er the hurt negro and struck at him. The next thing I knew,
Mr. M'Grath was overboard and right down here in front of the
paddle-wheel, and the man he had tried to strike was jumping in after
him. I thought they would both be ground to death under the wheel."

"Is that all?"

"All but the rescue. The pilot turned the _Belle Julie_ around and they
were picked up. Mr. M'Grath was unconscious, and the other man was too
weak to stand up."

Captain Mayfield nodded. "He was sick when he came to us: consumption,
Mac said."

Miss Farnham was a doctor's daughter, and she had seen many victims of
the white death.

"I think that must have been a mistake," she ventured. "He doesn't look
at all like a tuberculosis patient."

Again the captain was curious.

"How could you tell, at that distance and in the night?" he asked
quizzically.

Embarrassment quickly flung down a handful of obstacles in Charlotte's
path, but she picked her way among them.

"I saw him yesterday morning quite close, and I looked at him
because--because I thought I had seen him somewhere before. Do you know
anything about him, Captain Mayfield?--who he is, I mean?"

"Not any more than I do about the rest of them. They're driftwood,
mostly, you understand. We pick them up and drop them, here and there
and everywhere. This fellow's name is Gavitt--John Wesley Gavitt--on the
clerk's book. Mac said he was a sick hobo, working his way to St.
Louis."

"How long before the beginning of a voyage do you hire the crew?" asked
Charlotte, trying not to seem too pointedly interested.

"Oh, they string along all through the loading for two or three days,
and from that right up to the last minute."

It was discouraging, and she was on the point of giving up. Her one hope
now lay in the fixing of the exact time of the man Gavitt's enlistment
in the _Belle Julie's_ crew, and there appeared to be only one way of
determining this.

"Does anybody know--could anybody tell just when this particular man was
hired, Captain Mayfield?" she asked.

"Not unless Mac happens to remember. No, hold on; I recollect now; it
was the day we left New Orleans--day before yesterday, that was."

"In the morning?"

If the good-natured captain was beginning to wonder why his pretty
passenger was cross-examining him so closely, he did not betray it.

"It was about noon; I believe. Two or three of the black boys had
skipped out at the last minute, as they always do, and we were
sho