Slowly, slowly, oh how terrible and slow, the waters crept, up, up, up! The current grew in strength. The cottonwoods no longer nodded their heads, but bent down in the flood. The feet of the castaways refused their hold upon the crumbling sand. Ben surged with all his strength against the tide. It was of no avail. Their feet slipped from under them. The river grasped them. One piercing shriek, one loud cry—and they were swept away, linked in one another's arms!
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE CRUISE OF THE "ROARER."
In Bordeaux a man in cap and blouse rolls great wine pipes from great warehouses down to great vessels that lie at the quay. These vessels take the great pipes on board and bear them to the four corners of the earth.
Away up in the wilds of Arkansas a woodman swings his axe, and the great oak topples and falls, with a roll of thunder, to the ground.
The man in the blouse on the docks of Bordeaux has never seen, nor does he know of the existence of the man who swings his axe in the uninhabited timbers of the White River bottoms. They do not speak the same language; they do not worship from the same religion; they know nothing of one another; care nothing. And yet should the woodman stop swinging his axe the man in the blouse would stop rolling barrels; for the iron bands that girt the great wine pipes bind together a mutual interest of these two humble workmen, so many thousand miles apart. And so the woodman in the forest of Arkansas fells the tall white oak for the man in the blouse, in Bordeaux. Tell him so and he will laugh at you. Explain it to him and he will say the reasoning is brought from a distance. But stop his axe—and the man in Bordeaux will stop rolling the pipes of wine! For it is the staves from the mighty oak on the White River bottom lands that hold the wine on the docks of Bordeaux.
The stave-timber of America is being rapidly exhausted. It has been, and it is a source of much wealth. But a few years ago, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan produced good staves in large quantities. Now their production is very limited, and they have none for export. Indeed they import from other states. A few years ago Northern Michigan sent staves to Cadiz, Spain; but her timber is rapidly disappearing. The oak forests of Arkansas and Tennessee are still comparatively fresh, and supply many staves to Europe. The most available timber is that located on some of the water-ways traversing the forest, on which they may be rafted to the Mississippi or put in flat boats at their "banking" and sent to New Orleans direct. The forest of Eastern Europe, Russia and Hungary, still furnish some staves; but their trees have been culled over these centuries past, and the New World must be looked to for a steady supply.
The "Mary Jane, No. 2" had originally left the Virginia shore, a short distance below Wheeling, freighted with jugs and crocks.
The "Mary Jane, No. 2" was square in front and square behind, and much resembled an enormous dry-goods box loaded with pottery. A stovepipe stuck from her deck, "back aft" when that end was up stream, and "up for'ard" when she had swapped ends; which she frequently did. An oar with a blade sixteen feet long and a stem fifty feet, hung over the end opposite the stovepipe. This was the "gouger." A similar one, but with a much shorter stem, hung at the stovepipe end, and worked, back and forth, above that article. That was the "Steer'n o'r." Two short heavy-stemmed sweeps, with long blades, were hung one on each side. They were all pivoted on iron pins, and had planks laid on the rounding roof of the craft for the crew to walk upon as they worked them with arms extended above their heads. The three last named "oars" were not difficult for a stout man to handle. But the "gouger," though a child could lift the stem and dip the blade, would have felled an ox with the rebound, unless the ox knew how to catch it and hold it up.
Such was the "Mary Jane, No. 2"; looking, on the river, with her long, leg-like sweeps, not unlike a pre-historic June bug. From Wheeling to Memphis she supplied the inhabitants with brown receptacles for their corn juice, and at Memphis her trip ended and she was dismantled. This last being accomplished by taking the stove out of her "cabin" and removing the planks of her decking. Then the "Mary Jane, No. 2" lay peacefully soaking in the waters of Wolf River for many days, until the acquisitive eyes of Cap'n Willum Smiff, (pronounced with a clear nose and a mouth unchoked with tobacco-juice, William Smith) fell upon her. When she engaged the attention of those orbs a change came over the peaceful life of the "Mary Jane." The name "Mary Jane, No. 2" passed into history, and the more robust and sounding title of "Roarer" adorned her stern. With the new nomenclature came a new existence. With Cap'n Willum Smiff at the "steer'n o'r" and Lieutenant Jeremiah Jarphly at the "gouger" the "Roarer" sailed for the St. Francis river and was cordelled a short distance up that stream. There she loaded with pipe and barrel staves for the man in the blouse on the quay in Bordeaux. The stovepipe was transferred to the centre of the craft, where it stuck up belching smoke and fire like a juvenile Popocatapetl. Beneath the stack was now a dirty little cabin, twelve feet square, with bunks on three sides, the stove in the centre, and a home-made wooden table with two similarly constructed stools for furniture. Both cabin and bunks were formed of tiers of staves. She carried a crew of six men besides Cap'n Willum Smiff and Lieutenant Jeremiah Jarphly; and the "Roarer" cast off her lines and set sail for New Orleans.