roistering,
songs, shouts. Arrested, pent, dammed up, the lusty life of that great
waterway leading into the West and South scarce took time for sleep.

The boat slipped on down, now crossing a shaft of light flung on the
water from some lamp or fire, now blending with the ghostlike shadows
which lay in the moonless night. It passed out of the town itself, and
edged into the shade of the forest that swept continuously for so many
leagues on ahead.

"Hello, there!" called a voice through the darkness, after a time.
"Who goes there?"

The splash of a sweep had attracted the attention of someone on shore.
The light of a camp fire showed.

Every one in the boat looked at the leader, but none vouchsafed a
reply to the hail.

"Ahoy there, the boat!" insisted the same voice.

"Shall I fire on yez to make yez answer a civil question? Come ashore
wance--I can lick the best of yez in three minutes, or me name's not
Patrick Gass!"

The captain of the boat turned slowly in his seat, casting a glance
over his silent crew.

"Set in!" said he, sharply and shortly.

Without a word they obeyed, and with oar and steering-sweep the great
craft slowly swung inshore.

Lewis stepped from the boat, and, not waiting to see whether he was
followed--as he was by all of his men--strode on up the bank into the
circle of light made by the camp fire. About the fire lay a dozen or
more men of the hardest of the river type, which was saying quite
enough; for of all the lawless and desperate characters of the
frontier, none have ever surpassed in reckless audacity and truculence
the men of the old boat trade of the Ohio and the Mississippi.

These fellows lay idly looking at Lewis as he entered the light, not
troubling to accost him.

"Who hailed us?" demanded the latter shortly.

"Begorrah, 'twas me," said a short, strongly built man, stepping
forward from the other side of the fire.

Clad in loose shirt and trousers, like most of his comrades, he showed
a powerful man, a shock of reddish hair falling over his eyes, a
bull-like neck rising above his open shirt in such fashion that the
size of his shoulder muscles might easily be seen.

"'Twas me hailed yez, and what of it?"

"That is what I came ashore to learn," said Meriwether Lewis. "We are
about our business. What concern is that of yours? I am here to
learn."

"Yez can learn, if ye're so anxious," replied the other. "'Tis me
have got three drinks of Monongahaly in me that