ous clicks of the bell; our helm goes
hard down and the engines stop with a sullen jar, as I catch a hissing
curse through the set teeth of the pilot.

A yell of wild triumph rises from the rival's deck. On she comes in
gallant style, shutting the gap and passing us like a race-horse,
before we can swing into the channel and recover headway. It is a
splendid sight as the noble boat passes us; her black bulk standing out
in the clear moonlight against the dim, gray banks like a living
monster; her great chimneys snorting out volumes of massive black smoke
that trail out level behind her, from the great speed. Her side toward
us is crowded with men, women and children; hats, handkerchiefs and
hands are swung madly about to aid the effort of the hundred voices.

Close down to the water's edge--scarce above the line of foam she
cuts--her lower deck lies black and undefined in the shadow of the
great mass above it. Suddenly it lights up with a lurid flash, as the
furnace-doors swing wide open; and in the hot glare the negro
stokers--their stalwart forms jetty black, naked to the waist and
streaming with exertion that makes the muscles strain out in great
cords--show like the distorted imps of some pictured inferno. They,
too, have imbibed the excitement. With every gesture of anxious haste
and eyeballs starting from their dusky heads, some plunge the long
rakes into the red mouths of the furnace, twisting and turning the
crackling mass with terrific strength; others hurl in huge logs of
resinous pine, already heated by contact till they burn like pitch.
Then the great doors bang to; the _Yo Ho!_ of the negroes dies away and
the whole hull is blacker from the contrast; while the "Senator,"
puffing denser clouds than ever, swings round the point a hundred yards
ahead!

There is dead silence on our boat--silence so deep that the rough
whisper of the pilot to the knot around him is heard the whole length
of her deck: "Damnation! but I'll overstep her yit, or--bust!"

"Good, old man!" responds Styles--"Let her out and I'll stand the
wine!"

Then the old colonel walks to the wheel; his face purple, his glengary
pushed back on his head, his cigar glowing like the "red eye of
battle," as he puffs angry wheezes of smoke through his nostrils.

"Damned hard! sir--hard! Egad! I'd burn the last ham in the locker to
overtake her!"--and he hurls the glowing stump after the "Senator," as
the Spartan youth hurled their shields into th