But in spite of good resolutions and ardent hopes, progress was slow. Head winds sprang up, dense fog shut down, obscuring channel marks, even snow fell—the weather was certainly against them.
TAKING SOUNDINGS.
“... FRANK SHOUTED, ‘THREE FATHOMS!’”
“The ‘Sunny South,’” Ransom quoted scornfully one morning when he put his head out of the companionway and got a block of snow down his neck. “They have a funny brand of sun down here.” Yet as he looked shoreward, his eye rested on an old Southern mansion. Fluted columns supported its double portico, wide-spreading trees from which hung in festoons the (to Northern eyes) weird Spanish moss, clustered thickly around it; beyond were cotton fields, the whiteness of the blossoms rivalling the freshly fallen snow.
“Say, fellows, pinch me, will you?” Kenneth shouted down to his friends. “I’ve got a bad dream, I guess. All hands on deck to shovel snow.” Kenneth’s shout was very fierce. Frank appeared with a broom, Clyde with a dust pan, and Arthur brought a scrubbing brush.
“Pipe sweepers, mate,” commanded the captain.
Arthur’s whistle was a failure, for the simple reason that one cannot pucker the mouth to whistle and laugh at the same time, but the crew understood, and all hands turned to and swept the decks free of snow.
“Pipe breakfast,” was the next order. This was not necessary, however; all four boys tried to get through the two-foot wide companionway at once, and all four stuck while the tantalizing odor of steaming coffee filled their nostrils. Clyde fell out of the bunch to the cabin floor, which relieved the jam, and gave the others a chance.
At Vicksburg the boys tied up for four days, and visited the bone of contention between the North and the South so many years ago. They found many reminders of the great siege—earthworks still plainly visible, the old stone house where Grant and Pemberton met to arrange for the surrender of the town. Most impressive of all was the great national cemetery—a great city of the dead. Then the boys realized as they never could by any other means the terrible struggle, the bravery shown on both sides, and the despair of the besieged as they were hemmed in more and more closely by the Union lines, while their ammunition gave out and the food grew scarce. The travellers found that the war was still the chief topic of conversation in the South, and they got a point of view new to them. Events were still dated on the “time of the war,” so it seemed as if the great conflict had taken place but a few years ago. There was a new topic, however, that the Northern boys could talk about without the least danger of giving offence. In the war with Spain, the sons of the Union and the Confederate soldier fought side by side, and the people on both sides of Mason and Dixon’s line were equally proud of their achievements.
As the “Gazelle” got under way and sailed down stream, the boys looked back at the heights, while their thoughts carried them back to the time when Porter’s fleets lay at anchor in about the same position and waited for the storm of iron from the guns mounted there to cease. But the wind was blowing half a gale, and their attention was called back with a jar from the past to the very practical present. The stream was now very full, and there was little danger of running aground, so Kenneth determined to sail in spite of the freshening wind and the steady drizzle that froze as it fell. It was Arthur’s turn at the stick, but it was just the kind of weather to hurt one weakened by illness, so Kenneth took his place, and sailed the boat. The wind a little abaft the beam (another of the best points of sailing, according to Ransom), the little boat sped on, racing, seemingly, with the billows the gale kicked up.