essly
reminded Ramsey. From the mate it was further learned that the pursuer
had overhauled the pursued between Petit Goufre--which he and the whole
company called Petty Gulf--and Grand Gulf; places named before the days
of steam for their dangerous eddies. Yet, he went on to tell Ramsey, the
swifter boat, with more freight to put ashore and with a larger appetite
for cord-wood, had never got clean away. Even now, in full view ahead,
she was down at half speed, wooding up from a barge in tow alongside.
You could hear her crew singing as they trotted under their great
shoulder loads of wood. The amateurs, except Hugh but including Ramsey,
caught up their song and were promptly joined by a group around the bell
of the _Westwood_ as that gallant loser foamed along between the
_Votaress_ and the shore:

"Oh, if I had a scolding wife,
As sure as you are born
I'd take her down to Noo Orleans
And trade her off for corn."

Presently the _Antelope_ cast off the emptied flat in midstream, and a
redoubled whiteness behind her paddle-boxes showed full speed.

"Now we can give her a square deal!" said a youth.

"And pass her inside of an hour!" declared another.

"In Bunch's Cut-off!" ventured one to the commodore, but the commodore
said the _Votaress_ herself was hungry for wood, and the mate confirmed
him by a nod.

"How much wood," some one asked the mate, "will a boat like this use up
in twenty-four hours?" It quickened the blood to be up here midway
between these turbid waters and yonder passionate sky so joyous in one
quarter, so angry in another; particularly to be here while steadily
distancing one beautiful boat and overtaking another "amid green
islands," as Mrs. Gilmore quoted--one of which, still in sight astern,
was that old haunt of flatboat robbers, called Island Ninety-four,
Stack's Island, or Crow's Nest. One half forgot the sad state of affairs
below. Conversation glided as swiftly as a flock of swallows and in as
many directions.

"How much wood?" said the mate. "Well, that sort o' depends. I once part
owned a boat that fo' one whole month didn't burn enough wood to dry the
sheriff's shoes, but that 'uz 'cause he kep' her tied up to the bank."

Ramsey did not hear this and cared nothing for the laugh it won. She had
seen the doctor and the priest slip from the twins' room in the texas
and go below aft. "How's mom-a?" she eagerly asked the commodore.

"Very well."

"How's Lu