“Landing’s gone,” he said to his helper on the other side of the big wheel. “I saw Jim Higgins, who came up in the Walsh Honsell, and he says it has cut back a quarter of a mile. The whole bend has gone. The two houses at the landing—the people hardly got out. That’s what they get for living outside the levee. I wish I knew what we’ll find in the crossing below. Like as not, Big Timber Beacon has gone into the river before now.”
The big side-wheeler coughed her way down through the Silverplate Bend cautiously enough, feeling it by the loom of the shore, since the lights at the head and middle of it were gone.
Only a solitary beacon at the foot remained, and as they swept the curve the pilot reached for a lever and threw on the search-light, and with it lighted up the bend.
All along its front, tree trunks cluttered a ragged bank, and the water rustled through their tops as they lay fallen half-over. He cut the light off, and brought the steamboat a little farther out.
“Hate to take chances on McAlpin’s Bar,” he said. “But there are some nasty snags there, and the bar is the lesser evil.”
So they came down to the foot of the bend and to the solitary beacon. Then the pilot cast a glance across the river.
“Well, by hokey!” he exclaimed. “Big Timber Light is still standing. I’m glad of that. The Lily reset it, and if ever I was glad to see a light I am glad to see that one now.”
He brought the big wheel spinning over toward him, and the Rupert Lee swung its nose out from the bank, and slowly turned its huge bulk till it was headed toward the Big Timber Beacon. The current swept it downward as it turned, so that as it finally “straightened out,” the two lights bore almost directly ahead and astern, the proper line for a run through the thread of channel below McAlpin’s Bar. Hinckley thoughtfully eyed the Big Timber Beacon.
“Tommy,” he said, “does that light seem to be as high up as usual?”
“Pretty low,” commented Tommy, peering out into the darkness. “Looks to me like it ain’t steady, either.”