“What of that?” replied Jack. “A party of half a dozen men could set fire to the boat and ride away to Texas before the gunboats would know anything about it. They might as well be a hundred miles away.”
“And more,” the agent went on, “two of the planters who own this cotton are willing to remain here as hostages, and they say that if anything happens to you or your boat we can do what we please with them.”
“What of that?” repeated Jack. “If the Venango is burned, who is going to punish those hostages? We have no right to do it, and you do not for a moment suppose that General Banks would interest himself in the matter? He’s got government business to attend to, and don’t care a cent what happens to us or any other civilians. I’ll go after the cotton if you say so, but you’ll never see the Venango again, and the firm will have to pay for her.”
This frightened the agent for a while, and he told Jack to stay on the safe side of the river and let the Arkansaw people get their cotton to market the best way they could. These orders remained in force about three months, and then came a fateful day when the only cotton the agent knew anything about was on the Arkansas side, eight miles above Skipwith’s Landing.
“I really think it will be a safe undertaking,” said the agent, “for you will be within plain sight of two iron-clads and the ram Samson, which are lying at Skipwith’s.”
“I wouldn’t give that for all the help I’ll get from the whole of them,” declared Jack, snapping his fingers in the air. “They’ll not know that trouble has come to me till they see my boat in flames, and how long will it take one of those tubs of iron-clads to get up steam and run eight miles against the current of the Mississippi? The Venango will be in ashes before one of them will come within shelling distance of us.”
“But there’s the Samson. She can run seventeen miles an hour against a four-mile current.”
“And what is the Samson but a carpenter shop, with no guns and a crew of darkies? Do you want me to go there or not?”
The agent did what Longstreet is said to have done when General Lee told him to order Pickett’s useless charge at Gettysburg; he looked down at the ground and evaded a direct answer.
“We want cotton enough to fill out the Hyperion’s cargo,” said he, “and that’s the only batch on the river that I have been able to hear of.”