“But up at Decker,” I added mischievously, “they said you ran all night.”
“They said! They said! Whadda they know about this here ferry? I’m runnin' this, I guess. Havin' to git out here nights, tar-erd (he was meaning tired) as I am, an' take this thing back an' forth. I’m gittin' sick on it. I hain’t got to do it.”
“I know,” observed Franklin, “but we’re very anxious to get across tonight. We have to be in Evansville by morning anyhow.”
“Well, I don’t know nothin' about that. All I know is everybody’s in a all-fired hurry to git across.”
“Well, that’s all right now, doctor,” I soothed. “We’ll fix this up on the other side. You just take us over like a good sort.”
The aroma of a tip seemed to soothe him a little.
“Be keerful how you run that car,” he commented to Bert. “One feller ran his car on an' up-ended this thing an' off he went. We never did get the machine out. She was carried on down stream.”
Bert manœuvred the car very gingerly. Then we poled off in the moonlight, and I could see plainly that there was a flood. We were slow getting out to where the main current was, but once there its speed shocked me. A vast, sullen volume of water was pouring down—on and away into the Wabash, the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Gulf. I was thinking how wonderful water is anyhow—out of the unknown, into the unknown, like ourselves, it comes and goes. And here, like petty actors in a passing play, we were crossing under the moon—the water as much a passing actor as any of us.
“Better pay out more at the stern there,” called the old man to his helper. “She’s pushin' her pretty hard.”
The water was fairly boiling along the upstream side.