Seeing that my uncle had not yet observed me, I turned quickly on my heel, and made hastily for the dock of the steamer Arrow. I concealed myself on board of her till she was under way, when, making my case known to the steward, I was allowed to work my passage in the cabin to Detroit.
It was that season when, as many dwellers by the Western lakes will remember, the Arrow was the fastest boat on those waters. We passed the other steamer somewhere off Monroe lighthouse; and on the same afternoon, therefore, as the old Baltic came up to the wharf at Detroit, there I stood before the astonished eyes of her captain, again clamoring for my wages,—with this difference only, that my shirt was now on my back, and my crackers carefully stowed away in my pocket with my five coppers.
CHAPTER VII.
ALMOST A TRAGEDY.
AS soon as the Baltic was made fast, and the captain had sufficiently recovered from his astonishment, he stalked toward me, denouncing vengeance. I took to my heels as soon as he reached the wharf. Finding that he could not catch me, he stopped, shook his fist, and swore he would arrest me if he saw or heard anything more of me. I, of course, knew nothing of the law but its terrors, and, though I really had the better side in the case, gave the matter up.
It may have been that the joy to be in a strange city, out of the way of capture, helped me materially, but it seems a little remarkable now how soon this mighty disappointment and defeat vanished wholly from my thoughts. I cannot remember that the circumstance ever crossed my mind again till I was called upon, months subsequently, to recount my adventures to admiring school-fellows.
It could not, I am sure, have been twenty minutes after my Parthian contest with the irate captain—for, if the truth must be told, I shot him a scathing epithet or so in my flight—when I was amusing myself after the manner of the “light and heavy balancer,” rolling myself about upon the tops of some white-fish barrels, at a neighboring dock, as contented and happy as a thoughtless boy only can be.
Tied to this dock was a little sloop-rigged scow, used in bringing sand from Hog Island in the Detroit River. There was a small boat, with a solitary oar and scull-hole belonging to this sand-scow, tugging lazily at the rope by which it was attached, as it floated dreamily astern in the current. A youngish fellow, with a good-natured face, was engaged in unloading the larger craft when I espied the smaller one.
Now, if there was any one thing in which much practice and a boundless love had lent me any degree of skill, it was risking my life in amateur navigation. I need scarcely tell you, therefore, how I ceased my acrobatics with the white-fish barrels, and came and gazed wistfully at that little boat; how I varied this employment by staring inquiringly into the mild face of that enviable young man who had control of its destinies; how, when he paused in his work to regard me in turn, I thrust my hands unconcernedly into my pockets, and looked studiously away from him and the little boat, at the far windings of the broad river; how, when he had resumed his work, my eyes also resumed their longing pilgrimage from the little boat to his face; and how, having repeated this process several times, my mind tugging fitfully and dreamily at its purpose, as the little boat at its rope, I finally turned and asked, in an abrupt voice, for the loan of the one-oared craft.
The young man was startled into a smile, perhaps of sheer good-nature, and perhaps of pleased surprise at so brief a petition overtoppled by so lengthy an enacted preamble. Certainly, he said, I might take his little boat, and I embarked.
Pushing boldly into the stream, which runs there three or four miles an hour, I sculled vigorously for the Canadian shore. Even at this early period, I may remark, I had an overpowering desire to visit foreign lands; and I resolved to take that opportune occasion to go abroad. Those most familiar with the swift, deep river will best understand that the probability of my reaching the British shore was only less than the possibility of my ever getting back again; and that the project, under the circumstances, was utterly mad and perilous.