XVIII
RAMSEY WINS A POINT OR TWO
There was half an hour yet before the first mate's watch would end.
He had risen from the captain's seat on the approach of that middle-aged pair who in the first hour of the voyage had enjoyed seeing Hugh and Ramsey together; a couple whose home evidently was far elsewhere—if anywhere—and who as evidently had seen the world to better advantage than most of the Votaress's passengers. As he rose Hugh and Ramsey came up near one of the wheels. Seeing them start directly for him, he made a heavy show of attention to the married pair.
While the quick step of the two younger people brought them near, the husband began to reply to the mate: "Why, to the common eye, tiresome, I dare say. To the artist—I wonder! It's the only much-travelled river in the world whose most imposing sight is always the boat."
"It isn't!" whispered Ramsey to Hugh. Then openly, yet decorously, "Ahem!" she said as they lapsed into waiting attitudes. But the mate was not to be ahemmed, and while he hearkened on to the critic she could do no better than hammer the small of her back and smooth into it a further perfection.
"At the same time," continued the stranger, "it's immensely interesting; politically as to its future, scientifically as to its past." He turned to his wife: "Look, for instance, at this bit of it right here." A trained art in his pose and gesture caused Ramsey and old Joy to look as he prompted. "This is Fausse Rivière Cut-off," he continued, and the mate said it was—'False River'.
"Yes. Now, barely two generations ago"—he animatedly took Ramsey into his glance—"this stream suddenly abandoned twenty-odd miles of its own tremendous length and width and sprang through this two-mile cut-off." There was such fervor in his tone, and in his wife's mien such vivacity of interest, that the amazing event stood before Ramsey as if it had just occurred.
"You've read books about this river!" she said.