o-day, clipped of its perils by dykes and beacons, in boats driven by
steam.

Yet these modern mariners, charged with the care of the great steamboats
two and three hundred feet long, are more heroic characters than were
the greatest of the old-time navigators. The finest sight that I saw in
all that day aboard the _Gladiateur_ was our pilot at his post as he
swung us around certain of the more dangerous of the curves: where rocks
or sand-bars narrowed the channel closely and where a fall in the
river-bed more than usually abrupt made the current fiercely strong. In
such perilous passes he had behind him in a row at the long
tiller--these boats are not steered by a wheel forward, but by a tiller
at the stern--two, three, and at one turn four men. He himself, at the
extreme end of the tiller, stood firmly posed and a little leaning
forward, his body rigid, his face set in resolute lines, his eyes
fixedly bent upon the course ahead; behind him the others, elately
poised in readiness to swing their whole weight with his on the instant
that his tense energy in repose flashed into energy in action as the
critical turn was made--the whole group, raised above us on the high
quarter-deck, in relief against the deep blue sky. Amy, or another of
the Southern sculptors, will be moved some day, I hope, to seize upon
that thrilling group and to fasten it forever in enduring bronze.

VI

As we approached the bridge of Serrieres it was evident that another
demonstration in our honour was imminent. On the bridge a small but
energetic crowd was assembled, and we could see a bouquet pendent from a
cord descending toward the point where our boat was expected to pass.
The projectors of that floral tribute cheered us finely as we came
dashing toward them; and up in our bows was great excitement--which
suddenly was intensified into anguish as we perceived that our admirers
had made a miscalculation: a fateful fact that was anticipated and
realized almost in the same instant--as we saw the bouquet level with
our deck but forty feet away a-beam! Yet good luck saved the day to us.
As we shot the bridge we also rounded a curve, and a moment after the
bow of the long _Gladiateur_ had gone wide of the bouquet the stern had
swung around beneath it and it was brought safe aboard. In the same
breath we had passed under and beyond the bridge and were sending up
stream to our benefactors our cheers of thanks.

When the discovery was made that a b