down. Meantime, sir, this mortal peril to hundreds of our best
people is wholly chargeable to your captain."

"Captain and owners," said Hugh.

"Captain and owners! Good night, sir."

"Good night, gentlemen."

For half an hour the _Votaress_ headed west. Then the north star crept
forward from starboard beam to bow and then back from bow to larboard
beam. Plaquemine town, bayou, and bend swept past, and as she laid her
course east for Manchac bayou, bend, and point a tranquil voice came up
to the pilot-house from the darkness forward of the bell: "Where is
Hugh, Mr. Watson?"

"He's just turned in, sir."

XV

MORNING WATCH

Twinkled quite away were the four hours of middle watch.

All the gentler turnings of the journey's first hundred miles were
finished and the many hundred miles of its wider contortions were well
begun. One winding of thirty-five miles had earned but twelve of
northward advance. But at any rate that was now far downstream. Baton
Rouge, the small capital of the State, crowning the first high bank you
reach, was some six miles astern. In the dark panorama of the shores,
decipherable only to a pilot's trained sight, the unbroken procession of
sugar estates was broken at last and the shining _Votaress_, having
rounded a point from north to west, was crossing close above it with
Seven Lakes and the Devil's Swamp on her starboard bow. The _Antelope_
glimmered a short mile behind.

It was the first mate's watch. On the hurricanedeck he paced at ease
across and across near the front rail, where at any instant his eye
could drop to its truer domain, the forecastle. The westerly moon hung
high over the larboard bow. Now the boat ran so close along the lowland
that in smiting the water each bucket of her shoreward wheel drew a
separate echo from the dense wood, as if a phantom boat ran beside her
among the moss-draped cypresses. Ramsey! what thrills you were missing!

She knew it. In her sleep she lay half consciously resenting the loss.
Under the next point a close turn led into a long northeastward reach,
and as the _Votaress_ bore due north across it the morning star, at one
flash, blazed out on the dark world and down the flood. Through her
stateroom's high window its silvery beam found Ramsey in the upper berth
and opened her eyelids with a touch. Staring on the serene splendor, she
would soon have slept again, but just then the many lights of a large
steamer glided out of the next bend