and here, finally, the same public hope and pride grown wider and loftier in their last affluence before entering that purgatory of civil war which now seems but a bad dream outlived.
Steam was up on the Enchantress, and every now and then her mighty wheels tugged on her hawsers. In the crowd gathered on the wharf to see her go were the Gilmores and the half dozen from Vicksburg and the Bends. Up on the hurricane-deck were two or three small knots of passengers, chiefly ladies, unknown to the Gilmore group; but beside a derrick post, where we first saw Hugh on the Votaress, stood the three Hayles, old Joy, and "California"—bound once more for the gold-diggings. Near the Hayles, yet nearer the bell, was Hugh, in command.
"You don't reckon," said a voice in the throng, "that that's her captain, do you?"
"No," said another, "I should think not."
"Yes," said the very human Gilmore, "that's the captain."
Vicksburg and the Bends sent up smiles and faint wavings to Ramsey and her mother and only did not call to them because they were in a great city. It made them very proud and happy to see Hugh the master of this, to them, matchless wonder of utility and beauty, and they could not help saying things to each other with voice enough to let strangers around them know he was their personal friend. While they did so who should alight from a cab and glance up to Hugh but his grandfather. Hugh answered with a gesture toward the Gilmores, to whom the old gentleman promptly turned. There had arisen among the boats a good-natured custom of giving friends a free trip eight miles up the river, to the suburb of Carrollton. So a word from the commodore was enough; the players and their group hurried aboard with him and as they touched the lower deck the last bell sounded and the lines were cast off.
When they reached the hurricane-deck they were in the middle of the stream. They did not join the senior Hayles at once; Ramsey met them and with her they stood on the skylight roof watching the shores to see when they should stop drifting and gain headway. Over on the "Algiers" side of the harbor lay the Paragon, repairing a smashing she had got at the wharf through the bad handling of another boat, else the Hayles would hardly have been going home on the Enchantress.
The crew of the Enchantress stood about her capstan and their chantey-man, ready to sing when the swivel should peal and her burgee run down; but the Gilmore group were too far aft to see them. The player's wife, speaking gravely with Ramsey in low tones, remarked with sudden gayety:
"I see why we're here behind the bell. You're afraid they'll sing——"