f paddle-wheels and tumble of their cataracts, the tranquil
creep of tiller-ropes, and the compelling swing and sage guidance of the
helm.

In this vaster consciousness, by a partnership which had to be tacit or
instantly perish, they easily lifted and carried the abounding freight,
of every form and substance, destined for the feeding, apparelling, or
equipment of thousands awaiting it in homes and families whose strivings
and fortunes helped to make that universal wonder of things which kept
Hugh grave and Ramsey laughing. Especially the teeming human life of the
great craft did these two jointly draw into this magnified self. They
drew on deck-hands, mates, watchmen, firemen, engineers, and strikers,
each with some aspiration and some appetite. They drew in stewards,
cooks, chambermaids, and cabin-boys, every one with yearnings and
sacrifices; pilots, clerks, and mud clerks, full of histories and
dreams. Down in dim spaces behind the engines and between the two wheels
they drew in the immigrant deck passengers, so mutely sad for the
distant homes behind them, so mutely hopeful and fearful for the distant
homes before. And on the deck above these exiles they took in the cabin
passengers--ladies who told their lives over their knitting or
embroidery in floods of lamplight and the cushioned ease of feminine
seclusion; children here and there battling against sleep or yielding to
it in stateroom berths; the ruder sex at card-tables in the forward
cabin--from which, oddly, the twins were refraining; three or four
tipplers at the fragrant bar, and one or two readers under the
chandeliers. Outside, scores of non-readers sat in tilted chairs, their
heels breast-high on the guard-rails and their minds tobacco-lulled to a
silent content with the breezy lanternlight of the boiler deck, the
occasional passing of a downward-bound flatboat or steamer, the gradual
overhauling of some craft that had backed out earlier at New Orleans,
and the wide, slow oscillations of the unbounded starlight overhanging
land and flood.

These too the young pair included. All these were parts of their blended
consciousness as the alert Ramsey noticed that the grandfather's talk
had turned upon Hugh and boats.

"He and the _Quakeress_ were the same age," he was remarking, when
Ramsey's laugh jingled.

"Both," she broke in, "built the same year!" Her curls switched backward
at the old man. She faced Hugh. "Where were you born?"

But he only signe