ce with which he
appealed to Red, until that worthy was drawn into the conversation. When
Black succeeded in this latter-named operation, he would, by insensible
stages, draw himself away, and give himself up to enthusiastic
admiration of his partner, or, apparently, of his conversational
ability.

The Spring of 1869 found the Chums in the crew of the _Bennett_, "the
peerless floating palace of the Mississippi," as she was called by those
newspapers whose reporters had the freedom of the _Bennett's_ bar; and
the same season saw the _Bennett_ staggering down the Mississippi with
so heavy a load of sacked corn, that the gunwales amidships were fairly
under water.

The river was very low, so the _Bennett_ kept carefully in the channel;
but the channel of the great muddy ditch which drains half the Union is
as fickle as disappointed lovers declare women to be, and it has no more
respect for great steamer-loads of corn than Goliath had for David.

A little Ohio river-boat, bound upward, had reported the sudden
disappearance of a woodyard a little way above Milliken's Bend, where
the channel hugged the shore, and with the woodyard there had
disappeared an enormous sycamore-tree, which had for years served as a
tying-post for steamers.

As live sycamores are about as disinclined to float as bars of lead are,
the captain and pilot of the _Bennett_ were somewhat concerned--for the
sake of the corn--to know the exact location of the tree.

Half a mile from the spot it became evident, even to the passengers
clustered forward on the cabin-deck, that the sycamore had remained
quite near to its old home, for a long, rough ripple was seen directly
across the line of the channel.

Then arose the question as to how much water was on top of the tree, and
whether any bar had had time to accumulate.

The steamer was stopped, the engines were reversed and worked by hand to
keep the _Bennett_ from drifting down-stream, a boat was lowered and
manned, the Chums forming part of her crew, and the second officer went
down to take soundings; while the passengers, to whom even so small a
cause for excitement was a godsend, crowded the rail and stared.

The boat shot rapidly down stream, headed for the shore-end of the
ripple. She seemed almost into the boiling mud in front of her when the
passengers on the steamer heard the mate in the boat shout: "Back all!"

The motion of the oars changed in an instant, but a little too late,
for, a he