The leadsman's call broke more harshly on the night. "Mark four! Mark four! Quarter—less—"
Suddenly the pulsing of the engines stopped and the boat drifted into the enveloping shadows of the shore. The branches of a tree swept the upper deck, leaving sprays of moss tangled in the railing. A bell crashed out a signal of alarm and the boat came to a full stop.
"Tie up and get out there and sound that channel, Jiggetts," came a sonorous voice from the lower deck. "I'm not a-countin' on goin' a-ground here to-night. God knows what this old river's been up to since we passed up, two months ago."
Directly following the words, a huge line of rope went coiling through the air to the shore. Two negroes sprang after it, hastily wrapping it around a mammoth cottonwood tree that towered out of the darkness. A skiff shot out from the boat; two men at the oars, and one standing well forward recording the depth as they moved carefully along.
In a few minutes the boat became enveloped once more in the stillness of the night; the flare from the torch baskets at the masthead gleamed upon a shore of endless willows, a distant line of cypresses, a land where seemingly no explorer had yet penetrated. The call of the leadsman grew fainter and fainter, dying away at last to an echo.
"Mighty sorry to tie up." The Captain's voice broke the stillness as he approached the young traveller, "but I reckon it's better than runnin' on one of them bars and restin' there till another boat comes along and pulls us off. I reckon you'd rather run the chance, hey, just so's you could get to the end of your travellin'. I know how you feel. You're just itching to get there this minute and get to work—ain't it the truth?"
The Captain, a rugged pioneer, known from one end of the river to the other, shoved his hands deep into his pockets and peered into the darkness.
"Yes, I want to get there, Captain. I'm impatient and restless and all that,—and yet," he hesitated, following the glance of the man beside him. "I believe I've fallen under the spell of this old river. At first it made me think of the ocean in its breadth and loneliness, but I see now that it is not the same at all. This wilderness of lowlands that we have been passing through for the last week makes it seem even more desolate and forsaken. Yet—in its very solitude one feels a certain nearness to God," he ended reflectively.
The old Captain's eyes shifted from the black shore, deepening, as his gaze lingered on the broad expanse of water, into an expression much like that of a dog that gazes into the eyes of the master it worships.
"We-ell, I reckon I'm sorter fond of it, too. When a feller's lived with a thing fifty years he's mighty likely to have some sorter feelin' for it." His eyes twinkled as he continued, "Y' know, sir, that old river always puts me in mind of a woman; it's changing its mind all the time, it's cantankerous—you can't any more count on it than a bad penny, and when it takes a notion to change its channel, it just goes ahead and does it and don't say a thing. Why, sir, haven't I see it cut off ten miles in one place by goin' straight through when it used to make a bend! I like it, though, just because it's notionate and don't bother about anybody. D' you ever hear the old sayin' that when the good Lord made it, He washed His hands in it and told it to go where it damn pleased? Well, sir," the old fellow threw back his head and let out a gust of laughter, "it's been doin' that pretty nigh ever since!"