packet, and get locked up in a St. Louis
jail. I'll get out again quicker than you, but that hardly matters. If
you're going aboard, go ahead; I'm in no great hurry." Out of the corner
of his eye he was watching the Mexican, but found nothing threatening.

Schoolcraft glared at him, allowed a hypocritical smile to mask his
feelings, bowed politely, and walked down the levee, the Mexican
following him, and Tom bringing up the rear. They were quickly separated
by the bustle on the boat, each giving his immediate attention to the
preparations necessary for his comfort during the voyage.

A second blast of the whistle was followed by the groaning of the great
derrick as it lifted the landing stage and swung it aboard; lines were
hauled in and the passengers along the rails waved their adieus and
called last minute messages to those they were leaving behind. It would
be many years before some of them saw their friends again, and for a few
the reunion would not be on this earth. A bell rang aft and the great
stern paddle slapped and thrashed noisily as it bit and tore at the
yellow water beneath it. Showers of sparks, incandescent as they left
the towering stacks, fell in gray flakes on the decks and the river, the
bluish smoke of the wood fires trailing straighter and straighter astern
as the packet rounded into the boiling current and pushed upstream at a
constantly increasing speed, leaving behind her the western metropolis
on the left-hand bank and a straggling hamlet on the other.

Here the Mississippi is a mighty river, approaching half a mile in width
between its limestone banks; deep, swift, its current boiling up the
muddy contribution of the great Missouri, as if eager to expose the
infamy of its pollution to the world. But whatever it lost in purity by
the addition of the muddy water, pouring in eighteen miles above the
city, it gained in greatness. Other large rivers have been tamed and
rendered nearly harmless, but these two have baffled man's labors and
ingenuity, and finally the contributing stream has been given up as
incorrigible.

The confusion of the passengers attending to their baggage, places at
table and their sleeping quarters grew constantly less as mile followed
mile, and by the time the _Belle_ swung in a great, westward curve to
leave the Father of Waters for the more turbid and treacherous bosom of
the Big Muddy, many were eagerly looking for the line marking the
joining of the two great strea