“Oh, Charlie,” cried Sandy, “I know now why the clerk said that there were plenty of fellows who had to spar their way on the river. It is hard work to pull this steamer over the sand-bars and shoals, and when a man is busted and has to work his way along, he’s like a steamboat in a fix, like 226 this one is. See? That’s the reason why they say he is sparring his way, isn’t it?”
“You are quite correct, youngster,” said the young man from Baltimore, regarding Sandy’s bright face with pleasure. “Correct you are. But I never knew what the slang meant until I came out here. And, for that matter, I don’t know that I ever heard the slang before. But it is the jargon of the river men.”
By this time, even sparring was of very little use, for the spars only sank deep and deeper into the soft river-bottom, and there was no chance to raise the bow of the boat from its oozy bed. The case for the present was hopeless; but the crew were kept constantly busy until nightfall, pulling and hauling. Some were sent ashore in a skiff, with a big hawser, which was made fast to a tree, and then all the power of the boat, men and steam, was put upon it to twist her nose off from the shoal into which it was stuck. All sorts of devices were resorted to, and a small gain was made once in a while; but it looked very much as if the calculation of Charlie, five feet in an hour, was too liberal an allowance for the progress towards St. Louis.
Just then, from the boat furthest down the river rose a cloud of steam, and the astonished lads heard a most extraordinary sound like that of a gigantic organ. More or less wheezy, but still easily to be understood, the well-known notes of 227 “Oh, Susannah!” came floating up the river to them. Everybody paused to listen, even the tired and tugging roustabouts smiling at the unwonted music.
“Is it really music?” asked Oscar, whose artistic ear was somewhat offended by this strange roar of sounds. The young man from Baltimore assured him that this was called music; the music of a steam-organ or calliope, then a new invention on the Western rivers. He explained that it was an instrument made of a series of steam-whistles so arranged that a man, sitting where he could handle them all very rapidly, could play a tune on them. The player had only to know the key to which each whistle was pitched, and, with a simple arrangement of notes before him, he could make a gigantic melody that could be heard for many miles away.
“You are a musician, are you not?” asked the young man from Baltimore. “Didn’t I hear you playing a violin in your room last night? Or was it one of your brothers?”
Oscar, having blushingly acknowledged that he was playing his violin for the benefit of his cousins, as he explained, his new-found acquaintance said, “I play the flute a little, and we might try some pieces together some time, if you are willing.”
As they were making ready for bed that night, the pleasant-faced young man from Baltimore, who had been playing whist with his mother and sister, 228 and the “military man,” as the boys had privately named one of the party, came to their door with his flute. The two musicians were fast friends at once. Flute and violin made delicious harmony, in the midst of which Sandy, who had slipped into his bunk, drifted off into the land of dreams with confused notions of a giant band somewhere up in the sky playing “Oh, Susannah!” “Love’s Last Greeting,” and “How Can I Leave Thee?” with occasional suggestions of the “Song of the Kansas Emigrants.”
Another morning came on, cold, damp, and raw. The sky was overcast and there were signs of rain. “There’s been rain to the nor’rard,” said Captain Bulger, meditatively. Now Captain Bulger was the skipper of the “New Lucy,” and when he said those oracular words, they were reported about the steamboat, to the great comfort of all on board. Still the five boats stuck on the shoals; their crews were still hard at work at all the devices that could be thought of for their liberation. The “War Eagle”––for they had found out the name of the musical steamer far down stream––enlivened the tedious day with her occasional strains of martial and popular music, if the steam-organ could be called musical.
In the afternoon, Oscar and the amiable young man from Baltimore shut themselves in their stateroom and played the flute and violin. The lovely lady who had made Sandy’s acquaintance early in 229 the voyage asked him if he could make one at a game of whist. Sandy replied that he could play “a very little.” The thought of playing cards here on a steamboat, in public, as he said to himself, was rather frightful. He was not sure if his mother would like to have him do that. He looked uneasily around to see what Charlie would say about it. But Charlie was nowhere in sight. He was wandering around, like an uneasy ghost, watching for signs of the rising of the river, now confidently predicted by the knowing ones among the passengers.