ma doesn't know you're out." With which paternal
admonition we ascended.

The professor was still in a deep sleep; having been transferred by the
aid of a deck hand, or two, to his bower. This was a box of a
state-room six feet by nine, in which was a most dilapidated
double-bass, a violin case and a French horn. Over the berth, a cracked
guitar hung by a greasy blue ribbon. Staple waked him without
ceremony--ordered Congress water, pulled out the instruments; and soon
we were in "a concord of sweet sounds," the like of which the mermaids
of the Alabama had not heard before.

Suddenly, in the midst of a roaring chorus, there was a short, heavy
jar that sent us pellmell across the state-room; then a series of
grinding jolts; and, amid the yelling of orders, jangling of bells and
backing of the wheels, the boat swung slowly round by the bows. We were
hard and fast aground!

Of all the unpleasant episodes of river travel, the worst by far is to
be grounded in the daytime. The dreary monotony of bank and stream as
you glide by increases ten-fold when lying, hour after hour, with
nothing to do but gaze at it. Under this trial the jolliest faces grow
long and dismal; quiet men become dreadfully blue and the saturnine
look actually suicidal. Even the negro hands talk under their breath,
and the broad _Yah! Yah!_ comes less frequently from below decks.

Here we lay, two miles above Selma--hard and fast, with engines and
anchors equally useless to move us a foot--until midnight. About
sundown an up-boat passed just across our bows. Little is the sympathy
a grounded boat gets unless actually in danger. Every soul aboard of
her, from captain to cook's boy, seemed to think us fair game, and
chaff of all kinds was hailed from her decks. But she threw us a Selma
paper of that evening, and a hundred eager hands were stretched over
the side to catch it.

It fell at the feet of a slight, wiry man of about fifty, with
twinkling gray eyes, prominent features and fierce gray moustache.
There was something in his manner that kept the more ardent ones from
plucking it out of his fingers, as he stooped quietly to pick it up;
but few on board ever knew that their quiet fellow-passenger was the
most widely known "rebel of them all."

Many a man has read, with quickening breath, of the bold deeds of
Admiral Raphael Semmes; and some have traced his blazing track to the,
perhaps, Quixotic joust that ended his wild sea-kingship, never
recal