We had not much time to kill. We had only just commenced sipping through our straws, when we heard a "chuck, chuck" in the direction of Lafayette; and, looking up the river, we beheld a small boat making down for the wharves.
Her straight sides told she was a "stern-wheeler," but as she forged round in the crescent-like bend from which New Orleans derives one of its well-known names, my companion, with the glass at his eye, pronounced her the Yazoo City.
"Here!" he said, as the boat began to draw toward the wharf, "it's your turn with the telescope. Get Mr. Bradley in your field of vision, and keep him there till he comes near enough for the naked eye. What a divine conception my thinking of the spy-glass—quite a new idea in detection. We're not only saved exposure to the hot sun, but my man will never suspect the presence of a spy. If he should see us looking out of the window, he'd be cunning to guess our object."
The lawyer continued to talk, but I paid only slight attention to what he was saying. I knew it was only to fill up the time. I had got the Yazoo City in the field-view of the telescope and was raking her fore and aft in search of our pirate passenger.
I soon discovered the object of my search. He was upon the guards, near the top of the stairs leading down to the boiler-deck. I could make out a pair of saddle-bags hanging over his arm. I knew it was the whole of his luggage, and that he was prepared to step ashore as soon as the staging was shot out.
I announced my discovery to my companion.
"Let me have a squint at him," he requested. "It may be as well for me to get acquainted with the phiz of the interesting gentleman, and see how it will figure in a court of justice. In a Panama hat and blue cottonades, you say?"
"Yes; on the saloon deck, close to the head of the stairway."
"I have got his precious picture in my eye. Dressed like a dandy, too! Patent boots, and grand ruffled shirt! What a flash swaggerer! Let me see—let me see. I think I've seen that fellow before."
While my companion still kept his eye to the telescope, as if to familiarize himself with the person of the pirate planter, the little boat struggled into her place, shoved out her staging, and gave the impatient passengers a chance of stepping ashore.