The other three boys stayed below in comfort, while the captain, wrapped in a big ulster and crowned with a yellow sou’wester, held the tiller, and looked the part of the weatherbeaten mariner down to the ground.
The wind was steady and very strong, so that the yacht keeled over before it, and almost buried her lee rail under; the sails rounded out to the blast, and as the rain froze on them, the rigging, the spars and the deck, she looked like a great candied boat, such as the confectioners like to display in their store windows. It was exhilarating, this flying along in the wintry air, but the frozen rigging and stiffened sheets made sailing difficult and dangerous. It would be impossible to reef, and difficult to lower the canvas under these conditions.
With eyes alert, and ready hand on tiller, Kenneth watched for snags, for reefs or for sand bars, while the cold rain dashed into his face in spite of the close-drawn sou’wester. Mile after mile the good craft sped on—swift, sure and steady. Past islands low lying and gray in the mist, past forests of cypress, white and glistening with frost, the gray moss hanging from the branches sleet covered and crackling in the wind. It was a run to remember, a run that stimulated, yet at the same time left the steersman surprisingly tired, as Ransom found when he tried to work his stiffened limbs and help furl the canvas.
“I wish that this sail had a few hinges,” Frank complained, as he thumped it in a vain endeavor to roll it up compactly. “Might as well try to roll up a piece of plank.”
It took over an hour to get things stowed properly that under ordinary circumstances could have been disposed of in fifteen minutes; and though the captain firmly intended to write up his log that night, it was only by the exercise of a good deal of will power that he kept awake till supper was over.
The following day the “Gazelle” lay close to the levees of Natchez, having covered the distance of ninety-three miles in less than a day and a half.
This old town the boys thought the most beautiful that they had seen. The stately old mansions were surrounded by gardens, and trees grew everywhere.
The town crowned the last of the heights of the Mississippi, and the view from the bluff is one of the finest anywhere along the river. Before starting on the cruise the boys had read about the places they were likely to visit, and they recalled that Natchez was one of the earliest settlements on the river. They remembered, too, that the Natchez Indians, perhaps the most intelligent of their race, were one of the ten first tribes to run foul of the white man’s civilization. Swift and sure pacification, by means of the sword, was their lot.
“Natchez under the hill,” as the cluster of houses occupying the narrow strip of land between the river and the steep slope is called, was as unattractive and foul as Natchez proper was beautiful and wholesome. Not many years ago it bore the reputation of being one of the hardest places on the Mississippi, and even when the boys anchored off its water front, they found it far from desirable.
A run of a hundred and thirty-nine miles in three days brought the “Gazelle” and her crew to Baton Rouge. Though the wind was blowing hard when they reached the town, they had to be content with the meagre shelter of a few scattered trees on a low point. It was practically an open anchorage.