As evening closed in he could hear the darkies who had been paid off, it being Saturday night, singing and arguing along the shore. A dense fog soon enveloped everything, however, and he could not see which way he was going. He seized the roots of a drifting tree, knowing it would keep in the channel, mounted it and sat there for hours floating with the current. All night the mocking birds along shore serenaded him. He would have remained on the tree until morning; but he heard the whistles of steamers below. Knowing that a fleet left New Orleans every Saturday afternoon bound north, and that each would be trying to gain the lead on the other, he was afraid he would be run down, so he slid off the tree and made for shore. That course was not without its danger, also; for mingled with the beautiful songs of the mocking bird, he had heard the hoarse bark of alligators and there was no telling but that he might run right on to some of them. They are thick along shore, but rarely go out into the river, except as in the case of the dead mule, they follow their prey. Luckily he avoided those dangerous reptiles. He sounded the bugle and a Frenchman came down to the bank. Paul explained who he was and the man eagerly invited him ashore. "I am sitting up with my old master who is dead," said the Frenchman. "What was the matter with him?" inquired Boyton, somewhat alarmed.
"Oh, it wasn't the fever, you need have no fear."
Paul decided to land and wait until the fleet had passed at any rate, then he lighted his lamp and pushed off through the fog, preferring the solitude of the river to the society of the grief stricken Frenchman. The fog lifted in the morning and he found that he was on time. Ten miles above New Orleans, he was met by excursion steamers with enthusiastic crowds aboard. Captain Leathers of the famous old boat, Natchez, was determined to outdo the others in the way of welcoming the voyager, for Boyton was an old friend. He had a cannon placed on the deck of his boat, loaded to the muzzle. A crowd of negroes were jammed on a lot of cotton bales, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of Paul and Captain Leathers fired right in amongst them. The concussion was so great that at least forty of the darkies were knocked off their feet and thought they were killed by the explosion. Paul landed at New Orleans, April 27th, finishing a journey of two thousand four hundred and thirty miles. He was feted and lionized in the Crescent City until he was in danger of becoming enervated, so he boarded a train for the north, some thirty pounds less in weight than when he started at Oil City.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The summer of 1879 was idly spent. Boyton visited the most celebrated watering resorts of America and enjoyed a well earned good time. As the autumn leaves began to fall, he was seized with an irresistible desire to feel himself again afloat, so he turned his attention to the rivers of the New England States. He went to Boston, made a careful study of the maps, and concluded to take a voyage on the Merrimac; this river, with its numerous falls and rapids, he thought would furnish some excitement. The start was made from Plymouth, New Hampshire, at six o'clock in the morning of October seventh. The river was too rough for him to tow the Baby Mine along, a fact which he very much deplored. Boyton had not paddled many yards from the shore ere he found the water so shallow that he was compelled to wade quite a distance before getting fairly under way, then he soon left the cheering crowd in the distance. About nine o'clock, approaching a bridge, he heard a rumbling sound. Looking up he beheld the figure of a man and horse outlined against the sky like a shadow picture. The countryman also discovered the queer looking figure in the water. He craned his neck, jerked his arms up and with mouth and eyes wide open slapped the reins on the horse's back and galloped off at a faster pace than the good agriculturalists in that locality are wont to ride. He had not read the newspapers.
An hour later, Paul blew his bugle in front of a farm house that stood near the river. The people ran to the water's edge and began firing a broadside of down east interrogatives with such rapidity as to nearly swamp him.
"Ain't yeou nearly drowned?" "Ain't yeou afeard yeou will be?" "Ain't yeou hungry?" "Ain't yeou cold?" "Ain't yeou hot?" "Kin yeou keep awake?" "Ef yeou cain't, would yeou sink?" "Air yeou a orphing?", "Dew yeou like the water?" "What circuse dew yeou belong tew?" "Who hired yeou tew dew this?" "Why on airth dew yeou travel this way fur instead of in a boat?"
Paul could not stand the rapid fire system of the New Hampshire rustics, and with a pained expression on his face he, pulled silently out of hearing. The narrowing river brought him closer to the banks, and as he was forging ahead an old gentleman hailed him. Paul stopped for a moment and was sorry for it, as the man tried to chill his blood with doleful stories of the dangers in the river below. "Yeou air goin' straight ahead tew destruction," he bellowed, "thar's a whirlpool jist ahead, where six lumbermen was drowned one time."
Boyton had no fear of sharing the fate of the lumbermen, so he pushed ahead, leaving the old man standing on the bank with clasped hands and pained expression.
The voyager shortly reached the junction of Squam river, and there encountered the first waterfall. A crowd of men and boys had assembled on the bridge and anxiously watched him dash down on the rushing waters, in which he was for the moment lost. Emerging from the boiling foam at the foot of the fall, he scrambled on a rock and stood up to look for the channel. From that point he had a wearisome pull in dead, choppy water, until he reached New Hampton. At many places along the route, well disposed persons were liberal with their advice to give up such an "outlandish" mode of traveling and to "git on land like a human critter." Though the advice sounded well, Paul noticed on one occasion at least, that their methods of travel were not devoid of the danger ascribed to his. Above him, on the grim rocks of a bluff, he saw the wreck of a light wagon, and floating along with the current, were the seat and one wheel.