the _Votaress_.
Said the pilot, Ned, to Ramsey, pulling the wheel down to head into the
crimson west:

"Four 'n' four's eight, ain't it? Used to be. Can't tell what'll change
on this river. When Lake Concordia, over here in Louisiana, was part o'
the river, an' Vidal's Island, in its middle, was in the river, this
bend wa'n't jest eight mile' round, it wuz twenty. These are _the_
bends. F'om here to Cairo we got to run one etarnal wriggle o' six
hund'd 'n' eighty mile' to make three hund'd 'n' seventy."

"Oh, I'm glad of it! At least--ain't--ain't you?"

He shook his head: "Not this run." The supper bell rang and Ramsey fled,
but he repeated: "No, not this run!" He turned and looked back upon
Natchez bluff far behind the steamer's wake. "I wished every last Hayle
on this blessed boat wuz off o' her an' 'top o' you!"

On that bluff, in colonial days, had stood Fort Rosalie, whose dire
tragedy Ramsey, down in the cabin, found Gilmore, at table, recounting
to Hugh and others: murder of its French settlers by Natchez Indians and
the extermination of the Natchez tribe by the French from New Orleans.
He was brief, and for a good ending went on to recall his own first
sight of the spot, before the time of steamboats, when Natchez was a
village; how, as his low broadhorn came drifting down around this point
close above it, the bold rise swung into view, crowned with pines, its
lower parts evergreen with the bay magnolia, and its precipitous front
lighted up, as now, with the last beams of day. He made it seem so fair
and important that Ramsey's native pride and a shame of her previous
blindness almost drove her from the board to take a last look at it from
the stern guards; but she was again in her mother's seat and again very
hungry. He was good company to every one, the actor; always acting, yet
always as natural as if acting and nature were one; a quiet education to
Hugh, an unfailing joy to his wife, and both to Ramsey.

After supper the players got out an old two-act play for the next
evening's entertainment. They cast Hugh and Ramsey for two small roles,
and for two larger ones found a young brother and sister--of
Napoleon--at the mouth of the Arkansas--who would have just time to act
them before leaving the boat. Supper had prevented its guests from
seeing the _Votaress_ turn Giles's Bend and Rifle Point and meet another
boat as glittering as she and pass Lake Saint John and Fairchild's
Bend--where the river widened