ead, miles away in Shreve's Cut-off,
riding the strong current under Turnbull's Island, came the _Regent_,
finest and speediest of Gideon Hayle's steamers.

So late in the season her passengers were few and she was not utterly
smothered in a cargo of cotton bales, yet her freight deck showed a
goodly brown mass of them, above which her snowy form gleamed against
the verdant background of the forested island, as dainty as a swan,
while her gliding stem raised on either side a silver ribbon of water
that arched itself almost to her gunwales.

"Each to her own starboard," answered the _Regent's_ mellow bell to the
bell of the _Votaress_. Her whistle whitened and trumpeted in salute,
and on jack-staff and verge-staff her rippling flags ran up and dipped,
twice, thrice, to the answering flags of the Courteney boat. Well
forward on her hurricane-deck her captain, whom many on the _Votaress_
pointed out by name, stood alone. Amid-ships her cabin-boys lined her
cook-house guards. Her negro crew swarmed round her capstan with their
chantey-man on its head and sent over the gliding waters the same
stalwart perversion of the wilderness hymn of "Gideon's Band" to which
the twins had danced the night before. Now the lone, high voice of the
leader sang:

"Fus' come de animals, two by two,
Fus' come de animals, two by two,
Fus' come de animals, two by two,
De elephantine and de kanguiroo,"

and now, while he held the key-note through the refrain's whole first
line, the chorus rolled up from an octave below:

"Do you belong to Gideon's Band?
Here's my heart an' here's my hand!
Do you belong to Gideon's Band?
Fight'n' fo' yo' home!"

No song is so poor that it may not thrill a partisan devotion. Ramsey
stood on her toes. Down in his berth and in torture the shut-in Lucian
faintly heard, turned his gaze to his brother, whispered "the _Regent_!"
and listened for another verse. The boats were passing widely apart, and
when it came only memory made its foolish lines plain to his doting ear:

"Nex' come de hoss and den de flea,
Nex' come de hoss and den de flea,
Nex' come de hoss and den de flea,
De camomile and de bumblebee.
Do you belong to Gideon's Band?
. . . . . . . .

Fight'n' fo' yo' home!"

On the last line the singers were half a mile downstream, in Raccourci
Cut-off, and Ramsey and the _Votaress_ were we