“Fred, for goodness’ sake get out of here; I feel enough like a baby now, without having a nurse alongside. I’ll do well enough for a few hours; just look in once in a while.”
During the first day of the trip, Crayme made no trouble for himself or Fred: under the friendly shelter of night, the two men had a two-hour chat which was alternately humorous, business-like, and retrospective, and then Crayme fell asleep. The next day was reasonably pleasant out of doors, so the captain wrapped himself in a blanket and sat in an extension-chair on the guards, where with solemn face he received some condolences which went far to keep him in good humor after the sympathizers had departed. On the second night the captain was restless, and the two men played cards. On the third day the captain’s physique reached the bottom of its stock of patience, and protested indignantly at the withdrawal of its customary stimulus; and it acted with more consistency, though no less ugliness, than the human mind does when under excitement and destitute of control. The captain grew terribly despondent, and Fred found ample use for all the good stories he knew. Some of these amused the captain greatly, but after one of them he sighed,
“Poor old Billy Hockess told me that the only time I ever heard it before, and didn’t we have a glorious time that night! He’d just put all his money into the Yenesei—that blew up and took him with it only a year afterward—and he gave us a new kind of punch he’d got the hang of when he went East for the boat’s carpets. ’Twas made of two bottles of brandy, one whiskey, two rum, one gin, two sherry, and four claret, with guava jelly, and lemon peel that had been soaking in curaçoa and honey for a month. It looks kind of weak when you think about it, but there were only six of us in the party, and it went to the spot by the time we got through. Golly, but didn’t we make Rome howl that night!”
Fred shuddered, and experimented upon his friend with song; he was rewarded by hearing the captain hum an occasional accompaniment; but, as Fred got fairly into a merry Irish song about one Terry O’Rann, and uttered the lines in which the poet states that the hero
“—took whiskey punch
Ivery night for his lunch,”
the captain put such a world of expression into a long-drawn sigh that Fred began to feel depressed himself; besides, songs were not numerous in Fred’s repertoire, and those in which there was no allusion to drinking could be counted on half his fingers. Then he borrowed the barkeeper’s violin, and played, one after another, the airs which had been his favorites in the days of his courtship, until Crayme exclaimed,
“Say, Fred, we’re not playing church; give us something that don’t bring all of a fellow’s dead friends along with it.”
Fred reddened, swung his bow viciously, and dashed into “Natchez Under the Hill,” an old air which would have delighted Offenbach, but which will never appear in a collection of classical music.
“Ah! that’s something like music,” exclaimed Captain Crayme, as Fred paused suddenly to repair a broken string. “I never hear that but I think of Wesley Treepoke, that used to run the Quitman; went afterward to the Rising Planet, when the Quitman’s owners put her on a new line as an opposition boat. Wess and I used to work things so as to make Louisville at the same time—he going up, I going down, and then turn about—and we always had a glorious night of it, with one or two other lively boys that we’d pick up. And Wess had a fireman that could fiddle off old ‘Natchez’ in a way that would just make a corpse dance till its teeth rattled, and that fireman would always be called in just as we’d got to the place where you can’t tell what sort of whiskey ’tis you’re drinking, and I tell you, ’twas so heavenly that a fellow could forgive the last boat that beat him on the river, or stole a landing from him. And such whiskey as Wess kept! used to go cruising around the back country, sampling little lots run out of private stills. He’d always find nectar, you’d better believe. Poor old boy! the tremens took him off at last. He hove his pilot overboard just before he died, and put a bullet into Pete Langston, his second clerk—they were both trying to hold him, you see—but they never laid it up against him. I wish I knew what became of the whiskey he had on hand when he walked off—no, I don’t, either; what am I thinking about? But I do, though—hanged if I don’t!”