The End of the World: A Love Story

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  WAKING UP AN UGLY CUSTOMER.

  The steady beat of the wheels and the incessant clank of the engineswent on as usual. The boat was loaded almost to her guards, and did notmake much speed. The wheels kept their persistent beat upon the water,and the engines kept their rhythmical clangor going, until August foundhimself getting drowsy. Trouble, with forced inaction, nearly always hasa soporific tendency, and a continuous noise is favorable to sleep. Onceor twice August roused himself to a sense of his responsibility andbattled with his heaviness. It was nearing the end of his watch, for thedog-watch of two hours set in at four o'clock. But it seemed to him thatfour o'clock would never come.

  An incident occurred just at this moment that helped him to keep hiseyes open. A man went aft through the engine-room with a redhandkerchief tied round his forehead. In spite of this partial disguiseAugust perceived that it was Parkins. He passed through to the placewhere the steerage or deck passengers are, and then disappeared fromAugust's sight. He had meant to disembark at a wood-yard just belowPaducah, but for some reason the boat did not stop, and now, as Augustguessed, he was hiding himself from Paducah eyes. He was not much toosoon, for the great bell on the hurricane-deck was already ringing forPaducah, and the summer dawn was showing itself faintly through theriver fog.

  The alarm-bell rang in the engine-room, and Wehle stood by his engine.Then the bell rang to stop the starboard engine, and August obeyed it.The pilot of a Western steamboat depends much upon his engines forsteerage in making a landing, and the larboard engine was kept running awhile longer in order to bring the deeply-loaded boat round to herlanding at the primitive wharf-boat of that day. There is something finein the faith with which an engineer obeys the bell of the pilot, notknowing what may be ahead, not inquiring what may be the effect of theorder, but only doing exactly what he is bid when he is bid. August hadstopped his engine, and stood trying to keep his mind off Parkins andthe events of the night, that he might be ready to obey the next signalfor his engine. But the bell rang next to stop the other engine, atwhich the second engineer stood, and August was so free fromresponsibility in regard to that that he hardly noticed the sound of thebell, until it rang a second time more violently. Then he observed thatthe larboard engine still ran. Was Munson dead or asleep? Clearly it wasAugust's duty to stand by his own engine. But then he was startled tothink what damage to property or life might take place from the failureof the second engineer to stop his engine. While he hesitated, and allthese considerations flashed through his mind, the pilot's bell rangagain long and loud, and August then, obeying an impulse rather than aconviction, ran over to the other engine, stopped it, and then,considering that it had run so long against orders, he reversed it andset it to backing without waiting instructions. Then he seized Munsonand woke him, and hurried back to his post. But the larboard engine hadnot made three revolutions backward before the boat, hopelessly thrownfrom her course by the previous neglect, struck the old wharf-boat andsunk it. But for the promptness and presence of mind with which Wehleacted, the steamboat itself would have suffered severely. The mate andthen the captain came rushing into the engine-room. Munson wasdischarged at once, and the striker was promised engineer's wages.

  Gus went off watch at this moment, and the mud-clerk said to him, in hischaracteristically indifferent voice, "Such luck, I declare! I was sureyou would be dismissed for meddling with Parkins, and here you arepromoted, I declare!"

  The mishap occasioned much delay to the boat, as it was veryinconvenient to deliver freight at that day and at that stage of waterwithout the intervention of the wharf-boat. A full hour was consumed infinding a landing, and in rigging the double-staging and temporaryplanks necessary to get the molasses and coffee and household "plunder"ashore. Some hint that Parkins was on the river had already reachedPaducah, and the sheriff and two deputies and a small crowd were at thelanding looking for him. A search of the boat failed to discover him,and the crowd would have left the landing but for occasional hints slylythrown out by the mud-clerk as he went about over the levee collectingfreight-bills. These hints, given in a non-committal way, kept the crowdalive with expectation, and when the rumors thus started spread abroad,the levee was soon filled with an excited and angry multitude.

  If it had been a question of delivering a criminal to justice, Augustwould not have hesitated to tell the sheriff where to look. But he verywell knew that the sheriff could not convey the man through the mobalive, and to deliver even such a scoundrel to the summary vengeance ofa mob was something that he could not find it in his heart to do.

  In truth, the sheriff and his officers did not seek very zealously fortheir man. Under the circumstances, it was probable he would notsurrender himself without a fight, in which somebody would be killed,and besides there must ensue a battle with the mob. It was what theycalled an ugly job, and they were not loth to accept the captain'sassurance that the gambler had gone ashore.

  While August was unwilling to deliver the hunted villain to a savagedeath, he began to ask himself why he might not in some way use histerror in the interest of justice. For he had just then seen thewretched and bewildered face of Norman looking ghastly enough in the fogof the morning.

  At last, full of this notion, and possessed, too, by his habit ofaccomplishing at all hazards what he had begun, August strolled backthrough the now quiet engine-room to the deck-passengers' quarter. Itwas about half an hour before six o'clock, when the dog-watch wouldexpire and he must go on duty again. In one of the uppermost of thefilthy bunks, in the darkest corner, near the wheel, he discovered whathe thought to be his man. The deck-passengers were still asleep, lyingaround stupidly. August paused a moment, checked by a sense of thedangerousness of his undertaking. Then he picked up a stick of wood andtouched the gambler, who could not have been very sound asleep, lying inhearing of the curses of the mob on the shore. At first Parkins did notmove, but August gave him a still more vigorous thrust. Then he peeredout between the blanket and the handkerchief over his forehead.

  "I will take that money you won last night from that young man, if youplease."

  WAKING UP AN UGLY CUSTOMER.]

  Parkins saw that it was useless to deny his identity. "Do you want to beshot?" he asked fiercely.

  "Not any more than you want to be hung," said August. "The one wouldfollow the other in five minutes. Give back that money and I willgo away."

  The gambler trembled a minute. He was fairly at bay. He took out a rollof bills and handed it to August. There was but five hundred. Smith hadthe other four hundred and fifty, he said. But August had a quiet Germansteadiness of nerve. He said that unless the other four hundred andfifty were paid at once he should call in the sheriff or the crowd.Parkins knew that every minute August stood there increased his peril,and human nature is now very much like human nature in the days of Job.The devil understood the subject very well when he said that all that aman hath will he give for his life. Parkins paid the four hundred andfifty in gold-pieces. He would have paid twice that if August haddemanded it.