"Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and let me run down and get a cup of coffee."
A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in the "texas," and comforting himself with coffee. Just then the night watchman happened in, and was about to happen out again, when he noticed Ealer and exclaimed:—
"Who is at the wheel, sir?"
"X."
"Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!"
The next moment both men were flying up the pilot-house companion-way, three steps at a jump! Nobody there! The great steamer was whistling down the middle of the river at her own sweet will! The watchman shot out of the place again; Ealer seized the wheel, set the engine back with power, and held his breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a "towhead" which she was about to knock into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico!
By-and-by the watchman came back and said:—
"Didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep when he first came up here?"
"No."
"Well, he was. I found him walking along on top of the railings, just as unconcerned as another man would walk a pavement; and I put him to bed; now just this minute there he was again, away astern, going through that sort of tightrope deviltry the same as before."