Chapter Nineteen.
The “Belle of Natchez.”
While search is still being made for the body of the murdered man, and he suspected of the crime is threatened with a prison cell, she, the innocent cause of it, is being borne far away from the scene of its committal.
The steamboat, carrying Colonel Armstrong and his belongings, having left port punctually at the hour advertised, has forsaken the “Father of Waters,” entered the Red River of Louisiana, and now, on the second day after, is cleaving the current of this ochre-tinted stream, some fifty miles from its mouth.
The boat is the “Belle of Natchez.” Singular coincidence of name; since one aboard bears also the distinctive sobriquet.
Oft have the young “bloods” of the “City of the Bluffs,” while quaffing their sherry cobblers, or champagne, toasted Helen Armstrong, with this appellation added.
Taking quality into account, she has a better right to it than the boat. For this, notwithstanding the proud title bestowed upon it, is but a sorry craft; a little “stern-wheel” steamer, such as, in those early days, were oft seen ploughing the bosom of the mighty Mississippi, more often threading the intricate and shallower channels of its tributaries. A single set of paddles, placed where the rudder acts in other vessels, and looking very much like an old-fashioned mill-wheel, supplies the impulsive power—at best giving but poor speed.
Nevertheless, a sort of craft with correct excuse, and fair raison d’être; as all know, who navigate narrow rivers, and their still narrower reaches, with trees from each side outstretching, as is the case with many of the streams of Louisiana.
Not that the noble Red River can be thus classified; nor in any sense spoken of as a narrow stream. Broad, and deep enough, for the biggest boats to navigate to Natchitoches—the butt of Colonel Armstrong’s journey by water.