ted out their
girlish distresses, to let himself down. The foolish exploit was
sufficiently unsafe and painful to be its own reward, the rough line
cutting his hands and forcing him, as soon as he dared, to drop into the
arms of the two men. With them and others he passed from sight between
the great wheels but soon was with the pretty signers again, coming up
alone by way of the cook-house and pantry. His hands showed ugly red
scars as he brushed away a few flies that liked his perfumery and had
stubbornly followed him from below.

But the fun was over. It was not his galled palms but his pallid face
that struck the young company with a frank dismay. His whole bearing was
transformed and betrayed him smitten with emotions for which he found no
speech. Had it made him ill, they asked, going down by that dreadful
rope? No, he was not ill at all. But when they vacantly proposed to
resume the signing he exclaimed almost with vehemence that he had names
enough, and left them, to return the petition to the senator.

This was an incident of the forenoon. As he delivered the paper the
senator spoke a pleased word and then gazed on him in surprise. "Why,
what's the matter? Sick?"

"No, I'm not sick."

"But, look here, where--where's your own signature?"

"You can't have it."

"Oh, you want to sign, don't you?"

"No." A sudden anguish filled the boy's face. "Not for all the gold in
California. God A'mighty, sir, I've been down there and seen those
people!"

"Oh! my! dear! fellow! If we let mere sights and sounds--of things that
can't be helped--upset us--There's the dinner-bell--come, have a
cocktail with me--a Rofignac!... Ah! general--judge--wet your whistle
with us?"

The general and the judge, accepting, looked sharply at Basile.
"Why--what's the matter? Sick?"

But he went with them to the bar and to the board.

XXIII

A STATE OF AFFAIRS

Watson was in the pilot-house, though not at the wheel.

So early of a Sabbath afternoon, in the middle of his partner's watch,
he might well have been in his texas stateroom asleep, but to a
Mississippi River pilot Sunday afternoon, or any afternoon, or forenoon,
or midnight, or dusk or dawn, on watch or off, the one thing in this
world was the river. Else what sort of a pilot would he be, when the
whole lore of its thousands of miles of navigation was without chart,
light, or beacon, a thing kept only in pilots' memories, a lamp in a
temple?

Glancing down