The Last of the Flatboats

  CHAPTER XXV

  A VOYAGE IN THE WOODS

  It was long past midnight when Phil aroused one of his comrades to takehis place on watch and at the pump. For the young captain had a gooddeal of careful thinking to do, and he could do it better alone in thedark than when surrounded by his crew. Moreover, he knew that until histhinking should be done he could not sleep even if he should try.

  "I might as well stay on deck and let the other fellows sleep," he saidto himself, "as to lie awake for hours in my bunk."

  In the morning Phil called a "council of war."

  "Now listen to me first, without interrupting," he said. "I've thoughtout the situation as well as I can, and have made up my mind what weought to do. After I've told you my plan and the reasons for it, you canmake any suggestions you like, and I'll adopt any of them that seem goodto me."

  "That's right," said Irv. "Let's hear what you've thought and what yourplan is. Then we'll carry it out."

  "No," said Phil. "I want you to criticise it first, so that if it'swrong I can change it."

  "All right. Go ahead."

  "First of all, then, we're out here in the woods. It isn't a comfortableor a proper place for a flatboat to be in, and we must get out of it asquickly as we can."

  "But how?" broke in Will. "We're ten or twenty or maybe thirty or fortymiles from the river, and we can't possibly get back again."

  "I don't know so well about that," said Phil. "Of course we can't getback to the river at the point where we left it. But I'm not so surethat we can't get back to it somewhere else, and at any rate, I'm goingto try. Listen, now! The water we're in is thirty-five feet deep."

  "How do you know?" asked Constant.

  "I've sounded it. So we've plenty of water, and there is no danger ofour going aground. But we're not in any river, for we're in the midst ofthe woods, and woods don't grow in rivers. But this water that we're inis running toward somewhere at the rate of six or eight miles a hour,and we must go with it. Somehow or somewhere it must run into someriver, and that river must somewhere and somehow empty itself into theMississippi."

  "Why?" asked Constant.

  "Because there isn't anything else for it to run into, and of course itcan't stop running. Now my idea is this. We must cast the boat loose andlet her float with the current. It will be very hard work to keep herfrom smashing into these big trees, but we must do all the hard worknecessary. We'll tie up every night so long as we're in the woods, andwe'll float all day. Sooner or later we'll run out of the woods and intoa river, and when we do that we'll follow the river to its end, whereverit may happen to be."

  "But have you any idea where we are?" asked Will.

  "No," said Phil, "except that we are somewhere in the northern part ofthe state of Mississippi."

  "I know where we are," drawled Irv Strong.

  "Where?"

  "We're in the woods."

  "I'm pleased to observe that you still have 'lucid intervals,' Irv,"said Ed Lowry. "But I have a rather more definite idea than that of ourwhereabouts. I studied it out on the map early this morning."

  "Good, good! Where are we?" cried out all the boys in a breath, and withgreat eagerness.

  "Come here and see," said Ed, unrolling his great river map. "Youobserve that a number of rivers originate in northern Mississippi andwestern Tennessee, almost under the levees of the Mississippi. There arethe Big Sunflower, the Coldwater, and the Tallahatchie, with theYalobusha only a little way off. All of them run into the Yazoo, whichin its turn runs into the Mississippi near Vicksburg. All of them aremarked on my map as navigable for a part of their course. All of themlie in a great flat basin or lowland swamp. But for the levees theMississippi would flow into them whenever it rises to any considerableextent. In fact, they must originally have been mere bayous of the greatriver, running out of it and back into it again. The Mississippi leveeshave stopped all that ordinarily, but the levees have given way thistime, and so the Mississippi is now pouring its water into these rivers,and as there is too much of it for them to hold, it has filled theentire swamp country between them, making one vast stream of them all ineffect. We are somewhere in between those rivers, and if we can keep ourflatboat afloat and not wreck her among these trees, the current willsooner or later carry us into the natural channel of one or the other ofthem. That I understand to be Phil's idea, and he is right."

  "That's all right," said Phil, who was restlessly pacing up and down thedeck. "But has anybody any suggestion to make?"

  Nobody had anything to offer.

  "Very well, then," said the young captain, "let's get to work. We'vetalked enough. We must keep one fellow at a pump all the time. We can'tdo much with the sweeps while we're in the woods, and our greatestdanger is that of running the boat into one of these big trees andwrecking her. To prevent that I want you, Irv, and you, Constant,--foryou are the stoutest oarsmen,--to get into a skiff and carry a lineabout a hundred feet in advance of the boat. She slews around prettyeasily under a pull, and I want you two to guide her with a line. I'lltell you when you are to row to right or left to avoid trees, and therest of the time you've only to keep the line taut so as to be ready foremergencies. Get into the skiff at once, and take a light line withyou."

  As soon as the skiff was in position and the guiding line stretched,Phil directed Will Moreraud to jump into another skiff and release theflatboat from her moorings.

  It was perilous business navigating thus through a dense subtropicalforest. Phil stood at the bow, intently watching and giving his commandsin a restrained voice and with an apparent calm that sadly belied hisactual condition of mind. Will and Ed "stood by" the sweeps, working thepumps, but holding themselves ready to pull on the great oars wheneverPhil should find that mode of guiding the boat practicable.

  Every now and then Phil would call to Irv and Constant in the skiffahead, to pull with all their might to the right or left, and many timesthe flatboat, in spite of this diligence, had narrow escapes fromdisaster.

  It was terribly hard work, and the mental strain of it which fell uponPhil was worse even than the tremendous physical exertion put forth bythe other boys. There was no midday meal served that day, for it wouldhave meant destruction for any one of the boys to leave his post of dutylong enough even to prepare the simplest food.

  About four o'clock in the afternoon Phil suddenly called to Irv:--

  "Carry your line around a tree and check speed all you can!" Thenturning to Will:--

  "Jump into a skiff, Will, and take out another line, just as you didyesterday. When the boat stops, make fast!"

  The boys obeyed promptly, and a few minutes later _The Last of theFlatboats_ was securely tied to two great trees--one in front and oneastern.

  Then Phil threw himself down on the deck and closed his eyes as if insleep, and the boys in the skiffs came back on board.

  The captain was manifestly exhausted. The strain of watching anddirecting the course of the boat through so many hours and undercircumstances so difficult, the still greater strain put upon his mindby his consciousness that he alone was responsible for the safety ofboat and crew and cargo, and finally the sudden relief caused by aglimpse ahead which his comrades had been too busy to share, had broughton something very like collapse.

  The boys said nothing, lest they disturb him. He lay still for a quarterof an hour perhaps. Then he got up, stripped off his clothing, andleaped overboard.

  Five minutes later he returned to the deck refreshed by his bath, andalmost himself again.

  As he dried himself with a towel, he said:--

  "Two of you go below and get supper. Make it a big one, for we are allstarving. And get it as quickly as you can." Then, after a brief pause,he added:--

  "You didn't notice it, I suppose, but we're out of the woods!"

  "How so?" asked Ed and Irv in unison.

  "There's an open river just ahead," replied Phil. "Go forward and look.I'm going to sleep now. Wake me up when supper is ready."

  And in a moment th
e exhausted boy was sound asleep, stretched out upon ahard plank, without pillow or other comfort of any kind.

  "Poor fellow!" said Irv. "He's got the big end of this job all thetime."

  With that he dived below, and returning, placed a pillow under Phil'sbandaged head, and spread a blanket over him, for the air was chill.